Kitabı oku: «The Tenants of Malory. Volume 2», sayfa 10
"She has not been looking well."
"You mean Agnes?" conjectured he.
"Yes, of course. She's not herself. She does not tell me, but I know the cause, and, as an old friend of ours, and a friend, beside, of Mr. Cleve Verney, I must tell you that I think he is using her disgracefully."
"Really?"
"Yes, most flagitiously."
"How do you mean? Shrapnell wrote me word that he was very attentive, and used to join her in her walks; and afterwards he said that he had been mistaken, and discovered that he was awfully in love with the young lady at Malory."
"Don't believe a word of it. I wonder at Captain Shrapnell circulating such insanity. He must know how it really was, and is. I look upon it as perfectly wicked, the way that Captain Shrapnell talks. You're not to mention it, of course, to anyone. It would be scandalous of you, Thomas Sedley, to think of breathing a word to mortal—mind that; but I'm certain you wouldn't."
"What a beast Cleve Verney has turned out!" exclaimed Tom Sedley. "Do you think she still cares for him?"
"Why, of course she does. If he had been paying his addresses to me, and that I had grown by his perseverance and devotion to like him, do you think, Thomas Sedley, that although I might give him up in consequence of his misconduct, that I could ever cease to feel the same kind of feeling about him?" And as she put this incongruous case, she held Tom Sedley's arm firmly, showing her bony wrist above her glove; and with her gaunt brown face and saucer eyes turned full upon him, rather fiercely, Tom felt an inward convulsion at the picture of Cleve's adorations at this shrine, and the melting of the nymph, which by a miracle he repressed.
"But you may have more constancy than Agnes," he suggested.
"Don't talk like a fool, Thomas Sedley. Every nice girl is the same."
"May I talk to Cleve about it?"
"On no account. No nice girl could marry him now, and an apology would be simply ridiculous. I have not spoken to him on the subject, and though I had intended cutting him, my friend Mrs. Splayfoot was so clear that I should meet him just as usual, that I do control the expression of my feelings, and endeavour to talk to him indifferently, though I should like uncommonly to tell him how odious I shall always think him."
"Yes, I remember," said Tom, who had been pondering. "Cleve did tell me, that time – it's more than a year ago now – it was a year in autumn – that he admired Agnes, and used to walk with you on the green every day; he did certainly. I must do him that justice. But suppose Agnes did not show that she liked him, he might not have seen any harm."
"That's the way you men always take one another's parts. I must say, I think it is odious!" exclaimed Charity, with a flush in her thin cheeks, and a terrible emphasis.
"But, I say, did she let him see that she liked him?"
"No, of course she didn't. No nice girl would. But of course he saw it," argued Charity.
"Oh, then she showed it?"
"No, she did not show it; there was nothing in anything she said or did, that could lead anyone, by look, or word, or act, to imagine that she liked him. How can you be so perverse and ridiculous, Thomas Sedley, to think she'd show her liking? Why, even I don't know it. I never saw it. She's a great deal too nice. You don't know Agnes. I should not venture to hint at it myself. Gracious goodness! What a fool you are, Thomas Sedley! Hush."
The concluding caution was administered in consequence of their having got very near the seat where Agnes was sitting.
"Miss Christian is only nervous, poor old thing! and Thomas Sedley has been getting sal volatile for her, and she'll be quite well in a day or two. Hadn't we better walk a little up and down; it's growing too cold for you to sit any longer, Agnes, dear. Come."
And up got obedient Agnes, and the party of three walked up and down the green, conversing upon all sorts of subjects but the one so ably handled by Charity and Tom Sedley in their two or three minutes' private talk.
And now the noble lord and his party, and the mayor, and the corporation, and Mr. Larkin, and Captain Shrapnell, and many other celebrities, were seen slowly emerging from the lane that passes the George Inn, upon the green; and the peer having said a word or two to the mayor, and also to Lady Wimbledon, and bowed and pointed toward the jetty, the main body proceeded slowly toward that point, while Lord Verney, accompanied by Cleve, walked grandly towards the young ladies who were to be presented.
Tom Sedley, observing this movement, took his leave hastily, and, in rather a marked way, walked off at right angles with Lord Verney's line of march, twirling his cane.
CHAPTER XIX
VANE ETHERAGE GREETS LORD VERNEY
So the great Lord Verney, with the flush of his brilliant successes in the town-hall still upon his thin cheeks, and a countenance dry and solemn, to which smiling came not easily, made the acquaintance of the Miss Etherages, and observed that the younger was "sweetly pretty, about it, and her elder sister appeared to him a particularly sensible young woman, and was, he understood, very useful in the charities, and things." And he repeated to them in his formal way, his hope of seeing them at Ware, and was as gracious as such a man can be, and instead of attorneys and writs sent grouse and grapes to Hazelden.
And thus this narrow man, who did not easily forgive, expanded and forgave, and the secret of the subsidence of the quarrel, and of the Christian solution of the "difficulty," was simply Mr. Vane Etherage's hundred and thirty votes in the county.
What a blessing to these counties is representative government, with its attendant institution of the canvass! It is the one galvanism which no material can resist. It melts every heart, and makes the coldest, hardest, and heaviest metals burst into beautiful flame. Granted that at starting, the geniality, repentance, kindness, are so many arrant hypocrisies; yet who can tell whether these repentances, in white sheets, taper in hand, these offerings of birds and fruits, these smiles and compliments, and "Christian courtesies," may not end in improving the man who is compelled to act like a good fellow and accept his kindly canons, and improve him also with whom these better relations are established? As muscle is added to the limb, so strength is added to the particular moral quality we exercise, and kindness is elicited, and men perhaps end by having some of the attributes which they began by affecting. At all events, any recognition of the kindly and peaceable social philosophy of Christianity is, so far as it goes, good.
"What a sensible, nice, hospitable old man Lord Verney is; I think him the most sensible and the nicest man I ever met," said Miss Charity, in an enthusiasm which was quite genuine, for she was, honestly, no respecter of persons. "And young Mr. Verney certainly looked very handsome, but I don't like him."
"Don't like him! Why?" said Agnes, looking up.
"Because I think him perfectly odious," replied Miss Charity.
Agnes was inured to Miss Charity's adjectives, and even the fierce flush that accompanied some of them failed to alarm her.
"Well, I rather like him," she said, quietly.
"You can't like him, Agnes. It is not a matter of opinion at all; it's just simply a matter of fact– and you know that he is a most worldly, selfish, cruel, and I think, wicked young man, and you need not talk about him, for he's odious. And here comes Thomas Sedley again."
Agnes smiled a faint and bitter smile.
"And what do you think of him?" she asked.
"Thomas Sedley? Of course I like him; we all like him. Don't you?" answered Charity.
"Yes, pretty well – very well. I suppose he has faults, like other people. He's good-humoured, selfish, of course – I fancy they all are. And papa likes him, I think; but really, Charrie, if you want to know, I don't care if I never saw him again."
"Hush!"
"Well! You've got rid of the Verneys, and here I am again," said Tom, approaching. "They are going up to Hazelden to see your father."
And so they were – up that pretty walk that passes the mills and ascends steeply by the precipitous side of the wooded glen, so steep, that in two places you have to mount by rude flights of steps – a most sequestered glen, and utterly silent, except for the sound of the mill-stream tinkling and crooning through the rocks below, unseen through the dense boughs and stems of the wood beneath.
If Lord Verney in his conciliatory condescension was grand, so was Vane Etherage on the occasion of receiving and forgiving him at Hazelden. He had considered and constructed a little speech, with some pomp of language, florid and magnanimous. He had sat in his bath-chair for half an hour at the little iron gate of the flower-garden of Hazelden, no inmate of which had ever seen him look, for a continuance, so sublimely important, and indeed solemn, as he had done all that morning.
Vane Etherage had made his arrangements to receive Lord Verney with a dignified deference. He was to be wheeled down the incline about two hundred yards, to "the bower," to meet the peer at that point, and two lusty fellows were to push him up by Lord Verney's side to the house, where wine and other comforts awaited him.
John Evans had been placed at the mill to signal to the people above at Hazelden, by a musket-shot, the arrival of Lord Verney at that stage of his progress. The flagstaff and rigging on the green platform at Hazelden were fluttering all over with all the flags that ever were invented, in honour of the gala.
Lord Verney ascended, leaning upon the arm of his nephew, with Mr. Larkin and the mayor for supporters, Captain Shrapnell, Doctor Lyster, and two or three other distinguished inhabitants of Cardyllian bringing up the rear.
Lord Verney carried his head high, and grew reserved and rather silent as they got on, and as they passed under the solemn shadow of the great trees by the mill, an overloaded musket went off with a sound like a cannon, as Lord Verney afterwards protested, close to the unsuspecting party, and a loud and long whoop from John Evans completed the concerted signal.
The Viscount actually jumped, and Cleve felt the shock of his arm against his side.
"D – you, John Evans, what the devil are you doing?" exclaimed Captain Shrapnell, who, turning from white to crimson, was the first of the party to recover his voice.
"Yes, sir, thank you – very good," said Evans, touching his hat, and smiling incessantly with the incoherent volubility of Welsh politeness. "A little bit of a squib, sir, if you please, for Captain Squire Etherage – very well, I thank you – to let him know Lord Verney – very much obliged, sir – was at the mill – how do you do, sir? – and going up to Hazelden, if you please, sir."
And the speech subsided in a little, gratified laugh of delighted politeness.
"You'd better not do that again, though," said the Captain, with a menacing wag of his head, and availing himself promptly of the opportunity of improving his relations with Lord Verney, he placed himself by his side, and assured him that though he was an old campaigner, and had smelt powder in all parts of the world, he had never heard such a report from a musket in all his travels and adventures before; and hoped Lord Verney's hearing was not the worse of it. He had known a general officer deafened by a shot, and, by Jove! his own ears were singing with it still, accustomed as he was, by Jupiter! to such things.
His lordship, doing his best on the festive occasion, smiled uncomfortably, and said, —
"Yes – thanks – ha, ha! I really thought it was a cannon, or the gas-works – about it."
And Shrapnell called back and said, —
"Don't you be coming on with that thing, John Evans – do you mind? – Lord Verney's had quite enough of that. You'll excuse me, Lord Verney, I thought you'd wish so much said," and Lord Verney bowed graciously.
The answering shot and cheer which were heard from above announced to John Evans that the explosion had been heard at Hazelden, and still smiling and touching his heart, he continued his voluble civilities – "Very good, sir, very much obliged, sir, very well, I thank you; I hope you are very well, sir, very good indeed, sir," and so forth, till they were out of hearing.
The shot, indeed, was distinctly heard at the gay flagstaff up at Hazelden, and the Admiral got under weigh, and proceeded down the incline charmingly till they had nearly reached the little platform at the bower, where, like Christian in his progress, he was to make a halt.
But his plans at this point were disturbed. Hardly twenty yards before they reached it, one of his men let go, the drag upon the other suddenly increased, and resulted in a pull, which caused him to trip, and tripping as men while in motion downhill will, he butted forward, charging headlong, and finally tumbling on his face, he gave to the rotatory throne of Mr. Etherage such an impulse as carried him quite past the arbour, and launched him upon the steep descent of the gravel-walk with a speed every moment accelerated.
"Stop her! – ease her! – d – you, Williams!" roared the Admiral, little knowing how idle were his orders. The bath-chair had taken head, the pace became furious; the running footmen gave up pursuit in despair, and Mr. Vane Etherage was obliged to concentrate his severest attention, as he never did before, on the task of guiding his flying vehicle, a feat which was happily favoured by the fact that the declivity presented no short turns.
The sounds were heard below – a strange ring of wheels, and a powerful voice bawling, "Ease her! stop her!" and some stronger expressions.
"Can't be a carriage, about it, here?" exclaimed Lord Verney, halting abruptly, and only restrained from skipping upon the side bank by a sense of dignity.
"Never mind, Lord Verney! don't mind – I'll take care of you – I'm your vanguard," exclaimed Captain Shrapnell, with a dare-devil gaiety, inspired by the certainty that it could not be a carriage, and the conviction that the adventure would prove nothing more than some children and nursery maids playing with a perambulator.
His feelings underwent a revulsion, however, when old Vane Etherage, enveloped in cloak, and shawls, his hat gone, and his long grizzled hair streaming backward, with a wild countenance, and both hands working the directing handle, came swooping into sight, roaring, maniacally, "Ease her! back her!" and yawing frightfully in his descent upon them.
Captain Shrapnell, they say, turned pale at the spectacle; but he felt he must now go through with it, or for ever sacrifice that castle-in-the-air, of which the events of the day had suggested the ground-plan and elevation.
"Good heaven! he'll be killed, about it!" exclaimed Lord Verney, peeping from behind a tree, with unusual energy; but whether he meant Shrapnell, or Etherage, or both, I don't know, and nobody in that moment of sincerity minded much what he meant. I dare say a front-rank man in a square at Waterloo did not feel before the gallop of the Cuirassiers as the gallant Captain did before the charge of the large invalid who was descending upon him. All he meditated was a decent show of resistance, and as he had a stout walking-stick in his hand, something might be done without risking his bones. So, as the old gentleman thundered downward, roaring, "Keep her off – keep her clear," Shrapnell, roaring "I'm your man!" nervously popped the end of his stick under the front wheel of the vehicle, himself skipping to one side, unhappily the wrong one, for the chair at this check spun round, and the next spectacle was Mr. Vane Etherage and Captain Shrapnell, enveloped in cloaks and mufflers, and rolling over and over in one another's arms, like athletes in mortal combat, the Captain's fist being visible, as they rolled round, at Mr. Vane Etherage's back, with his walking-stick still clutched in it.
The chair was lying on its side, the gentlemen were separated, and Captain Shrapnell jumped to his feet.
"Well, Lord Verney, I believe I did something there!" said the gallant Captain, with the air of a man who has done his duty, and knows it.
"Done something! you've broke my neck, you lubber!" panted Mr. Vane Etherage, who, his legs not being available, had been placed sitting with some cloaks about him, on the bank.
Shrapnell grinned and winked expressively, and confidentially whispered, "Jolly old fellow he is – no one minds the Admiral; we let him talk."
"Lord Verney," said his lordship, introducing himself with a look and air of polite concern.
"No, my name's Etherage," said the invalid, mistaking – he fancied that Jos. Larkin, who was expounding his views of the accident grandly to Cleve Verney in the background, could not be less than a peer – "I live up there, at Hazelden – devilish near being killed here, by that lubber there. Why I was running at the rate of five-and-twenty knots an hour, if I was making one; and I remember it right well, sir, there's a check down there, just before you come to the mill-stile, and the wall there; and I'd have run my bows right into it, and not a bit the worse, sir, if that d – fellow had just kept out of the – the – king's course, you know; and egad! I don't know now how it is – I suppose I'm smashed, sir."
"I hope not, sir. I am Lord Verney – about it; and it would pain me extremely to learn that any serious injuries, or – or – things – had been sustained, about it."
"I'll tell that in a moment," said Doctor Lyster, who was of the party, briskly.
So after a variety of twists and wrenches and pokes, Vane Etherage was pronounced sound and safe.
"I don't know how the devil I escaped!" exclaimed the invalid.
"By tumbling on me– very simply," replied Captain Shrapnell with a spirited laugh.
"You may set your mind at rest, Shrapnell," said the Doctor, walking up to him, with a congratulatory air. "He's all right, this time; but you had better mind giving the old fellow any more rolls of that sort – the pitcher to the well, you know – and the next time might smash him."
"I'm more concerned about smashing myself, thank you. The next time he may roll to the devil – and through whoever he pleases for me – knocked down with that blackguard old chair, and that great hulking fellow on top of me – all for trying to be of use, egad! when everyone of you funked it – and not a soul asks about my bones, egad! or my neck either."
"Oh! come, Shrapnell, you're not setting up for an old dog yet. There's a difference between you and Etherage," said the Doctor.
"I hope so," answered the Captain, sarcastically, "but civility is civility all the world over; and I can tell you, another fellow would make fuss enough about the pain I'm suffering."
It was found, further, that one wheel of the bath-chair was disorganised, and the smith must come from the town to get it to rights, and that Vane Etherage, who could as soon have walked up a rainbow as up the acclivity to Hazelden, must bivouac for a while where he sat.
So there the visit was paid, and the exciting gala of that day closed, and the Viscount and his party marched down, with many friends attendant, to the jetty, and embarked in the yacht for Ware.
CHAPTER XX
REBECCA MERVYN READS HER LETTER
The evenings being short, the shops alight, and the good people of Cardyllian in their houses, Tom Sedley found the hour before dinner hang heavily on his hands. So he walked slowly up Castle Street, and saw Mr. Robson, the worthy post-master, standing, with his hands in his pockets, at the open door.
"No letter for me, I dare say?" asked Sedley.
"No, sir – nothing."
"I don't know how to kill the time. I wish my dinner was ready. You dined, like a wise man, at one o'clock, I dare say?"
"We do – we dine early here, sir."
"I know it; a capital plan. I do it myself, whenever I make any stay here."
"And you can eat a bit o' something hearty at tea then."
"To be sure; that's the good of it. I don't know what to do with myself. I'll take a walk round by Malory. Can I leave the Malory letters for you?"
"You're only joking, sir."
"I was not, upon my honour. I'd be glad to bolt your shutters, or to twig your steps – anything to do. I literally don't know what to do with myself."
"There's no family at Malory, you know, now, sir."
"Oh! I did not know. I knew the other family had gone. No letters to be delivered then?"
"Well, sir, there is– but you're only joking."
"What is it?"
"A letter to Mrs. Rebecca Mervyn – but I would not think of troubling a gentleman with it."
"Old Rebecca? why I made her acquaintance among the shingles and cockles on the sea-shore last year – a charming old sea-nymph, or whatever you call it."
"We all have a great respect for Mrs. Mervyn, down here, in Cardyllian. The family has a great opinion of her, and they think a great deal of her, like us," said Mr. Robson, who did not care to hear any mysterious names applied to her without a protest.
"Well – so I say – so have I. I'll give her the letter, and take a receipt," said Sedley, extending his hand.
"There really is a receipt, sir, wanting," said the official, amused. "It came this morning – and if you'll come in – if it isn't too much trouble – I'll show it to you, please, sir."
In he stepped to the post-office, where Mr. Robson showed him a letter which he had that afternoon received. It said, —
"Sir, – I enclose five shillings, represented by postage-stamps, which will enable you to pay a messenger on whom you can depend, to deliver a letter which I place along with this in the post-office, into the hand of Mrs. Mervyn, Steward's House, Malory, Cardyllian, to whom it is addressed, and which is marked with the letter D at the left-hand corner.
"I am, sir,"Your obt. servant,"J. Dingwell."
"The letter is come," said Mr. Robson, taking it out of a pigeon-hole in a drawer, and thumbing it, and smiling on it with a gentle curiosity.
"Yes – that's it," said Tom Sedley, also reading the address. "'Mrs. Mervyn' – what a queer old ghost of a lady she is – 'Malory,' that's the ground – and the letter D in the corner. Well, I'm quite serious. I'll take the letter with pleasure, and see the old woman, and put it into her hand. I'm not joking, and I shall be back again in an hour, I dare say, and I'll tell you what she says, and how she looks – that is, assuming it is a love-letter."
"Well, sir, as you wish it; and it's very kind of you, and the old lady must sign a receipt, for the letter's registered – but it's too much trouble for you, sir, isn't it really?"
"Nonsense; give me the letter. If you won't, I can't help it."
"And this receipt should be signed."
"And the receipt also."
So away went our friend, duly furnished, and marched over the hill we know so well, that over-hangs the sea, and down by the narrow old road to Malory, thinking of many things.
The phantom of the beautiful lady of Malory was very much faded now. Even as he looked down on the old house and woodlands, the romance came not again. It was just a remembered folly, like others, and excited or pained him little more. But a new trouble vexed him. How many of our blessings do we take for granted, enjoy thanklessly, like our sight, our hearing, our health, and only appreciate when they are either withdrawn or in danger!
Captain Shrapnell had written among his gossip some jocular tattle about Cleve's devotion to Miss Agnes Etherage, which had moved him oddly and uncomfortably; but the next letter disclosed the mystery of Cleve's clandestine visits to Malory, and turned his thoughts into a new channel.
But here was all revived, and worse. Charity, watching with a woman's eyes, and her opportunities, had made to him a confidence about which there could be no mistake; and then Agnes was so changed – not a bit glad to see him! And did not she look pretty? Was there not a slight look of pride – a reserve – that was new – a little sadness – along with the heightened beauty of her face and figure? How on earth had he been so stupid as not to perceive how beautiful she was all this time? Cleve had more sense. By Jove! she was the prettiest girl in England, and that selfish fellow had laid himself out to make her fond of him, and, having succeeded, jilted her! And now she would not care for any one but him.
There was a time, he thought, when he, Tom Sedley, might have made her like him. What a fool he was! And that was past – unimproved – irrevocable – and now she never could. Girls may affect those second likings, he thought, but they never really care after the first. It is pride, or pique, or friendship, or convenience – anything but love.
Love! And what had he to do with love? Who would marry him on four hundred a year, and no expectations? And now he was going to teaze himself because he had not stepped in before Cleve Verney and secured the affections of little Agnes. What a fool he was! What business had he dreaming such dreams? He had got on very well without falling in love with Agnes. Why should he begin now? If he found that folly gaining upon him, he would leave Cardyllian without staying his accustomed week, and never return till the feeling had died as completely as last year's roses.
Down the hill he marched in his new romance, as he had done more than a year ago, over the same ground, in his old one, when in the moonlight, on the shingle, he had met the same old lady of whom he was now in quest.
The old trees of Malory rose up before him, dark and silent, higher and higher as he approached. It was a black night – no moon; even the stars obscured by black lines of cloud as he pushed open the gate, and entered the deeper darkness of the curving carriage-road that leads up through the trees.
It was six o'clock now, and awfully dark. When he reached the open space before the hall-door, he looked up at the dim front of the house, but no light glimmered there. The deep-mouthed dog in the stable-yard was yelling his challenge, and he further startled the solitary woods by repeated double-knocks that boomed through the empty hall and chambers of the deserted house.
Despairing of an entrance at last, and not knowing which way to turn, he took the way by chance which led him to the front of the steward's house, from the diamond casement of which a light was shining. The door lay open; only the latch was closed, such being the primitive security that prevails in that region of poverty and quietude.
With his stick he knocked a little tattoo, and a candle was held over the clumsy banister, and the little servant girl inquired in her clear Welsh accent what he wanted.
So, preliminaries over, he mounted to that chamber in which Mr. Levi had been admitted to a conference among the delft and porcelain, stags, birds, officers, and huntsmen, who, in gay tints and old-fashioned style, occupied every coigne of vantage, and especially that central dresser, which mounted nearly to the beams of the ceiling.
The room is not large, the recesses are deep, the timber-work is of clumsy oak, and the decorations of old-world teapots, jugs, and beasts of the field, and cocked-hatted gentlemen in gorgeous colouring and gilding, so very gay and splendid, reflecting the candle-light and the wavering glare of the fire from a thousand curves and angles; the old shining furniture, and carved oak clock; the room itself, and all its properties so perfectly neat and tidy, not one grain of dust or single cob-web to be seen in any nook or crevice, that Tom Sedley was delighted with the scene.
What a delightful retreat, he thought, from the comfortless affectations of the world. Here was the ideal of snugness, and of brightness, and warmth. It amounted to a kind of beauty that absolutely fascinated him. He looked kindly on the old lady, who had laid down her knitting, and looked at him through a pair of round spectacles, and thought that he would like to adopt her for his housekeeper, and live a solitary life of lonely rabbit-shooting in Penruthyn Park, trout-fishing in the stream, and cruising in an imaginary yacht on the estuary and the contiguous seaboard.
This little plan, or rather vision, pictured itself to Tom Sedley's morbid and morose imagination as the most endurable form of life to which he could now aspire.
The old lady, meanwhile, was looking at him with an expression of wonder and anxiety, and he said —
"I hope, Mrs. Mervyn, I have not disturbed you much. It is not quite so late as it looks, and as the post-master, Mr. Robson, could not find a messenger, and I was going this way, I undertook to call and give you the letter, having once had the pleasure of making your acquaintance, although you do not, I'm afraid, recollect me."
"I knew it, the moment his face entered the room. It was the same face," she repeated, as if she had seen a picture, not a face.
"Just under the walls of Malory; you were anxious to learn whether a sail was in sight, in the direction of Pendillion," said he, suggesting.
"No, there was none; it was not there. People – other people – would have tired of watching long ago; my old eyes never dazzled, sir. And he came, so like. He came – I thought it – was a spirit from the sea; and here he is. There's something in your voice, sir, and your face. It is wonderful; but not a Verney – no, you told me so. They are cruel men – one way or other they were all cruel, but some more than others – my God! much more. There's something in the eyes – the setting, the light – it can't be mistaken; something in the curve of the chin, very pretty – but you're no Verney, you told me – and see how he comes here a second time, smiling – and yet when he goes, it is like waking from a dream where they were, as they all used to look, long ago; and there's a pain at my heart, for weeks after. It never can be again, sir; I'm growing old. If it ever comes, it will find me so changed – or dead, I sometimes begin to think, and try to make up my mind. There's a good world, you know, where we'll all meet and be happy, no more parting or dying, sir. Yet I'd like to see him even once, here, just as he was, a beautiful mortal. God is so good; and while there's life there is hope."
