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THE CHIMES. |
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stretching out his hands to the dark shadows flying on above. " Have mercy on her, and on me ! Where does she go ? Turn her back ! I was her father ! "
But they only pointed to her, as she hurried on ; and said, " To desperation ! Learn it from the creature dearest to your heart!:'
A hundred voices echoed it. The air was made of breath expended in those words. He seemed to take them in, at every gasp he drew. They were everywhere, and not to be escaped. And still she hurried on; the same light in her eyes, the same words in her mouth; "Like Lilian ! To be changed like Lilian ! "
All at once she stopped.
" Now, turn her back!" exclaimed the old man, tearing his white hair. "My child ! Meg ! Turn her back ! Great Father, turn her back ! "
In her own scanty shawl, she wrapped the baby warm. With her fevered hands, she smoothed its limbs, composed its face, arranged its mean attire. In her wasted arms she folded it, as though she never would resign it more. And with her dry lips, kissed it in a final pang, and last long agony of Love.
Putting its tiny hand up to her neck, and holding it there, within her dress: next to her distracted heart: she set its sleeping face against her: closely, steadily, against her: and sped onward to the River.
To the rolling River, swift and dim, where Winter Night sat brooding like the last dark thoughts of many who had sought a refuge there before her. Where scattered lights upon the banks gleamed sullen, red, and dull, as torches that were burning there, to show the way to Death. Where no abode of living people cast its shadow, on the deep, impenetrable, melancholy shade.
To the River ! To that portal of Eternity, her desperate footsteps tended with the swiftness of its rapid waters running to the sea. He tried to touch her as she passed him, going down to its dark level; but the wild distempered form, the fierce and terrible love, the desperation that had left all human check or hold behind, swept by him like the wind.
He followed her. She paused a moment on the brink, before the dreadful plunge. He fell down on his knees, and in a shriek addressed the figures in the Bells now hovering above them.
" I have learnt it! " cried the old man. " From the creature dearest to my heart! Oh, save her, save her ! "
He could wind his fingers in her dress; could hold it! As the words escaped his lips, he felt his sense of touch return, and knew that he detained her.
The figures looked down steadfastly upon him. |
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