The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Moon Rock, by Arthur J. Rees

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Title: The Moon Rock

Author: Arthur J. Rees

Release Date: June 3, 2004 [eBook #12509]

Language: English

Character set encoding: US-ASCII

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THE MOON ROCK

By

ARTHUR J. REES

1922

"There is no help for all these things are so,
And all the world is bitter as a tear,
And how these things are, though ye strove to show,
_She would not know._"

--Swinburne

CHAPTER I

The voice of the clergyman intoned the last sad hope of humanity, the
final prayer was said, and the mourners turned away, leaving Mrs. Turold
to take her rest in a bleak Cornish churchyard among strangers, far from
the place of her birth and kindred.

The fact would not have troubled her if she had known. In life she had
been a nonentity; in death she was not less. At least she could now mix
with her betters without reproach, free (in the all-enveloping silence)
from the fear of betraying her humble origin. Debrett's Peerage was
unimportant in the grave; breaches of social etiquette passed unnoticed
there; the wagging of malicious tongues was stopped by dust.

Her husband lingered at the grave-side after the others had departed. As
he stood staring into the open grave, regardless of a lurking grave-digger
waiting to fill it, he looked like a man whose part in the drama of life
was Care. There was no hint of happiness in his long narrow face, dull
sunken eyes, and bloodless compressed lips. His expression was not that of
one unable to tear himself away from the last glimpse of a loved wife
fallen from his arms into the clutch of Death. It was the gaze of one
immersed in anxious thought.

The mourners, who had just left the churchyard, awaited him by a rude
stone cross near the entrance to the church. There were six--four men, a
woman, and a girl. In the road close by stood the motor-car which had
brought them to the churchyard in the wake of the hearse, glistening
incongruously in