The Deliverance: A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco FieldsGlasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
General
The Deliverance: A Romance of the Virginia Tobacco Fields
Glasgow, Ellen Anderson Gholson
Tobacco farmers -- Fiction; Virginia -- Fiction
The boy looked at Carraway. "You tell him to come, sir," he
pleaded. His eyes were so like Fletcher's--small, sparkling,
changing from blue to brown--that the lawyer's glance lingered
upon the other's features, seeking some resemblance in them,
also. To his surprise he found absolutely none, the high,
blue-veined forehead beneath the chestnut hair, the straight,
delicate nose; the sensitive, almost effeminate curve of the
mouth, must have descended from the "worthless drab" whom he had
beheld in the severe white light of Fletcher's scorn. For the
first time it occurred to Carraway that the illumination had been
too intense.
"I'll tell him, certainly," he said quietly after a moment; "but
I don't promise that he'll come, you understand."
"Oh, I won't thank him," cried the boy eagerly. "It isn't for
that I want him--tell him so. Maria says he hates a fuss."
"I'll deliver your message word for word," responded the lawyer.
"Not only that, I'll add my own persuasion to it, though I fear I
have little influence with your neighbour."
"Tell him I beg him to come," insisted the boy, and the urgent
voice remained with Carraway throughout the day.
It was not until the afternoon, however, when he had tossed his
farewell handful of rice at the departing carriage and met
Maria's last disturbed look at the Hall, that he found time to
carry Will's request and Fletcher's check to Christopher Blake.
The girl had shown her single trace of emotion over the boy's
pillow, where she had shed a few furtive tears, and the thought
of this was with Carraway as he walked meditatively along the red
clay road, down the long curves of which he saw the carriage
rolling leisurely ahead of him. As a bride, Maria puzzled him no
less than she had done at their first meeting, and the riddle of
her personality he felt to be still hopelessly unsolved. Was it
merely repression of manner that annoyed him in her he
questioned, or was it, as he had once believed, the simple lack
of emotional power? Her studied speech, her conventional
courtesy, seemed to confirm the first impression she had made;
then her dark, troubled gaze and the sullen droop of her mouth
returned to give the lie to what he could but feel to be a
possible misjudgment. In the end, he concluded wisely enough
that, like the most of us, she was probably but plastic matter
for the mark of circumstance--that her development would be,
after all, according to the events she was called upon to face.
The possibility that Destiny, which is temperament, should have
already selected her as one of those who come into their
spiritual heritage only through defeat, did not enter into the
half-humorous consideration with which he now regarded her.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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