The 13th District: A Story of a CandidateWhitlock, Brand
General
The 13th District: A Story of a Candidate
Whitlock, Brand
Didactic fiction; Elections -- Fiction; Political campaigns -- Fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
The heavy feeling that oppressed Garwood in church, the chill that
checked the felicity he felt himself now entitled to, remained with
him. At times he would forget and become happy, but as soon as he was
conscious that he was happy, he would remember that there was some
reason why he should not be happy, and then his memory would swiftly
bring back to him the thing he had done. By afternoon this constant
recurrence irritated him, and he half pitied himself, thinking it
unjust that he should be thus annoyed when he was so anxious to be
contented and at peace, especially after all the sacrifices he had made
to his mother's wishes during the last sixteen hours. And so when he
set out in the clear, shining afternoon to go to Emily, he resolved
to throw off this feeling; to cast it from him; to have done with it
for all time. Physically he expressed this resolve by the fling of his
head, and the way he set his shoulders back, holding them high with the
will to be all he wished to be.
The house-maid was out for her Sunday afternoon holiday, and Emily
herself swung back the door in answer to Garwood's ring. The girl
smiled radiantly when she saw him and, with a lover's pretense about
her spiritual prescience of all his movements, said she knew it was he
at the door. He told her that she had never looked so beautiful before,
and there was much of truth in this, for she wore, with an effect of
having shown it at church for the first time that morning, a new fall
suit, the skirt of which vouched for the jacket that had been laid
aside for the greater comfort of a blue silk bodice, which billowed
modestly at her young breast, giving her an air of slightness and
accentuating the delicacy of her whole person. Her eyes and cheeks were
bright with health and her lover's coming, so that her natural color,
which made the wearing of dark costumes an easy thing for her, was
thereby heightened.
In the moment they lingered in the hall, she laid her soft hands on his
shoulders, reaching up to him with a smile of propitiation to say:
"Dade's here."
She was pleased when he frowned his jealous disapproval.
"How long's she going to stay?" he said bluntly.
"Not long," she replied. "She won't stay when she knows you're here.
Why didn't you let me know you were coming?"
"I didn't know it myself," he said. "I came on a telegram from Rankin,
and I ought to go right out again, only--I had to stay and see you."
She purred an instant in the embrace into which he drew her and then
quickly hushed him by pointing toward the drawing-room.
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