Doruntine Read Online Free PDF

even more noteworthy, were copies of letters sent by the Lady Mother to her old friend Count Thopia, lord of the neighboring principality, from whom, it seemed, she requested advice about various family matters. The Count’s answers were in the archives too. In two or three letters over which Stres’s aide cast a rapid eye, the Lady Mother had in fact confessed to the Count her reservations about Doruntine’s marriage to a husband from so far away, soliciting his view of the matter. In one of them—it must have been among the most recent—she complained about her terrible loneliness, thewords barely legible (one felt that it had been written in a trembling hand, at an advanced age). The brides of her sons had departed one by one, taking their children with them and leaving her alone in the world. They had promised to come back to visit her, but none had done so, and in some sense she felt she could hardly blame them. What young woman would want to return to a house that was more ruin than home and on which, it was said, the seal of death had been fixed?
    Stres listened attentively to his deputy, although the latter had the impression that his chief’s attention sometimes wandered.
    â€œAnd here?” Stres finally asked, “what are they saying here?”
    The deputy looked at him, puzzled.
    â€œHere,” Stres repeated. “Not in the archives, but here among the people, what are they saying about it?”
    His deputy raised his arms helplessly.
    â€œNaturally, everyone is talking about it.”
    Stres let a moment pass before adding, “Yes, of course. That goes without saying. It could hardly be otherwise.”
    He closed his desk drawer, pulled on his cloak and left, bidding his deputy good night.
    His path home took him past gates and fences of the one-story houses that had sprung up since the town, not long ago as small and quiet as the surrounding villages, had become the regional center.The porches on which people whiled away the summer evenings were deserted now, and only a few chairs or swings had been left outside in the apparent hope of another mild day or two before the rigors of winter set in.
    But though the porches were empty, young girls, sometimes in the company of a boy, could be seen whispering at the gates and along the fences. As Stres approached, they interrupted their low masses and watched him pass with curiosity. The events of the night of October eleventh had stirred everyone’s imagination, girls and young brides most of all. Stres guessed that each one must now be dreaming that someone—brother or distant friend, man or shadow—would some day cross an entire continent for her.
    â€œSo,” his wife said to him when he got home, “have you finally found out who she came back with?”
    Taking off his cloak, Stres glanced covertly at her, wondering whether there was not perhaps a touch of irony in her words. Tall, blond, she looked back at him with the hint of a smile, and in a fleeting instant it occurred to Stres that though he was by no means insensitive to his wife’s charms, he could not imagine her riding behind him, clinging to him in the saddle. Doruntine, on the other hand, seemed to have been born to ride like that, hair streaming in the wind, arms wrapped around her horseman.
    â€œNo,” he said drily.
    â€œYou look tired.”
    â€œI am. Where are the children?”
    â€œUpstairs playing. Do you want to eat?”
    He nodded yes and lowered himself, exhausted, into a chair covered with a shaggy woolen cloth. In the large fireplace tepid flames licked at two big oak logs but were unable to set them ablaze. Stres sat and watched his wife moving back and forth.
    â€œAs if all the other cases were not enough, now you have to search for some vagabond,” she said through a clinking of dishes.
    She made no direct reference to Doruntine, but somehow her hostility came through.
    â€œNothing I can do about