Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Villages -- Fiction; Virginia -- Fiction
They kept their own first names, for they both clung tenaciously to
the truth whenever it was possible. Indeed, they did not practise many
subterfuges nor make any very great effort at concealment. In this big
strange life of a city where neither of them had ever been before,
it did not seem likely that he would be traced, or that a country so
grimly occupied with war and great undertakings would pause long enough
in all the mad confusion to note that one inconspicuous man had failed
to appear at the place assigned to him. They were not worried either
about finances. They each had a small stock of ready money, and Julie
had a couple of Liberty Bonds which could be sold in case he found any
trouble in getting work. They had agreed that he must leave his bonds
for Elizabeth, although, as she had a small income of her own, she was
independent of his support. He found a position almost at once in a
printing establishment where war had left them short of men, and where
they welcomed his expert services. Julie planned to seek work also
later on, but for the present he entreated her not to.
“No, take time just to be alive a while,” he begged. “Why, we’re almost
as new as Adam an’ Eve; all I want you to do is just to help me name
the animals.”
“Name the animals!” she laughed, as no human being had ever laughed
before at his small whimsicalities.
They were both released into a gayety and laughter of life that
heretofore had passed them by. Youth flowed back into Julie’s face,
and with it her lost prettiness--or perhaps a fresh prettiness which
even her youth had never known. Ordinarily the strangeness of their
new surroundings, with the inevitable publicity of the lodging-house,
would have terrified them both. But not now. As certain animals put
their young in the centre of the flock, and then in companionship face
the enemy boldly, so together they pooled their confessed weaknesses
and fears, and thus were able to turn an assured front to the rest of
the world. Their passion had released them. Heretofore they seemed
to themselves to be clinging merely to the edges of life, but now
they were at its flaming centre. Nay more, they were life itself;
and from the heart of it they looked forth at the rest of the world
with a fearless joy. Like children who make a tent out of a couple
of chairs roofed by an old shawl and, creeping under it, find an
enchanted world of their own, no matter what tragedies may be facing
the grown-up people around them, so under the grim roof of a world’s
war these two discovered a miraculous existence. After their long years
of repression, in this sudden release they were intoxicated with the
rapture of existence. For Julie the days flowed by in ecstasy, from
early morning when she arose and prepared his breakfast, on through all
the happy day as she attended to her small home tasks, and so to the
fall of evening which brought him home again--every moment was a golden
joy keyed to a hidden rhythm.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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