35. CHAPTER XXXV.
ONLY TWENTY-EIGHT.
In this strange world we very often pass near what we are seeking.
Harley and his friend had scarcely entered the house, when a
sort of shadow glided beneath one of the great oaks, passed along
the front of the mansion, and approached the portico.
This shadow was a young woman—thin, feeble-looking, and clad
in black. A chance-gleam from one of the windows fell upon her
face. When Harley and St. Leger had seen it in the tobacco-house,
the thin white cheeks were covered with rouge, and the momentary
excitement of acting had changed the natural expression. Now
the rouge had disappeared, and there was no excitement. A cold,
dumb despair seemed to possess this human being, and her face
was the face of a ghost.
Her feet, as she walked, left deep prints in the snow, which was
now several inches in depth, and these prints were small and slender—the
feet were evidently delicate. One hand drew around her
shivering figure a black cloak, and this hand was slight and ladylike—the
hand of a person who has never performed manual labor.
In the movements of the slender and wasted figure there was
something woe-begone. Despair impersonate, there in the chill,
weird night, might have looked thus.
The woman walked swiftly along the front of the house, as if
resolutely bent on going up the broad steps and knocking at the
door. A close observer would have said that she walked thus
rapidly for fear her resolution would give way. And before she
reached the steps it had given way. Her pace lessened; she raised
her head, hesitated, stopped—her head sank again, and uttering a
low sob, she turned round and began to walk back. After taking
a few steps, she again stopped, went once more toward the door,
reached the steps, ascended two or three, and then, her resolution
entirely failing, she buried her face in her cloak and hurried
away.
Away from the great, dreary-looking mansion, with its glaring
eyes, which seemed to follow her; away from the oak under whose
drooping boughs she had hidden, night after night; along the winding
path by the spring where St. Leger had picked up the black
veil, and beneath the tree on whose trunk were carved the letters
“J. H.” and “A. C.”; over the rude style, out into the broad fields,
toward the lonely, gloomy, never-ending forest—so the poor, frail
thing went into the night.
As she hurried on, her thin form buffeted by the snow which a
cold wind was driving, now, straight into her face—her steps
wavering, her shoulders shivering, as the blast struck her—she
moaned, uttering inarticulate words.
At last these words became distinct, and might have been heard
if any one had been near. There was a dull despair in them—the
suppressed cry of a hungry, miserable heart—resembling the unhappy
cry of a child in pain.
“O me!” the woman said, “I am only twenty-eight—I am not so
old—and I am going to die to-night! I would not care for that—I
have nothing to live for—but O me! I have not seen him!—I have
not seen him! and I shall die, and never see him and tell him
everything, and find my child!”
She tottered on, uttering that low sound which the word moan
scarcely describes.
“I have gone there night after night; I have watched and
watched, and resolved, time after time, and looked up at that light,
and I could not go to him! Why did I not? I know he would
forgive me!”
The wind struck her fiercely, and the snow covered her poor,
thin cheeks—so white already that it seemed quite useless for the
snow to make them whiter. Her walk became slower, and more
labored. She dragged her feet, and panted.
Where was she going? She did not know. Not to the house
of the poor, charitable family who had received her when she fled
from the strollers—dividing that small loaf with the houseless
wanderer. She was not thinking of shelter now, but of getting
away somewhere—of reaching some spot where she could lie
down, hidden from all eyes, like a hunted animal, and die.
“He was noble—enough—to forgive me—!”
These words came in gasps, which showed that her strength was
failing. She had tottered on, indeed, mile after mile, for more than
two hours. Her pace now was a stagger. She had entered a wood,
and heard water flowing near. This seemed to remind her of
some other scene, and she murmured, with sobs,
“O my child! my child!”
As this cry escaped her, she stumbled and half fell.
“The snow—is blinding me!”
It was not the snow. A step further, she fell upon one knee and
one hand. She remained thus for a moment, her eyes closed, her
heart beating more and more faintly. Then she rose, slowly and
painfully; took three steps; fell upon her knees—then upon her
face, with both arms stretched out.
Through the opening between the tall cypresses the snow-flakes
fell gently and quietly upon her.
