Part 65 (2/2)
Only this morning she had deemed herself miserable beyond her fellows; now, who can compete with her in utter content? In a few short hours she will be his wife! Oh that her father could but----
Her father! Now, all at once, it rushes back upon her; she is a little dazed, a good deal unsettled, but surely some one had said that her--her father--was--dead!
The lamps in the street die out. The sickly winter dawn comes over the great city. The hush and calm still linger; only now and then a dark phantom form issues from a silent gateway, and hurries along the pavement, as though fearful of the growing light.
Ruth has sunk upon her knees, and is doing fierce battle with the remorse that has come to kill her new-born happiness. There is a terrible pain at her heart, even apart from the mental anguish that is tearing it. Her slight frame trembles beneath the double shock; a long s.h.i.+vering sob breaks from her; she throws her arms a little wildly across the couch before which she is kneeling, and gradually her form sinks upon her arms. No other sob comes to disturb the stillness. An awful silence follows. Slowly the cold gray morning fills the chamber, and the sun,--
”Eternal painter, now begins to rise, And limn the heavens in vermilion dyes.”
But within deathly silence reigns. Has peace fallen upon that quiet form? Has gentle sleep come to her at last?
Horace, ascending the stairs cautiously, before the household is astir, opens the room where last he had seen Ruth, and comes gently in. He would have pa.s.sed on to the inner chamber, thinking to rouse her to prepare in haste for their early wedding, when the half-kneeling half-crouching figure before the lounge attracts his notice.
”Ruth,” he says, very gently, fearful lest he shall frighten her by too sudden a summons back to wakefulness; but there is no reply. How can she have fallen asleep in such an uncomfortable position? ”Ruth,”
he calls again, rather louder, some vague fear sending the blood back to his heart; but again only silence greets his voice. And again he says, ”Ruth!” this time with pa.s.sionate terror in his tone; but, alas!
there is still no response. For the first time she is deaf to his entreaty.
Catching her in his arms, he raises her from her kneeling posture, and, carrying her to the window, stares wildly into her calm face,--the poor, sad, pretty face of her who had endured so much, and borne so long, and loved so faithfully.
She is dead!--quite dead! Already the limbs are stiffening, the hands are icy cold, the lips, that in life would so gladly have returned kiss for kiss, are now silent and motionless beneath the despairing caresses he lavishes upon them in the vain hope of finding yet some warmth remaining.
But there is none. She is gone, past recall, past hearing all expressions of remorseful tenderness. In the terrible lonely dawn she had pa.s.sed away, with no one near to hold her dying hand, without a sigh or moan, leaving no farewell word of love or forgiveness to the man who is now straining her lifeless body to his heart, as though to make one last final effort to bring her back to earth.
There is a happy smile upon her lips, her eyes are quite closed, almost she seems as one that sleepeth. The awful majesty of death is upon her, and no voice of earth, however anguished and imploring, can reach her ice-bound heart. As the first faint touch of light that came to usher in her wedding morn broke upon the earth, she had died, and gone somewhere
”Above the smoke and stir of this dim spot Which men call earth.”
CHAPTER x.x.xVII.
”Was I deceived, or did a sable cloud Turn forth her silver lining on the night?”--MILTON.
The two months that Dorian has given himself in which to finish the business that, he said, had brought him home, have almost come to an end. Already winter is pa.s.sing out of mind, and ”Spring comes up this way.”
The ”checkered daffodil” and the soft plaintive primrose are bursting into bloom. The gentle rain comes with a pa.s.sing cloud, and sinks lovingly into the earth's bosom and into the hearts of the opening buds.
The gra.s.s is springing; all the world is rich with fresh young life.
The very snowdrops--pale blossoms, born of bitter winds and sunless skies--have perished out of sight.
Ruth is lying in her grave, cold and forgotten save by two,--the man who has most wronged her, and the woman who had most to forgive her.
As yet, Clarissa cannot rise out of the depression that fell upon her when Horace's treachery was first made known to her. Her love had seemed so good, so tender, it had so brightened all her life, and had been so much a part of her existence, that it seemed to carry to the grave with it all her youth and gladness. However untrue this young love of her life had been, still, while she believed in it, it had been beautiful to her, and it is with bitterest grief she has laid it aside; to her it had been a living thing, and even as it fades from her she cries to it aloud to stay, and feels her arms empty in that it no longer fills them.
”But, oh, not yet, not yet Would my lost soul forget How beautiful he was while he did live, Or, when his eyes were dewy and lips wet, What kisses, tenderer than all regret, My love would give.
”Strew roses on his breast,-- He loved the roses best; He never cared for lilies or for snow.
Let be this bitter end of his sweet quest; Let be the pallid silence, that is rest, And let all go!”
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