DOI issue:
Harland, Henry: Two sketches
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.20196#0152
146
Two Sketches
Lynd had been his wife. But that was the heart of his misfortune,
she wouldn't have him.
He had met her for the first time when he was a lad of twenty,
and she a girl of eighteen. He could see her palpable before him
now : her slender girlish figure, her bright eyes, her laughing
mouth, her warm brown hair curling round her forehead. Oh,
how he had loved her. For twelve years he had waited upon her,
wooed her, hoped to win her. But she had always Said, " No—I
don't love you. I am very fond of you ; I love you as a friend f
we all love you that way—my mother, my father, my sisters.
But I can't marry you." However, she married no one eise, she
loved no one eise ; and for twelve years he was an ever-welcome
guest in her father's house ; and she would talk with him, play to
him, pity him ; and he could hope. Then she died. He called
one day, and they said she was III. After that there came a blank
in his memory—a gulf, füll of blackness and redness, anguish and
confusion ; and then a sort of dreadful sudden calm, when they
told him she was dead.
He remembered standing in her room, after the funeral, with
her father, her mother, her sister Elizabeth. He remembered the
pale daylight that filled it, and how orderly and cold and forsaken
it all looked. And there was her bed, the bed she had died in ;
and there her dressing-table, with her combs and brushes ; and
there her writing-desk, her bookcase. He remembered a row of
medicine bottles on the mantelpiece; he remembered the fierce
anger, the hatred of them, as if they were animate, that had welled
up in his heart as he looked at them, because they had failed to do
their work.
"You will wish to have something that was hers, Richard,'''
her mother said. " What would you like ?"
On her dressing-table there was a small looking-glass in an
"vory
Two Sketches
Lynd had been his wife. But that was the heart of his misfortune,
she wouldn't have him.
He had met her for the first time when he was a lad of twenty,
and she a girl of eighteen. He could see her palpable before him
now : her slender girlish figure, her bright eyes, her laughing
mouth, her warm brown hair curling round her forehead. Oh,
how he had loved her. For twelve years he had waited upon her,
wooed her, hoped to win her. But she had always Said, " No—I
don't love you. I am very fond of you ; I love you as a friend f
we all love you that way—my mother, my father, my sisters.
But I can't marry you." However, she married no one eise, she
loved no one eise ; and for twelve years he was an ever-welcome
guest in her father's house ; and she would talk with him, play to
him, pity him ; and he could hope. Then she died. He called
one day, and they said she was III. After that there came a blank
in his memory—a gulf, füll of blackness and redness, anguish and
confusion ; and then a sort of dreadful sudden calm, when they
told him she was dead.
He remembered standing in her room, after the funeral, with
her father, her mother, her sister Elizabeth. He remembered the
pale daylight that filled it, and how orderly and cold and forsaken
it all looked. And there was her bed, the bed she had died in ;
and there her dressing-table, with her combs and brushes ; and
there her writing-desk, her bookcase. He remembered a row of
medicine bottles on the mantelpiece; he remembered the fierce
anger, the hatred of them, as if they were animate, that had welled
up in his heart as he looked at them, because they had failed to do
their work.
"You will wish to have something that was hers, Richard,'''
her mother said. " What would you like ?"
On her dressing-table there was a small looking-glass in an
"vory