The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 21Stevenson, Robert Louis
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The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition, Vol. 21
Stevenson, Robert Louis
English literature -- 19th century
All day the wind continued; and I sat in my room and made a feint of
reading, or walked up and down, and listened to the riot overhead. Night
fell, and I had not so much as a candle. I began to long for some
society, and stole down to the court. It was now plunged in the blue of
the first darkness; but the recess was redly lighted by the fire. The
wood had been piled high, and was crowned by a shock of flames, which
the draught of the chimney brandished to and fro. In this strong and
shaken brightness the Senora continued pacing from wall to wall with
disconnected gestures, clasping her hands, stretching forth her arms,
throwing back her head as in appeal to heaven. In these disordered
movements the beauty and grace of the woman showed more clearly; but
there was a light in her eye that struck on me unpleasantly; and when I
had looked on a while in silence, and seemingly unobserved, I turned
tail as I had come, and groped my way back again to my own chamber.
By the time Felipe brought my supper and lights, my nerve was utterly
gone; and, had the lad been such as I was used to seeing him, I should
have kept him (even by force, had that been necessary) to take off the
edge from my distasteful solitude. But on Felipe, also, the wind had
exercised its influence. He had been feverish all day; now that the
night had come he was fallen into a low and tremulous humour that
reacted on my own. The sight of his scared face, his starts and pallors
and sudden hearkenings, unstrung me; and when he dropped and broke a
dish, I fairly leaped out of my seat.
"I think we are all mad to-day," said I, affecting to laugh.
"It is the black wind," he replied dolefully. "You feel as if you must
do something, and you don't know what it is."
I noted the aptness of the description; but, indeed, Felipe had
sometimes a strange felicity in rendering into words the sensations of
the body. "And your mother, too," said I; "she seems to feel this
weather much. Do you not fear she may be unwell?"
He stared at me a little, and then said, "No," almost defiantly; and the
next moment, carrying his hand to his brow, cried out lamentably on the
wind and the noise that made his head go round like a millwheel. "Who
can be well?" he cried; and, indeed, I could only echo his question, for
I was disturbed enough myself.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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