Adirondack Mountains (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Hotels -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction; Love stories; Siblings -- Fiction
One Sunday, Eve, from her window--she was rather a lazy girl that
Sunday--witnessed the following departures from the camp. Sam Langham
and Mary in a guide boat, with fishing-tackle and an immense hamper
which looked like lunch. Herring and Phyllis could be seen hoisting the
sails on the knockabout. Herring had never sailed a boat and was
prepared to master that simple art at once. Lee and Renier were girt for
the mountain. Renier appeared to have a Flobert rifle in semihiding
under his coat, and it was to be feared that if he saw a partridge, he
would open fire on it, close season though it was. He and Lee would
justify this illegal act by cooking the bird for their lunch. Gay
commandeered the _Streak_ and departed at high speed toward Carrytown.
She had in one hand a sheet of blue-striped paper, folded. It resembled
a cablegram. And Eve thought that it must be of a very private nature,
or else Gay would have telephoned it to the Western Union office,
instead of carrying it by hand. The next to depart from the camp was
Arthur. He moved dreamily in a northwesterly direction, accompanied by
Uncas, the chipmunk, and Wow, the dog. Other guests made departures.
All of which Eve, half dressed and looking lazily from her window,
lazily noted, remarking that for her Sunday was a day of rest and that
she thanked Heaven for it. And she did not feel any differently until
Maud and the Carolinians walked out on the float and began to pack a
guide boat for the day.
Then her lazy, complacent feelings departed, and were succeeded by a
sudden, wide-awake surge of self-pity. She felt like Cinderella. Nobody
had asked her to go anywhere or do anything, and nobody had even thought
of doing so. When she was dead they would gather round her coffin and
remember that they hadn't asked her to go anywhere or do anything, and
they would be very sorry and ashamed and they would say what a nice girl
she had been, and how she had always tried to give everybody a good
time.
Between laughter and tears and mortification, Eve finished dressing, set
her lovely jaw, and went out into the delicious, cool calm of the
mountain morning. She could still hear the voices of many of the
departing ones; and the rattling and creaking of the knockabout's
blocks and rigging. She heard Herring say to Phyllis: "I think it would
be better if I could make the boom go out on this side, but I can't."
Phyllis's answer was a cool, contented laugh. It was as if she said:
"Hang the boom! _We're_ here!"
Have you ever had the feeling that you would like to board a swift boat,
head for the open sea, and never come back? Or that you could plunge
into some boundless, trackless forest and keep straight on until you
were lost, and died (beautifully and painlessly), and were covered with
beautiful leaves by little birds?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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