The Broad Highway

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.