Great Britain -- History -- Civil War, 1642-1649 -- Fiction
She lay silent again for a long time. The old man sat holding her hand;
her mother sat on the farther side of the bed, leaning against one of
the foot-posts, and watching the white face of her darling with eyes in
which love ruled distraction. Dorothy sat in one of the window-seats,
and listened to the music, which still came surging in, for still the
fool blew the bellows, and the blind youth struck the keys. And still
the clouds gathered overhead and sunk towards the earth; and still the
horse, which Dorothy had left spouting, threw up his twin-fountain,
whose musical plash in the basin as it fell mingled with the sounds of
the organ.
'What is it?' said Molly, waking up. 'My head doth not ache, and my
heart doth not beat, and I am not affrighted. What is it? I am not
tired. Marquis, are you no longer tired? Ah, now I know! He cometh! He
is here!--Marquis, the good Jesu wants Molly's hand. Let him have it,
marquis. He is lifting me up. I am quite well--quite--'
The sentence remained broken. The hand which the marquis had yielded,
with the awe of one in bodily presence of the Holy, and which he saw
raised as if in the grasp of one invisible, fell back on the bed, and
little Molly was quite well.
But she left sick hearts behind. The mother threw herself on the bed,
and wailed aloud. The marquis burst into tears, left the room, and
sought his study. Mechanically he took his Confessio Amantis, and sat
down, but never opened it; rose again and took his Shakespere, opened
it, but could not read; rose once more, took his Vulgate, and read:
'Quid turbamini, et ploratis? puella non est mortua, sed dormit.'
He laid that book also down, fell on his knees, and prayed for her who
was not dead but sleeping.
Dorothy, filled with awe, rather from the presence of the mother of the
dead than death itself, and feeling that the mother would rather be
alone with her dead, also left the room, and sought her chamber, where
she threw herself upon the bed. All was still save the plashing of the
fountain, for the music from the chapel had ceased.
The storm burst in a glare and a peal. The rain fell in straight lines
and huge drops, which came faster and faster, drowning the noise of the
fountain, till the sound of it on the many roofs of the place was like
the trampling of an army of horsemen, and every spout was gurgling
musically with full throat. The one court was filled with a clashing
upon its pavement, and the other with a soft singing upon its grass,
with which mingled a sound as of little castanets from the broad leaves
of the water-lilies in the moat. Ever and anon came the lightning, and
the great bass of the thunder to fill up the psalm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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