probe of mortal agony, which throughout eternity would never lose
its power to pierce to the quick!
Alvina seemed to keep strangely calm and aloof all the days after
the death. Only when she was alone she suffered till she felt her
heart really broke.
"I shall never feel anything any more," she said in her abrupt way
to Miss Frost's friend, another woman of over fifty.
"Nonsense, child!" expostulated Mrs. Lawson gently.
"I shan't! I shall never have a heart to feel anything any more,"
said Alvina, with a strange, distraught roll of the eyes.
"Not like this, child. But you'll feel other things--"
"I haven't the heart," persisted Alvina.
"Not yet," said Mrs. Lawson gently. "You can't expect--But
time--time brings back--"
"Oh well--but I don't believe it," said Alvina.
People thought her rather hard. To one of her gossips Miss Pinnegar
confessed:
"I thought she'd have felt it more. She cared more for her than she
did for her own mother--and her mother knew it. Mrs. Houghton
complained bitterly, sometimes, that _she_ had _no_ love. They were
everything to one another, Miss Frost and Alvina. I should have
thought she'd have felt it more. But you never know. A good thing if
she doesn't, really."
Miss Pinnegar herself did not care one little bit that Miss Frost
was dead. She did not feel herself implicated.
The nearest relatives came down, and everything was settled. The
will was found, just a brief line on a piece of notepaper expressing
a wish that Alvina should have everything. Alvina herself told the
verbal requests. All was quietly fulfilled.
As it might well be. For there was nothing to leave. Just
sixty-three pounds in the bank--no more: then the clothes, piano,
books and music. Miss Frost's brother had these latter, at his own
request: the books and music, and the piano. Alvina inherited the
few simple trinkets, and about forty-five pounds in money.
"Poor Miss Frost," cried Mrs. Lawson, weeping rather bitterly--"she
saved nothing for herself. You can see why she never wanted to grow
old, so that she couldn't work. You can see. It's a shame, it's a
shame, one of the best women that ever trod earth."
Manchester House settled down to its deeper silence, its darker
gloom. Miss Frost was irreparably gone. With her, the reality went
out of the house. It seemed to be silently waiting to disappear. And
Alvina and Miss Pinnegar might move about and talk in vain. They
could never remove the sense of waiting to finish: it was all just
waiting to finish. And the three, James and Alvina and Miss
Pinnegar, waited lingering through the months, for the house to come
<<BackPagesTo menuForward>>