Well, for the life of me, Professor, I said, I can t see anything to
laugh at in all that. Why, your explanation makes it a harder puzzle
than before. But even if the burial service was comic, what about poor
Art and his trouble? Why, his heart was simply breaking.
Just so. Said he not that the transfusion of his blood to her veins had
made her truly his bride?
Yes, and it was a sweet and comforting idea for him.
Quite so. But there was a difficulty, friend John. If so that, then
what about the others? Ho, ho! Then this so sweet maid is a polyandrist,
and me, with my poor wife dead to me, but alive by Church s law, though
no wits, all gone--even I, who am faithful husband to this now-no-wife,
am bigamist.
I don t see where the joke comes in there either! I said; and I did
not feel particularly pleased with him for saying such things. He laid
his hand on my arm, and said:--
Friend John, forgive me if I pain. I showed not my feeling to others
when it would wound, but only to you, my old friend, whom I can trust.
If you could have looked into my very heart then when I want to laugh;
if you could have done so when the laugh arrived; if you could do so
now, when King Laugh have pack up his crown, and all that is to him--for
he go far, far away from me, and for a long, long time--maybe you would
perhaps pity me the most of all.
I was touched by the tenderness of his tone, and asked why.
Because I know!
And now we are all scattered; and for many a long day loneliness will
sit over our roofs with brooding wings. Lucy lies in the tomb of her
kin, a lordly death-house in a lonely churchyard, away from teeming
London; where the air is fresh, and the sun rises over Hampstead Hill,
and where wild flowers grow of their own accord.
So I can finish this diary; and God only knows if I shall ever begin
another. If I do, or if I even open this again, it will be to deal with
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