‘Oh! foolish man,’ she whispered low,
’did you think to deceive a woman’s heart
thus clumsily? You who talked of the beech in
the Hall garden, you who found your way so well to
this dark chamber, and spoke the writing in the ring
with the very voice of one who has been dead so long.
Listen: I forgive that friend of yours his broken
troth, for he was honest in the telling of his fault
and it is hard for man to live alone so many years,
and in strange countries come strange adventures;
moreover, I will say it, I still love him as it seems
that he loves me, though in truth I grow somewhat
old for love, who have lingered long waiting to find
it beyond my grave.’
Thus Lily spoke, sobbing as she spoke, then my arms
closed round her and she said no more. And yet
as our lips met I thought of Otomie, remembering her
words, and remembering also that she had died by her
own hand on this very day a year ago.
Let us pray that the dead have no vision of the living!
AMEN
And now there is little left for me to tell and my
tale draws to its end, for which I am thankful, for
I am very old and writing is a weariness to me, so
great a weariness indeed that many a time during the
past winter I have been near to abandoning the task.
For a while Lily and I sat almost silent in this same
room where I write to-day, for our great joy and many
another emotion that was mixed with it, clogged our
tongues. Then as though moved by one impulse,
we knelt down and offered our humble thanks to heaven
that had preserved us both to this strange meeting.
Scarcely had we risen from our knees when there was
a stir without the house, and presently a buxom dame
entered, followed by a gallant gentleman, a lad, and
a maiden. These were my sister Mary, her husband
Wilfred Bozard, Lily’s brother, and their two
surviving children, Roger and Joan. When she guessed
that it was I come home again and no other, Lily had
sent them tidings by the servant man John, that one
was with her whom she believed they would be glad to
see, and they had hurried hither, not knowing whom
they should find. Nor were they much the wiser
at first, for I was much changed and the light in
the room shone dim, but stood perplexed, wondering
who this stranger might be.
‘Mary,’ I said at length, ‘Mary,
do you not remember me, my sister?’
Then she cried aloud, and throwing herself into my
arms, she wept there a while, as would any of us were
our beloved dead suddenly to appear before our eyes,
alive and well, and her husband clasped me by the hand
and swore heartily in his amazement, as is the fashion
of some men when they are moved. But the children
stood staring blankly till I called the girl to me,
who now was much what her mother had been when we parted,
and kissing her, told her that I was that uncle of
whom perhaps she had heard as dead many years ago.
