Robert W. Chambers

Blue-Bird Weather

Warsaw 2022

Contents

I

II

III

IV

I

It was now almost too dark to distinguish objects; duskier and vaguer became the flat world of marshes, set here and there with cypress and bounded only by far horizons; and at last land and water disappeared behind the gathered curtains of the night. There was no sound from the waste except the wind among the withered reeds and the furrowing splash of wheel and hoof over the submerged causeway.

The boy who was driving had scarcely spoken since he strapped Marche’s gun cases and valise to the rear of the rickety wagon at the railroad station. Marche, too, remained silent, preoccupied with his own reflections. Wrapped in his fur-lined coat, arms folded, he sat doubled forward, feeling the Southern swamp-chill busy with his bones. Now and then he was obliged to relight his pipe, but the cold bit at his fingers, and he hurried to protect himself again with heavy gloves.

The small, rough hands of the boy who was driving were naked, and finally Marche mentioned it, asking the child if he were not cold.

“No, sir,” he said, with a colorless brevity that might have been shyness or merely the dull indifference of the very poor, accustomed to discomfort.

“Don’t you feel cold at all?” persisted Marche kindly.

“No, sir.”

“I suppose you are hardened to this sort of weather?”

“Yes, sir.”

By the light of a flaming match, Marche glanced sideways at him as he drew his pipe into a glow once more, and for an instant the boy’s gray eyes flickered toward his in the flaring light. Then darkness masked them both again.

“Are you Mr. Herold’s son?” inquired the young man.

“Yes, sir,” almost sullenly.

“How old are you?”

“Eleven.”

“You’re a big boy, all right. I have never seen your father. He is at the clubhouse, no doubt.”

“Yes, sir,” scarcely audible.

“And you and he live there all alone, I suppose?”

“Yes, sir.” A moment later the boy added jerkily, “And my sister,” as though truth had given him a sudden nudge.

“Oh, you have a sister, too?”

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This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.

This is a free sample. Please purchase full version of the book to continue.