Tales of a Cruel Country
TALES OF A CRUEL COUNTRY
BY GERALD CUMBERLAND Author of “Set Down in Malice”
NEW YORK BRENTANO’S PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1919, by BRENTANO’S All rights reserved PRINTED IN THE U. S. A. TO FREDERICK NOEL BYRON
Then came sudden alarms; hurryings to and fro; trepidations of innumerable fugitives, I knew not whether from the good cause or the bad; darkness and lights; tempest and human faces; and at last, with the sense that all was lost, female forms, and the features that were worth all the world to me; and but a moment allowed—and clasped hands, with heart-breaking partings, and then—everlasting farewells! and, with a sigh such as the caves of hell sighed when the incestuous mother uttered the abhorred name of Death, the sound was reverberated—everlasting farewells! and again, and yet again reverberated—everlasting farewells!
De Quincey
To Frederick Noël Byron
THE blossom of the lilac-tree gave a pulp-like sound as it thwacked against her window, and curiously named Stephanie Miniati smiled to herself as she turned in her bed and, placing a hand on her rounded breast, closed her eyes in order that she might see Orosdi. For not only did Orosdi dwell in her heart, but his big, black eyes burned in her brain and lit it, and his sinewy hands were ever about her throat in love-cruelty. She closed her eyes and, in imagination, summoned him to her chamber. He came: not hurriedly, as an anxious lover moves, but with long, lazy strides, his baby-face all smiles, his selfish, rounded chin thrust a little forward. He stood by her side and then, in imagination, she made him bend down suddenly and kiss her shoulder....
She sighed in a luxury of love, and “Orosdi! Or-os-di!” she murmured. And she thought for the thousandth time: “I am the most beautiful girl in Ajvatli, and Orosdi is the most handsome lad of all who walk on the plain of Langaza.”
But as yet she was only half awake, and in her semi-consciousness had forgotten her other lover who now lay in the church cemetery on the high land above Ajvatli.
