FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87  
88   89   90   91   92   93   >>  
is open mouth. The expression of this face struck me all at once as terrible. It regarded me with a look of silent understanding, as though I were a companion in suffering, and would have to lie there when its torments had at last come to an end. It was impossible to remove my eyes from the picture; it seemed to become alive, now coming quite near, now going far away into a darkness that my own dizzy head created. It was as though in this picture the curtain was drawn aside from a part of my own soul's secret history, and it was only by an effort of will, called forth by a fear of becoming too far absorbed into my own fancy, that I succeeded in tearing myself away from it. When I turned, there stood in the light that fell from the window near the front pew, the lady with the rose. She wore an expression of infinite sadness, as though she knew well the connection between me and the picture, and as if the briar-spray in her hand were only a miniature of the thorn-bush in which yonder martyr lay. In the lonely stillness of the church a panic came over me, an inexpressible terror of unseen powers, and I fled precipitately. When I got outside, I discovered that I had lost Susanna's blue cross. It could only be in the church on the step where I had been sitting. At that moment, while my heart was still throbbing with terror, I would not have gone back again into the church for anything in the world--except Susanna's blue cross. I found it, when I carefully searched the floor where I had been sitting. The second time during these years that my nervous system gave evidence of its unsoundness was late in the autumn, a month or two before I was to go home. A peasant, who had gone in to see the minister, had fastened his horse, which was wall-eyed, to the churchyard wall. I began to look at it; and the recollection of its dead, expressionless glance followed me for the rest of the day. It seemed to me as if its eyes, instead of looking out, looked inwards into a world invisible to me, and as if it would be quite natural if it forgot to obey the reins, and left the ordinary highway for the road to Hades, along which the dead are travelling. With this in my mind, I sat that afternoon in the parsonage where people were talking of all kinds of things, and there suddenly appeared before me a home face, pale and with a strained look, and soon after I could see that the man to whom it belonged was striving desperately to
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87  
88   89   90   91   92   93   >>  



Top keywords:

church

 

picture

 

terror

 

expression

 

Susanna

 
sitting
 

unsoundness

 

autumn

 

desperately

 
peasant

striving

 
evidence
 

searched

 

belonged

 

carefully

 

nervous

 

system

 

throbbing

 

recollection

 

travelling


highway

 

appeared

 

things

 

suddenly

 

talking

 

people

 

afternoon

 

strained

 

parsonage

 

ordinary


expressionless

 
glance
 

churchyard

 

fastened

 

moment

 
forgot
 

natural

 

invisible

 

looked

 

inwards


minister

 

martyr

 

secret

 

history

 

created

 

curtain

 
effort
 

absorbed

 

succeeded

 

tearing