Mrs. Granite thought if Jane could go to her Aunt Annie’s second cousin Jenny in South Carolina, for a spell, she would be cured; but Mrs. Granite said climate was only meant for rich folks; she said you lived and died here in Windover, if your lungs was anyways delicate, like frozen herring packed into a box. She was almost epigrammatic—for Mrs. Granite.
Bayard had been sitting in his study-chair, writing steadily, while his mind, with his too sensitive sympathy, followed the fortunes of these poor women who made him all the home he knew. It was towards six o’clock, and darkening fast. The noise on the beach opposite the cottage was heavy; and the breakers off Ragged Rock boomed mightily.
Snow was falling so thickly that he could not see the water. The fog-bell was tolling, and yells of agony came from the whistling-buoy. It was one of the days when a man delicately reared winces with a soreness impossible to be understood unless experienced, from life in a place and in a position like his; when the uncertain value of the ends of sacrifice presents itself to the mind like the spatter from a stream of vitriol; when the question, Is what I achieve worth its cost? burns in upon the bravest soul, and gets no answer for its scorching.
Bayard laid down his pen and paper, and looked patiently out of the window; putting his empty hand in his pocket as he did so.
His eyes gazed into the curtain of the whirling snow. He wondered how far out to sea it extended; how many miles of it dashed between himself and Helen. It was one of the hours when she seemed to fill the world.
The snowflakes took on fantastic shapes—so! That was the way she held out her white hands. The soft trailing of her gown sounded in the room. If he turned his head, should he see her standing, a vision in purple and gold, smiling, warm, and sweet? It would be such a disappointment not to find her! Rather believe that he should, if he would, and so not stir.
Suddenly his hand in his own pocket struck an object whose character he did not at the moment recall. He drew it out and looked at it. It was the key of his old home in Beacon Street.
For three years, perhaps, he had not thought of his uncle’s words: “Keep your latch-key. You will want to use it, some day.”
Bayard regarded the latch-key steadily. The senseless thing burned his palm as if it were trying to articulate.