FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37  
38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>   >|  
f in spite of his meditations just now. She at least respected his sorrow, he told himself. She bore herself very naturally, though with long silences, and never once met his eyes with her own. He made his excuses as soon as he could and slipped across to the stable yard. At least he would be alone this afternoon. Only, as he rode away half an hour later, he caught a sight of the slender little figure of his mother waiting to have one word with him if she could, beyond the hall-door. But he set his lips and would not see her. It was one of those perfect September days that fall sometimes as a gift from heaven after the bargain of summer has been more or less concluded. As he rode all that afternoon through lanes and across uplands, his view barred always to the north by the great downs above Royston, grey-blue against the radiant sky, there was scarcely a hint in earth or heaven of any emotion except prevailing peace. Yet the very serenity tortured him the more by its mockery. The birds babbled in the deep woods, the cheerful noise of children reached him now and again from a cottage garden, the mellow light smiled unending benediction, and yet his subconsciousness let go for never an instant of the long elm box six feet below ground, and of its contents lying there in the stifling dark, in the long-grassed churchyard on the hill above his home. He wondered now and again as to the fate of the spirit that had informed the body and made it what it was; but his imagination refused to work. After all, he asked himself, what were all the teachings of theology but words gabbled to break the appalling silence? Heaven ... Purgatory ... Hell. What was known of these things? The very soul itself--what was that? What was the inconceivable environment, after all, for so inconceivable a thing...? He did not need these things, he said--certainly not now--nor those labels and signposts to a doubtful, unimaginable land. He needed Amy herself, or, at least, some hint or sound or glimpse to show him that she indeed was as she had always been; whether in earth or heaven, he did not care; that there was somewhere something that was herself, some definite personal being of a continuous consciousness with that which he had known, characterized still by those graces which he thought he had recognized and certainly loved. Ah! he did not ask much. It would be so easy to God! Here out in this lonely lane where he rode beneath the branches
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   13   14   15   16   17   18   19   20   21   22   23   24   25   26   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37  
38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51   52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

heaven

 

things

 

inconceivable

 
afternoon
 

teachings

 
theology
 

informed

 

lonely

 
imagination
 
refused

ground

 

contents

 
beneath
 
branches
 
instant
 

stifling

 

wondered

 

grassed

 

churchyard

 
spirit

Heaven

 
signposts
 

doubtful

 

personal

 

unimaginable

 

labels

 
definite
 
glimpse
 

needed

 

continuous


Purgatory

 

silence

 

appalling

 

recognized

 

thought

 

environment

 

consciousness

 
characterized
 

graces

 

gabbled


emotion
 

mother

 
figure
 
waiting
 
slender
 

caught

 

perfect

 
September
 
naturally
 

silences