A Tale of a Lonely Parish

by F. Marion Crawford

"If it turns out a fine night, don't come for us. We will walk home," said the squire to the groom as they descended before the vicarage and Stamboul, who had sat on the floor between them, sprang down to the ground.

John was startled when he met Mrs. Goddard. He was amazed at the change in her appearance for which no one had prepared him. She met him indeed very cordially but he felt as though she were not the same woman he had known so short a time before. There was still in her face that delicate pathetic expression which had at first charmed him, there was still the same look in her eyes; but what had formerly seemed so attractive seemed now exaggerated. Her cheeks looked wan and hollow and there were deep shadows about her eyes and temples; her lips had lost their colour and the lines about her mouth had suddenly become apparent where John had not before suspected them. She looked ten years older as she put her thin hand in his and smiled pleasantly at his greeting. Some trite phrase about the "ravages of time" crossed John's mind and gave him a disagreeable sensation, for which it was hard to account. He felt as though his dream were suddenly dead and a strange reality had taken life in its place. Could this be she to whom he had written verses by the score, at whose smile he had swelled with pride, at whose careless laugh he had trembled with shame? She was terribly changed, she looked positively old—what John called old. As he sat by her side talking and wondering whether he would fall back into those same grooves of conversation he had associated with her formerly, he felt something akin to pity for her, which he had certainly never expected to feel. She was not the same as before—even the tone of her voice was different; she was gentle, pathetic, endowed even now with many charms, but she was not the woman he had dreamed of and tried to speak to of the love he fancied was in his heart. She talked—yes; but there were long pauses, and her eyes wandered strangely from him, often towards the windows of the vicarage drawing-room, often towards the doors; her answers were not always to the point and her interest seemed to flag in what was said. John could not fail to notice too that both Mr. Ambrose and Mr. Juxon treated her with the kind of attention which is bestowed upon invalids, and the vicar's wife was constantly doing something to make her comfortable, offering her a footstool, shading the light from her eyes, asking if she felt any draught where she sat. These were things no one had formerly thought of doing for Mrs. Goddard, who in spite of her sad face had been used to laugh merrily enough with the rest, and whose lithe figure had seemed to John the embodiment of youthful activity. At last he ventured to ask her a question.

"Have you been ill, Mrs. Goddard?" he inquired in a voice full of interest. Her soft eyes glanced uneasily at him. He was now the only one of the party who was not in some degree acquainted with her troubles.

"Oh no!" she answered nervously. "Only a little headache. It always makes me quite wretched when I have it."

"Yes. I often have headaches, too," answered John. "The squire told me as we came down."

"What did he tell you?" asked Mrs. Goddard so quickly as to startle her companion.

"Oh—only that you had not been very well. Where is it that you suffer?" he asked sympathetically. "I think it is worst when it seems to be in the very centre of one's head, like a red-hot nail being driven in with a hammer—is that like what you feel?"

"I—yes, I daresay. I don't quite know," she answered, her eyes wandering uneasily about the room. "I suppose you have dreadful headaches over your work, do you not, Mr. Short?" she added quickly, feeling that she must say something.

"Oh, it is all over now," said John rather proudly. But as he leaned back in his chair he said to himself that this meeting was not precisely what he had anticipated; the subject of headaches might have a fine interest in its way, but he had expected to have talked of more tender things. To his own great surprise he felt no desire to do so, however. He had not recovered from the shock of seeing that Mrs. Goddard had grown old.

"Yes," said she, kindly. "How glad you must be! To have done so splendidly too—you must feel that you have realised a magnificent dream."