Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the FutureHamilton, Cicely
Science
Theodore Savage: A Story of the Past or the Future
Hamilton, Cicely
Apocalyptic fiction; End of the world -- Fiction; Regression (Civilization) -- Fiction; Science fiction
“Wrong again,” he rejoined, amused by the contempt in her voice. She was
still contemptuous when he opened his bag and tossed her a dingy bundle;
but as she disentangled it, saw lace and embroidery, she brightened
suddenly and knelt down to examine in the firelight; while the sight of
the cracked hand-glass brought an instant “Oh!” followed by intent
contemplation and much patting and twisting of hair.
Theodore dished supper while she sat and pondered her reflection; and
even while she ate hungrily she had eyes and thoughts for nothing but
her new possessions. Some were what he had taken them to
be—underclothes, for the most part of an ordinary pattern; but mingled
with the plainer linen articles were one or two more decorative, lace
collars and the like, and it was on these, dingy as they were, that she
fell with delight that was open and audible. He watched her curiously
when, for the first time since he had known her, he saw her mouth widen
in a smile. She was no longer inert, the sullen, lumpish Ada, she was
critical, interested, alive; she fingered her treasures, she smoothed
them and made guesses at their price when new; she held them up, now
this way, now that, for his admiration and her own. Finally, while
Theodore stretched his tired length by the camp fire, she ran off to her
shelter for a broken scrap of comb; and when he looked up, a few minutes
later, she was posing self-consciously before the hand-glass, with hair
newly twisted and a dirty scrap of lace round her neck.... She was
another woman as she sat with her rags arranged to show her new
frippery; tilting the hand-mirror this way and that and twitching now at
the collar and now at her straying ends of hair.
Lying stretched on an arm by the fire, he watched her little feminine
antics, amused and taken out of himself; realizing how seldom, till that
moment, he had thought of her as a woman, how nearly she had seemed to
him an animal only, a creature to be guided and fed; and parrying her
eager and insistent demand to be taken to the house where the treasure
had been found, that she might see if it contained any more. He had no
desire to spoil her pleasure in her finery by the gruesome tale of the
manner of its finding; hence, in spite of a curiosity made manifest in
coaxing, he held to his refusal stubbornly.... The house was a long way
off, he told her—much further than she would care to tramp; then, as she
still persisted, maintaining her readiness even for a lengthy
expedition, he went on to fiction and explained that the house was in a
dangerous condition—knocked about, ruinous, might fall at any moment—and
he was not going to say where it was, for her own sake, lest she should
be tempted to the peril of an entry.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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