FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103  
104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   >>   >|  
f saying anything like this. And she certainly had not known that she would suddenly find herself overwhelmed by a rising tidal wave of unbearable woe and drop her face on to the old woman's lap with wild sobbing. She had not come down from London to do this--but away from the world--in the clean, still little cottage room which seemed to hold only grief and silence and death the wave rose and broke and swept her with it. Mrs. Bennett only gave herself up to the small clutching hands and sat and shivered. "No one--will come in--will they?" Robin was gasping. "There is no one to hear, is there?" "No one on earth," said the old fairy woman. "Quiet and loneliness are left if there's naught else." What she thought it would be hard to say. The blow which had come to her at the end of a long life had, as it were, felled her as a tree might have been felled in Mersham Wood. As the tree might have lain for a short time with its leaves still seeming alive on its branches so she seemed living. But she had been severed from her root. She listened to the girl's sobbing and stroked her hair. "Don't be afraid. There's no one left to hear but the walls and the bare trees in the wood," she said. Robin sobbed on. "You've a kind heart, but you're not crying for me," she said next. "You've a black trouble of your own. There's few that hasn't these days. And it's worse for the young that's got to live through it and after it. When Mary Ann comes to see after me to-morrow morning I may be lying dead, thank God. But you're a child." The small clutching hands clutched more piteously because it was so true--so true. Whatsoever befell there were all the long, long years to come--with only the secret left and the awful fear that sometime she might begin to be afraid that it was not a real thing--since no one had ever known or ever would know and since she could never speak of it or hear it spoken of. "I'm so afraid," she shuddered at last in a small low voice. "I'm so _lonely_!" The old fairy woman's stroking hand stopped short. "Is there--anything--you'd like to tell me--anything in the world?" she asked tremulously. "There's nothing I'd mind." The pretty head on her lap shook itself to and fro. "No! No! No! No!" the small choked voice gave out. "Nothing--nothing! Nothing. That's why it's so lonely." As she had waited alone through the night in her cradle, as she had watched the sparrows on the roofs above her in the
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103  
104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

afraid

 

clutching

 

felled

 

sobbing

 

lonely

 

Nothing

 

Whatsoever

 

clutched

 
morning

befell

 

morrow

 

piteously

 

spoken

 

choked

 

pretty

 

tremulously

 

watched

 
sparrows

cradle

 

waited

 
secret
 

stroking

 

stopped

 

shuddered

 

silence

 

cottage

 

Bennett


loneliness

 

gasping

 

shivered

 

overwhelmed

 

rising

 

suddenly

 
unbearable
 

London

 
listened

stroked

 

sobbed

 

trouble

 

crying

 

severed

 
thought
 
naught
 
Mersham
 

branches


living

 
leaves