Chapters (55)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- CONTENTS
- Foreword to The Cullen Collection
- Introduction to Weighed and Wanting
- 1. A Bad Weather Holiday
- 2. An Eventful Walk
- 3. Hester Alone
- 4. The Aquarium
- 5. Amy Amber
- 6. Cornelius and Vavasor
- 7. Hester and Amy
- 8. A Beginning in Hester
- 9. A Private Exhibition
- 10. Vavasor and Hester
- 11. The Concert Room
- 12. Sudden Change
- 13. Yrndale
- 14. Down the Hill
- 15. Out of the Frying Pan
- 16. Waiting a Purpose
- 17. Major H. G. Marvel
- 18. The Major and Vavasor
- 19. A Walk Along the River
- 20. An Unpleasant Interview
- 21. Corney’s Holiday
- 22. A Distinguished Guest
- 23. Courtship in Earnest
- 24. Calamity
- 25. In London
- 26. A Talk with the Major
- 27. A Scuffle
- 28. Gartley and the Major
- 29. Further Down
- 30. Differences
- 31. Deep Calleth Unto Deep
- 32. Deliverance
- 33. On the Way Up
- 34. The Attic Room
- 35. Amy and Corney
- 36. Miss Vavasor
- 37. Mr. Christopher
- 38. An Arrangement
- 39. Things at Yrndale
- 40. The Return
- 41. A Sad Beginning
- 42. Mother and Son
- 43. Miss Dasomma and Amy
- 44. The Sick Room
- 45. Vengeance Is Mine
- 46. Father and Daughter-in-law
- 47. The Message
- 48. A Family
- 49. A Birthday Gift
- ENDNOTES
Mark kept looking for Corney’s coming, his eyes turning every other moment to the door. When his father entered, he stretched out his arms to him. The strong man bent over him and could not repress a sob. The boy pushed him gently back far enough to see his face.
“Father,” he said—he had never called him father before—“you must be glad, not sorry. I am going to your father and my father. He is waiting for me.”
Then seeing Corney come in, he stretched his arms toward him past his father.
“Corney! Corney!” he cried, just as he used to call him when he was a mere child. Corney bent over him, but the outstretched arms did not close around him. They fell.
But he was not yet ascended. Feebly he signed to the major.
“Majie,” he whispered, with a look and expression for which the major tried the rest of his life to find the meaning. “Majie! Corney! You tell!”
Then he went.
I think it was the grief at the grave of Lazarus that made our Lord weep, not his death. One with eyes opening into both worlds could hardly weep over any law of the Father of Lights! I think it was the impossibility of getting them comforted over this thing death, which looked to him so different from what they thought it, that made the fearless weep, and give them in Lazarus a foretaste of his own resurrection.
The major alone did not weep. He stood with his arms folded, like a sentry relieved and waiting the next order. Even Corney’s eyes filled with tears and he murmured, “Poor Markie!” It should have been “Poor Corney!” He stooped and kissed the silent face, then drew back and gazed with the rest on the little pilgrim-cloak the small prophet had dropped as he rose to his immortality.
Saffy, who had been seated gazing into the fire, called out in a strange voice, “Markie, Markie!”
Hester turned to her at the cry and saw her apparently following something with her eyes along the wall from the bed to the window. At the curtained window she gazed for a moment, and then her eyes fell and she sat like one in a dream. A moment more and she sprang to her feet and ran to the bed, crying again, “Markie! Markie!” Hester lifted her and held her to kiss the sweet white face. It seemed to content her. She went back to her stool by the fire, and there sat staring at the curtained window with the look of one gazing into regions unknown.
That same night, before the solemn impression should pass, the major took Corney to his room and, recalling every individual expression he could of the little prophet-dreamer, carried out the commission entrusted him, not without the shedding of tears.