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Dark Fleece, The (The Collected Works of Joseph Hergesheimer - 28 Volumes)
Dark Fleece The - The Collected Works of Joseph Hergesheimer - 28 Volumes Author:Joseph Hergesheimer Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INT an unfamiliar upper room of the Canderays' house Jason stood prepared for the signal to descend to his wedding. The ceremony was to occur at six o'clock; it ... more »was now only five minutes before—he had absently looked at his watch a great many times in a short space—and he was striving to think seriously of what was to follow. But in place of this he was passing again through a state of silent, incoherent surprise. This was the sort of thing for which a man might pinch himself to discover if he were awake or dreaming. In five, no, four, minutes now Honora Canderay was to become his, Jason Burrage's, wife. A certain complacency had settled over him in the past few days, something of his inborn feeling of the Canderays as a house apart seemed to have evaporated; and, in addition, he had risen—Honora wouldn't take any just happen so. Jason was never notable for humility. Yet who, even after he had returned from California with his riches, could have predicted this evening? His astonishment was as much at himself, illuminated by extraordinary events, as at any exterior circumstance. At times he had the ability to see himself, as if fromthe outside; and that view, here, was amazing. Why, only a short while ago he had been drinking rum in the shed in back of "Pack" Glower's house, perhaps the least desirable shed in Cottarsport. Of one fact, however, he was certain—no more promiscuous draughts of Medford. He recognized that he had taken so much not from the presence of desire, but from a total absence of it as well as of any other mental state. "Pack" and his associates, too, were now a thing of the past, a bitterly rough and vacant element. The glass lamp on a bureau was smoking: he stepped forward to lower the wick, when a knock fell on the door. A young Boston relative of Honora...« less