City and town life -- Fiction; Romance fiction, American; Short stories, American
He drew a breath long, and looked about him. I knew how he was seeing
the bare room, lamp-lighted, and himself trying to work in spite of the
longing that teased and possessed him and bade him give it up and lean
back and think of her; or of tossing on the hard couch in the tyranny of
living his last hour with her and of living, too, the hours that might
never be. And here she was in this room--his room. Peter dropped his
head on his hand and his eyes did not leave her face save to venture an
occasional swift, ecstatic excursion to her fingers.
Simply and all quietly, as Nature sends her gifts, miracles moved toward
completion while Miggy sewed. The impulse to do for him this trifling
service was like a signal, and when she took up the needle for him I
think that women whose hands had long lain quiet stirred within her
blood. As for Peter--but these little housewifely things which enlighten
a woman merely tease a man, who already knows their import and longs for
all sweet fragments of time to be merged in the long possession.
Miggy gave the needle back to Peter and he took it--needle, red book,
and hand.
"Miggy!" he said, and the name on his lips was like another name. And it
was as if she were in some place remote and he were calling her.
She looked at him as if she knew the call. Since the world began, only
for one reason does a man call a woman like that.
"What is it you want?" she said--and her voice was very sweet and very
tired.
"I want more of _you_!" said Peter Cary.
She may have tried to say something, but her voice trembled away.
"I thought it would be everything--your coming here to-day," Peter said.
"I've wanted it and wanted it. And what does it amount to? Nothing,
except to make me wild with wanting you never to go away. I dread to
think of your leaving me here--shutting the door and being gone. If it
was just plain wanting you I could meet that, and beat it, like I do the
things down to the works. But it isn't that. It's like it was something
big--bigger than me, and outside of me, and it gets hold of me, and it's
like it asked for you without my knowing. I can't do anything that you
aren't some of it. It isn't fair, Miggy. I want more of you--all of
you--all the time, Miggy, all the time...."
I should have liked to see Miggy's face when she looked at Peter, whose
eyes were giving her everything and were asking everything of her; but I
was studying the sunset, glory upon glory, to match the glory here. And
the singing of Little Child began again, like that of a little voice
vagrant in the red west....
"Oh, I can see a playmate there,
Far up in Splendour Town!"
Miggy heard her, and remembered.
"Peter, Peter!" she cried, "I couldn't--I never could bring us two on
you to support."
Peter gave her hands a little shake, as if he would have shaken her. I
think that he would have shaken her if it had been two or three thousand
years earlier in the world's history.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account