May 6.--Eve of the wedding. Caroline is serenely happy, though not
blithe. But there is nothing to excite anxiety about her. I wish I
could say the same of him. He comes and goes like a ghost, and yet
nobody seems to observe this strangeness in his mien.
I could not help being here for the ceremony; but my absence would have
resulted in less disquiet on his part, I believe. However, I may be
wrong in attributing causes: my father simply says that Charles and
Caroline have as good a chance of being happy as other people. Well, to-
morrow settles all.
May 7.--They are married: we have just returned from church. Charles
looked so pale this morning that my father asked him if he was ill. He
said, 'No: only a slight headache;' and we started for the church.
There was no hitch or hindrance; and the thing is done.
4 p.m.--They ought to have set out on their journey by this time; but
there is an unaccountable delay. Charles went out half-an-hour ago, and
has not yet returned. Caroline is waiting in the hall; but I am
dreadfully afraid they will miss the train. I suppose the trifling
hindrance is of no account; and yet I am full of misgivings . . .
Sept. 14.--Four months have passed; only four months! It seems like
years. Can it be that only seventeen weeks ago I set on this paper the
fact of their marriage? I am now an aged woman by comparison!
On that never to be forgotten day we waited and waited, and Charles did
not return. At six o'clock, when poor little Caroline had gone back to
her room in a state of suspense impossible to describe, a man who worked
in the water-meadows came to the house and asked for my father. He had
an interview with him in the study. My father then rang his bell, and
sent for me. I went down; and I then learnt the fatal news. Charles was
no more. The waterman had been going to shut down the hatches of a weir
in the meads when he saw a hat on the edge of the pool below, floating
round and round in the eddy, and looking into the pool saw something
strange at the bottom. He knew what it meant, and lowering the hatches
so that the water was still, could distinctly see the body. It is
needless to write particulars that were in the newspapers at the time.
Charles was brought to the house, but he was dead.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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