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Updated: May 31, 2025
Vivia lingered, subdued and pale, beside the hearth, doing any quiet piece of work that came to hand; no one had seen her shed tears, she had shown no strenuous sorrow; on the night of Ray's return she had slept her first unbroken sleep for months; her nerves, stretched so intensely and so long, lay loosely now in their passionate reaction; some element more interior than they saved her from prostration.
No more! O Vivia, Vivia!" With a groan of anguish, Pentaur looked upward, as if behind the desert's sky he might see again that youthful face, the face of that sweet Christian with whom he had been acquainted from childhood and whom he had last seen dying in Carthage's amphitheatre. Little did Timokles know how the memory of Vivia Perpetua's death hour had haunted Pentaur.
Little Jane, whipping the frothy snow of her eggs, went on whipping all the harder for fear Ray should know she saw him. And Vivia, with one hand upon his head, took away the brown fingers, that her own cool, fragrant palm might press upon his burning lids. Such sudden tears belong to such tropical natures. For there was no anger or sullenness in Ray's grief; he was just and simply sorry.
Still Vivia stayed at the cottage, not so much by fervent entreaty, or because she had no other place to go to, as because there were strange, strong ties binding her there for a while. Should all else fail, with the ripened wealth of her voice at command, her future was of course secure from want.
"We'd like to, little Jane. Are the cookies done? By George! don't they look like manna? They'll last all the way to Fort Riley. And be manna in the wilderness. Smoking hot. Have some, Vivia? Little Jane, I say, 't would be jolly, if you'd go along and cook for the regiment." "Is that all you'd want of me?"
When in the dull forenoon she would have enlivened Vivia with her precious elderberry-wine, that a connoisseur must taste twice before telling from purplest Port, and Vivia only wet her lips at it, or when she carried Ray a roasted apple, its burnished sides bursting with juice and clotted with cream, and the boy glanced at it and never saw it, little Jane felt ready to cry; and she set to bethinking herself seriously if there were nothing else to be done.
But he recovered and destroyed them after his return to England, with all the other reminiscences of those early years. Some notes, however, are extant, dated respectively, 1841, 1842, and 1845, and will be given in their due place. * She also wrote a dramatic poem in five acts, entitled 'Vivia Perpetua', referred to by Mrs.
Vivia Perpetua was the best loved of a heathen father's children. How she suffered in her heart, when her old father came to the prison and besought her to give up Christ! 'Daughter, begged the old man, 'have pity on my gray hairs. Have compassion on thy father! He wept at her feet. He begged her to have pity on her little child. But she could not give up Christ.
"And then," continued Timokles, "the wretched father, hearing his daughter speak those words that doomed her to death, tried to draw her from the platform. He was struck with a stick, and the judge condemned Vivia Perpetua and Felicitas, with the other Christians, to be exposed to the wild beasts." Another low groan broke from Pentaur.
Living, Vivia had a proud assurance in her heart of that! Her heart that went swiftly gliding back into the past, and filling old scenes with fresh fire. Thinking thus, she bent forward with dark, steady gaze, as if she sought for its pictures in the uncertain depths of the mirror, and there they rose as of old the crystal gave them back to the seeker.
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