English fiction -- 19th century; Short stories, English
He sat in the sun, on the stone wall that divided the garden from the
great lake, and swung his legs, silently gazing with his soul in his
eyes, and SHE, in a long wicker chair, sideways to him, shaded her face
with her hand and looked down. The soul went out of him, and hovering
over the waving hair, and the dimple at the corner of the drooping
mouth, peeped through the fingers of the dear hand at its true and only
resting places--those brown pools over whose depths lay the clouding
shadow of the morrow.
_But_ another twenty-four hours, and then back to prison--to prison--to
prison. The thought beat through both hearts, with the level monotony
of a tolling for the dead, for the glorious dead, for the month past of
a sweet and lovely life together in the garden of rest.
To-morrow was the ending of all life and light, bringing with it for
her a separation from the true self, a return behind the triumphant
car of a mocking and over-riding fate, to a caged existence, a loathed
companionship, a weary, weary beating of the breast against the bars;
for him--a legion of mind-devils, torturing, twisting, lying in wait at
every turn and corner of life, ever alert and ever cruel, and a dreary,
craving ache.
To-morrow was the farewell of their love, perhaps till the grave--who
knows? their great and burning love, that had given all and taken
all, that had cared with an exceeding tenderness for every thought
and movement, that was old, yet had not tired, that had known and
understood, having no depths left to sound, no heights to win; that
tree which, planted in the moist, cool earth of comradeship, had
grown steadily and grandly till it rejoiced in the sweet foliage of a
perfect trust, and the glorious flowers of passion. The day looked on,
and laughed in slanting rays of heat and light, and presently on a
snow-cooled breeze wafted between two towering heights came a chime of
far-off Italian bells.
She looked up into his face, and smiled.
‘Shall I sing my Love a little song?’ she said. And as he knelt beside
her, she held his head in her two hands, and sang shyly into his ear,
in time to the drifting cadence.
* * * * *
Out of his eyes fled hunger and pain, and he leaned his forehead on
her breast, and so they drank of the merciful well of peace. The chime
floated faintly past them with a note of invitation.
* * * * *
‘The bells have got into my head, darling. I’m mad, I think,--I can’t
feel anything--Child of mine, come for a drive, and find the bells;
we’ll get drunk on sun, and air, and sky, and mountains, and--kisses,
and forget there is a to-morrow and an ending.’
He stood up straight and strong, and drew her to him.
So they waited, and the chime floated once more past, while they looked
life again into each other’s eyes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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