It is a wise and (to some extent) a true saying, that hard work
is an antidote to sorrow, a panacea for all trouble; but when the
labor is over and done, when the tools are set by, and the weary
worker goes forth into the quiet evening--how then? For we
cannot always work, and, sooner or later, comes the still hour
when Memory rushes in upon us again, and Sorrow and Remorse sit,
dark and gloomy, on either hand.
A week dragged by, a season of alternate hope and black despair,
a restless fever of nights and days, for with each dawn came
hope, that lived awhile beside me, only to fly away with the sun,
and leave me to despair.
I hungered for the sound of Charmian's voice, for the quick,
light fall of her foot, for the least touch of her hand. I
became more and more possessed of a morbid fancy that she might
be existing near by--could I but find her; that she had passed
along the road only a little while before me, or, at this very
moment, might be approaching, might be within sight, were I but
quick enough.
Often at such times I would fling down my hammer or tongs, to
George's surprise, and, hurrying to the door, stare up and down
the road; or pause in my hammerstrokes, fiercely bidding George
do the same, fancying I heard her voice calling to me from a
distance. And George would watch me with a troubled brow but,
with a rare delicacy, say no word.
Indeed, the thought of Charmian was with me everywhere, the
ringing hammers mocked me with her praises, the bellows sang of
her beauty, the trees whispered "Charmian! Charmian!" and
Charmian was in the very air.
But when I had reluctantly bidden George "good night," and set
out along lanes full of the fragrant dusk of evening; when,
reaching the Hollow, I followed that leafy path beside the brook,
which she and I had so often trodden together; when I sat in my
gloomy, disordered cottage, with the deep silence unbroken save
for the plaintive murmur of the brook--then, indeed, my
loneliness was well-nigh more than I could bear.
There were dark hours when the cottage rang with strange sounds,
when I would lie face down upon the floor, clutching my throbbing
temples between my palms--fearful of myself, and dreading the
oncoming horror of madness.
It was at this time, too, that I began to be haunted by the thing
above the door--the rusty staple upon which a man had choked out
his wretched life sixty and six years ago; a wanderer, a lonely
man, perhaps acquainted, with misery or haunted by remorse, one
who had suffered much and long--even as I--but who had eventually
escaped it all--even as I might do. Thus I would sit, chin in
hand, staring up at this staple until the light failed, and
sometimes, in the dead of night, I would steal softly there to
touch it with my finger.