Books Should Be Free Loyal Books Free Public Domain Audiobooks & eBook Downloads |
|
The Hermit and the Wild Woman By: Edith Wharton (1862-1937) |
---|
![]()
BY EDITH WHARTON
NEW YORK
MCMVIII
TABLE OF CONTENTS I The Hermit and the Wild Woman II The Last Asset III In Trust IV The Pretext V The Verdict VI The Pot Boiler VII The Best Man
THE HERMIT AND THE WILD WOMAN
I THE Hermit lived in a cave in the hollow of a hill. Below him was a
glen, with a stream in a coppice of oaks and alders, and on the farther
side of the valley, half a day's journey distant, another hill, steep
and bristling, which raised aloft a little walled town with Ghibelline
swallow tails notched against the sky. When the Hermit was a lad, and lived in the town, the crenellations of
the walls had been square topped, and a Guelf lord had flown his
standard from the keep. Then one day a steel coloured line of
men at arms rode across the valley, wound up the hill and battered in
the gates. Stones and Greek fire rained from the ramparts, shields
clashed in the streets, blade sprang at blade in passages and
stairways, pikes and lances dripped above huddled flesh, and all the
still familiar place was a stew of dying bodies. The boy fled from it
in horror. He had seen his father go forth and not come back, his
mother drop dead from an arquebuse shot as she leaned from the platform
of the tower, his little sister fall with a slit throat across the
altar steps of the chapel and he ran, ran for his life, through the
slippery streets, over warm twitching bodies, between legs of soldiers
carousing, out of the gates, past burning farmsteads, trampled
wheat fields, orchards stripped and broken, till the still woods
received him and he fell face down on the unmutilated earth. He had no wish to go back. His longing was to live hidden from life. Up
the hillside he found a hollow in the rock, and built before it a porch
of boughs bound together with withies. He fed on nuts and roots, and on
trout which he caught with his hands under the stones in the stream. He
had always been a quiet boy, liking to sit at his mother's feet and
watch the flowers grow on her embroidery frame, while the chaplain read
aloud the histories of the Desert Fathers from a great silver clasped
volume. He would rather have been bred a clerk and scholar than a
knight's son, and his happiest moments were when he served mass for the
chaplain in the early morning, and felt his heart flutter up and up
like a lark, up and up till it was lost in infinite space and
brightness. Almost as happy were the hours when he sat beside the
foreign painter who came over the mountains to paint the chapel, and
under whose brush celestial faces grew out of the rough wall as if he
had sown some magic seed which flowered while you watched it. With the
appearing of every gold rimmed face the boy felt he had won another
friend, a friend who would come and bend above him at night, keeping
off the ugly visions which haunted his pillow visions of the gnawing
monsters about the church porch, evil faced bats and dragons, giant
worms and winged bristling hogs, a devil's flock who crept down from
the stone work at night and hunted the souls of sinful children through
the town. With the growth of the picture the bright mailed angels
thronged so close about the boy's bed that between their interwoven
wings not a snout or a claw could force itself; and he would turn over
sighing on his pillow, which felt as soft and warm as if it had been
lined with down from those sheltering pinions. All these thoughts came back to him now in his cave on the cliff side.
The stillness seemed to enclose him with wings, to fold him away from
life and evil. He was never restless or discontented. He loved the long
silent empty days, each one as like the other as pearls in a
well matched string. Above all he liked to have time to save his soul.
He had been greatly troubled about his soul since a band of Flagellants
had passed through the town, exhibiting their gaunt scourged bodies and
exhorting the people to turn from soft raiment and delicate fare, from
marriage and money getting and dancing and games, and think only how
they might escape the devil's talons and the great red blaze of hell... Continue reading book >>
|
Genres for this book |
---|
Literature |
Short stories |
eBook links |
---|
Wikipedia – Edith Wharton |
Wikipedia – The Hermit and the Wild Woman |
eBook Downloads | |
---|---|
ePUB eBook • iBooks for iPhone and iPad • Nook • Sony Reader |
Kindle eBook • Mobi file format for Kindle |
Read eBook • Load eBook in browser |
Text File eBook • Computers • Windows • Mac |
Review this book |
---|