Kenelm Chillingly — Volume 08Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
General
Kenelm Chillingly — Volume 08
Lytton, Edward Bulwer Lytton, Baron
English fiction -- 19th century
So murmuring, he was about to turn towards the town, when close by
that child's grave he saw another. Round that other there were pale
"everlastings," dwarfed blossoms of the laurestinus; at the four
angles the drooping bud of a Christmas rose; at the head of the grave
was a white stone, its sharp edges cutting into the starlit air; and
on the head, in fresh letters, were inscribed these words:--
To the Memory of
L. M.
Aged 17,
Died October 29, A. D. 18--,
This stone, above the grave to which her mortal
remains are consigned, beside that of an infant not
more sinless, is consecrated by those who
most mourn and miss her,
ISABEL CAMERON,
WALTER MELVILLE.
"Suffer the little children to come unto me."
CHAPTER XI.
THE next morning Mr. Emlyn, passing from his garden to the town of
Moleswich, descried a human form stretched on the burial-ground,
stirring restlessly but very slightly, as if with an involuntary
shiver, and uttering broken sounds, very faintly heard, like the moans
that a man in pain strives to suppress and cannot.
The rector hastened to the spot. The man was lying, his face
downward, on a grave-mound, not dead, not asleep.
"Poor fellow overtaken by drink, I fear," thought the gentle pastor;
and as it was the habit of his mind to compassionate error even more
than grief, he accosted the supposed sinner in very soothing
tones--trying to raise him from the ground--and with very kindly
words.
Then the man lifted his face from its pillow on the grave-mound,
looked round him dreamily into the gray, blank air of the cheerless
morn, and rose to his feet quietly and slowly. The vicar was
startled; he recognized the face of him he had last seen in the
magnificent affluence of health and strength. But the character of
the face was changed,--so changed! its old serenity of expression, at
once grave and sweet, succeeded by a wild trouble in the heavy eyelids
and trembling lips.
"Mr. Chillingly,--you! Is it possible?"
"Varus, Varus," exclaimed Kenelm, passionately, "what hast thou done
with my legions?"
At that quotation of the well-known greeting of Augustus to his
unfortunate general, the scholar recoiled. Had his young friend's
mind deserted him,--dazed, perhaps, by over-study?
He was soon reassured; Kenelm's face settled back into calm, though a
dreary calm, like that of the wintry day.
"I beg pardon, Mr. Emlyn; I had not quite shaken off the hold of a
strange dream. I dreamed that I was worse off than Augustus: he did
not lose the world when the legions he had trusted to another vanished
into a grave."
Here Kenelm linked his arm in that of the rector,--on which he leaned
rather heavily,--and drew him on from the burial-ground into the open
space where the two paths met.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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