Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty CraigHolmes, Mary Jane
General
Chateau d'Or, Norah, and Kitty Craig
Holmes, Mary Jane
American fiction -- 19th century; Americans -- France -- Fiction; Manners and customs -- Fiction
“The last word was spoken softly, kindly, and brought a rain of tears
from the poor woman, who had clung to him so many years, and never heard
that name from him before. Two days after that he died, and went to the
God who deals justly with all His creatures. They bought him an elegant
coffin, and dressed him in the finest of broadcloth, and brought him up
to Millfield and buried him in the quiet graveyard behind the church,
where he sleeps till the resurrection morning. Anna did not see him. She
could not, but she suffered Madame Verwest to take Arthur with her to
the grave, and so the mother and the son stood together while the coffin
was lowered to the earth, and the solemn words were uttered, ‘ashes to
ashes, dust to dust.’
“To the little boy the weeping woman said:
“‘That’s your father, Arthur; your father they are burying;’ but Arthur
was thinking more of the sunshine, and birds, and flowers than of the
ceremonial which had no meaning for him, and releasing himself from his
grandmother, started in pursuit of a butterfly, and his loud baby laugh
mingled with the sound of the dirt rattling down upon the coffin which
contained what had been his father.”
Here Hal Morton paused, and pointed toward a half-closed shutter through
which the early morning was breaking. We had sat up all night, he
telling and I listening to this strange story, which I felt was not
finished yet, for I must know more of Anna, and if anything had ever
been heard from Eugenie, who, however bad she might seem, had shown
herself in some respects a noble woman, with many noble instincts and
kindly feelings; so I said to my companion:
“Never mind the daylight, Hal. We will order a tip-top breakfast by and
by, and meantime you finish the story and tell me more of Anna and
Eugenie. Did they ever hear from her, and did Anna and the child get
Haverleigh’s money?”
“Yes, they got Haverleigh’s money,” Hal replied. “Anna and Arthur
between them. It was theirs lawfully, you know, and there was a million
in all. Think of Anna Strong a millionaire. But it did not hurt her one
whit, or change her in the least from the sweet, modest, half-frightened
woman who came back to Millfield in place of the gay Anna we had known.
She did not wear mourning for her husband; she could not with that
consciousness in her heart of relief because he was dead; but she always
wore black or white, relieved perhaps with a knot of ribbon or a flower,
and never was there a fairer sight than was she in this sober attire as
she went about our village seeking the sick and suffering, and giving to
the poor of the wealth that God had given her. She built her mother a
handsome house on an elevation just out of the town, and a wing was
added for Madame Verwest, who was so much one of the family that she
could not leave them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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