The shadows lengthened into evening in the little churchyard, and over
the woods and fields. Honora Jackman and the two children came
presently tailing homewards to that changed house; afterwards Honora
took her own way back to the house of the Baffalls. In the churchyard a
slim white-faced girl stole out from among the shadows of the trees,
looking about her carefully in all directions, and went to the grave;
and there for the first time broke down and wept as she had never wept
before. For this was the parting, and only her memories were to be left
to her for the future. It was, perhaps, characteristic of her that she
should have watched and waited until the darkness had fallen before she
went to him; characteristic of her, too, that she felt she was never
again to visit the grave. This was to be final--and this was between the
dead man and herself only.
"Good-bye, Old Paul--for ever and ever," she whispered, kneeling there,
and touching the earth softly with her palms, as in benediction. "Sleep
very quietly--rest lightly--my dear--my dear! I shall never forget; I
shall think of you, dear, sleeping here, with the trees whispering above
you, and the birds--and all about you that you loved. Old Paul!--oh--my
Old Paul!"
By the time she got back to the house she was calm and self-contained;
she offered no explanation of her absence to anyone. When, in the big
room upstairs, Alice begged that she might be allowed to drag her bed
across, so that she could be near Moira in the night, Moira scornfully
regarded her for a moment, and then dragged the bed across herself.
"What are you afraid of?" she demanded.
"I feel as if I should die," whimpered the other girl. "It's so awful.
He's dead--and I feel that perhaps in the dark he might come in--as he
used to do----"
"I wish he would," broke in Moira quickly. "Go to sleep; you can hold my
hand, if you feel frightened."
The younger girl presently fell asleep, with the undried tears still
upon her pink cheeks; a smile grew about her mouth as she lay there. The
smile was answered by one in the face of Moira, but it was a scornful
one. For her part she lay wakeful, with the tears gathering in her eyes
quietly now and then, as old memories came back to her.
Meanwhile, Mr. Baffall was stubbornly fighting a battle. As he went on
fighting it, he discovered that he hated the man in black more and more
every moment, with a growing hatred; for Matthew Shandler was not to be
moved in any way. They had been together to the house, but no will had
been found; they had the testimony of Mrs. Baffall that Old Paul had
declared his intention of doing it that very night of his death; which
looked hopeless enough, on the face of it.
Mrs. Baffall had been early turned out of the room by the shoulders,
gently enough, by her husband; because she persisted in bursting into
tears, and in imploring Matthew Shandler to remember the children.
Which, as Baffall put it afterwards, wasn't business.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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