He wanted time and
the absence of ulterior pressure. He wanted to keep the tree without
ornaments, realize fully the direction and momentum of this new start.
* * * *
The afternoon waned from the purging good of three o'clock to the golden
beauty of four. Afterward he walked through the dull ache of a setting
sun when even the clouds seemed bleeding and at twilight he came to a
graveyard. There was a dusky, dreamy smell of flowers and the ghost of a
new moon in the sky and shadows everywhere. On an impulse he considered
trying to open the door of a rusty iron vault built into the side of a
hill; a vault washed clean and covered with late-blooming, weepy
watery-blue flowers that might have grown from dead eyes, sticky to the
touch with a sickening odor.
Amory wanted to feel "William Dayfield, 1864."
He wondered that graves ever made people consider life in vain. Somehow
he could find nothing hopeless in having lived. All the broken columns
and clasped hands and doves and angels meant romances. He fancied that
in a hundred years he would like having young people speculate as to
whether his eyes were brown or blue, and he hoped quite passionately that
his grave would have about it an air of many, many years ago.
Pages:
393
394
395
396
397
398
399
400
401
402
403
404
405
406
407
408
409
410
411
412
413
414
415
416
417