Page:Aurora Leigh a Poem.djvu/85

76 And spare me yet, the burden of your eyes.’

Then, suddenly, a single ghastly shriek Tore upwards from the bottom of the house. Like one who wakens in a grave and shrieks, The still house seemed to shriek itself alive, And shudder through its passages and stairs With slam of doors and clash of bells.—I sprang, I stood up in the middle of the room, And there confronted at my chamber-door, A white face,—shivering, ineffectual lips.

‘Come, come,’ they tried to utter, and I went; As if a ghost had drawn me at the point Of a fiery finger through the uneven dark, I went with reeling footsteps down the stair. Nor asked a question.

There she sate, my aunt,— Bolt upright in the chair beside her bed, Whose pillow had no dint! she had used no bed For that night’s sleeping. . yet slept well. My God, The dumb derision of that grey, peaked face Concluded something grave against the sun, Which filled the chamber with its July burst When Susan drew the curtains, ignorant Of who sate open-eyed behind her. There, She sate. . it sate. . we said ‘she’ yesterday. . And held a letter with unbroken seal, As Susan gave it to her hand last night: All night she had held it. If its news referred