 | CHAPTER IV. Pictures of country life |  |
4. CHAPTER IV.
Years ago all this happened, and what either party, or both
have suffered, only themselves know. The same house, shabbier
than it used to be, with the one uncurtained window towards
the street, is standing yet. Sometimes in the evening twilight
you will see there a plain, pale woman, with grey hair, sewing
by the last light. She does not smile, nor look as if she had
smiled for many years, or ever would again. Often three
bright, laughing children go in at the gate with parcels of
sewing, and they climb over her chair and kiss her, and wonder
why she is not gay and laughing like their mother; and when
they go away, they are sure to leave more money than she has
earned, behind them; they are Casper's children, and the
woman is Eliza Anderson.
Sometimes you will see there a ragged, wretched man, lame
in the right leg, and with one arm off at the elbow—his face
has in it a look of habitual suffering, of baffled and purposeless
suffering, as if all the world was set against him, and he could
not help it; and that is George.
Sometimes in the night, when all is dark and still, a white-haired
man leans over the broken gate, forgetting the white
wall of his own garden, and all the roses that are in it, and the
pretty children that are smiling in their dreaming: and even
the wife, gone to sleep too, in the calm, not to say indifferent
when he gets ready. He leans there a long while thinking,
not of what is, but of what might have been, and wondering
whether eternity will make whole the broken blessings of time.
That is Casper, to be sure—who else should it be?
| CHAPTER IV. Pictures of country life | |