The invisible slip of a woman in Gray now began to question him regarding
the bundle. Would not those delicate, beautiful things be ruined, thus put
away in his closet? He got up, took the bundle out, laid it on his table,
untied the kerchief, lifted carefully off the white muslin dress and the
blue silk coat, and started with them toward two empty pegs on the wall. He
never closed the door of his cabin if the night was fine. It stood open now
and a light wind blew the soft fabrics against his body and limbs, so that
they seemed to fold themselves about him, to cling to him. He disengaged
them reluctantly--apologetically.
Then he lay down again. But now the dress on the wall fascinated him. The
moonlight bathed it, the wind swayed it. This was the first time that a
woman's garments had ever hung in his room. He welcomed the mere accident of
their presence as though it possessed a forerunning intelligence, as though
it were the annunciation of his approaching change of life. And so laughing
to himself, and under the spell of a growing fancy, he got up again and took
the little white shoes and set them on the table in the moonlight--on the
open Bible and the speech of St.Paul--and then went back, and lay looking at
them and dreaming--looking at them and dreaming.
His thoughts passed meantime like a shining flock of white doves to Amy,
hovering about her. They stole onward to the time when she would be his
wife; when lying thus, he would wake in the night and see her dress on the
wall and feel her head on his bosom; when her little shoes might stand on
his open Bible, if they chose, and the satin instep of her bare foot be
folded in the hard hollow of his.
He uttered a deep, voiceless, impassioned outcry that she might not die
young nor he die young; that the struggles and hardships of life, now
seeming to be ended, might never begirt him or her so closely again; that
they might grow peacefully old together.
To-morrow then, he would see her; no, not tomorrow; it was long past
midnight now.
He got down on his bare knees beside the bed with his face buried in his
hands and said his prayers.
And then lying outstretched with his head resting on his folded hands, the
moonlight streaming through the window and lighting up his dark-red curls
and falling on his face and neck and chest, the cool south wind blowing down
his warm limbs, his eyes opening and closing in religious purity on the
dress, and his mind opening and closing on the visions of his future, he
fell asleep.