He walked by the side of the cart in silence.
She never spoke but once all the journey, and that was about half way, to complain in a sort of hopeless, pitiful tone that she was cold. It was a burning afternoon.
William took off his coat, and began to tie it round her by means of the sleeves; Susan made a little, silent, peevish and not very rational resistance; William tied it round her by brotherly force.
They reached her home; when she got out of the cart her eye was fixed, her cheek white, she seemed like one in a dream.
She went into the house without speaking or looking at William. William was sorry she did not speak to him; however he stood disconsolately by the cart, asking himself what he could do next for her and George. Presently he heard a slight rustle, and it was Susan coming back along the passage. “She has left something in the cart,” thought he, and he began to look in the straw.
She came like one still in a dream, and put her hand out to William, and it appeared that was what she had come back for.
William took her hand and pressed it to his bosom a moment. At this Susan gave a hysterical sob or two, and crept away again to her own room.
What she suffered in that room the first month after George's departure I could detail perhaps as well as any man living; but I will not. There is a degree of anguish one shrinks from intruding upon too familiarly in person; and even on paper the microscope should spare sometimes these beatings of the bared heart. It will be enough if I indicate by-and-by her state, after time and religion and good habits had begun to struggle, sometimes gaining, sometimes losing, against the tide of sorrow. For the present let us draw gently back and leave her, for she is bowed to the earth—fallen on her knees, her head buried in the curtains of her bed; dark, faint and leaden, on the borders of despair—a word often lightly used through ignorance. Heaven keep us all from a single hour, here or hereafter, of the thing the Word stands for; and Heaven comfort all true and loving hearts that read me, when their turn shall come to drain the bitter cup like Susan Merton.