You Never Know Your Luck; being the story of a matrimonial deserter. Volume 2.

This eBook was produced by David Widger
By Gilbert Parker
The stillness of a summer's day in Prairie Land has all the characteristics of music. That is not so paradoxical as it seems. The effect of some music is to produce a divine quiescence of the senses, a suspension of motion and aggressive life; to reduce existence to mere pulsation. It was this kind of feeling which pervaded that region of sentient being when Shiel Crozier told his story. The sounds that sprinkled the general stillness were in themselves sleepy notes of the pervasive music of somnolent nature—the sough of the pine at the door, the murmur of insect life, the low, thudding beat of the steam-thresher out of sight hard by, the purring of the cat in the arms of Kitty Tynan as, with fascinated eyes, she listened to a man tell the tale of a life as distant from that which she lived as she was from Eve.
She felt more awed than curious as the tale went on; it even seemed to her she was listening to a theme beyond her sphere, like some shameless eavesdropper at the curtains of a secret ceremonial. Once or twice she looked at her mother and at the Young Doctor, as though to reassure herself that she was not a vulgar intruder. It was far more impressive to her, and to the Young Doctor too, than the scene at the Logan Trial when a man was sentenced to death. It was strangely magnetic, this tale of a man's existence; and the clock which sounded so loud on the mantelpiece, as it mechanically ticked off the time, seemed only part of some mysterious machinery of life. Once a dove swept down upon the window-sill, and, peering in, filled one of the pauses in the recital with its deep contralto note, and then fled like a small blue cloud into the wide and—as it seemed—everlasting peace beyond the doorway.
There was nothing at all between themselves and the far sky-line save little clumps of trees here and there, little clusters of buildings and houses—no visible animal life. Everything conspired to give a dignity in keeping with the drama of failure being unfolded in the commonplace home of the widow Tynan. Yet the home too had its dignity. The engineer father had had tastes, and he had insisted on plain, unfigured curtains and wallpaper and carpets, when carpets were used; and though his wife had at first protested against the unfigured carpets as more difficult to keep clean and as showing the dirt too easily, she had come to like the one-colour scheme, and in that respect her home had an individuality rare in her surroundings.