Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty — John Shaqi
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
"Here is Caliban now," she added, and a loutish looking fellow,
small-eyed, heavy-lipped and shock-haired, appeared to rise out of the
ground before them, dangling a milk pail on his arm. At sight of
Margarita his jaw dropped, he shivered violently and appeared ready to
faint, but as she called encouragingly to him he mustered courage to
approach and feel of her skirt timidly. He was evidently feeble-minded
as well as dumb, for with a sort of croak he dropped the bucket and
began to dance clumsily up and down, snapping his fingers the while.
Plainly he had thought her gone for good and this was his
thanksgiving.
"Milk the cow, Caliban, I am thirsty," said Margarita impatiently,
after a moment of this, "and get me some bread. Make haste with it."
He started on a run for the door furthest from the cow stall and
appeared almost immediately with a large silver mug and a huge piece
torn from a loaf. Squatting beside the cow he balanced the mug between
his knees and deftly milked it full. She seized it, drained it
thirstily and began munching her bread, holding the mug out to him
again to be filled a second time. She bit great mouthfuls from the
loaf, like a child of four, and Roger watched her, half amused, half
irritated.
"You are not accustomed to the exercise of hospitality, I see," he
said finally, and as she looked at him over the silver mug
inquiringly, he explained.
"I have walked for more than an hour and I am hungry, too, Miss
Margarita," he said. "Won't you offer me anything to eat and drink?"
She shook her head doubtfully.
"I need this bread myself," she said, "and no one drinks from this cup
but me. I should not like it. If Caliban will get you another ..."
"Surely he will if you tell him to," Roger suggested mildly.
"Very well," she returned indifferently, "when he has finished
milking, I will," and she continued her meal, adding, "I do not think
he likes you, for he shows his teeth. He did that when the doctor came
to see my father."
I asked Margarita a year or two after this to describe for me how she
first entertained Roger: I had already a good idea of his initial
hospitality to her in the French restaurant. Here is her letter.
DEAREST JERRY:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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