So they sleep.
* * * * *
She has cooked their breakfast.
They walk, a man and a woman, down the steep street to work. A child
between them, holding the hand of a man.
They are grey, they are sullen. They are caught up in the sullen strife
of their relentless life. There is no let to them. Time is a barren
field with no horizon.
FRENCH EVA[9]
By KATHARINE FULLERTON GEROULD
(From _Scribner's Magazine_)
The real _dramatis personae_ are three (for Schneider was only a
sign-post pointing): Follet, the remittance-man, Stires, and French Eva.
Perhaps I should include Ching Po--but I hate to. I was the man with his
hands in his pockets who saw the thing steadily and saw it whole--to
filch a windy phrase. I liked Stires, who had no social standing, even
on Naapu, and disliked Follet, who had all the standing there was.
Follet dined with magnates; and, believe me, the magnates of Naapu were
a multicolored lot. A man might have been made by copra or by pearls--or
by blackbirding. We were a plutocracy; which means that so long as a man
had the house and the drinks, you asked no questions. The same rule
holds--allowing for their dizzier sense of figures--in New York and
Chicago. On the whole, I think we were more sensible.
Pages:
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234