He paused, but I found nothing to say. He went on, his voice, that was even when he began, dropping deeper, and sinking as I never heard it.
"The Lord in His providence saw fit to take away my wife, your mother, before sickness, or age, or sorrow could strike her. I was left, to suffer some small part of what my sins merit, in the land of my sojourn. The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord. But because my wife Mary,--my wife Mary" (he lingered over the words, loving them so), "is a glorified spirit in another world, and I am a prisoner here, is she any less my wife, and I her faithful husband? You are my son, and hers,--hers, Jakey; but if you ever say such words to me again, one house will not hold us both." He turned his head away, and I heard him murmuring under his breath, "Mary! Mary!" as I have said his way was; and I was silent and ashamed, fearing to speak lest I make matters worse; and so presently I slipped out and left him; and my fine plan came to naught, save to make two sad hearts sadder than they were.
But it was to be! Looking back, Melody, after fifty years, I am confident that it was the will of God, and was to be. In three weeks from that night, I was in France.
I pass over the wonder of the voyage; the sorrowful parting, too, that came before it, though I left all well, and my father to all appearances fully himself. I pass over these, straight to the night when Yvon and I arrived at his home in the south of France. We had been travelling several days since landing, and had stopped for two days in Paris. My head was still dizzy with the wonder and the brightness of it all. There was something homelike, too, in it. The very first people I met seemed to speak of my mother to me, as they flung out their hands and laughed and waved, so different from our ways at home. I was to see more of this, and to feel the two parts in me striving against each other; but it is early to speak of that.
The evening was warm and bright, as we came near Château Claire; that was the name of my friend's home. A carriage had met us at the station, and as we drove along through a pretty country (though nothing to New England, I must always think), Yvon was deep in talk with the driver, who was an old servant, and full of news. I listened but little, being eager to see all my eyes could take in. Vines swung along the sides of the road, in a way that I always found extremely graceful, and wished we might have our grapes so at home. I was marvelling at the straw-roofed houses and the plots of land about them no bigger than Abby Rock's best table-cloth, when suddenly Yvon bade pull up, and struck me on the shoulder. "_D'Arthenay, tenez foi!_" he cried in my ear; and pointed across the road. I turned, and saw in the dusk a stone tower, square and bold, covered with ivy, the heavy growth of years. It was all dim in the twilight, but I marked the arched door, with carving on the stone work above it, and the great round window that stared like a blind eye. I felt a tugging at my heart, Melody; the place stood so lonely and forlorn, yet with a stateliness that seemed noble. I could not but think of my father, and that he stood now like his own tower, that he would never see.