A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our TimeCaine, Hall, Sir
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A Son of Hagar: A Romance of Our Time
Caine, Hall, Sir
Cumberland (England) -- Fiction; English fiction; London (England) -- Fiction
Greta's first impulse had been to go in search of her husband, but this
was an idle and a foolish thought. Where should she look? Besides this,
she had promised to remain in the convent until her husband should come
for her, and she must keep her word. She did not go to supper when the
gong sounded, but crept up to her room. The bell rang for vespers, and
Greta did not go to the chapel. She lay down in anguish and wept
scalding tears. The vesper hymn floated up to her where she lay, and she
was still weeping. There was no light in this dark place; there was no
way out of this maze but to wait and suffer.
And slowly the certainty stole upon her that Hugh Ritson had made no
idle threat. He was a resolute man; he had given her a choice of two
courses, and had she not taken a selfish part? If Paul, her husband,
were indeed in danger, no matter from what machination of villainy--was
it much to ask that she, his wife, should rescue him by a sacrifice that
fell heaviest upon herself? Hugh Ritson had been right--her part had
been a selfish one. Oh, where was Mr. Christian? She had telegraphed for
him, and he had answered that he would come; yet hour had followed hour,
and still he had not arrived.
Three hours she tossed in agony. She heard the sisters pass up the
echoing stone staircase to their dormitories, and then the silent house
became as dumb as a vault. Not a ripple flowed into this still tarn from
the great stream of the world that rushed and surged and swelled with
the clangor of a million voices around its incrusted sides.
Her window overlooked the Abbey Gardens. All was quiet beneath. Not a
step sounded on the pavement. Before her the blank wall was black, and
the dark, leafless trees stood out from the vague green of the grass
beyond. Against the sky were the dim outlines of the two towers of the
old abbey--by day a great rock for the pigeons that wheeled above the
tumbling sea of the city, by night a skull of stone from which the voice
of the bell told of the flight of time.
Out of the calm of a moment's stupefaction Greta was awakened by a knock
at her door. The novice entered and told her that a woman waited below
to speak with her. Greta betrayed no surprise, and she was beyond the
reach of fresh agitation. Without word or question she followed the
novice to the room where Mrs. Drayton sat.
She recognized the landlady and heard her story. Greta's heart leaped up
at the thought of rejoining her husband. Here was the answer to the
prayer that had gone up she knew not how often from her troubled heart.
Soon she would be sure that Hugh Ritson's threat was vain. Soon she
would be at Paul's side and hold his hand, and no earthly power should
separate them again. Ah, thank God, the merciful Father, who healed the
wounded hearts of His children, she should very soon be happy once more,
and all the sorrows of these past few days would fade away into a dim
memory.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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