Within these walls

by Rupert Hughes

And they never knew the final irony of its presence there above the parallel bodies of David and Patty RoBards. It linked Harry Chalender’s destiny forever with theirs. But they never made a protest. It was the Parthian shot of fate, the perfection of the contemptible contemptuousness with which life regards its victims.

Unwitting of this dismal joke upon his father and remembering only the secret of which he was trustee, Keith loitered about to see the cellar walls demolished and the dead Jud Lasher brought to light. He kept wondering what to say when the crisis was reached. He could not find a lie to utter.

But from somewhere the edict came that the cellar walls should not be taken away; and the workmen abandoned them.

And now the house was gone as if it had been burned in some night of fire. But it had served its time. It had lived the short life of wooden homes. Stone houses may outlast sonnets and coins and chronicles, but houses of wood and of flesh perish soon. They have lived as stone never lived. Through the wood the white blood of sap once coursed and trees, like hearts, suffer too well for time to endure. They must go back to the dust whence new trees and new hearts are made.

It was time for the old house to vanish. Like a human heart it had held within its walls sorrow and honor, passion and crime. It was time for it to cease to beat, cease to be.

It went out with an honorable name. It went into oblivion with no history, and the old word of Tacitus about nations was true of houses, too. Happy is the house that has no history. But all houses, and all nations, have histories—if one only knew.

Keith was almost sorry that the cellar walls were left. He had braced himself against the shock of revelation and when it did not come, he suffered a collapse of strength. But he could not share this disappointment with anyone. It must remain forever a RoBards secret to die with him.

When at last the dam was piled across the valley, and the little brooks encountered it, they backed up and filled their own beds to overflowing. They swelled till they covered the levels where the bridges had been. Stealthily they erased the roads that dipped into them now and ran under water till they climbed out again on the opposite slope. The brooks united into a pond and the pond widened and lengthened. It began to climb the hills and wind about the promontories.

It aspired toward the highway cut out of the rock along the top of the hills, and toward the lengthy tall-piered concrete bridge with the ornaments of green bronze.

Keith and Immy watched the gradual drowning of the farm and took their last walks about it, hand in hand, until long arms of water cut off their approach even to the Tarn of Mystery, which was now a bald hillock, an island height, a tiny Ararat.