Flower of the Gorse E-Book

Louis Tracy

• Herausgeber: Louis Tracy
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

Louis Tracy (1863 - 1928) was a British journalist, and prolific writer of fiction. He used the pseudonyms Gordon Holmes and Robert Fraser, which were at times shared with M. P. Shiel, a collaborator from the start of the twentieth century. He was born in Liverpool to a well-to-do middle-class family. At first he was educated at home and then at the French Seminary at Douai. Around 1884 he became a reporter for a local paper - 'The Northern Echo' at Darlington, circulating in parts of Durham and North Yorkshire]; later he worked for papers in Cardiff and Allahabad. During 1892-1894 he was closely associated with Arthur Harmsworth, in 'The Sun' and 'The Evening News and Post' (font: Wikipedia)

Leseprobe

Flower of the Gorse

Louis Tracy

CONTENTS

I The Tower and the Well

II The Feast of Sainte Barbe

III The Wreck

IV The Home-coming

V The Lifting of the Veil

VI A Lull

VII Mischief

VIII The Tightening of the Net

IX Showing How Harvey Raymond Began the Attack

X Madeleine's Flight

XI Mutterings of the Storm

XII Wherein both the Reef and Mr. Raymond Yield Information

XIII Showing How Tollemache Took Charge

XIV A Breton Reckoning

CHAPTER I

THE TOWER AND THE WELL

"O, la, la! See, then, the best of good luck for each one of us this year!"

Although Mere Pitou's rotund body, like Falstaff's, was fat and scant o' breath, and the Pilgrims' Way was steep and rocky, some reserve of energy enabled her to clap her hands and scream the tidings of high fortune when the notes of a deep-toned bell pealed from an alp still hidden among the trees.

Three girls, fifty paces higher up the path, halted when they heard that glad cryand, indeed, who would not give ear to such augury?

"Why should the clang of a bell foretell good luck, Mother?" cried Barbe, the youngest, seventeen that September day, and a true Breton maid, with eyes like sloes, and cheeks the tint of ripe russet apples, and full red lips ever ready to smile shyly, revealing the big, white, even teeth of a peasant.

"Mother" signaled that explanations must await a more opportune moment.

"Madame Pitou can't utter another word," laughed Yvonne, the tallest girl of the trio.

"She has had some secret on the tip of her tongue all day," said Madeleine, who was so like Barbe that she might have been an elder sister; though the sole tie between the two was residence in the same village. "Don't you remember how she kept saying in the train?'Now, little ones, ask Sainte Barbe to be kind to you. She'll hear your prayers a kilometer away, even though you whisper them.'"

"Yes, and Mama would have liked us to begin singing a hymn when we started from the foot of the hill, but she thought Monsieur Ingersoll and Monsieur Tollemache would only be amused," put in Barbe.

"They would certainly have been amused before Madame Pitou reached the top, singing!" tittered Yvonne.

"Is it possible that I shall ever be as stout as Mama?" murmured Barbe, and the mere notion of such a catastrophe evoked a poignant anxiety that was mirrored in her eyes.

"Ah, Mignonne, now you know the form your petition to Sainte Barbe must take," smiled Yvonne.

"It's all very well for you, Yvonne, to chaff us smaller ones," pouted Madeleine. "You're tall, and slim, and fair, and you carry yourself like the pretty American ladies who come to Pont Aven in the season, the ladies who wear such simple clothes, and hardly look a year older than their daughters, and walk leagues in men's boots, and play tennis before dejeuner. Of course you can't help being elegant. You're American yourself."

The recipient of this tribute turned it aside deftly. "Sometimes I think I am more Breton than American," she said.

"Yes, everyone says that," agreed Barbe loyally. "Next year, Yvonne, they'll make you Queen of the Gorse."

With the innocence of youth, or perhaps with its carelessness, Barbe had raised a topic as prickly as the gorse itself, because Madeleine had been a maid of honor that year, and might reasonably expect the regal place in the succeeding Fete of the Fleurs d'Ajonc. Happily, Yvonne, if endowed with a sense of humor, was eminently good-natured and tactful.

"Nothing of the sort," she replied. "My father will never allow me to be photographed, and there would be a riot in Pont Aven if the shops couldn't sell picture postcards of the Queen."

"Hurry up!" cried single-minded Barbe. "Let's pray to Sainte Barbe before Mother comes, or she'll be telling me what I must ask for, and I mean to take your advice, Yvonne."