登陆注册
5255300000031

第31章 BROWN WOLF(1)

SHE had delayed, because of the dew-wet grass, in order to put on her overshoes, and when she emerged from the house found her waiting husband absorbed in the wonder of a bursting almond-bud.

She sent a questing glance across the tall grass and in and out among the orchard trees.

"Where's Wolf?" she asked.

"He was here a moment ago." Walt Irvine drew himself away with a jerk from the metaphysics and poetry of the organic miracle of blossom, and surveyed the landscape. "He was running a rabbit the last I saw of him."

"Wolf! Wolf! Here Wolf!" she called, as they left the clearing and took the trail that led down through the waxen-belled manzanita jungle to the county road.

Irvine thrust between his lips the little finger of each hand and lent to her efforts a shrill whistling.

She covered her ears hastily and made a wry grimace.

"My! for a poet, delicately attuned and all the rest of it, you can make unlovely noises. My ear-drums are pierced. You outwhistle -

"

"Orpheus."

"I was about to say a street-arab," she concluded severely.

"Poesy does not prevent one from being practical - at least it doesn't prevent ME. Mine is no futility of genius that can't sell gems to the magazines."

He assumed a mock extravagance, and went on:

"I am no attic singer, no ballroom warbler. And why? Because I am practical. Mine is no squalor of song that cannot transmute itself, with proper exchange value, into a flower-crowned cottage, a sweet mountain-meadow, a grove of red-woods, an orchard of thirty-seven trees, one long row of blackberries and two short rows of strawberries, to say nothing of a quarter of a mile of gurgling brook. I am a beauty-merchant, a trader in song, and I pursue utility, dear Madge. I sing a song, and thanks to the magazine editors I transmute my song into a waft of the west wind sighing through our redwoods, into a murmur of waters over mossy stones that sings back to me another song than the one I sang and yet the same song wonderfully - er - transmuted."

"O that all your song-transmutations were as successful!" she laughed.

"Name one that wasn't."

"Those two beautiful sonnets that you transmuted into the cow that was accounted the worst milker in the township."

"She was beautiful - " he began, "But she didn't give milk," Madge interrupted.

"But she WAS beautiful, now, wasn't she?" he insisted.

"And here's where beauty and utility fall out," was her reply.

"And there's the Wolf!"

From the thicket-covered hillside came a crashing of underbrush, and then, forty feet above them, on the edge of the sheer wall of rock, appeared a wolf's head and shoulders. His braced fore paws dislodged a pebble, and with sharp-pricked ears and peering eyes he watched the fall of the pebble till it struck at their feet. Then he transferred his gaze and with open mouth laughed down at them.

"You Wolf, you!" and "You blessed Wolf!" the man and woman called out to him.

The ears flattened back and down at the sound, and the head seemed to snuggle under the caress of an invisible hand.

They watched him scramble backward into the thicket, then proceeded on their way. Several minutes later, rounding a turn in the trail where the descent was less precipitous, he joined them in the midst of a miniature avalanche of pebbles and loose soil. He was not demonstrative. A pat and a rub around the ears from the man, and a more prolonged caressing from the woman, and he was away down the trail in front of them, gliding effortlessly over the ground in true wolf fashion.

In build and coat and brush he was a huge timber-wolf; but the lie was given to his wolfhood by his color and marking. There the dog unmistakably advertised itself. No wolf was ever colored like him.

He was brown, deep brown, red-brown, an orgy of browns. Back and shoulders were a warm brown that paled on the sides and underneath to a yellow that was dingy because of the brown that lingered in it. The white of the throat and paws and the spots over the eyes was dirty because of the persistent and ineradicable brown, while the eyes themselves were twin topazes, golden and brown.

The man and woman loved the dog very much; perhaps this was because it had been such a task to win his love. It had been no easy matter when he first drifted in mysteriously out of nowhere to their little mountain cottage. Footsore and famished, he had killed a rabbit under their very noses and under their very windows, and then crawled away and slept by the spring at the foot of the blackberry bushes. When Walt Irvine went down to inspect the intruder, he was snarled at for his pains, and Madge likewise was snarled at when she went down to present, as a peace-offering, a large pan of bread and milk.

A most unsociable dog he proved to be, resenting all their advances, refusing to let them lay hands on him, menacing them with bared fangs and bristling hair. Nevertheless he remained, sleeping and resting by the spring, and eating the food they gave him after they set it down at a safe distance and retreated. His wretched physical condition explained why he lingered; and when he had recuperated, after several days' sojourn, he disappeared.

And this would have been the end of him, so far as Irvine and his wife were concerned, had not Irvine at that particular time been called away into the northern part of the state. Riding along on the train, near to the line between California and Oregon, he chanced to look out of the window and saw his unsociable guest sliding along the wagon road, brown and wolfish, tired yet tireless, dust-covered and soiled with two hundred miles of travel.

Now Irvine was a man of impulse, a poet. He got off the train at the next station, bought a piece of meat at a butcher shop, and captured the vagrant on the outskirts of the town. The return trip was made in the baggage car, and so Wolf came a second time to the mountain cottage. Here he was tied up for a week and made love to by the man and woman. But it was very circumspect love-making.

同类推荐
  • 洞真太上三九素语玉清真诀

    洞真太上三九素语玉清真诀

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 四部律并论要用抄

    四部律并论要用抄

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 八识规矩直解

    八识规矩直解

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • The Innocence of Father Brown

    The Innocence of Father Brown

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
  • 秋官司寇

    秋官司寇

    本书为公版书,为不受著作权法限制的作家、艺术家及其它人士发布的作品,供广大读者阅读交流。汇聚授权电子版权。
热门推荐
  • 暴君的逃婚新娘(完)

    暴君的逃婚新娘(完)

    她只是长的比别人漂亮一点,性格调皮了一点,一直到十年后她都记得自己的一身白色公主裙上红色的鲜血,那么的夺目。十年前他被无辜的拖进一个混乱现场。十年后,他是蓝魅集团的总裁,年仅二十五岁,但他始终保持神秘……十年后她长成了亭亭玉立的大美人,为了复仇,她开始接近他,与他展开狂烈的爱情游戏,这场游戏究竟输了谁的心……
  • 法师维迦

    法师维迦

    击杀或助攻就无限增长魔力?维迦穿越了,还顺道带上了LOL邪恶小法师的被动技能——超凡邪力。
  • 燕京天下

    燕京天下

    本书以燕京啤酒为坐标,以行为业大画史为背景,真实再燕京25年的发展历程和中国式基业长青的本土化企业经验,并阐述这样一个事实;当中国改变世界的时候,燕京啤酒也在改变着整个中国啤酒行业的天下。
  • 电竞路人王又又又成盒

    电竞路人王又又又成盒

    (双c,感情线很甜,甜到发腻的那种) 听说苗沫这个小妖精喜欢上了一个声音好听的小哥哥! 苗沫是谁她可是单排路人王可她竟然为了一个技术渣天天成盒可真不可思议? 慕言,“………???” 剧情苗沫意味不明的喔了一声:“巫说以上犯下当诛。”慕言别过头想了想又转了过来看着苗沫的脸,慢慢道:“巫说,契约之后,可以入洞房了!”苗沫被慕言抱着不干了,“我记得很清楚巫没有说过。”“沫沫乖,我即是巫。”慕言温柔道……‘小公主,这次让我陪着你一起走上这荣耀之路吧!’
  • 最后的太古神魔

    最后的太古神魔

    洪荒的神魔纷纷醒来。满天的仙佛纷纷涅磐。日月同空,雪夜惊雷。一场惨无人寰的屠杀过后,孤独的我该何去何从?风华正茂的佳人,荡气回肠的爱情,豪气云天的兄弟情,神秘的幻境,惊险刺激的世途,神秘的洪荒传说,没落的太古神话,强大的神器、无敌的仙。
  • 24位著名CEO给青少年的忠告

    24位著名CEO给青少年的忠告

    本书精选了对青少年有较大影响力的24位CEO,以他们成功的经验展开了一次与青少年的“对话”。内容深入浅出,符合青少年成长的需要。每一个“对话”的主题都能帮助青少年解决一个疑惑,不但让青少年了解各行各业精英的成功事迹,还能让青少年在每一位CEO的人生智慧中汲取营养,超越自己。
  • 教你打门球(学生球类运动学习手册)

    教你打门球(学生球类运动学习手册)

    21世纪,人类进入了新经济时代。综合国力竞争的实质是民族素质的竞争,是人才的竞争,是教育的竞争。在这样的背景下,加强素质教育,尤其是进行身体素质教育就显得更为重要。球类运动是世界上开展的最广泛的运动项目之一,也是广大体育爱好者乐于观赏和参与的体育运动。经常进行此类运动,不仅可以增强人们的体质,提升身体的协调性,而且还能增强我们的自信心以及培养团队精神。
  • 世界最具幻想性的童话故事(5)

    世界最具幻想性的童话故事(5)

    我的课外第一本书——震撼心灵阅读之旅经典文库,《阅读文库》编委会编。通过各种形式的故事和语言,讲述我们在成长中需要的知识。
  • 重生之黛玉穿越到我家

    重生之黛玉穿越到我家

    她——是林黛玉重生。离世之地产大亨独女,亿万家产唯一继承人。咳嗽一声整个商界都要跟着感冒。可偏偏她又拥有迷人的美貌,雍容的气质,真真是三千宠爱于一身。他——是贾宝玉再世,更是珠宝大亨的二公子,众人皆知的鲍家二少。英俊潇洒,出手大方,高调气派,声势夺人。当他和他,同时看上了她。一个一见面就对她说:“这位妹妹我见过。”另一个初次约会就对她说:“我们结婚吧。”让我们拭目以待,娇柔的林妹妹将如何面对这一切——她,还会哭吗?
  • 山奴

    山奴

    生老病死,人生四大轮回,。其中占这四大轮回中的四分之三是苦的,而人又是哭着来到人世间,世人真如宗教所说的那样生来就是赎罪的?山奴,背负轮回大山的奴隶。