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What ought people to do about stopping?" "It's very hard to say," said Father Payne. "The happiest thing of all is, I expect, to die before that comes; and the next best thing is to know when to stop and to want to stop. But many people get a habit of work, and fall into dreariness without it."
Evidently this had been a big, commodious and comfortable house in its day. But that day was long past its sunset. Now the bigness only emphasized the dreariness and desolation. Dampness and spider webs everywhere, cracks in the ceiling, paper peeling from the walls.
Perhaps all this dreariness and desolation made itself more keenly felt because the boy was just from the city, which teemed with life and bustle and energy. In its poorest quarter he had never seen such a lack of tidiness as the interior of Dirk Sharp's house presented.
I looked into the garden; it was deserted, and the mid-day wind was roaming among the flowers." The dreariness is wonderfully described: only the poor pale boy looking eagerly out from the window of the sacristy, and the hot mid-day wind walking in the solitary garden. How skilfully is each of these little strokes dashed in, and how well do all together combine to make a picture!
Nor were there wanting living objects to animate the scene; our own little kafila was sufficiently large and cheerful to banish every idea of dreariness, and we encountered others much more picturesque.
The gloom of the old stone house and the desolateness of his new home, when compared with the one which he had left, had, at first, been all that his fresh young spirits could bear; and, having grown to like his new abode in a measure, he found, even then, that it would not do to remember Hastings and his friends too often; and now, in these dreary days, the boy began to grow less cheerful and to feel an unconquerable desire to go back to those who loved him and whose homes knew nothing of dreariness or gloom.
When the Cash Inquirer stumbled, and took an involuntary leap into the middle of the bed, an awful voice came out of the dreariness, saying, “There is a chair right there behind you.” This information proved to be correct, and the discomfited delegate subsided into it, and gazed stolidly at the Madame.
Nathalie's departure, however, seemed to break the spell of his dreariness. During the following six weeks he was frequently seen in Moscow and seemed to cling to the companionship of Kashkine; who, in a measure, began to replace Rubinstein with him.
For eight months of summer they were alike in their clear-skied, sweet-breathed loveliness; in the autumn, there where the melancholy of the falling leaf could not spread its contagion to the sculptured foliage of Gothic art, the days were alike in their sentiment of tranquil oblivion and resignation which was as autumnal as any aspect of woods or fields could have been; in the winter they were alike in their dreariness and discomfort.
The wind was shaking the few remaining leaves from the trees and blowing them about in rustling dreariness, the frosts had already touched the grass and ferns, and though the place on a bright day would still have been lovely, it looked bare and melancholy enough under that frowning sky. "It is like my life," muttered Mellen; "like my life, with an added blackness coming up beyond."
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