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The Prodigal Returns By: Lilian Staveley (1878?-1928) |
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By Lilian Staveley
The Author of "The Golden Fountain" and "The Romance of the
Soul"
London
John M. Watkins
21 Cecil Court, Charing Cross Road, W.C. 2
1921
CONTENTS Part I. 7
Part II. 63
Part III. 81
Part IV. 102
Part V. 151 PART I Sunshine and a garden path . . . flowers . . . the face and neck and
bosom of the nurse upon whose heart I lay, and her voice telling me
that she must leave me, that we must part, and immediately after
anguish blotting out the sunshine, the flowers, the face, the voice.
This is my first recollection of Life the pain of love. I was two
years old. Nothing more for two years and then the picture of a pond and my
baby brother floating on it, whilst with agonised hands I seized his
small white coat and held him fast. And then a meadow full of long, deep grass and summer flowers,
and I industriously picking buttercups into a tiny petticoat to take to
cook, "to make the butter with," I said. And then a table spread for tea. Our nurses, my two brothers, and
myself. Angry words and screaming baby voices, a knife thrown by
my little brother. Rage and hate. And then a wedding, and I a bridesmaid, aged five years the church,
the altar, and great awe, and afterwards a long white table, white
flowers, and a white Bride. Grown men on either side of
me smilingly delightful, tempting me with sweets and cakes and wine,
and a new strange interest rising in me like a little flood of
exultation the joy of the world, and the first faint breath of the
mystery of sex. Then came winters of travel. Sunshine and mimosa, olive trees
against an azure sky. Climbing winding, stony paths between green
terraces, tulips and anemones and vines; white sunny walls and
lizards; green frogs and deep wells fringed around with maidenhair.
Mountains and a sea of lapis blue, and early in the mornings from
this lapis lake a great red sun would rise upon a sky of molten gold.
In the rooms so near me were my darling brothers, from whom I
often had to part. Beauty and Joy, and Love and Pain these made
up life. At ten I twice narrowly escaped death. From Paris we were to take
the second or later half of the train to Marseilles. Late the night
before my father suddenly said, "I have changed my mind; I feel we
must go by the first train." This was with some difficulty arranged. On reaching an immense bridge across a deep ravine I suddenly
became acutely aware that the bridge was about to give way. In a
terrible state of alarm I called out this fearful fact to my family. I
burst into tears. I suffered agonies. My mother scolded me, and
when we safely reached the other side of the bridge I was severely
taken to task for my behaviour. The bridge broke with the next train
over it the train in which we should have been. Some four hundred
people perished. It was the most terrible railway disaster that had
ever occurred in France. A few weeks later, death came nearer still. Having escaped from our
tutor, with a party of other children we ran to two great reservoirs to
fish for frogs. Laughing and talking and full of childish joy, we
fished there for an hour, when all at once I was impelled, under an
extraordinary sense of pressure, to call out, "If anyone falls into the
water, no one must jump in to save them, but must immediately run
to those long sticks" (I had never noticed them until I spoke) "and
draw one out and hold it to whoever has fallen in." I spoke
automatically, and felt as much surprised as my companions that I
should speak of such a thing. Within five minutes I had fallen in myself. My brother remembered
my words, but before he could reach me with the stick I was under
the water for the third and last time. It was all that they could do to
drag my weight up to the ledge, for the water was a yard below it.
Had my brother jumped in, as he said he most surely would have
done had I not forewarned him, we must both have been drowned,
for they would have had neither the strength nor the time to pull us
both out alive... Continue reading book >>
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