Читать книгу The Long Rifle - Stewart Edward White - Страница 27

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The old woman’s straight back bent, her head drooped forward. Leaning heavily on her cane she made her way to the Boston rocker. She sat down.

The air seemed to have turned cold, but she made no move to close the window. It did not matter. She was very small. Her veined hands lay inert in her lap. Her face looked shrunken. The snap and sparkle of her eyes had dulled. In her seemed but a feeble stir of life.

Her thoughts lay in a still pool, without motion. There was in them no bitterness, no keenness of sorrow; only a faint stirring of reflection. Her life was finished; its last destiny fulfilled. Now was done that for which her vitality had been sustained; that for which she had been preserved here until the appointed moment. For she knew now that she was very old. She heard John Birkholm’s heavy tread outside, but the sound left her undisturbed. Nothing he could do or say could affect her. Even the thought of Andrew seemed withdrawn, far away, as remote as the thought of Boone and her husband and her son. She had no illusions: she knew she would never see Andrew again. All the outer world had become spectral. She had withdrawn from its reality, and now waited in patience at the portal of a new reality that was to be. Only one thing the eye of her spirit saw still solid, still valid in a world become shadowy: the long rifle. It was as though it were a symbol of the old purpose of her youth, and the youth of her men. It was as though the last remnants of her life force had revitalized it to its destiny. A great peace came over her.

“Thy will be done, O Lord!” she murmured.