United States or United States Virgin Islands ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
"The letter was to Uncle Bernique, Father. And Bruce Steering read it. And though it told him that he was the owner of the Tigmores, he and Uncle Bernique will not prove it." For a moment she paused, and then, with some new purpose on her face, she began again, "There was an oath to make all sure that they would not prove it.
A veil of weird loneliness hung over the cavernous place and the air that shivered up to the three was cool and laden with damp, sweet odours. Old Bernique began to descend. As they proceeded, the old man's sense of something stupendous impressed itself more and more upon his companions. Farther on down, the solemn quiet of the Gulch became unbearable, but no one spoke.
You have the malaria!" was the Frenchman's greeting. "Go 'long, I have no such thing; I'm only as lonely as the devil." Steering got up and shook hands with the old man with so much energy that Bernique made a grimace of pain. "Come up here and talk," cried Steering, his eagerness to hear the sound of a human and friendly voice making him overlook the excitement under which Bernique laboured.
Life, big, splendid, stretched out before him. Old Bernique had risen and was pacing the banks of the Di nervously. Steering, too, got to his feet. Going down to Bernique, he took the old man's hands in his. Neither heard a little rustle up the bluff in the leafy bushes. "Oh, Uncle Bernique!" said Steering, and stopped because of the wild sound of his own voice.
Whend you begand to tell your story, I waked up an' I listened. I hearn all you said an' all he said. Ev'thing. Unc' Bernique, you cayn't tell nobody!
Presto," she shut her eyes. "Now I have his point of view. Now I'm seeing what he sees that Miss Sally Madeira likes to hear him sing, and humours him and pets him because he is gay and glad to be alive, and because Uncle Bernique says that he needs somebody to mother him. I mother Piney. Can't you see that." She laughed again and arose and stood in front of him, gay, mocking, nonchalant.
His feeling for Italy had to be explained in another way. It was the great sweet note of poetry, music and beauty, of that far country, vibrating across the years and the miles, taken up as a memory in the Missouri hills by Old Bernique and, through him, reaching a Missouri boy's heart, all tuned and pitched for it. That was all there was to Piney's story. It was only a fragment.
To prove all that is to let the light in upon dark places. I hardly see how the light can be let in, Uncle Bernique, without cutting Madeira out sharp and keen as a rascal. Madeira would never allow, at this juncture, he couldn't allow us to establish my claim to the Tigmores on my word and yours. He has done unwise, crazy things already. He would fight us. I know it, you know it. We could win.
"Well," Steering was not so unaccustomed a miner by now but what the sight there in the Gulch had its effect upon him, "Well," he said gingerly, "if you are right, Uncle Bernique, if the face doesn't cut blind, why, Mr. Crittenton Madeira and old Grierson have a good thing, haven't they?" "Urg-h-h!" Old Bernique made a gnashing sound and leaned his head listeningly.
"Best old man in the world," answered Piney, with the soft, sweet shyness, like a girl's, that was always in his voice when he let his affections find expression. Before this Steering had heard, from old Bernique himself, the short story that had connected the affections of the tramp-boy and the wandering prospector. Piney, Old Bernique had said, was the child of a woman whom he had known in St.
Word Of The Day