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Updated: June 5, 2025
I was terribly interested in it all, but horribly shocked, and from my vantage of fifteen years I said. "Deolda, I think you ought to marry Johnny." "Fiddledeedee!" said my aunt. "If she had sense she wouldn't marry either one of 'em one's too old, one's too young."
I had just got under the blanket when the door opened quietly. "Who is that?" I asked. "It's me Deolda." She went to the window and peered out into the storm, as though she were trying to penetrate its mystery. I couldn't bear her standing there; it was as if I could hear her heart bleed.
As he took a look at Deolda going out of the room, he said: "P hew! What's that?" "I told you I was sick and had to get a girl to help out what with Susie visiting and all," said my aunt, very short. "Help out? Help out! My lord! help out! What's her name Beth Sheba?" Now this wasn't as silly as it sounded.
"Going to marry him," Deolda repeated in her cool, truthful way that always took my breath. "Has he asked you?" my aunt inquired, sarcastically. "No, but he will," said Deolda. She looked out under her long, slanting eyes that looked as if they had little red flames dancing in the depths of them. "But you love Johnny," my aunt went on. She nodded three times with the gesture of a little girl.
"Don't you listen to 'em, Deolda. I'll make money for you; I'll make more than any of 'em. It's right you should want it. Tell 'em that you're going to marry me, Deolda. Clear 'em out." That was where he made his mistake. He should have cleared them out. Now Captain Hammar spoke: "You're quite a little man, ain't you, Johnny? Here's where you got a chance to prove it.
That night I was tired out and went to bed. But I couldn't sleep; Deolda sat staring out into the dark as she had the night before. Next morning I was standing outside the house when one of Deolda's brothers came tearing along. It was Joe, the youngest of one-armed Manel's brood, a boy of sixteen who worked in the fish factory. "Deolda!" he yelled. "Deolda, Johnny's all right!"
Then my aunt surprised me by throwing her arms around Deolda and kissing her and calling her "my poor lamb," while Deolda leaned up against my aunt as if she were her own little girl and snuggled up in a way that would break your heart. One afternoon soon after old Conboy brought Deolda home before tea time, and as she jumped out: "Oh, all right!" he called after her.
She had seized the one loophole that life had given her and had infused her relentless courage into another's veins. I was at the bottom of Deolda Costa's coming to live with my aunt Josephine Kingsbury, for I had been what my mother called "peaked," and was sent down to the seashore to visit her. And suddenly I, an inland child, found myself in a world of romance whose very colors were changed.
He told me to tell you good-by for him. Deolda, for God's sake, marry me before he comes back! He'll kill you, that's what he'll do. It's not for my sake I'm asking you it's for your sake!" She looked at him with her big black eyes. "I believe you mean that, Conboy. I believe I'll do it. But I'll be fair and square with you as you are with me. You'd better let me be; you know what I'm like.
Suddenly I noticed we were wallowing in the trough of the sea, and went on deck to see what was wrong. I groped my way to the wheel. It swung empty. Captain Hammar was gone, washed overboard in the storm. How I made port myself I don't know " Here his reading was interrupted by an awful noise Deolda laughing, Deolda laughing and sobbing, her hands above her head, a wild thing, terrible.
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