Husband and wife -- Fiction; World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
She had even come to think that she was glad that their perfect days
of love had ended in a sharp crash. How pitiful it would have been to
have seen that love, which was all beauty and tenderness and sacrifice
on both sides, dribble down into the commonplace of discontent, or, at
best, a kindly tolerance! She was glad that it had come to an end while
it was yet a perfect, beautiful thing; glad that she could link those
months of wonder love directly with the wonder and mystery of what was
to come to them.
The three years of separation had not kept them apart. It seemed that
they had at first been thrown violently away from each other. But
there had been an immediate rebound, and Augusta knew that they had
ever since been approaching each other in understanding and spirit.
She had worked, and trained, to prepare herself for this work so dear
to her which she was doing now. And Jimmie had suffered--here in
France. Augusta's eyes had seen the things which he must have gone
through, things which her heart and her intuitions had before told her
concerning him. But all seemed only to fit them into the design that
was prepared for them. In fact, in the supreme egoism of love, it had
not been difficult to believe that the whole world's tragedy had been
in some measure arranged to form a setting for their love.
Every subconscious thought of her waking days, every half formed dream
of day or night had of late been bringing Jimmie to Augusta, until it
seemed that the terrible world about her--which she was still obliged
to call reality--could not much longer persist. The end must be near.
For she had felt the coming of her love so vividly that material, brute
things could not much longer keep it from her.
Jimmie was coming to her! The mistakes, the travail, the dim
misunderstandings of this phase of being which was called life, would
soon be past. Jimmie and she would once more take the open road out
into the country of God.
For weeks her spirit had lived upon and breathed upon her dream, until
it, the dream, had become to her the real. And it seemed to her that
she was already going through the transition that would bring her out
with Jimmie upon the glorious, untried road that lay beyond the world's
death. She had no fear. The very daring of her dream had raised in her
a faith in love that trembled at nothing.
And then, in an instant, everything had gone black.
She had seen Jimmie. And she had thought that she saw Jimmie die,
and--and--_nothing_--
Jimmie was gone from her forever. And there was left to her nothing but
the dry little reflection that she had been a fool.
In those two black days when her soul strained, listening and watching
over the edges of the normal world, she had breasted the dark tide of
despair running full down upon her, and not even she herself could
have told how near she was to going down under it.
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