United States or Andorra ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
I have thrown away my crutch, Vivia, for all my life I am going to have this little shoulder to lean upon." And over his sombre face a smile crept and deepened, like the yellow ray, that, after a long, dark day of driving rain, suddenly gilds the tree-tops and brims the sky; and though, when it went, the gloom shut drearily down again, still it bore the promise of fair day to-morrow.
They were, indeed, a providential galaxy of pure-hearted, unspotted, heroic men. There is a mild and sweet beauty in the star of Winthrop, the lustre of which asks no jealous or rival estimation. Vivia stood before the glass, brushing out black shadows from her long, fine hair.
"Now, Raymond Lamar! if you talk so, you sha'n't read the letter!" "I don't want to read it." "Have you left off loving Beltran, because he differs from you?" "Left off loving Beltran!" Vivia waited a moment, leaning on the back of his chair, and then Ray, bending, covered his face with his hands, and the large tears oozed from between his brown fingers.
They had kept only one cow, and Tommy Low would attend to her for the sake of his suppers, suppers at which Vivia must forego her water-cresses now; but Janet had a bed of mushrooms growing down-cellar, that, broiled and buttered, were, she fancied, quite equal to venison-steaks.
And shall I give such dominion to the first traitor that demands it? No! nor to the thousandth! There she lies, bleeding, torn, prostrate, a byword! Why, Vivia, this was my country, she that made me, reared me, gladdened me! It is the now crusade. I understand none of your syllogisms. My country is in danger. Here's my hand!"
Southern noontide, winter twilight lost themselves again, as Vivia gazed, in the soft starry gleam of an April midnight.
Near them the vireos were singing loud and sweet. "Vivia," said Ray, after a pause, "if I should never come back" "You will come back." "But if I never did, should you greatly care?" "Beginning to despond! That is good! You won't go, then?" "If the way lay over the bottomless pit, I should go." "And you can't get free, if you want to?" "No!"
She took away her hand, and let the illumination fall full upon his face, a face haggard as a dead man's. "Ray," she said, "where is Beltran?" Only silence replied to her. He lay and stared up at her in a fixed and glassy glare. Breathless silence. Then Ray groaned, and turned his face to the wall. Vivia blew out the light. The weeks crept away with the setting-in of the frosts.
Vivia looked on all the tender loveliness of the dying year with a listless eye: waiting, weary waiting, makes the soul torpid to all but its pain. It was long since there had been any letter from Ray. In all this oppression of summer and of autumn there had come no report of Beltran. Her heart had lost its proud assurance, worn beneath the long strain of such suspense.
But here Vivia dared not concentrate her recollections, dared not dally with such distant delight, twisted and tossed her hair into its coils, and once more opened the letter.
Word Of The Day