She stood erect, with her fingers lying in his palm, and the ring of her voice was like the clashing of steel against steel.
He bent down, and, for the first time, pressed his lips to her forehead; then turned quickly and walked away. When he reached the head of the stairs, he looked back and saw her standing in the door, with the candle-light flaring over her face; and in after years, he could never recall, without a keen pang, that vision of a girlish form draped in mourning, and of fair, rigid features, which hope and happiness could never again soften and brighten.
Her splendid eyes followed him, as if the sole light of her life were passing away forever; and, with a heavy sigh, he hurried down the steps, realizing all the mournful burden of that Portuguese sonnet,—
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“Go from me. Yet I feel that I shall stand Henceforward in thy shadow. Nevermore Alone upon the threshold of my door Of individual life, I shall command The uses of my soul, nor lift my hand Serenely in the sunshine as before, Without the sense of that which I forbore— Thy touch upon the palm. The widest land Doom takes to part us, leaves thy heart in mine, With pulses that beat double. What I do And what I dream include thee, as the wine Must taste of its own grapes. And when I sue God for myself, He hears that name of thine, And sees within my eyes the tears of two.” |
CHAPTER XXVI.
“I hope nothing has gone wrong, Robert? You look unusually forlorn and doleful.”
Dr. Grey stepped out of his buggy, and accosted the gardener, who was leaning idly on the gate, holding a trowel in his hand, and lazily puffing the smoke from his pipe.
“I thank you, sir; with us the world wags on pretty much the same, but when a man has been planting violets on his mother’s grave he does not feel like whistling and making merry. Besides, to tell the truth,—which I do not like to shirk,—I am getting very tired of this dismal, unlucky place. If I had known as much before I bought it as I do now, all the locomotives in America could not have dragged me here. I was a stranger, and of course nobody thought it their special duty to warn me; so I was bitten badly enough by the agent who sold me this den of misfortune. Now, when it is too late, there is no lack of busy tongues to tell me the place is haunted, and has been for, lo! these many years.”