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AND I am here before the fire, dreaming and waiting, for yesterday brought me an experience very different from my usual monotonous life.
Was it all some phantom? It must be.
The Miriam that I have longed for all these years was not here yesterday, did not sit in this very chair. It must have been a vision, the mere fancy of an old man's mind. For how many times in sleep has not the same dream come to me as a whispered message from another world, from her grave even--and on awakening I always seemed to know that her journey through life was at an end.
But no, it was not a phantom, for here is the necklace. Then it was not a dream. Fate has really sent her to me so we can cheer each other in these, the last hours of our earthly lives.
But will she come back today as she promised? Or will she depart again, this time for good, so that I shall see her no more until I have crossed the River of Death.
O Miriam, come to me, I need you more now than ever before. Come, I am waiting with outstretched arms.
Yes, she is coming. I see the yet distant form of the one I love.
She is approaching, coming ever nearer. Miriam, what happiness we shall yet have together, in the dusk of our lives, what pleasant hours here by the fire--
Death, kindly death, come now to me. She pa.s.sed by my shop and turned the corner and went toward the station. Her heart then is still cold as stone.
It was the money I paid her for the necklace that bought her ticket to another town----
SOMETHING PROVINCIAL
THE little house in Pemborough Square had been vacant for many years.
NO lights through the closed shutters--
NO smoke from the chimneys--
EVENING--
AN old woman was sitting on the doorstep muttering to herself in some strange tongue--
HER vague eyes saw neither the square nor its straight rows of trees--
ONLY something far away--a memory perhaps
SOME tragedy lay hidden in her heart.
MANY years ago this small house had been occupied by a family with several children--children that played games in the great garden behind.
A YOUNG woman had been much with the little troop of children.
THEY had all loved her who played with them as if a child herself and in happy hours had sung French songs to them.
SHE had gone away, they had heard to the Island of Madeira.
--and the children soon forgot their sweet friend.
ON the steps of this now abandoned house sat the muttering old woman.
THE sound of quick steps aroused her--she peered through the gathering gloom--
A YOUNG man was coming nearer
THE woman rose slowly to her feet and waited rigidly
IT is you--you! she whispered hoa.r.s.ely--
HER words went like shots at the slight figure, now perceptible
HE stopped abruptly and shuddered like one accused of crime.
I DO not know you, he managed to say. He had a flat thin voice.
YOU once lived in this house, the woman said menacingly.
HE shuddered again and stepped back
THE young man began to wonder. Could she be the sweet French woman that the village children had loved-- that he, the eldest of the little group had in his boyish awakening been romantic over--
THE gypsy sensed his admission of her charge.
SHE went on--Do you know who you are?
DO you know where you got your black hair?
HE lifted his hand unsteadily in the direction of his head.
THE old creature nodded and fixed him with her fierce eyes.
I AM not your mother
NEITHER was the woman you called by that name.
THE young man gasped.
HIS body grew tense.
HE remembered his adored mother whose grave he visited every Sunday morning.
HE made an effort to think that this was only a gypsy--an impostor--
THE woman was speaking--
NEITHER your father nor mother ever knew that you were not their child.
