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It was sheer mental and bodily weariness that brought Steve to a prolonged halt. The heat was overpowering him at last. This strange land with its ruddy twilight had become a labour beyond endurance. It was as if the waters of the river were being evaporated into a steam which left the air unbreathable.
And Flemming returned the shake as heartily, recognising in this ruddy personage, a former travelling companion, Mr. Berkley, whom he had left, a week or two previous, toiling up the Righi. Mr. Berkley was an Englishman of fortune; a good-humored, humane old bachelor; remarkable alike for his common sense and his eccentricity.
I'm afraid I interrupted eh?" "No, no, not at all. Only some idle scribbling. I'd finished." "You are a poet?" "Only a lunatic. I haven't taken my degree." "Ah! it's a noble gift the gift of song; precious through its rarity." Polyhistor caught a note of emotion in his visitor's voice, and glanced at him curiously. "Surely," he thought, "that vulgar, ruddy little face is transfigured."
By that time, though, I'd got a better view myself. And say, hadn't I seen them ruddy cheeks and that gray hair and them droopy eyes before? Why, sure! It's what's-his-name, the old guy who blew into the Corrugated awhile ago, my absentee boss Ballard! Maybe I'd have told Zenobia all about him if there'd been time; but there wa'n't.
Fires roared up a wide chimney at either end, long rows of figures clad in armor stood on each side, one mailed hand grasping a lance, the other bearing a lighted candle, a device of Sir Jasper's. Narrow windows pierced in the thick walls let in gleams of wintry moonlight; ivy, holly, and evergreen glistened in the ruddy glow of mingled firelight and candle shine.
During the short afternoon the western sunshine comes into the study and strives to stare the ruddy blaze out of countenance but with only a brief triumph, soon to be succeeded by brighter glories of its rival.
But, to say the truth, the spectacle struck me rather ludicrously, to see this party of stout middle-aged and elderly gentlemen, in the fulness of meat and drink, their ample and ruddy faces glistening with wine, perspiration, and enthusiasm, rumbling out those strange old stanzas from the very bottom of their hearts and stomachs, which two organs, in the English interior arrangement, lie closer together than in ours.
Level lines of dewy mist lay stretched along the valley, out of which rose the massy mountains their lower cliffs in pale gray shadow, hardly distinguishable from the floating vapor, but gradually ascending till they caught the sunlight, which ran in sharp touches of ruddy color along the angular crags, and pierced, in long level rays, through their fringes of spear-like pine.
She had lived upon one hope, and that hope was destroyed. Her round ruddy cheeks and portly form wasted away, and within a few weeks the neighbours, who performed the last office of humanity, declared that a thinner corpse was never wrapt in a winding sheet than Mrs. Jeffrey. Time soothed, but did not heal the sorrows, the shame, and the disappointment of the son.
In the dim light of the embers, the girl slipped from her bed and stole quietly across the room to the fire-place, to lay another stick of wood upon the glowing coals. A moment she stood, in the ruddy light, looking toward the sleeping man. Then, without a sound, she stole to his side, and kneeling, softly touched his forehead with her lips. As silently, she crept back to her couch.
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