The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900 ... - Gredos

The Salamanca Corpus: Yeoman Fleetwood (1900)
sift the pot-pourri. All at once, struck by the young man's silence, she turned to him, and
saw to her surprise that he was leaning against the window-sill, shading his eyes with
his hands.
"Oh," she cried, with a little gasp of dismay, "how cruel and thoughtless I have been. Of
course your mother made this pot-pourri. Ah, do not think me unfeeling — indeed I did
not mean to be so. I — I can't tell you how sorry I am for you."
Simon's eyes were still averted; the delicate odour had in truth brought back to him
poignant memories. He was a man of strong emotions and great reserve; his heart
though long starved was large and tender, and now was almost too full to allow him to
speak. But after a time he found his voice: — "It was the last thing she made before she
died," he said, "and my father—"
He broke off: he could talk of the mother, whom he had yet loved dearly, but of the
father, whose loss had been to him more bitter than death, he could not bring himself to
speak.
"Ah, your father," murmured Rachel softly, "you lost them both in one day, did you
not? Oh, poor Mr. Simon! I do feel for you. To lose your father — that was sad enough,
but your mother! I almost wonder you are alive."
Simon turned towards her impulsively; it seemed to him for a moment as though the
idolised memory of his father claimed its due. He could not have told any one but her,
but she must know how matters really stood, and how the anguish caused by the loss of
his mother was as but a drop in the ocean of that other vaster, deeper, all-pervading
sorrow for his father's death.
But even as he opened his lips to say the words the
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scent of the dried rose-leaves recalled him to that sunny day when he had carried the
little mother round the garden; he felt the touch of her hand upon his face, he
remembered the look of pride and love in her eyes. Oh no, oh no, for the sake of that
day, and in memory of that other when the little head, once pillowed on his shoulder,
had been laid to rest on the heart dearer to him than all the world, her memory should be