He wanted to
address something final to the slim girl in black before him, something
now, before she was forever lost in the gabble of her relatives; but he
could think of nothing appropriate, expressive of the tumult within
him. His misery deepened with every step, grew into a bitterness of
rebellion that almost forced an incoherent reckless speech. Rosemary
Roselle didn't turn, she didn't linger, there were a great many things
that she might say. The colored woman was positively hurrying forward.
A great loneliness swept over him. He had not, he thought drearily,
been made for joy.
"It's queer there's no one about," Rosemary Roselle observed. They
reached the imposing pillars of an entrance--the wooden gate was
chained, and they were obliged to turn aside and search for an opening
in a great mock-orange hedge. Before them a wide sweep of lawn led up
to a formal dark facade; a tanbark path was washed, the grass ragged
and uncut. Involuntarily they quickened their pace.
Elim saw that towering brown pillars rose to the roof of the dwelling
and that low wings extended on either hand. Before the portico a
stiffly formal garden lay in withered neglect.
The flower beds, circled with masoned rims and built up like wired
bouquets, held only twisted and broken stems.
A faint odor of wet plaster and dead vegetation rose to meet them. On
the towering wall of the house every window was tightly shuttered. The
place bore a silent and melancholy air of desertion.
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