The Professor's House
he was going to do about the matter of domicile.
He couldn’t make himself believe that he was ever
going to live in the new house again. He didn’t
belong there. He remembered some lines of a
translation from the Norse he used to read long ago in one of his mother’s few books, a little two-volume
Ticknor and Fields edition of Longfellow, in blue
and gold, that used to lie on the parlour table:
For thee a house was built
Ere thou wast born;
For thee a mould was made
Ere thou of woman earnest.
Lying on his old couch, he could almost believe himself in that house already. The sagging springs were like the sham upholstery that is put in coffins. Just the equivocal American way of dealing with serious facts, he reflected. Why pretend that it is possible to soften that last hard bed?
He could remember a time when the loneliness of death had terrified him, when the idea of it was insupportable. He used to feel that if his wife could but lie in the same coffin with him, his body would not be so insensible that the nearness of hers would not give it comfort. But now he thought of eternal solitude with gratefulness; as a release from every obligation, from every form of effort. It was the Truth.
—272—
