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THE CHIMES. |
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the brow : "I thank you for the last time. Good night. Good bye. Put your hand in mine, and tell me you'll forget me from this hour, and try to think the end of me was here."
" What have you done !" she asked again.
"There'll be a Fire to-night," he said, removing from her. " There'll be Fires this winter-time, to light the dark nights, East, West, North, and South. When you see the distant sky red, they'll be blazing. When you see the distant sky red, think of me no more; or if you do, remember what a Hell was lighted up inside of me, and think you see its flames reflected in the clouds. Good night. Good bye !"
She called to him; but he was gone. She sat down stupefied, until her infant roused her to a sense of hunger, cold, and darkness. She paced the room with it the livelong night, hushing it and soothing it. She said at intervals, " Like Lilian, when her mother died and left her !" Why was her step so quick, her eye so wild, her love so fierce and terrible, whenever she repeated those words ?
"But it is Love," said Trotty. "It is Love. She'll never cease to love it. My poor Meg !"
She dressed the child next morning with unusual care—ah vain expenditure of care upon such squalid robes !—and once more tried to find some means of life. It was the last day of the Old Year. She tried till night, and never broke her fast. She tried in vain.
She mingled with an abject crowd, who tarried in the snow, until it pleased some officer appointed to dispense the public charity (the lawful charity; not that once preached upon a Mount), to call them in, and question them, and say to this one, "Go to such a place," to that one, " Come next week;" to make a football of another wretch, and pass him here and there, from hand to hand, from house to house, until he wearied and lay down to die; or started up and robbed, and so became a higher sort of criminal, whose claims allowed of no delay. Here, too, she failed.
She loved her child, and wished to have it lying on her breast. And that was quite enough.
It was night: a bleak, dark, cutting night: when, pressing the child close to her for warmth, she arrived outside the house she called her home. She was so faint and giddy, that she saw no one standing in the doorway until she was close upon it, and about to enter. Then she recognised the master of the house, who had so disposed himself—with his person it was not difficult—as to fill up the whole entry.
" Oh !" he said, softly. " You have come back ?" |
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