Lippincott's Magazine of Popular Literature and Science, Volume 12, No. 30, September, 1873. VariousЧитать онлайн книгу.
he cannot, he is so ill: his heart is breaking for thinking of his dead Gretchen? You know the story, Sheila. The mother begs him to rise and come with her, and they will join the band of pilgrims going to Kevlaar, to be healed there of their wounds by the Mother of God. Then you find them at Kevlaar, and all the maimed and the lame people have come to the shrine; and whichever limb is diseased, they make a waxen image of that and lay it on the altar, and then they are healed. Well, the mother of this poor lad takes wax and forms a heart out of it, and says to her son, 'Take that to the Mother of God, and she will heal your pain.' Sighing, he takes the wax heart in his hand, and, sighing, he goes to the shrine; and there, with tears running down his face, he says, 'O beautiful Queen of Heaven, I am come to tell you my grief. I lived with my mother in Cologne: near us lived Gretchen, who is dead now. Blessed Mary, I bring you this wax heart: heal the wound in my heart.' And then—and then—"
Sheila saw his lip tremble. But he frowned, and said impatiently, "What a shame it is to destroy such a beautiful story! You can have no idea of it—of its simplicity and tenderness—"
"But pray let us hear the rest of it," said Mrs. Lorraine gently.
"Well, the last scene, you know, is a small chamber, and the mother and her sick son are asleep. The Blessed Mary glides into the chamber and bends over the young man, and puts her hand lightly on his heart. Then she smiles and disappears. The unhappy mother has seen all this in a dream, and now she awakes, for the dogs are barking loudly. The mother goes over to the bed of her son, and he is dead, and the morning light touches his pale face. And then the mother folds her hands, and says—"
He rose hastily with a gesture of fretfulness, and walked over to the window at which Sheila sat and looked out. She put her hand up to his: he took it.
"The next time I try to translate Heine," he said, making it appear that he had broken off through vexation, "something strange will happen."
"It is a beautiful story," said Mrs. Lorraine, who had herself been crying a little bit in a covert way: "I wonder I have not seen a translation of it. Come, mamma, Lady Leveret said we were not to be after four."
So they rose and left, and Sheila was alone with her husband, and still holding his hand. She looked up at him timidly, wondering, perhaps, in her simple way, as to whether she should not now pour out her heart to him, and tell him all her griefs and fears and yearnings. He had obviously been deeply moved by the story he had told so roughly: surely now was a good opportunity of appealing to him, and begging for sympathy and compassion.
"Frank," she said, and she rose and came close, and bent down her head to hide the color in her face.
"Well?" he answered a trifle coldly.
"You won't be vexed with me," she said in a low voice, and with her heart beginning to beat rapidly.
"Vexed with you about what?" he said abruptly.
Alas! all her hopes had fled. She shrank from the cold stare with which she knew he was regarding her. She felt it to be impossible that she should place before him those confidences with which she had approached him; and so, with a great effort, she merely said, "Are we to go to Lady Leveret's?"
"Of course we are," he said, "unless you would rather go and see some blind fiddler or beggar. It is really too bad of you, Sheila, to be so forgetful: what if Lady Leveret, for example, had come into that shop? It seems to me you are never satisfied with meeting the people you ought to meet, but that you must go and associate with all the wretched cripples and beggars you can find. You should remember you are a woman, and not a child—that people will talk about what you do if you go on in this mad way. Do you ever see Mrs. Kavanagh or her daughter do any of these things?"
Sheila had let go his hand: her eyes were still turned toward the ground. She had fancied that a little of that emotion that had been awakened in him by the story of the German mother and her son might warm his heart toward herself, and render it possible for her to talk to him frankly about all that she had been dimly thinking, and more definitely suffering. She was mistaken: that was all.
"I will try to do better, and please you," she said; and then she went away.
CHAPTER XV.
A FRIEND IN NEED
Was it a delusion that had grown up in the girl's mind, and now held full possession of it—that she was in a world with which she had no sympathy, that she should never be able to find a home there, that the influences of it were gradually and surely stealing from her her husband's love and confidence? Or was this longing to get away from the people and the circumstances that surrounded her but the unconscious promptings of an incipient jealousy? She did not question her own mind closely on these points. She only vaguely knew that she was miserable, and that she could not tell her husband of the weight that pressed on her heart.
Here, too, as they drove along to have tea with a certain Lady Leveret, who was one of Lavender's especial patrons, and to whom he had introduced Mrs. Kavanagh and her daughter, Sheila felt that she was a stranger, an interloper, a "third wheel to the cart." She scarcely spoke a word. She looked at the sea, but she had almost grown to regard that great plain of smooth water as a melancholy and monotonous thing—not the bright and boisterous sea of her youth, with its winding channels, its secret bays and rocks, its salt winds and rushing waves. She was disappointed with the perpetual wall of white cliff, where she had expected to see something of the black and rugged shore of the North. She had as yet made no acquaintance with the sea-life of the place: she did not know where the curers lived; whether they gave the fishermen credit and cheated them; whether the people about here made any use of the back of the dog-fish, or could, in hard seasons, cook any of the wild-fowl; what the ling and the cod and the skate fetched; where the wives and daughters sat and spun and carded their wool; whether they knew how to make a good dish of cockles boiled in milk. She smiled to herself when she thought of asking Mrs. Lorraine about any such things; but she still cherished some vague hope that before she left Brighton she would have some little chance of getting near to the sea and learning a little of the sea-life down in the South.
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