United States or Eswatini ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Here he was, after four years of prison, walking the highway with two of the humblest creatures of Ireland, and yet, as his soul said, two of the best. Stalking along in thought, he suddenly became conscious that Michael and Christopher had fallen behind. He turned round. "Come on. Come on with me." But the two shook their heads. "It's not fitting, you a Calhoun of Playmore!" Christopher answered.
"There is much to do at Salem," he added calmly, and yet with his heart beating, as it had not beaten since the day he had first met her at Playmore. "You would not take the money I sent to Dublin for you the gift of a believing friend, and you would not come to America!" "I shall have to tell you why one day," he answered slowly, "but I'll pay my respects to your mother now."
In prison, when I used to mop my floor and clean down the walls; when I swept the dust from the corners; when I folded up my convict clothes; when I ate the prison food and sang the prison hymns; when I placed myself beside the bench in the workshop to make things that would bring cash to my fellow-prisoners in their need; when I saw a minister of religion or heard the Litany; when I counted up the days, first that I had spent in jail and then the days I had still to spend in jail; when I read the books from the prison library of the land where you had gone, and of the struggle there; when I saw you, in my mind's eye, in the cotton-fields or on the verandah of your house in Virginia I had but one thought, and that was the look in your face at Playmore and Limerick, the sound of your voice as you came singing up the hill just before I first met you, the joyous beauty of your body."
"Do you still see no reason to alter the opinions which you expressed yesterday? Does your speedy departure mean that?" "I am afraid it does, Mr. Playmore. When I am an older woman, I may be a wiser woman. In the meantime, I can only trust to your indulgence if I still blindly blunder on in my own way."
"Why, to hear you speak, mistress, it would almost seem you had a fondness for the man who killed your father, who went to jail for it, and " "And became a mutineer," intervened the girl flushing. "Why not say all? Why not catalogue his offences? Fondness for the man who killed my father, you say! Yes, I had a deep and sincere fondness for him ever since I met him at Playmore over seven years ago.
She rose and touched my forehead with her lips; her voice sank to tones of tenderness which I had never heard from her yet. "Say yes, Valeria," she whispered; "and be dearer to me and dearer to him than ever!" My heart sided with her. My energies were worn out. No letter had arrived from Mr. Playmore to guide and to encourage me.
One of the copies I inclosed in my letter to Mr. Playmore. The other I laid by me, on my bedside table, when I went to rest. Over and over again, through the long hours of the wakeful night, I read and re-read the last words which had dropped from Miserrimus Dexter's lips. Was it possible to interpret them to any useful purpose? At the very outset they seemed to set interpretation at defiance.
Thereupon he read the note, and added: "We'll see him of the Calhouns risin' high beyant poverty and misfortune some day." Old Christopher nodded. "I'm glad Miles Calhoun was buried on the hilltop above Playmore. He had his day; he lived his life. Things went wrong with him, and he paid the price we all must pay for work ill-done."
I have known all that has happened since we left Ireland, through the letters my mother has received. I know that Playmore has been sold, and I am sorry. Now that your day of release is near, and you are to be again a free man, have you decided about your future? Is it to be in Ireland? No, I think not. Ireland is no place for a sane and level man to fight for honour, fame, and name.
"Well, if we don't meet wear that," she said, and, laughing over her shoulder, turned and ran into the grounds of Loyland Towers. When Dyck entered the library of Playmore, the first words he heard were these: "Howe has downed the French at Brest. He's smashed the French fleet and dealt a sharp blow to the revolution. Hurrah!"
Word Of The Day