American fiction -- 19th century; Christmas stories, American
There is a sad story connected with Anna’s being there at Castlewild, a
story which only Mildred can tell, and in the dusky twilight of that
first evening when Adam was away and the baby Milly asleep in its crib,
she takes Anna’s hand in hers and tells her what Anna indeed knew
before, but which seems far more real as it comes from Mildred’s lips,
making the tears fall fast as she listens to it. Tells her how
Providence directed her to the room in a Paris hotel, where a fellow
countryman lay dying, alone and unattended save by a hired nurse. The
sick room was on the same hall with her own, and in passing the door
which was ajar, she was startled to hear a voice once familiar to her
and which seemed to call her name. Five minutes later and she was
sitting by Herbert Dunallen’s bedside and holding his burning hands in
hers, while he told her how long he had lain there with the fever
contracted in the south of France, and how at the moment she passed his
door he was crying out in his anguish and desolation for the friends so
far away, and had spoken her name, not knowing she was so near.
After that Milly was his constant attendant, and once when she sat by
him he talked to her of the past and of Anna, who had been three years
the wife of Adam Floyd.
“I am glad of it,” he said. “She is happier with him than she could have
been with me. I am sorry that I ever came between them, it was more my
fault than hers, and I have told Adam so. I wrote him from Algiers and
asked his forgiveness, and he answered my letter like the noble man he
is. There is peace between us now, and I am glad. I have heard from him,
or rather of him since, in a roundabout away. He lost his right arm in
the war, and that will incapacitate him from his work. He can never use
the hammer again. I do not suppose he has so very much money. Anna liked
Castlewild. In fact I believe she cared more for that than for me, and I
have given it to her;—have made my will to that effect. It is with my
other papers, and Milly, when I am dead, you will see that Anna has her
own. I did not think it would come quite so soon, for I am young to die.
Not thirty yet, but it is better so, perhaps. You told me that you
prayed for me every day, and the memory of that has stuck to me like a
burr, till I have prayed for myself, more than once, when I was well,
and often since shut up in this room which I shall never leave alive.
Stay by me, Milly, to the last; it will not be long, and pray that if I
am not right, God will make me so. Show me the way, Milly, I want to be
good, I am sorry, oh, so sorry for it all.”
For a few days longer he lingered, and then one lovely autumnal morning,
when Paris was looking her brightest, he died, with Milly’s hand in his,
and Milly’s tears upon his brow.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account