Show the crippled lady of Peri bonka 0 41 by james oliver curwood TOTO samoa 11 ft 1928 1929 Doa bledar in donn A co inc CHAPTER XIII continued 21 paul finished and it seemed as though tiny raindrops were in his brain so BO clearly could he be bent bear and 4 re elthe beating of his big pulse in a few moments the moaning of ue life came to him in a distant wave it truck nearer in the of an elevator door indistinct voices passed down tile the hall from another street blocks away the hammering of rivet drivers on new steel rose above the rush bad and roar of traffic paul looked from his window as aa if he be might see gee thep the pit lt out of which the same sound had bad co come me night might and day for three years his eyes fell upon gloomy sooty booty walls under him lay an ing fabric of mens toll i a great sea of roofs strung with wires craggy with ugly architectural warts broken with chimneys streaked with tarred gutters and with I 1 the he gaping shifting mouths of ventilating funnels sucking air into their artificial lungs he looked down and saw a thousand moving things in a stream like ants every hurrying particle a human soul struggling in tile the furious twentieth century effort to make itself greater than god from all this claire had freed him she ha hurt it given him new life and with it love and happiness ile he crushed her tetter letter in his band as aa it some pitiful breath might wrench its precious pages from him then he turned to the telephone e it was impossible for him to watt wal t lue be wanted to tell her there was on one oth other r woman in the world as wonderful as carla in Cl alres voice was a trembling note of happiness when he be sald said this dear old paul she cried softly but you come to me until evening I 1 have something which I 1 must st do before I 1 see you again that night when he went to his home hom claire was not there she had bad left a note for him 1 I have gone to see carla it it said aid only a woman can make another woman like carlo carla understand CHAPTER XIV and here we find ourselves where we began with tile the lovely crippled lady on her porch at Peri bonka onka she had lived a year in Peri Perl bonka w when lien we set out to tell this story A winter had passed another spring a summer and now it was the beginning of glorious september september Is the most beautiful of all months in the lac st jean country A softness ls Is in the air which one does not feel at any other time a breath of ripened forests foris ts a soothing warmth and comradeship of earth and water which Is like a song the big river across the road and down the green bank from the crippled ladys ladya gardens of flowers Is friendliest then its water Is a sheen of laughter its snowy sandbars possess the quality of softened whiteness which gives to them almost the purity of a womans comans breasts there have cave been changes since the crippled lady was borne from the hospital to the place near her mother where she wants to live the pit to I 1 no longer a pit but a mighty force driving its energy in unending streams through high tension wires the hils alls may rumble and roar and growl but it to Is a slave securely shackled and wit win probably go on laboring tor for its human masters tor for all time th this I 1 a change or development devel was ex pecked anticipated by experts almost to the day and hour but others were not the world for instance accepting a very small corner of it as the whole could not understand why a man like paul kirke should deliberately sever himself from the huge prestige and wealth built by his fathers success and as the alory went beat bear awny away with him film all his personal person nl pos sessions in a trunk and a handbag It could understand quite easily how a husband and wife might end their marital relationship but it 11 was puzzled and shocked ked that a woman like claire kirke should throw herself awn awny y won soon afterward on a stoop shouldered prematurely ageing man inan who was possessed of nothing on earth but ain an passion for shaping things nut of marble there are a lot of people who taken collectively are like a big gaping ing boor claire said in a letter to carla they are amusing for a time then they become norual again this was just before she went west to join jimmy Ennerd tle in i his work of completing a marble gimp for an important civic center atar she got there she wrote corla carla it la is magnificent when it Is finished w are going colne to spend a year in capri working together 1 capri uie ahe mediterranean the Ux habitant country lac at 81 jm jean it to Is glorious glor ionn here carla wrote bael back 1 I love September F laris alaways all a 0 0 carla C always ways sits site on her porch 0 o tant t she to 18 looking up the river toward the north cautle paul li there working out oat it a part of the dream which absorbs absorb them both thirty miles beyond the green and blue black edge 0 wilder ness which she can caa see paul pan has hai a timber concession and fifteen men working with him where a little tie while before he be might have had bad fifteen thousand our but these fifteen men and aad what they are planning to do d 0 with the concession mean more to paul and varla carla than all the millions to in the world it Is not necessary to slaughter nature or even harm barm her in order to possess for ourselves some of her products paul out says in a paper beli writing for a pulpwood pulp wood journal there Is such a thing as harvesting lumber and having a better forest eich each year rear instead of a diminished one nature wants to fraternize with us as and will when wp we cease to sack and plunder her like vandals next year the fifteen men wit will I 1 be increased Increase dito i to fifty but now camps are being built and just enough timber harvested to cover the expense of the work paul latious lah ors with his ax along with the others from morning until night every friday he comes down the river to carla aria carla knows that she Is going boget to get strong land and well this mental attitude her sureness and optimism tono ah am shadow Is I 1 cat casi over their happl neu because became carla cannot walk gether with her great happiness has overcome the doubt of physicians she Is beginning to stand a little with pauls arms about her and their two precious days a week together are filled with wonderful plans of what she Is going to do in another year wherever paul la Is there she will also be that Is the point I 1 from which they always start in building their castles no shadow la Is cast over their happiness because carla cannot walk paul w wheels heels her about the village in the big chair and not Is missed in their visits they go as far as the little picturesque old cheese factory and down the hill 1111 to the still older w wharf barf where the boat comes in from across the lake doctor derwent who Is at hils has ans allowed carls carla to go twice to the monastery munns tery in pauls launch and it october Is fine fin she will ma make ke her first trip to his concession during that month takes her over the soft windy sandy ronda roads to the edge of the blueberry plains in a buggy and then carries her in hit his arms to it place where she can help illin hilra pick fruit for their sunday din ner tie he will never give up carrying her like that he says even when she is strung strong again Perl bonka has grown hap happier with them even maria la is younger and samuel has forgotten his financial losses so carla wrote to claere Cl alre it Is 11 glorious here I 1 love sep THE END |