Almost within a stone's throw of my chamber this man and his aged father--the latter now a hopeless paralytic--live together in the ruins of their old home.
Year by year the river, by constant cavings, has swallowed nearly all its extensive grounds, yet beyond the low-browed Spanish cottage that clings close within the new levee, "the ghost of a garden" fronts the river. Here, amid broken marbles--lyreless Apollos, Pegasus bereft of wings, and prostrate Muses--the hardier roses, golden-rod, and honeysuckle run riot within the old levee, between the comings of the waters that at intervals steal in and threaten to swallow all at a gulp.
The naked old house, grotesquely guarded by the stately skeleton of a moss-grown oak, is thus bereft, by the river in front and the public road at its back, of all but the bare fact of survival.
No visitor ever enters here; but in the summer evenings two old men may be seen creeping with difficult steps from its low portal up to the brow of the bank, where they sit in silence and watch the boats go by.
The picture is not devoid of pathos, and even the common people whisper together as they look upon the figures of father and son sitting in the moonlight; and no one likes to pass the door at night, for there are grewsome tales of ghosts afloat, in which decapitated statues are said to stalk about the old garden at nightfall.
A sigh always escapes me as I look upon this desolate scene; but it is not now, but when the old-young man, the son, passes my door each day, carrying in his pale hands a bunch of flowers which he keeps upon his desk in the little back office, that my mysterious pain possesses me.
Why does this hope-forsaken man carry a bunch of flowers? Is it the surviving poet within him that finds companionship in them, or does he seem to see in their pure hearts, as in a mirror, a reflection of his own sinless youth?
These questions I cannot answer; but every day, as he passes with the flowers, I follow him with fascinated eye until he is quite lost in the distance, my heart rent the while with this incisive pain.
Finally, he is lost to view. The dart passes through and out my breast, and, as I turn, my eye falls upon a pretty rose-garden across the way, where live a mother and her two daughters.