"I do not consider myself superstitious, but somehow I don't like it—that little bird hovering in front of my window. It seems like a bad omen, and it was a shadow which startled me. My life seems haunted with shadows, and they always bring misfortune to me."
We were both silent for a time, when he went on: "How curious life is! Here am I riding with you, a total stranger, long past midnight. You are the first I have ever admitted into this wagon, with the exception of my faithful Cato, who is driving. If one could only see from the beginning how strangely one's life is to be ordered."
The stranger's voice was rich and deep. I hoped he would continue so that I might get some idea of him and his peculiar mode of life, and what was going on night after night in this interior. I waited for him to proceed.
"Have you known trouble or sorrow in your life?" he asked.
"Yes," I replied; "I have lost nearly all who were dear to me in this round world."
"Then," said he, "I will tell you my story with the hope that it will be both understood and appreciated. I loved from childhood a charming girl, sweet and pure. I need not go into the detail of all that boyish love, but in my early manhood and her early womanhood we were married—and what a sweet bride she was!
"We lived in an old white farmhouse in a village near the great city—a beautiful place, a long, low, two-story-and-attic, farmhouse, probably fifty or sixty years old. How well I can see it—its sloping roof, the extension, the quaint doorway with side-lights and with a window over the top, the front porch with graceful shaped newels, the long piazza running the entire length of the extension, great chimneys at each end, and enormous pine-trees in front of the house! The house stood on a little elevation, with terraced bank, and with a pretty fence inclosing it. Beyond was an old well with lattice-work sides and door, and a pathway trodden by the foot of former occupants, long since dead. In front of the house were circular beds of old-time flowers—sweet-williams, lady's-slippers, larkspur, and foxglove. At the rear, great banks of tiger-lilies threw their delicate blue shadows against the white surface of our little home. In one corner of our garden we had left the weeds to grow luxuriantly, like miniature forest trees, and found much pleasure in studying their beautiful forms. How fine they looked in silhouette against the sunset sky! On one side of the old-fashioned doorway were shrubs and a rose-of-Sharon tree, and on the other, honeysuckle and syringa-bushes. There were also many kinds of fruit and shade-trees.
"How happily we walked up and down the shady lanes of that little village! For us the birds sang sweetly. We took delight in our flowers and everything about us. In the evening we would enjoy the sunsets, returning home arm in arm in the afterglow, to sit in the cool of the evening on the piazza and to listen to the wind as it sighed through the pines. What music they made for us! We compared it with what poets of all ages had sung of them, and went to sleep, lulled to rest by the wind through their soft boughs."
He paused again, evidently thinking of the happy time.
"How can I tell you," he resumed, "of the life that went on in that simple old farmhouse? Our pleasant wood-fire on the hearth; a few photographs from the old masters on the walls; our favorite books of poetry and fiction, which we read together during the long winter evenings, while the pine-trees sighed outside, and all was so comfortable and cozy within; or the lovely walks in spring and summer, through the byways of the pretty little village, with its hedgerows, blackberries, and wild flowers. How we watched for the first violets, and what joy the early blossoms gave us! What pleasure we took in those delightful years, and how smoothly our lives ran on! Each day I went to the city, and was always cheered by the thought that my sweet wife would be at the station to meet me. How pure she looked in the summer evening, clad in her thin white dresses, with a silver fan and brooch, her dark hair and eyes like those of a startled fawn!