Christian fiction; Medical fiction; Scotland -- Fiction; Surgeons -- Fiction; Wingfold, Thomas (Fictitious character) -- Fiction
Faber was ready enough to attribute every thing human to a physical
origin, but as he sat there pondering her condition, recalling her
emotion and strange speech of the night before, and watching the state
she was now in, an uneasiness began to gather--undefined, but other than
concerned her health. Something must be wrong somewhere. He kept
constantly assuring himself that at worst it could be but some mere
moleheap, of which her lovelily sensitive organization, under the
influence of a foolish preachment, made a mountain. Still, it was a huge
disorder to come from a trifle! At the same time who knew better than he
upon what a merest trifle nervous excitement will fix the attention! or
how to the mental eye such a speck will grow and grow until it absorb
the universe! Only a certain other disquieting thought, having come
once, would keep returning--that, thoroughly as he believed himself
acquainted with her mind, he had very little knowledge of her history.
He did not know a single friend of hers, had never met a person who knew
any thing of her family, or had even an acquaintance with her earlier
than his own. The thing he most dreaded was, that the shadow of some old
affection had returned upon her soul, and that, in her excessive
delicacy, she heaped blame upon herself that she had not absolutely
forgotten it. He flung from him in scorn every slightest suggestion of
blame. _His_ Juliet! his glorious Juliet! Bah!--But he must get her to
say what the matter was--for her own sake; he must help her to reveal
her trouble, whatever it might be--else how was he to do his best to
remove it! She should find he knew how to be generous!
Thus thinking, he sat patient by her side, watching until the sun of her
consciousness should rise and scatter the clouds of sleep. Hour after
hour he sat, and still she slept, outwearied with the rack of emotion.
Morning had begun to peer gray through the window-curtains, when she
woke with a cry.
She had been dreaming. In the little chapel in Nestley Park, she sat
listening to the curate's denouncement of hypocrisy, when suddenly the
scene changed: the pulpit had grown to a mighty cloud, upon which stood
an archangel with a trumpet in his hand. He cried that the hour of the
great doom had come for all who bore within them the knowledge of any
evil thing neither bemoaned before God nor confessed to man. Then he
lifted the great silver trumpet with a gleam to his lips, and every
fiber of her flesh quivered in expectation of the tearing blast that was
to follow; when instead, soft as a breath of spring from a bank of
primroses, came the words, uttered in the gentlest of sorrowful voices,
and the voice seemed that of her unbelieving Paul: "I will arise and go
to my Father." It was no wonder, therefore, that she woke with a cry. It
was one of indescribable emotion. When she saw his face bending over her
in anxious love, she threw her arms round his neck, burst into a storm
of weeping, and sobbed.
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