Grey The Shepherd of Guadaloupe

1. Auflage 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5183-1860-3
Verlag: Krill Press
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: 0 - No protection

E-Book, Englisch, 323 Seiten

Zane Grey (1872 - 1939) was an American author best known for writing Western novels, with his most famous being Riders of the Purple Sage. That work is widely considered the greatest Western ever written, and Grey remains one of the most famous authors of the genre. Grey also wrote many other novels on fishing and baseball.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Grey, Zane

Leseproben

CHAPTER TWO
.................. “Reckon he’s fainted, Miss.” The voice probably came from the porter. “He is very white.” This was evidently from a girl. “Are you sure it’s the same fellow, Ginia?” “I know it is.” That voice had a rich note that Forrest recognized. It had power to raise him from his lethargy, but he decided he would like staying unconscious a little while longer. “Miss, he was fetched in a wheel chair,” said the porter. “Sho I had all I could do with his luggage, an’ I reckoned whoever fetched him would help him aboard. But he got on alone, an’ I seen him saggin’ here too late.” “Mother,” interposed the first girl, “Ginia declares she saw this young man on the Berengaria.” “Indeed! Who is he?” queried the mother. “I don’t know,” answered the girl Forrest knew. “But I do know he’s a wounded soldier.” “Who told you that, my dear?” “Anyone could have seen. Besides, he told me so...He was alone on the ship...Porter, is there anyone with him now?” “No, Miss, I’s sho there ain’t. It was a red-cap who fetched him in.” “Bring me a towel wet with cold water,” returned the girl called Ginia. “Ethel, get your mother’s smelling-salts, in case I need something stronger.” Forrest felt some one brush his knees and evidently sit down opposite him. Then a soft warm hand touched his cheek, and that gentle contact shot all through him. “Like ice,” she whispered. “Poor fellow! Wouldn’t it be awful if he were dead?” exclaimed the girl who was probably Ethel. “Hush! Suppose he heard you!...Ethel, don’t stand there like a ninny. Go back to your mother...Thanks, porter. You might get another pillow.” Then Forrest felt the gentle pressure of a cold wet cloth upon his brow and temples, and the touch of light fingers smoothing back his hair. A most unaccountable sensation assailed him. This was the girl who had given him the tiny bouquet of violets, which he had still in his possession. What chance had brought them together again and now on a train going west? “He doesn’t come to,” whispered the girl to some one near. “I wonder if there’s a doctor aboard.” Forrest thought it was quite time he was recovering consciousness. Therefore to the best of his ability he imitated a motion-picture actress coming out of a trance, and then opened his eyes. Some one gasped, but it was not the girl bending toward him. She drew back, a little startled. Then the gravity of her face relaxed. “There! You’ve come to. We—I had begun to fear you never would...You fainted, you know.” “Very good of you to trouble—about me,” he replied, and his unsteadiness was not feigned. “You must have hurried too fast.” “Yes. You see, I didn’t want to miss this train...Another whole day.” A blond head popped up from behind the seat, where manifestly it had been very close indeed. And a pretty girl asked, solicitously: “Ginia, is he all right?” “He has recovered, at any rate.” “Thank you. I think the fact that I’m on this train will make me all right—presently,” replied Forrest. “I am very glad,” said the girl, soberly, and sat down opposite him. The porter brought another pillow and slipped it under Forrest’s shoulders. “Anythin’ mo’ I can get you, boss?” Forrest shook his head. The girl handed the towel to the porter, and moved as if to rise. But she did not carry out her impulse. Forrest was gazing into her eyes, which evidently confused her, yet held her there for the moment. Her eyes were deep dark violet, wide apart, and somehow they struck a memory chord in Forrest’s uncertain mind. Just now they were troubled. “Was it on the ship—I saw you?” he asked, uncertainly. “Yes.” “Anywhere else?” “Not that I know of.” Slipping his hand inside his breast pocket, he drew forth the faded violets and exposed them in his palm. “I found these pinned to my steamer rug. Did you put them there?” She blushed rosy red. “I!...Why do you imagine I did it?” “There was only one other person who could have been kind enough. He was an old man and never would have thought of it...Did you?” “But why do you want to know?” “I’d like to know truly that you did it, instead of some stranger.” “I am a stranger, too.” “You are, yes. But then you are not. I can’t explain. I believe, though, I’ve seen you somewhere...I’d been nine months in a hospital. Missing months before that. God only knows where...The first time my frozen heart seemed to soften was when I saw those violets...I laid them on my pillow—and cried myself to sleep on them...Absurd for a soldier! But the iron in me is gone...Now will you tell me?” “Something prompted me,” she answered, swiftly. “I don’t know what. I resisted the impulse...But then I did it. And now I’m very, very glad.” She arose, somewhat confusedly, and backed into the aisle. Forrest felt the intensity of his gaze and that it fascinated her. There seemed nothing more to be said in words. “I hope you rest and soon feel stronger,” she said, and left him. Forrest thought it would be well to do just that thing, if he were ever to reach Las Vegas. Yet an inner conviction, more stable and determined today, assured him that such hope was no longer vain. He relaxed the tension which had upheld him, and closing his eyes, went back to the old ghastly strife with his pangs. Always he paid for exertion, and that meant of emotion as well as of muscle. But outworn nature took a hand, and his surrender to reality was only a preamble to sleep. When he awoke the sun was on the other side of the car. Aware at once of relief, Forrest sat up. The flat green country and the wide farms, with their straight fences, told him Illinois was fast passing by. The blond girl came down the aisle with an elderly woman, presumably her mother, and she smiled at Forrest. “You had a long nap. I hope you feel better.” “I do, thank you.” “The porter was going to wake you—for lunch, he said—but we drove him off.” “Thank you. I don’t need much to eat and it’s easy to get. But sleep is difficult. I guess I was just about all in.” “You don’t look so—so bad now,” she concluded, with naïve encouragement. The other girl was not in evidence. Forrest leaned on the window-sill and watched the flying landscape, scarcely believing that at last he was on the way home. There had come a break in his bitterness. The broad brown and green acres thrilled him. He had never appreciated his country. If he only could have had everything to do over again! There were horses in the meadows, flocks of blackbirds flying in clouds over the wooded creek bottoms. The lanes, recently muddy, stretched for leagues across the land, empty of vehicles clear to the horizon. How different in France! But America was endless and boundless. Wait till he crossed the Mississippi—then France could have been set down anywhere and lost! Some one addressed him. Turning, he looked up into the bright face of the girl who had been so kind to him. “You are better?” she asked, gladly. “Yes, indeed,” he replied, and thanked her for her solicitude. “Oh, but you had me scared!” she exclaimed. “Are you really as—as ill as you made me believe?” “How ill was that?” asked Forrest, smiling up at her. The wholesomeness and artlessness of her drew him out of himself. “When I first asked if you were a wounded soldier you said—’all that’s left of me.’” “Well, isn’t it true?” “I—I can’t tell,” she returned, the glad light fading. “You don’t look ill or weak now—only pale.” Here she sat down opposite him and clasped her hands over her knees. She had changed her dark traveling dress to one of lighter hue, and the effect was magical. “Truly, I hoped you were just spoofing—that day on the ship. This morning, indeed, I noticed you were a very sick boy...Still, when I saw you sitting up just now, I hoped again——” “Boy!—I am twenty-eight,” he interrupted, in pain that her kindness made acute. He faced again to the window, biting his lip. “And my doctors give me perhaps a month—to live.” There ensued what Forrest felt to be a very long silence. He could not control remorse. But her youth, her abounding health, stung him into a revolt at...