The air is forlorn—the house is vocal no more—love is gone.
“When was it, Tom? at what hour?” asked he.
“Late cock-crow, just the gray of the morning. She was always early, poor little thing—somewhere betwixt five and six—it must ’a’ bin. Will you please have something a’ter your ride?”
“Nothing, Tom, nothing, thanks, but I’d like very much to see Winnie. Call her, Tom, and I’ll wait here—or no—I’ll be in the drawing-room, tell her.”
And to that room he went, standing for a while at the threshold, and making his desolate survey; and then to the window, and then from place to place.
The small table at which she used to sit in the evenings stood in its old place by the sofa. Her little basket of coloured worsted balls, the unfinished work with the ivory crotchet-needles stuck through it, were there awaiting the return that was not to be. There lay the old piano open.
How well he knew that little oval landscape over the notes mellow by time, the lake and ruined tower, and solitary fisherman—poor enough, I dare say, as a work of art; but to William’s mind always the sweetest and saddest little painting the world contained. Under that roofless tower that lonely fisherman there had heard all Violet’s pretty music, and before it poor Aunt Dinah’s grand and plaintive minuets, until, years ago, she had abdicated the music-stool in favour of the lighter finger and the rich young voice.
He remembered dear Aunt Dinah’s face as she, sitting by that little table there, would lower her book or letter and listen to the pretty girl’s song, sadly, in some untold poetry of memory. Oh, Aunt Dinah!—He did not know till now how much you were to him—how much of Gilroyd itself was in your kindly old face. The walls of Gilroyd speak and smile no more.
He heard old Winnie Dobbs talking to Tom in the passage, and her slow foot approaching. Poor Aunt Dinah’s light step and pleasant tones would come no more on stair or lobby.
Such a welcome at Gilroyd, or anywhere, as the old one, for him would be no more—no, nowhere—never.