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Updated: May 31, 2025
But the children had wandered down to the lake-shore, oblivious of her cry, and were standing on the rock watching their images glassed below and ever freshly shattered with rippling undulations. A wherry chained beside them Vivia rocked lightly with her foot. "You and little Jane will set me down by-and-by?" she asked. "'T will be so much pleasanter than the coach."
Ray has already scrambled from the shallow breach where his brother alone found bottom; waiting hands assist Beltran; but as she lingers that moment shivering on the brink, blindly remembering the double movement of that arm beneath the ice, she silently asks, with a thrill, if he suffered Ray to save himself because he was a boy, and could, or because because she was Vivia!
He paused, the ardor and eagerness suspended on cheek and lip, for Vivia met his glance and understood its simple speech, since in some degree a dark eye lets you into the soul, where a blue one bluffs you off with its blaze, and under all its lucent splendor is as impenetrable as a turquoise. A girl of more vanity would have waited for plainer words.
Wert thou there, O Pentaur, when the governor examined the prisoners? Didst thou see Vivia Perpetua's old father press forward, carrying her babe in his arms, and beg her to recant for the child's sake? Didst thou hear the judge ask her, 'Art thou then a Christian? and didst thou hear her answer, 'I am'?" Timokles paused. Pentaur had groaned. His face was hidden in his hands.
As for Vivia, she burst into tears. "Oh, Ray!" sobbed she, "I wish I were a man!" "I don't!" said he. "Oh, it's rip-roarious! Come, let's follow our leader. We'll bring you back the cropple-crown, auntie." And so they departed, while, breaking into fresh carols, ringing and dulcet, as they went, Vivia's voice resounded till the woods pealed to the echo:
Pursuing the white sun-bonnet down the pasture, Ray kept springing ahead with his elastic foot, threshing the juniper-plats that little Jane had already searched, and scattering about them the pungent fragrance of the sweet-fern thickets, the breath of summer itself; then returning for a sober pace or two, would take off his hat, thrust a hand through the masses of his hair that looked like carved ebony, and show Vivia that his shadow was exactly as long as her own.
He served those gods now, yet he revered the memory of the Christian, Vivia Perpetua, as of one of the holiest of women. Timokles ventured no further words. Pentaur summoned a slave, and committed to his care the young Christian. The memory of Vivia Perpetua might pierce the merchant's soul, but would not avail for Timokles' release.
And just then Beltran has no word for Ray, the customary smiling word always waited for, since his eyes are on the vision at his feet, and straightway the child springs down, springs where he can intercept Beltran's view, seems to rise in his wrath a head above the girl, and, looking at Beltran all the while, slaps Vivia on the cheek.
As for Vivia, she was a Maryland woman. Too burningly indignant, the blood bubbled in her heart for words sometimes, and she would be glad of Beltran's weapons with which to confront Kay when he returned from Boston, whither, the day before, without a word's explanation, he had betaken himself. So she turned again to the open letter, and scanned its weightiest paragraphs.
And here, if Vivia saw one other scene blaze out before her and vanish, why not believe, for fancy's sake, that it was as real a picture as the image of the dark and beautiful girl herself bending there with the carmine stain upon her cheek, the glowing, parted lips, the shining eyes, the shadowy hair?
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