The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck 16 – Cabell · Verses Across
Literature · Fantasy
The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck 16Part 2 · Chapter 8
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Literature · Fantasy
The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck 16
Part 2 · Chapter 8
CabellEnglish
Colonel Musgrave was alone. He had lifted his emptied coffee-cup and he swished the lees gently to and fro. He was curiously intent upon these lees, considered them in the light of a symbol....
Then a comfortable, pleasant-faced mulattress came to clear the supper-table. Virginia they called her. Virginia had been nurse in turn to all the children of Rudolph Musgrave's parents; and to the end of her life she appeared to regard the emancipation of the South's negroes as an irrelevant vagary of certain "low-down" and probably "ornery" Yankees --as an, in short, quite eminently "tacky" proceeding which very certainly in no way affected her vested right to tyrannize over the Musgrave household.
"Virginia," said Colonel Musgrave, "don't forget to make up a fire in the kitchen-stove before you go to bed. And please fill the kettle before you go upstairs, and leave it on the stove. Miss Agatha is not well to-night."
"Yaas, suh. I unnerstan', suh," Virginia said, sedately.
Virginia filled her tray, and went away quietly, her pleasant yellow face as imperturbable as an idol's.
PART THREE - TERTIUS
"It is in many ways made plain to us
That love must grow like any common thing,
Root, bud, and leaf, ere ripe for garnering
The mellow fruitage front us; even thus
Must Helena encounter Theseus
Ere Paris come, and every century
Spawn divers queens who die with Antony
But live a great while first with Julius.
"Thus I have spoken the prologue of a play
Wherein I have no part, and laugh, and sit
Contented in the wings, whilst you portray
An amorous maid with gestures that befit
This lovely rôle,--as who knows better, pray,
Than I that helped you in rehearsing it?"
