FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121  
122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   >>   >|  
laid down her pen and put her forehead on her clasped hands. How empty and inane these entries seemed beside this rich and eventful twenty-four hours just passed! What had she been doing a year ago to-day? she wondered. The lower drawer of the desk held a number of slim diaries like the one before her. She pulled it out, took up the last-year's volume and opened it. "Why," she said in surprise, "I got jessamine for mother this very same day last year!" she pondered frowning, then reached for a third and a fourth. From these she looked up, startled. That date in her mother's calendar called for cape jessamines. What was the fourteenth of May to her? She bent a slow troubled gaze about her. The room had been hers as a child. She seemed suddenly back in that childhood, with her mother bending over her pillow and fondling her rebellious hair. When the wind cried for loneliness out in the dark she had sung old songs to her that had seemed to suit a windy night: _Mary of the Wild Moor_, and _I am Dreaming Now of Hallie_. Sad songs! Even in those pinafore years Shirley had vaguely realized that pain lay behind the brave gay mask. Was there something--some event--that had caused that dull-colored life and unfulfilment? And was to-day, perhaps, its anniversary? Her thought darted to her father who had died before her birth, on whose gray hair had been set the greenest laurels of the Civil War. She had always been deeply proud of his military record--had never read his name on a page of Confederate history without a new thrill. But she had never thought of him and her mother as actors in a passionate love-romance. Their portraits hung together in the living-room down-stairs: the grave middle-aged man with graying hair, and the pale proud girl with the strange shadow in the dark eyes. The canvases had been painted in the year of her mother's marriage. The same sadness had been in her face then. And their marriage and his death had both fallen in midwinter. No, this May date was not connected with him! "Dearest, dearest!" whispered Shirley, and a slow tear drew its shining track down her cheek. "Is there something I've never known? Is there?" CHAPTER XXIII UNCLE JEFFERSON'S STORY John Valiant sat propped up on the library couch, an open magazine unheeded on his knee. The reading-stand beside him was a litter of letters and papers. The bow-window was open and the honeysuckle breeze blew about him, lifting his
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121  
122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
mother
 

thought

 

Shirley

 

marriage

 

portraits

 
actors
 
middle
 

passionate

 
romance
 

living


stairs

 

greenest

 
laurels
 

anniversary

 
darted
 

father

 
history
 
Confederate
 

thrill

 

deeply


military

 

record

 

midwinter

 

propped

 

library

 

Valiant

 

JEFFERSON

 

magazine

 

unheeded

 

honeysuckle


window

 
breeze
 

lifting

 

papers

 

reading

 
litter
 

letters

 
CHAPTER
 

sadness

 
painted

canvases
 

strange

 
shadow
 
fallen
 

shining

 

whispered

 
connected
 

Dearest

 
dearest
 

graying