Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/657

 650 careless reception checked the rush of emotion as if it had been frost-bound, and turned her flushed cheek the hue of ashes. She soon reached the little gate under the butternuts, and there she stopped, unable to move a step farther, and leaning on the gate, waited to recover breath, and courage to go on. She trembled like a leaf,—the deadly ‘sickness of mingled hope, fear, and eager longing came over her, and for a few moments she thought she was dying. The hope which had nerved her to bear all the hardships of her journey, without showing a single trace of fatigue, began to fail her now: suddenly she was roused by something smelling and snuffing round her feet, licking them all over, and whining in low stifled accents. She looked down, and saw Keefe’s little terrier expressing his joy at seeing her, and his sympathy with the pain his instinct told him she was suffering, in every way he could. Coral started on seeing him, for in former days Keefe’s dog was seldom far away from his master; and now she looked wildly round to see if Keefe too was beside her. But there was no one visible; so she gathered courage to stroke the little creature’s head, and call him fondly by his name; and be, sitting quietly down at her feet, gazed silently in her face, while she looked towards the house, and tried to gain her self-command.

There was nothing in the season or the weather to revive her drooping spirits; the butternuts were stripped of their leaves, and cast weird and spectral shadows on the ground: a wailing sound every now and then stirred their bare branches, and rustled the withered leaves lying in heaps around. The grass was brown and sere, and in the flower-beds the bare shrubs and dead flower-stalks showed like the skeletons of joys gone by; the very moon, burying herself in clouds, seemed hiding her face from the sad spectacle of the year’s decay. And now the rain began to fall, not violently, but a soft, thick, drizzling rain; and the dog, first gently pawing her dress, went a few steps towards the house, looking back, as if to coax her to follow him, and then finding she did not follow, came back to renew his entreaties.

“Well, Frisk," she said, at last, “let us go.”

She opened the gate, and walked steadily up to the house, while Frisk, with that instinctive knowledge of one’s wishes which dogs so often display, came noiselessly after her. A strong gleam of light came through the half-drawn curtains of one of the windows, and going close to it, she looked in. What did she see there, that struck so sharp and deadly a pang to her heart! Did she see Keefe ill, or dying? Not so: she saw him looking far handsomer and happier than of old; and leaning over his shoulder, as he sat working at some piece of ornamental wood-work, was a lady, young, graceful, beautiful,—of such beauty and grace as Coral had never before beheld: she spoke, and Keefe looked up at her with smiling fondness. To have met such a look from his eyes, Coral would gladly have died at his feet.

This was all that she saw. There had been many changes in that room since she had last seen it, but they were all innoticed by her; her gaze was fixed, was fascinated on Keefe and his companion, and she stood and watched them, little heeding the chill rain that each minute fell faster and faster.

“What can that be?” said Keefe. “Is it the wind?”

“It was like the moan of some one in pain," said Helen, anxiously.

“I guess it is only Frisk asking to come in,” said Keefe.

She went to the door, and opening it, called the dog; he was not to be seen, not was anything else visible.

“It must have been the wind,” she said, coming back, “for it’s beginning to blow, and it’s raining fast.”

“It was very like a cry of anguish,” said Helen.

“l’ll go out, and try if I can see any one,” said Keefe.

Helen followed him to the stoup, and he went round the house, but he came back in a few minutes, saying that nothing living was to be seen.

“Then it must have been the wind; but it frightened me strangely,” said Helen; “and where, I wonder, is Frisk?”

“He missed me when I was in the village, after dinner, but he'll soon be home, never fear; Frisk won’t lose himself.”

“Well, he won’t,” said Mrs. Wendell, "and now I’ll take up the cakes. Will you come and pour out the tea, Mrs. Dillon?”

When tea was over, and Mrs. Wendell had removed the tea-things, and taken her knitting, and her seat by the chimney-corner, Helen gave Keefe the “Lady of the Lake," and sat sewing beside him while he read aloud. Thus an hour soon passed away. Even Mrs. Wendell was moved to interest by those magic strains which stir the hearts of fair maidens and brave youths, as if with the sound of the trumpet; and can make the withered pulse of age throb once more.

A loud knock at the door disturbed the reader and his hearers, alike excited and absorbed.

“Who can this be, I wonder?" said Mrs. Wendell, and laying down her knitting which she had long held idle in her hands, she went to the door. On opening it, a young man in a blue pilot jacket and cloth cap presented himself.

“How are you, Mrs. Wendell?” he said, speaking, she thought, in a hurried and embarrassed manner.

“My gracious!” she exclaimed the next instant, “why it’s Denis Brady!”

“Denis!” cried Keefe, springing up, and seizing hold of him; “why, Denis, what joy to see you again!"

“Didn’t you expect me? Isn't Coral here?” asked Denis, yielding to the force with which Keefe drew him into the house.

“Coral! no—what do you mean?”

“Then where is she? She came here—I saw her climb the bank. Good God! where is she?”

He would have rushed out of the house filled with terror lest she should have thrown herself into the lake; for with love’s power of divination, he guessed that she had seen Keefe and Helen together, and known her to be his wife. Denis had heard of Keefe’s marriage at the village, and