United States or United Arab Emirates ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Jenny seemed to be twice dead with the death of her mother, and Theophil's loneliness suddenly became more absolute and cut off than ever before. There was now no one left who could involuntarily recall remembered words and traits of Jenny, and who would for their own sakes want to sit down and talk of her. All that was left that really knew Jenny was the old house itself.
But it was not long before the doors of home opened again for her in the sound of Theophil's voice; and in the sense of the old familiar nearness to him she was back again safe in the only world she ever wished to dwell in.
She knew nothing of Theophil's wild visit to her room, for the housemaid had forgotten to mention his call; and the strange and perhaps somewhat cruel silence could, of course, only mean one thing for her, that Jenny had divined their love, and that for Jenny's happiness Theophil had determined that they must never see each other again.
That belonged to the realities; that could never change. "Jenny is dead, and I am dying," Isabel kept saying over to herself, divining, with love's intuition, something of Jenny's tragedy, and something of Theophil's conflict during those silent months. "Jenny is dead, and I am dying," a sad, a tragic message, surely!
He shuddered with dread at this terrible crying it was as though all her life was leaving her in sobs, as though she were bleeding to death in tears. It was grief piteously prostrate, wild, convulsive, unutterable. Jenny was right. Her heart was breaking. Theophil's terror was right. It was too late to love her. This was the death-crying of a broken heart.
Among the wreaths that already filled Jenny's room with that piercing smell of lilies which still clung there unless it were Theophil's fancy for many months afterwards, was one sent in loving memory "by her Sunday-school class"; and it was a part of that informal lying-in-state, which is an involuntary recognition of the divine honours due to death, that these little awestruck scholars should be taken in threes and fours to look at Teacher for the last time.
Need one say that she had her hours of loneliness and longing, when she would have exchanged a thousand years of love in heaven for a touch of Theophil's hand upon earth; but these she knew how to conquer, and for most days that union of two separated hearts remained to her as real as when it had been vowed in those silent woods.
Yes! another six months and Christmas will be here; and, after Christmas is turned, the weeks till February the 12th the second anniversary of Theophil's coming to New Zion will fly by in no time. Meanwhile Mrs. Talbot and Jenny with occasional contributions from Theophil began to busy themselves with Jenny's bottom drawer.
Then the misery flooded over her again in an irresistible sea, in which all kind words fell powerless as snowflakes; her resolution broke down, and with terrible sobs she flung herself into Theophil's arms. "O Theophil, my heart is breaking, my heart is breaking." Theophil was to feel her crying thus against his bosom till the end of his life.
And this perhaps is the place to record what only those acquainted with grief will understand, and not all of those, for grief has many contradictory fashions. Till he had loved Jenny, women had played little or no part in Theophil's life; but with Jenny's death he found, to his surprise, that the idea of woman was strangely sweet to him.
Word Of The Day