Labrador (N.L.) -- Fiction; London (England) -- Fiction; Love stories, English
The day after was Sunday, and Louis Napoleon would not look at the
sledges or packing. Instead he held a kind of religious service which
consisted partly in making Trafford read aloud out of a very oily old
New Testament he produced, a selected passage from the book of
Corinthians, and partly in moaning rather than singing several hymns. He
was rather disappointed that they did not join in with him. In the
afternoon he heated some water, went into the tent with it and it would
appear partially washed his face. In the evening, after they had supped,
he discussed religion, being curious by this time about their beliefs
and procedure.
He spread his mental and spiritual equipment before them very artlessly.
Their isolation and their immense concentration on each other had made
them sensitive to personal quality, and they listened to the broken
English and the queer tangential starts into new topics of this dirty
mongrel creature with the keenest appreciation of its quality. It was
inconsistent, miscellaneous, simple, honest, and human. It was as
touching as the medley in the pocket of a dead schoolboy. He was
superstitious and sceptical and sensual and spiritual, and very, very
earnest. The things he believed, even if they were just beliefs about
the weather or drying venison or filling pipes, he believed with
emotion. He flushed as he told them. For all his intellectual muddle
they felt he knew how to live honestly and die if need be very finely.
He was more than a little distressed at their apparent ignorance of the
truths of revealed religion as it is taught in the Moravian schools upon
the coast, and indeed it was manifest that he had had far more careful
and infinitely more sincere religious teaching than either Trafford or
Marjorie. For a time the missionary spirit inspired him, and then he
quite forgot his solicitude for their conversion in a number of
increasingly tall anecdotes about hunters and fishermen, illustrating at
first the extreme dangers of any departure from a rigid Sabbatarianism,
but presently becoming just stories illustrating the uncertainty of
life. Thence he branched off to the general topic of life upon the coast
and the relative advantages of "planter" and fisherman.
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