“I dare not disobey her!” Phebe spoke with difficulty, and clasping both hands over her face, moaned as if in pain, for the struggle within her heart was terrible.
When Phebe became sufficiently composed to look up, her sister was gone. She was glad to be alone, and creeping toward the bed, knelt down and prayed.
Malina had snatched a bonnet and shawl from the bed while her sister’s face was concealed, and gliding down stairs into the open air, she mounted the horse and rode away.
It was sunset as the poor girl came slowly over the old bridge, and rode by our house. I was playing in the front yard, and ran out to meet her—but all at once she drew the bridle tight, and the spirited horse sprung forward on the way before my childish voice could be heard. The gloom of coming night lay heavily amid the pine boughs, as the young girl rode under them, and when she dashed up the road, and disappeared over Fall’s Hill, both horse and rider were for one moment displayed in bold relief against a pile of crimson and golden clouds which lay heaped in the horizon. When she disappeared, it seemed, to my infant fancy, as if the gates of heaven had unfolded to receive her.
The night came on clear, and lighted both by moon and stars, the solitary traveler still kept the road, accompanied only by her spirited animal, and the shadow which seemed gliding along the dewy green-sward by her side, like a silent guardian. It was late in the evening when the horse checked himself at the fence before a red farm-house, with a sloping roof, and two large trees embowering it with foliage.
It seemed like supernatural instinct in the animal, for he had only been there once before, and Malina, in the tumult of her thoughts, scarcely knew where she wished to stop. There was a light twinkling through the thick leaves of a tree bough that dropped over one of the front windows, but it was very faint, and seemed forcing itself through the folds of a window curtain. Malina grasped the horn of her saddle, and dropping feebly down to the green-sward, moved toward the house. There was a foot-path which led to the front door—she followed this, and found herself in a dark entry, with a narrow stream of light falling through the entrance to an inner room. The sound of a faint, wandering voice, and of smothered sobs, stole from the room. Malina breathed heavily as she touched the door, and glided into the room. It was indeed the chamber of death. A solitary candle burned on the table, amid glasses and vials, sending forth just sufficient light to reveal an old fashioned tent bed, with its white drapery sweeping to the floor, and its heavy fringes hanging motionless, as if they had been cut from marble. At the foot of this bed knelt an old man; his hands were clasped beneath his face, and the long gray hair swept thickly over them, as he prayed. A female stood between Malina and the bed; she was bending over the pillows which were heaped high upon it, and though the poor girl could not see her face, she felt that it was his mother. She moved, and the sound of her footstep on the sanded floor made the old lady lift her head, and Malina saw his face once more. Oh, how white and changed it was! The damp, black hair fell heavily over his forehead, shadows lay about the closed eyelids, and there was an expression about the mouth, which was not a smile, and yet seemed deathly and sweet. His head was raised high with pillows, and though he seemed to sleep, the breath came painfully from his lips, and with a struggle that constantly disturbed the linen which lay in waves across his breast.
Malina stood upright in the dim light, motionless as a thing of marble, her eyes fixed on the dying man, and unconscious, in the force of her grief, that to all in the room, save him who saw her not, she was a stranger, and had intruded into the sanctuary of private grief.
It mattered not; Malina’s step had been mistaken for that of a woman from the kitchen, and no one knew that the wretched young creature was there.
There was a motion of the bed clothes, a faint murmur, and the dying man opened his eyes—those large, eloquent eyes that Malina had thought upon so often, and so thrillingly. There was a mist upon them now, but through it broke a soft and strange light, heavenly and beautiful. The old lady bent her ear, and listened to the faint murmur, which seemed dying on his lips.
“My father—when will he come back?—it is late!”