Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-01-01
THE EVENING STORY
One of WorId.FamOus Works of Literature

1t seemed more like a world she had
left when born on earth. And now
he was coming back to her in this.
Meantime the great Pasterzen Glacier
had moved on, marking only the CEN
turtles; the men upon its borders had
seen no change; the same great waves
lifted their snowy heads upon its sur
face: the same crevasse was still where
he had fallen. At night the moon
beams, falling, still shivered of its
CLASSY face; its pale presence filled the
night. and immortality lay brooding
in its hollows.
Friends were with Mrs. Knollys, but
she left them at the inn. One old
guide. remembered her, and asked to
bear her company. He went with her
In the morning, and sat few yards
from her, waiting. In the afternoon
she went alone. He would not have
credited you, had you told him that the
glacier moved. He thought it but an
Englishwoman's fancy. but he waited
with her. He had never forgotten that
old day. And Mrs. Knollys sat there
silently, searching the clear depths Of
the ice, that she might find her hus-
band.
One night she saw a ghost. The
tatest beam of the sun, falling on n
mountain opposite, had shone bacK
into the ice-cavern, and seemingly deep
within. in the grave azure light, she
fancied she saw face turned toward
her. She even thought she saw Charles
yellow hair, and the selfsame smile his
lips had worn when he bent down
to her before he fell. 1t could be
but fancy. She went home and was
silent with her friends about what had
happened. In the moonlight she went
back, and again the next morning be-
fore dawn. She told no one of her
00in0. HIT fha old otlida mat HaaV
the door. and walked silently behind
her. She had slept, the glacier ever
present in her dreams.
The sun had not yet risen when she
came, and she sat a long time in the
cavern listening to the murmur Of the
river flowing under the glacier at her
feet. Slowly the dawn began, and again
she seemed to see the simmer Of O
face-such a face as one sees in the
Goals Of dying fire. Then the full
sun came over the eastern mountain
and the guide heard a woman's cry.
There before her was Charles Knollys!
The face seemed hardly pale, and
there was the same faint smile-a smile
like her memory Of it, five and forty
years gone by. Safe in the clear ice,
still unframed, there lay-O Godl not
her Charles; not the Charles of her
own thought, who had lived through life
with her and shared her sixty years;
not the old man she had borne thither
in her mind-but q boy, q boy of one
and twenty, lying asleep, a ghost from
another world coming to confront her
from the distant past, immortal In the
immortality of the glacier. There was
his quaint coat, Of the fashion of half
century ago; his blue eyes open; his
past she had forgotten-and she, his
bride, stood there to welcome him with
her wrinkles, her bent figure and thin
white hairs. She was living, he was
dead, and she was two and forty years
older than he.
Then at last the long tears came
to her and she bent her white head
In the snow. The old man came up
with his pick, silently, and began work.
ing in the ice. The woman lay weep
ing, and the boy. with his still, faint
smile, lay looking at them from the
clear ice-veil, from his open eyes.
I believe that the professor found
his bullet: know not. believe that
the scientific world rang with his name
and the thesis that he published on the
glaciers motion and the changeless
eter had shown. All this you may read.
know no more.
But I know that in the English
churchyard there are now two graves
and a single stone, to Charles Knollys
and Mary, his wife, and the boy of one
and twenty sleeps there with his bride
of sixty-three, his young frame with her
old one, his yellow hair beside her white
And do not know that there Is not
some place, not here, where they are
still together, and he Is one and twenty
and she is eighteen. I do not know
this, but I know that all the pamphlets
of the German doctor cannot tell me 1t
it false.
Meantime, the great Pasterzen GlaZier
moves on, and the rocks with IT, and
the mountain filings his shadow Of the
planets in its face.