| | 1 | Author: | Holmes
Mary Jane
1825-1907 | Requires cookie* | | | Title: | Darkness and daylight  | | | | Published: | 2003 | | | | Subjects: | University of Virginia Library, Text collection | UVA-LIB-Text | University of Virginia Library, Early American Fiction, 1789-1875 | UVA-LIB-EarlyAmFict1789-1875 | | | | Description: | Collingwood was to have a tenant at last. For twelve
long years its massive walls of dark grey stone had
frowned in gloomy silence upon the passers-by, the terror
of the superstitious ones, who had peopled its halls with
ghosts and goblins, saying even that the snowy-haired old
man, its owner, had more than once been seen there, moving
restlessly from room to room and muttering of the
darkness which came upon him when he lost his fair
young wife and her beautiful baby Charlie. The old man
was not dead, but for years he had been a stranger to his
former home. “Dear Sir: — A wholly unexpected event makes it
necessary for me to be absent from home for the next few
weeks. During this time my house will be shut up, and
I shall be very glad if in her daily rides Miss Hastings
will occasionally come round this way and see that every
thing is straight. I would like much to give the keys into
her charge, knowing as I do that I can trust her. The books
in my library are at her disposal, as is also the portfolio
of drawings, which I will leave upon the writing table. “Dear Sir, — Miss Hastings accepts the great honor of
looking after your house, and will see that nothing gets
mouldy during your absence. “Darling Miggie: — Nina has been so sick this great
long while, and her head is so full of pain. Why don't
you come to me, Miggie? I sit and wait and listen till
my forehead thumps and thumps, just as a bad nurse
thumped it once down in the Asylum. “Poor blind man! Nina is so sorry for you to-night,
because she knows that what she has to tell you will crush
the strong life all out of your big heart, and leave it as
cold and dead as she will be when Victor reads this to
you. There won't be any Nina then, for Miggie and
Arthur, and a heap more, will have gone with her way
out where both my mothers are lying, and Miggie'll cry,
I reckon, when she hears the gravel stones rattling down
just over my head, but I shall know they cannot hit me,
for the coffin-lid will be between, and Nina'll lie so still.
No more pain; no more buzzing; no more headache; no
more darkness; won't it be grand, the rest I'm going to.
I shan't be crazy in Heaven. Arthur says so, and he
knows. “.... It will be dreadful at first, I know, and may
be all three of the darknesses will close around you for a
14
time, — darkness of the heart, darkness of the brain, and
darkness of the eyes, but it will clear away and the daylight
will break, in which you will be happier than in
calling Miggie your wife, and knowing how she shrinks
from you, suffering your caresses only because she knows
she must, but feeling so sick at her stomach all the time,
and wishing you wouldn't touch her. I know just how it
feels, for when Arthur kissed me, or took my hand, or even
came in my sight, before the buzz got into my head, it
made me so cold and faint and ugly, the way the Yankees
mean, knowing he was my husband when I wanted Charlie
Hudson. Don't subject Miggie to this horrid fate.
Be generous and give her up to Arthur. He may not deserve
her more than you, but she loves him the best and
that makes a heap of difference. | | | Similar Items: | Find |
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