The Late Mrs. Null

by Frank R. Stockton

The old lady did not immediately answer. Her head dropped a little on one side, a broad smile bewrinkled the lower part of her well-worn visage, and with her eyes half-closed, behind her heavy spectacles, she held out both her hands, the purple umbrella in one of them, and exclaimed in a voice of happy fervor: "Robert! I am yours!"

Mr Brandon, recovered from his first surprise, had made a step forward to go round the table and greet his visitor; but at these words he stopped as if he had been shot. Perception, understanding, and even animation, seemed to have left him as he vacantly stared at the elderly female with purple sun-bonnet and umbrella, blue calico gown, red shawl and coarse boots, who held out her arms towards him, and who gazed upon him with an air of tender, though decrepit, fondness.

"Don't you understand me, Robert?" she continued. "Don't you remember the day, many a good long year ago, it is true, when we walked together down there by the branch, and you asked me to be yours? I refused you, Robert, and, although you went down on your knees in the damp grass and besought me to give you my heart, I would not do it. But I did not know you then as I know you now, Robert, and the words of true love which you spoke to me that morning come to me now with a sweetness which I was too young and trifling to notice then. That heart is yours now, Robert. I am yours." And, with these words, she made a step forward.

At this demonstration Mr Brandon appeared suddenly to recover his consciousness and he precipitately made two steps backwards, just missing tumbling over his footstool into the fireplace.

"Madam!" he exclaimed, "what are you talking about?"

"Of the days of our courtship, and your love, Robert," she said. "My love did not come then, but it is here now. Here now," she repeated, putting the hand with the umbrella in it on her breast.

"Madam," exclaimed the old gentleman, "you must be raving crazy! Those things to which you allude, happened nearly half a century ago; and since that you have been married and settled, and——"

"Robert," interrupted the Widow Keswick, "you are mistaken. It is not quite forty-five years since that morning, and why should hearts like ours allow the passage of time or the mere circumstance of what might be called an outside marriage, but now extinct, to come between them? There is many a spring, Robert, which does not show when a man first begins to dig, but it will bubble up in time. And, Robert, it bubbles now." And with her head bent a little downwards, although her eyes were still fixed upon him, she made another step in his direction.

Mr Brandon now backed himself flat against some book-shelves in his rear. The perspiration began to roll from his face, and his whole form trembled. "Mrs Keswick! Madam!" he exclaimed, "You will drive me mad!"

The old lady dropped the end of her umbrella on the floor, rested her two hands on the head of it, settled herself into an easy position to speak, and, with her head thrown back, fixed a steady gaze upon the trembling old gentleman. "Robert," she said, "do not try to crush emotions which always were a credit to you, although in those days gone by I didn't tell you so. Your hair was black then, Robert, and you looked taller, for you hadn't a stoop, and your face was very smooth, and so was mine, and I remember I had on a white dress with a broad ribbon around the waist, and neither of us wore specs. What you said to me was very fresh and sweet, Robert, and it all comes to me now as it never came before. You have never loved another, Robert, and you don't know how happy it makes me to think that, and to know that I can come to you and find you the same true and constant lover that you were when, forty-five years ago, you went down on your knees to me by the branch. We can't stifle those feelings of by-gone days which well up in our bosoms, Robert. After all these years I have learned what a prize your true love is, and I return it. I am yours."