Joseph Hergesheimer

“ David walked out through the open doorway and stood on the small covered portico, that with a bench on each side, hung to the face of the dwelling. The stars were brightening in the sky above the confining mountain walls; there was a tremendous shrilling of frogs; the faint clamor of a sheep bell. He was absolutely, irresponsibly happy. He wished the time would hurry when he'd be big and strong like Allen, and get out into the absorbing stir of the world. ”

“ August Turnbull's gaze was steady and light blue; his nose was so heavy that it appeared to droop a little from sheer weight, almost resting on the mustache brushed out in a horizontal line across prominent lips; while his neck swelled in a glowing congestion above a wilting collar.
He nodded to several men in the narrow corridor of the car; men like himself in luxurious summer clothes, but for the most part fatter; then in the shed, looking about in vain for Bernard, his son-in-law, he proceeded to the street, where his automobile was waiting. ”

“ She accompanied Ettie to the kitchen and Calvin sat on the porch in a gathering darkness throbbing with frogs and perfumed with drifting locust blooms. Constellation by constellation the stars glimmered into being. Hannah, Lucy! They mingled and in his fiber were forever one. He gave himself up to the beauty of his passion, purified and intense from long patience and wanting, amazed at the miracle that had brought back everything infinitely desirable. ”

“ But that, David knew, was as disgraceful as the other—his own mother, Allen, objects of public charity! His face was clouded, his hands clenched. It was only a chance that he would be killed; there were four Hatburns though. His heart, he thought, would burst with misery; every instinct fought for the expression, the upholding of the family prestige, honor. A hatred for the Hatburns was like a strangling hand at his throat. ”

“ The man absolutely summed up all that Lavinia had dreamed of a romantic and masterful personage. She felt convinced that he had destroyed her life's happiness—no other man could ever appeal to her now; none other could satisfy the tumult he had aroused in her. This, she told herself, desperately miserable, was love.
Gheta spoke of her, for the three turned to regard her. She met their scrutiny with a doubtful half smile, which vanished as Anna Mantegazza made a light comment upon her hair being so newly up. Lavinia detested the latter with a sudden and absurd intensity. ”

“ He laughed at it, crushing and throwing aside the longing with a sense of contempt and triumph.
He could hear occasionally Bowman's smooth periods and his wife's eager enjoyment of the discourse. His sense of worldly loneliness deepened; Flavilla seemed far away. All life was inexplicable—yes, and profitless, ending in weariness and death. The hunger for perfection, for God, that had been a constant part of his existence, the longing for peace and security, were almost unbearable. He had had a long struggle; the devil was deeply rooted in him. ”

“ Calvin slowly smiled in bitterness and self-contempt; a pretty figure for a young girl to admire, he thought, losing the sense of mere physical fitness. Anyhow Lucy was supremely happy and safe, and he had accomplished it. He was glad that he had been so industrious and successful. Lucy could have almost anything she wanted—pretty clothes and rings with real jewels, necklaces hung with better than Scotch pebbles.
Perhaps when she had seen the world—its bigness and noise and confusion—after her longing was answered, she would turn back to him. ”

“ The brougham left, with a clatter of hoofs and a final clang of the great iron-bound door on the street; above, white stars grew visible in a blue dust. She dressed slowly, changing from one plain gown to another hardly less simple. Before the mirror, in an unsatisfactory lamplight, she studied her appearance in comparison with Gheta's.
She lacked the latter's lustrous pallor, the petal-like richness of Gheta's skin. Lavinia's cheeks bore a perceptible flush, which she detested and tried vainly to mask with powder. ”

“ He wanted to stay, seated obscurely on the bank, saturate himself with the still beauty; but the thought of French Janin waiting for the relief of his drug drove him on.
The maple trees that lined the quiet streets of the town were in full early leaf. Groups paced tranquilly over the brick ways; the houses stood in secure rows. A longing for safety, recognition, choked at Harry Baggs' throat. He wanted to stop at the corner, talk, move home to a shadowy cool porch. He hurried in his ragged clothes past the pools of light at the street crossings into the kinder gloom. ”

“ It might suit Gheta, who had wrinkles, to encourage such men as Cesare Orsi; their wealth might appeal to cold and material minds, but they could never hope to inspire passion; no one would ever cherish for them a hopeless lifelong love.
“Do you know,” Orsi declared with firm conviction, “you are even handsomer than your sister!”
“Fool! fool! fool!” But she could not, of course, say a word of what was in her thoughts. She met his admiring gaze with a blank face, conscious of how utterly her exterior belied and hid the actual Lavinia Sanviano. She felt wearily old, sophisticated. ”

“ He had never considered the possibility of Hester's dying; he had come to think of her as a lifelong responsibility. She had seemed, in her invalid's chair, withdrawn from the pressure of life as it bore upon others, more enduring than his father's haggard concern over the increasing difficulties of material existence and spiritual salvation, than his mother's flushed toiling.
Elim had lived with no horizon wider than the impoverished daily necessity; he had accepted this with mingled fatality and fortitude; any rebellion had been immediately suppressed as a wicked reflection upon Deity. ”

“ The narrow deep windows overlooked Florence, a somber expanse of roofing; and, coming rapidly toward the villa, Lavinia could see a tall dogcart, with a groom and two passengers. They were men; and, as they drew nearer, Lavinia—with a sudden pounding of her heart—realized the cause of the slight friction between the two women. The cart bore Cesare Orsi, and Mochales the bull-fighter, the Flower of Spain. It was a part of Anna Mantegazza's humor that the men, so essentially antagonistic, should arrive together clinging precariously on the high insecure trap. ”

“ In an instant a tide of bitterness, of passionate regret, swept over him. He saw the Hatburns' house, a rectangular bleak structure crowning a gray prominence, with the tender green of young pole beans on one hand and a disorderly barn on the other, and a blue plume of smoke rising from an unsteady stone chimney against an end of the dwelling. No one was visible.
Hot tears filled his eyes as the stage rolled along past the moldy ditch into which Allen had fallen. The mangy curs! His grip tightened on the reins and the team broke into a clattering trot, speedily leaving the Barren behind. ”

“ What would he think of her now? But she knew instinctively that there would be no change in Mochales' attitude. He was in love with Gheta; blind to the rest of the world.
She sat lost in a day-dream—how different her life would have been, married to the bull-fighter! She would have become a part of the fierce Spanish crowds at the ring, traveled to South America, seen the people heap roses, jewels, upon her idol....
Cesare Orsi stood in the doorway, smiling with oppressive good-nature.
“Lavinia,” he told her, “I've done something, and now I'm in the devil of a doubt.” ”

“ Lavinia repeated impatiently, “that Gheta will probably be here the last of the week.”
“The sacred camels!” Orsi exclaimed; then: “Oh, Gheta—good!” But he fell immediately into an angry reverie. “If I dared—” he muttered.
“What has stirred you up so?”
“It's difficult to explain to any one not born in Naples. Here, you see, all is not in order, like Florence; we have had a stormy time between brigands and secret factions and foreign rulers; and certain societies sprang up, necessary once, but now—when one still exists—a source of bribery and nuisance. ”

“ The old man had disappeared, with no trace of his objective kin. A road, deep in yellow mire, mounted a rise beyond and vanished a hundred yards distant. Elim, unwilling to get too far away from the sloop, had turned and moved toward the wharf, when he was halted by the sound of horses' hoofs.
He saw approaching him over the road a light open carriage with a fringed canopy and a pair of horses driven by a negro in a long white dust coat. In the body of the carriage a diminutive bonneted head was barely visible above an enormous circumference of hoops. ”

“ Lavinia agreed with her father that Gheta was a fool. She must be thirty, the younger suddenly realized. Bembo was growing hysterical from the tea and his own shrill anecdotes. He resembled a grotesque performing bird with a large beak. Lavinia's mind returned to the silent dark man who had passed in a cab. She wished, now, that she had been sitting at the front of the window—the object of his unsparing intense gaze. She realized that he was extremely handsome, and contrasted his erect slim carriage with Orsi's thick slouched shoulders. ”

“ An overwhelming sense of the mystery of being stabbed, sharp as a knife, at her heart; a choking longing possessed her to experience all—all the wonders of life, but principally love.
“Look, Bembo!” Anna Mantegazza suddenly exclaimed. “No; there—approaching! Who's that singular person in the hired carriage?”
Her interest was so roused that Lavinia, once more forgetful of Gheta's sleeves, leaned over her sister's shoulder, and immediately distinguished the object of their curiosity. ”

“ The elder moved on to the pounded earth beyond. Here, in their presence, David felt the loathing for the Hatburns a snake inspires—dusty brown rattlers and silent cottonmouths. His hatred obliterated every other feeling but a dim consciousness of the necessity to recover the mail bag. He was filled with an overpowering longing to revenge Allen; to mark them with the payment of his father, dead in the stable shed. ”

“ A bull-fighter! A blurred picture formed in Lavinia's mind from the various details she had read and heard of the cruelty of the Spanish national sport—torn horses, stiff on blood-soaked sand; a frenzied and savage populace; and charging bulls, drenched with red froth. She shuddered.
“What a brute!” she spoke aloud unintentionally.
Gheta glanced at her out of a cool superiority, but Anna Mantegazza nodded vigorously. ”

“ Lavinia luxuriated in her unhappiness. Mochales, she decided, must be the handsomest man in existence. His unchanging gravity fascinated her—the man's face, his voice, his dignified gestures, were all steeped in a splendid melancholy.
“I am a peasant,” he said, apparently addressing them all, but with his eyes upon Gheta, “from Estremadura, in the mountains. The life there was very hard, and that was fortunate for me; the food was scarce, and that was good too. If I ate like the grandees a bull would end me in the hot sun of the first fiesta; I'd double up like a pancake. ”

“ Such a tide of pleasure swept over her husband's countenance that Lavinia bit her lip in annoyance. She had intended only to rebuke Gheta and had not calculated the effect of her speech upon Cesare. She was scrupulously careful not to mislead the latter with regard to her feeling for him. She went to a rather needless extreme to demonstrate that she conducted herself from a sense of duty and propriety alone. ”