Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of FiftyBacon, Josephine Daskam
General
Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty
Bacon, Josephine Daskam
Fiction
Directly before him lay a wet, shining beach, for the tide was half
gone, and a hundred yards out, the tops of what might almost have
been a built wall of nasty pointed rocks formed a perfect lagoon
across the face of the promontory. At high tide these would not show,
but they were there, always guarding, always bare-toothed, and as far
again beyond them a bell-buoy mounted on a similar ledge seemed to
point to the existence of a double barrier. It was a great lonesome
bay of the Atlantic that he looked at, its arms on either side
desolate, scrubby and forbidding, with not a hint of life. Suddenly,
as he stared, wondering, and Margarita stood quiet beside him, a long,
quavering bellow came from behind him.
"It is the cow," said Margarita reassuringly, as he whirled around,
"she is calling Caliban to milk her, I suppose."
Again the impatient, minor bellow rose on the air, and Roger perceived
that what he had carelessly passed over as a great sand dune was in
reality a square cottage built of sand, apparently, for it was
precisely the colour and texture of sand, sloping off in a succession
of outbuildings, just as the cliffs and dunes slope, windowless,
nearly, from that side at least, and offering only the anxious cow,
peering from the furthest outhouse, as evidence of life. Close up to
it on one side, the right, a great, cliff-like spur of rock shot up
and ran like a wall for fifty feet, then fell away gradually into the
sand of the beach which ran up to meet it; the cottage itself was
perched on the beach edge, and beyond it, on the left side, the
straggling grass began. They moved on toward this house, then, and as
they neared it a long, melancholy howl echoed the cow's lament, a howl
with a baying, mellow undertone that lingered on the morning air. For
it was honest morning now, a September morning, blowing wild-grapes
and sea sand and bayberry into Roger's nostrils. As he stared at the
house a great hound crept around the corner of it, baying
monotonously, but as he saw Margarita he left off and ran to her,
arching his brindled head. He was a Danish hound, beautifully brindled
and very massive. She fondled him quietly, smiling as he clumsily
threw his great paws about her waist, and pushed him down.
"I am very hungry," said Margarita abruptly, "I think I will have
Caliban bring me some warm milk."
She turned her direction slightly and made for the cow stall, and as
he stood by the door Roger saw that whatever the internal structure of
the building might be, it was certainly covered with rough sand.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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