By the side of his curled black walnut bed, without drapery, and set,
like a French couch, low on three pairs of spiral legs, was a deep
cushioned chair into which he sank and dragged off his sodden buckskin
breeches. The room wavered and blurred in his weary vision--squat,
rush-bottomed Dutch chairs seemed to revolve about a table with
apparently a hundred legs, a bearskin floated across the floor.... He
secured the banian; and, swathing himself in its cool, sibilant folds,
he fell, his face hid in an angle of his arm, into an immediate profound
slumber.
The shadows of late afternoon were once more gathering when he woke. He
lay, with hands clasped behind his head, watching a roseate glow
disperse from the room. From without came the faint, clear voice of
Marta Appletofft, across the road at the farm, calling the chickens; and
he could hear the querulous whistling of the partridges that invariably
deserted the fringes of forest to join the domesticated flocks at feed
time. A sense of well-being flooded him; the project of St. Xavier, the
French forts, drew far away; never before had he found Myrtle Forge so
desirable. He was, he thought, growing definitely older. He was
twenty-five.
A light knock fell on his door, and he answered comfortably, thinking
that it was his mother.
Pages:
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39