The Romance of Zion Chapel [3d ed.]

by Richard Le Gallienne

"Theophil," she said suddenly, in that startling way sick people have, "you know that I am going to die!"

He could not answer, his voice would have choked in sobs. He leaned his head close to Jenny and pressed her hand, and in spite of himself two great tears fell upon Jenny's cheek.

But Jenny was curiously calm. There was almost a note of scolding in her voice, as she said, "It's no use crying, Theophil--it's got to be borne."

She was already growing strangely wise, and a little removed from earth. The first fears of her dark journey were passing, as she was more and more sinking among the shadows. In moments there seemed to be something almost trivial in earthly grief. But there was still one earthly joy, one earthly pride, of which her soul began to conceive the desire. It had come with the thought of her grave that one day took her, less with fear, than of a new home to which she would presently be going. In her fancy she had seen her name: "Jenny Talbot, the beloved daughter of John and Jane Talbot, aged twenty-one years" and it had struck her that the name was wrong.

Talbot? that was not her name. This was not the legend of her days. The world would be all wrong about her if it only read that in after days. No, her tomb could only bear one inscription--and what sweetness amid all the bitterness of death there was to say it over and over again to herself: "Jenny Londonderry, the beloved wife of Theophilus Londonderry, aged twenty-one years."

Only twenty-one years--she thought of those who would perhaps some day stand and read those words and think "What a sad little life!"--and yet all that mattered of life had been lived in those short years, aye, in two of them, and the violet breath of young love would come up to those who read from her young grave, as it would never breathe from the earth of long-wed, late-dying lovers.

Perhaps it was a beautiful chance for love to end like theirs; their love had never grown old, so it would remain forever young, a spring sign, a star in the front of love's year for ever.

Jenny spoke her wish to Theophil in the quiet of that night. The wish had been in his heart too, and the wish was presently fulfilled. Brides have seldom been happier than Jenny as she looked on the wife's ring that hung loose on her thin finger, and brides have often been sadder.

Death was coming very near now, so near that Jenny began to forget that she was going to die. She forgot too that she was married to Theophil, and would sometimes babble her heart-breaking fancies of the little home that was so near now, till sometimes Theophil had to hurry away with his unbearable grief to some other room.

And Jenny's once rosy apple of a face made one's heart ache to look on now. It made one frightened, too: it was so dark and witchlike, so uncanny, almost wicked, so thin and full of inky shadows. She would sit up in her bed a wizened little goblin, and laugh a queer, dry, knowing laugh to herself,--a laugh like the scraping of reeds in a solitary place. A strange black weariness seemed to be crushing down her brows, like the "unwilling sleep" of a strong narcotic. She would begin a sentence and let it wither away unfinished, and point sadly and almost humorously to her straight black hair, clammy as the feathers of a dead bird lying in the rain. Her hearing was strangely keen. And yet she did not know, was not to know. How was one to talk to her--talk of being well again, and books and country walks, when she had so plainly done with all these things? How bear it, when she, with a half-sad, half-amused smile, showed her thin wrists? How say that they would soon be strong and round again? Ugh! she was already beginning to be different from us, already putting off our body-sweet mortality, and putting on the fearful garments of death, changing from ruddy familiar humanity into a being of another element,--an element we dread as the fish dreads the air. Soon we should not be able to talk to her. Soon she would have unlearnt all the sweet grammar of earth. She was no longer Jenny, but a fearful symbol of mysteries at which the flesh crept. She was going to die.