“He married Ana Maria after she had laid aside the luto (mourning); and two years ago he died of the small-pox, in the Snake country. Poor fellow—he was almost an American.”
PART II
THE PERIOD OF THE NEW FORM
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE
1804–1864
For an estimate of Hawthorne as a writer of short stories see [pages 12–15] of the Introduction.
THE WHITE OLD MAID
[From “Twice-Told Tales.” The story was first published in “The New England Magazine” for July, 1835]
The moonbeams came through two deep and narrow windows, and showed a spacious chamber richly furnished in an antique fashion. From one lattice the shadow of the diamond panes was thrown upon the floor; the ghostly light through the other slept upon the bed, falling between the heavy silken curtains and illuminating the face of a young man. But how quietly the slumberer lay! how pale his features! And how like a shroud the sheet was wound about his frame! Yes, it was a corpse in its burial-clothes.
Suddenly the fixed features seemed to move with dark emotion. Strange fantasy! It was but the shadow of the fringed curtain waving betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as the door of the chamber opened and a girl stole softly to the bedside. Was there delusion in the moonbeams, or did her gesture and her eye betray a gleam of triumph as she bent over the pale corpse, pale as itself, and pressed her living lips to the cold ones of the dead? As she drew back from that long kiss her features writhed as if a proud heart were fighting with its anguish. Again it seemed that the features of the corpse had moved responsive to her own. Still an illusion. The silken curtains had waved a second time betwixt the dead face and the moonlight as another fair young girl unclosed the door and glided ghostlike to the bedside. There the two maidens stood, both beautiful, with the pale beauty of the dead between them. But she who had first entered was proud and stately, and the other a soft and fragile thing.
“Away!” cried the lofty one. “Thou hadst him living; the dead is mine.”
“Thine!” returned the other, shuddering. “Well hast thou spoken. The dead is thine.”