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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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Support the Monkey! Tell All your Friends and Teachers |
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78 It was the tone she always heeded, but she cowered down in her seat, repeating vehemently: “No, no, no!” “Get up!” “Why?” “I want to sit in front.” “No, no! How can you steer in front?” “I don’t have to. We’ll follow the track.” They spoke in smothered whispers, as though the night were listening. “Get up! Get up!” he urged her; but she kept on repeating: “Why do you want to sit in front?” “Because I-because I want to feel you holding me,” he stammered, and dragged her to her feet. The answer seemed to satisfy her, or else she yielded to the power of his voice. He bent down, feeling in the obscurity for the glassy slide worn by preceding coasters, and placed the runners carefully between its edges. She waited while he seated himself with crossed legs in the front of the sled; then she crouched quickly down at his back and clasped her arms about him. Her breath in his neck set him shuddering again, and he almost sprang from his seat. But in a flash he remembered the alternative. She was right: this was better than parting. He leaned back and drew her mouth to his... Just as they started he heard the sorrel’s whinny again, and the familiar wistful call, and all the confused images it brought with it, went with him down the first reach of the road. Half-way down there was a sudden drop, then a rise, and after that another long delirious descent. As they took wing for this it seemed to him that they were flying indeed, flying far up into the cloudy night, with Starkfield immeasurably below them, falling away like a speck in space... Then the big elm shot up ahead, lying in wait for them at the bend of the road, and he said between his teeth: “We can fetch it; I know we can fetch it-” As they flew toward the tree Mattie pressed her arms tighter, and her blood seemed to be in his veins. Once or twice the sled swerved a little under them. He slanted his body to keep it headed for the elm, repeating to himself again and again: “I know we can fetch it”; and little phrases she had spoken ran through his head and danced before him on the air. The big tree loomed bigger and closer, and as they bore down on it he thought: “It’s waiting for us: it seems to know.” But suddenly his wife’s face, with twisted monstrous lineaments, thrust itself between him and his goal, and he made an instinctive movement to brush it aside. The sled swerved in response, but he righted it again, kept it straight, and drove down on the black projecting mass. There was a last instant when the air shot past him like millions of fiery wires; and then the elm... The sky was still thick, but looking straight up he saw a single star, and tried vaguely to reckon whether it were Sirius, or-or-The effort tired him too much, and he closed his |
