That silence to your senses? Not friendship’s sign
Not reason’s subtle count. Nay, none of these!
Speak Thou, availing Christ! and fill this pause.”
But Kasba dare not look heavenward, for bitter, rebellious thoughts had hardened her heart. What had she done that this great trouble should be visited upon her? Delgezie had been both father and mother to her, soothing and tending and caring for her in her infantile afflictions with all the tenderness and affection of a loving mother. From the day of her birth he had surrounded and guarded her young life with the wealth and strength of a passionate love. The deep affection he had borne his poor dead wife had been transferred to the child she had left to his care. She became the joy of his life; his one thought was for her happiness, his one aim her comfort. They had been all in all to each other, and that God-fearing man had been cut down in an instant, without even the mournful consolation of a parting word. As the knowledge of her loss gained upon her the loneliness of her position grew correspondingly distinct. Poor, weary, sorrow-stricken girl, tired and harassed by her multitudinous duties, confused from want of rest and sleep, she sat buried in the perplexities of a series of most singularly strange and terrible happenings.
Yet she had still another duty to fulfil, another painful task to perform—a task, if possible, more keenly agonizing than the burying of her loved father. In a corner of the room lay the body of Roy Thursby, the man she had loved with all the strength of her simple young heart.
Roy’s body had been carried to Delgezie’s hut, but all attempts at resuscitation had proved futile, and it now lay on Kasba’s bed, covered with a white sheet, awaiting burial. The body, however, had not yet been sewn up in canvas, as was customary immediately after death. This still remained to be done, although the empty grave beside Delgezie’s yawned for it.
Silently in the gloomy darkness Kasba sat in a procrastinating mood. The stern burial custom of her race and a solemn duty to the dead called urgently to her to complete those last sad rites, but love with equal persistence implored for longer respite. Tremulously she shrank from the heart-rending ordeal of hiding forever the face she loved so ardently. Yet she well knew the task to be unavoidable, she would allow no other hand to touch that dear form, to cover his dear body with the garment of the grave.
The darkness grew intense. The feeble gleam of twilight from the window failed to pierce the room’s pitchy blackness any longer. The noisy clock ticked on incessantly. Silent and motionless the three figures sat like three grim statues, so inert were they.
At length a weird, ghostly sound broke the deathly stillness. With one accord Kasba and Sahanderry started to their feet. They gazed toward each other with horrified eyes, each striving to pierce the black pall which hung between them, to discover if either was the author of the strange sound. David cowered upon the floor.
The clock ticked ominously.