I waited about till the earth was thrown in and the man had left the place, then I returned to the grave.Oh, how bare and cruel it was, without so much as a bit of green turf to soften it! Oh, how much harder it seemed to live than to die, when I stood alone looking at the heavy piled-up lumps of clay, and thinking of what was hidden beneath them!
I was driven home by my own despairing thoughts.The sight of Sally lighting the fire in my room eased my heart a little.When she was gone, I took up Robert's letter again to keep my mind employed on the only subject in the world that has any interest for it now.
This fresh reading increased the doubts I had already felt relative to his having remained in America after writing to me.
My grief and forlornness have made a strange alteration in my former feelings about his coming back.I seem to have lost all my prudence and self-denial, and to care so little about his poverty, and so much about himself, that the prospect of his return is really the only comforting thought I have now to support me.I know this is weak in me, and that his coming back can l ead to no good result for either of us; but he is the only living being left me to love; and--I can't explain it--but I want to put my arms round his neck and tell him about Mary.
March 14th.I locked up the end of the cravat in my writing-desk.No change in the dreadful suspicions that the bare sight of it rouses in me.I tremble if I so much as touch it.
March 15th, 16th, 17th.Work, work, work.If I don't knock up, I shall be able to pay back the advance in another week; and then, with a little more pinching in my daily expenses, I may succeed in saving a shilling or two to get some turf to put over Mary's grave, and perhaps even a few flowers besides to grow round it.
March 18th.Thinking of Robert all day long.Does this mean that he is really coming back? If it does, reckoning the distance he is at from New York, and the time ships take to get to England, I might see him by the end of April or the beginning of May.
March 19th.I don't remember my mind running once on the end of the cravat yesterday, and I am certain I never looked at it; yet I had the strangest dream concerning it at night.I thought it was lengthened into a long clew, like the silken thread that led to Rosamond's Bower.I thought I took hold of it, and followed it a little way, and then got frightened and tried to go back, but found that I was obliged, in spite of myself, to go on.It led me through a place like the Valley of the Shadow of Death, in an old print I remember in my mother's copy of the Pilgrim's Progress.Iseemed to be months and months following it without any respite, till at last it brought me, on a sudden, face to face with an angel whose eyes were like Mary's.He said to me, "Go on, still;the truth is at the end, waiting for you to find it." I burst out crying, for the angel had Mary's voice as well as Mary's eyes, and woke with my heart throbbing and my cheeks all wet.What is the meaning of this? Is it always superstitious, I wonder, to believe that dreams may come true?
* * * * * * *
April 30th.I have found it! God knows to what results it may lead; but it is as certain as that I am sitting here before my journal that I have found the cravat from which the end in Mary's hand was torn.I discovered it last night; but the flutter I was in, and the nervousness and uncertainty I felt, prevented me from noting down this most extraordinary and unexpected event at the time when it happened.Let me try if I can preserve the memory of it in writing now.
I was going home rather late from where I work, when I suddenly remembered that I had forgotten to buy myself any candles the evening before, and that I should be left in the dark if I did not manage to rectify this mistake in some way.The shop close to me, at which I usually deal, would be shut up, I knew, before Icould get to it; so I determined to go into the first place Ipassed where candles were sold.This turned out to be a small shop with two counters, which did business on one side in the general grocery way, and on the other in the rag and bottle and old iron line.
There were several customers on the grocery side when I went in, so I waited on the empty rag side till I could be served.
Glancing about me here at the worthless-looking things by which Iwas surrounded, my eye was caught by a bundle of rags lying on the counter, as if they had just been brought in and left there.
From mere idle curiosity, I looked close at the rags, and saw among them something like an old cravat.I took it up directly and held it under a gaslight.The pattern was blurred lilac lines running across and across the dingy black ground in a trellis-work form.I looked at the ends: one of them was torn off.
How I managed to hide the breathless surprise into which this discovery threw me I cannot say, but I certainly contrived to steady my voice somehow, and to ask for my candles calmly when the man and woman serving in the shop, having disposed of their other customers, inquired of me what I wanted.
As the man took down the candles, my brain was all in a whirl with trying to think how I could get possession of the old cravat without exciting any suspicion.Chance, and a little quickness on my part in taking advantage of it, put the object within my reach in a moment.The man, having counted out the candles, asked the woman for some paper to wrap them in.She produced a piece much too small and flimsy for the purpose, and declared, when he called for something better, that the day's supply of stout paper was all exhausted.He flew into a rage with her for managing so badly.Just as they were beginning to quarrel violently, Istepped back to the rag-counter, took the old cravat carelessly out of the bundle, and said, in as light a tone as I could possibly assume: