The Iron Game: A Tale of the WarKeenan, Henry F. (Henry Francis)
History
The Iron Game: A Tale of the War
Keenan, Henry F. (Henry Francis)
United States -- History -- Civil War, 1861-1865 -- Fiction
The horizon to the zenith was full of shimmering star-points, Olympia,
with Jack, turned slowly toward the house, silent and not wholly sad.
Dick, in a low treble, could be heard just behind them, quoting
melancholy verses to Rosa; and the brother and sister returned slowly up
the dewy, odorous path. At the porch Rosa exclaimed, in surprise:
"I wonder where Pizarro is? I haven't seen him while we have been out.
It can't be possible he has followed Vincent! What shall we do if
he has?"
"Make Dick take his place. A terrier is sometimes as faithful as a
mastiff," Jack said, quickly.
"Oh! Miss Atterbury wants something with a bite, rather than a bark, and
a terrier wouldn't do," the boy answered.
"I want Pizarro. I shall never sleep a wink all night if he isn't here,"
Rosa said, in consternation; "he is better than a regiment of soldiers,
for he won't let a human being come near the house after the doors are
closed, not even the servants."
An expedition, calling upon Pizarro in many keys, set out and wandered
through the grounds, back to the quarters, to the gates leading to the
rose-fields, to the stable, but Pizarro was not to be found. Lights were
burning in the hall only when the four re-entered, and with a very grave
face Rosa bade the rest good-night.
CHAPTER XX.
A CATASTROPHE.
Rosedale had been a bed of thorns to Wesley Boone since his recovery. He
felt that he was an incongruous visitor among the rest, as a hawk might
feel in a dove-cote. He would have willingly returned to Richmond--even
at the risk of re-entering the prison--if Kate had not been on his
hands. The life of the place, the constant necessity of masking his
aversion to the Spragues, his detestation of Dick, the simple
merry-making and intimate amenities of such close quarters, tasked his
small art of dissimulation beyond even the most practiced powers. The
garment of duplicity was gossamer, he felt, after all, in such
atmosphere of loyalty and trust as surrounded him at Rosedale.
He knew that in the daily attrition and conventional intimacies of the
table, the drawing-room, or the promenade, the cloak covering his
resentful antipathy, his moral perversities, his thinly veiled
impatience, was worn to such thin shreds that eyes keen as Jack's must
see and know him as he was. What was hatefulest and most unendurable of
all was the bondage of truce in which the Atterburys held him. Wesley
was no coward, and he ached to meet Jack face to face, arm to arm, and
settle with that thoughtless insubordinate a rankling list of griefs
heaped up in moments of over-vivacious frankness. He would make Jack
smart for his arrogance, his insolence, his cursed condescension so soon
as they were back among the Caribees.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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