Clergy -- Fiction; Conduct of life -- Fiction; England -- Fiction; Families -- Fiction; Spouses of clergy -- Fiction
She knew where she probably was at this moment; for no sooner had the
men who had carried in Luke's body left, than Rachel had gone up into
the room, where they had laid him. It was now 10 o'clock and she was
still there, and there was a deathly silence in the house. Gwen opened
the door and listened. Not a sound could be heard. All was still. At
last feeling it unbearable she crept upstairs hoping to find Polly in
the nursery.
Polly was sitting by Pat's little crib, crying. It was a relief to Gwen
to hear her sobs. It broke the terrible silence.
"Is Mrs. Luke still there?" she asked, glancing in the direction of the
room in which she knew they had laid him.
Polly could not speak for her tears; but nodded.
"It's ten o'clock," said Gwen. "She ought to be coming to bed. She'll
be quite ill to-morrow. Do you think you could go in and persuade her
to come? Tell her I want to speak to her. Or where is Mrs. Greville?
Perhaps she would go."
"She ain't fit Miss Gwen," said Polly, "and I daren't go to her. She's
in her room and maybe in bed for all I know. I guess I'd better go
myself."
Gwen stood outside the room while Polly went softly in. The very fact
of the door being opened frightened her; all her nerve had left her and
she hoped that Polly would not be long.
She was not gone a minute; she came out of the room on tiptoe, closing
the door softly behind her. She was trembling so that at first she
could not speak and had to lean against the wall for support.
"Oh what is it? What is it?" cried Gwen in a panic, turning white.
It was some moments before Polly could speak, then the words came in
gasps.
"She's gone with him," she panted.
"What?"
"She's gone right—away—with him—to Heaven." She could scarcely speak.
"Do you mean she is dead?" cried Gwen.
"Yes; yes, she's dead; and the moon is shining on 'em both."
Gwen appalled at the news, opened the door and looked in. But what she
saw was so wonderful and beautiful that all horror subsided. Rachel was
kneeling by the bed on which Luke lay, her cheek resting on his dead
hand and a smile of rapture on her face. The moonlight was streaming
into the room from the open window on to the faces of husband and wife.
Once more they were together in its pathway as they had been on that
evening on the sea at Southwold, but now they were unconscious of it,
as they were together in the city that has no need of the sun neither
the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God did lighten it and the
Lamb is the Light thereof.
When the villagers heard that Rachel had died of heart failure on the
same day as her husband they mourned and wept. So young, they said, to
die! Two valuable lives given for the sake of a poor sick baby of a
drunken woman! What a waste of life!
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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