And ’twas said that this Elizabeth had within the span of my short life been a maid most lovely! There were no traces of that beauty and sprightliness remaining. I wondered, being a lad, that unkindness should work a change so sad in any one. ’Twas a mystery.... The room was cold. ’Twas ghostly, too––with Death hovering there invisible. Youth is mystified 155 and appalled by the gaunt Thing. I shivered. Within, the gale sighed and moaned and sadly whispered; ’twas blowing in a melancholy way––foreboding some inevitable catastrophe. Set on a low ledge of the cliff, the cottage sagged towards the edge, as if to peer at the breakers; and clammy little draughts stole through the cracks of the floor and walls, crying as they came, and crept about, searching out the uttermost corners, with sighs and cold fingers.
’Twas a mean, poor place for a woman to lie in extremity.... And she had once been lovely––with warm, live youth, with twinkling eyes and modesty, with sympathy and merry ways to win the love o’ folk! Ay; but ’twas wondrous hard to believe.... ’Twas a mean station of departure, indeed––a bare, disjointed box of a room, low-ceiled, shadowy, barren of comfort, but yet white and neat, kept by Judith’s clever, conscientious, loving hands. There was one small window, outlooking to sea, black-paned in the wild night, whipped with rain and spray. From without––from the vastness of sea and night––came a confused and distant wail, as of the lamentation of a multitude. Was this my fancy? I do not know; but yet it seemed to me––a lad who listened and watched––that a wise, pitying, unnumbered throng lamented.
I could not rid my ears of this wailing....
Elizabeth had rallied; she might weather it out, said the five wives of Whisper Cove, who had gathered to observe her departure.
“If,” Aunt Esther qualified, “she’s let be.”
“Like she done las’ time,” William Buttle’s wife whispered. “I ’low our watchin’s wasted. Ah, this heart trouble! You never knows.”
“If,” Aunt Esther repeated, “she’s let be.”
We waited for the parson.