With premonition of catastrophe he ran along the wall:—nothing, but windows, battened or curtained, blank as a blindman’s eyes; not a sign of humanity.
Where he had dreamed to stand speechless with happiness, he stood shaken by nameless fear.
Deep within the house he heard a relaxed beam “pung” with a sound like a viol string softly struck by a hand in passing: the deep, slow sound reverberated through the hollow house, and died away in vacant whispering.
Through the crevice of the shutter he saw the cold moonlight fall along the deserted floor. The house was absolutely empty.
There is a convent-school for orphaned girls kept by the nuns in New Orleans. The loveliest girl seen there in years was Gabrielle Lagoux, carried there between two nights, lest young love, like death, insist.
Dawn and departure. She had trembled like a leaf, half comprehending only; her mother kissed her twice, in feverish haste, with lips like dry leaves: that was their parting. Some one called “Gabrielle!” at the door. The coach was at the gate. She stopped at the wicket, looked down the lane, said a few words to the coachboy who guarded her gown from the wheels: “Tell him,” she said, “that I love him. Tell him remember me.” She paused again at the door of the coach, her foot on the step, a dazed look in her eyes, saying, “Tell him not to forget me. I love him!” The wheels rumbled over the cobbles. She never came back. When she entered the coach young love was done for forever: she never saw her golden lad again. Love beat his rose-red wings in vain; he could not overtake the coach; for the coach was fate; all was over; his dusty feet halted in the heat of the dusty road; “Good-by!... Good-by, forever!”
Days became weeks, weeks months, months grew into years; she never came again. She passed through the convent’s sheltering door, was safe from mischance and folly; passed into a world remote of unfamiliar faces, and forgot.
God made memory cruel, that men might know remorse; but the Devil devised forgetfulness, anodyne of regret.
Reputed heiress to vast estates, provided with boundless means and gifted with great beauty, coming to marriageable age in all the freshness of her youthful loveliness, she was wedded to a wealthy planter’s only son whose love for her was very great.