Legend of the Seventh Virgin Read Online Free PDF Page B

was all along of what had happened before, I’m thinking. Oh, but it were a good life. The years pass and the evil is forgotten and many a time I’ve looked into the past and I’ve said to myself you couldn’t have done different. It was the only way.”
    “But why should they be able to spoil our lives!” I demanded passionately.
    “There’s strong and weak in the world; and if you’re born weak you must find strength. It’ll come to you if you look.”
    “ I shall find strength, Granny.”
    “Yes, girl, you will, if you want. It’s for you to say.”
    “Oh, Granny, how I hate the St. Larnstons!” I repeated.
    “Nay, he is dead and gone long since. Don’t hate the children for the parents’ sins. As lief blame yourself for what I did. Ah, but it was a happy life. And there came the day of sorrow. Pedro had gone off for his first shift of the day. I knew they’d be blasting down in the mine and he were one of the trammers who’d go in when the fuses had been blown and load the ore into trucks. I don’t know what happened down there — no one can ever truly know, but all that day I waited at the top of the shaft for them to bring him out. Twelve long hours I waited, and when they brought him — he weren’t my gay and loving Pedro no more. He were alive though … for a few minutes — just time to say goodbye afore he went. ‘Bless you,’ he did say to me. ‘Thank you for my life.’ And what could he have said better than that? I tell myself even if there hadn’t been a Sir Justin, even if I’d given him healthy sons, he couldn’t have said better than that.”
    She stood up abruptly, and we went into the cottage.
    Joe had gone out with Squab, and she took me into the storehouse. There was an old wooden box there which was always kept locked and she opened this and showed me what was inside. There were two Spanish combs and mantillas. She put one of the combs in her hair and covered her hair with the mantilla.
    “There,” she said, “that was how he liked me to look. He said when he made his fortune he would take me to Spain, and I’d sit on a balcony and fan myself while the world went by.”
    “You look lovely, Granny.”
    “One of these is for you when you’re older,” she said. “And when I die, they are both for you.”
    Then she put the second comb and mantilla on my head and as we stood side by side it was surprising how much alike we were.
    I was glad that she had confided in me something which I knew she had told to no other living person.
    I shall never forget that moment when we stood side by side in our combs and mantillas, incongruous among the pans and the herbs. And outside the sound of the guns.

    I awoke to moonlight, although not much of it came into our cottage. There was a silence about me which was unusual. I sat up on the talfat and wondered what was wrong. No sound of anything. Not Joe’s breathing nor Granny’s. I remembered that Granny had gone out to help at a childbirth. She often did and then we never knew when she would be coming home, so it was not surprising that she was absent. But where was Joe?
    “Joe!” I said. “Joe, where are you?”
    I peered to his end of the talfat. He wasn’t there.
    “Squab!” I called. There was no answer.
    I descended the ladder; it did not take more than a second or two to explore the cottage. I went through to the storehouse but Joe wasn’t there either and I suddenly thought of the last time I had been in here when Granny had dressed my hair and decked me out in Spanish comb and mantilla; I remembered the sound of the guns.
    Was it possible that Joe had been such a fool as to go into the woods to look for wounded birds? Was he mad? If he went into the woods he would be trespassing, and if he were caught … This was the time of year when trespassing was considered doubly criminal.
    I wondered how long he had been gone. I opened the cottage door and looked out, sensing it to be just after midnight.
    I went back to the