The Mercy of the Lord. Flora Annie Webster Steel
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Flora Annie Webster Steel
The Mercy of the Lord
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066140649
Table of Contents
SILVER SPEECH AND GOLDEN SILENCE
THE FINDING OF PRIVATE FLANIGAN
THE REGENERATION OF DAISY BELL
THE MERCY OF THE LORD
"God movesn--a--mystere'ras way
Iswon--derstuper--form."
Craddock was polishing the brass of his safety valve and singing the while at high pressure between set teeth: his choice of a ditty determined by one of his transitory lapses into conventional righteousness. The cause of which in the present instance being an equally transient admiration for a good little Eurasian girl fresh from her convent.
As the sun--which shines equally on the just and the unjust--flamed on his red face and glowed from his corn-coloured beard it seemed to me--waiting in the comparative coolth of the pointsman's mud-oven shelter till the one mail train of the day should appear and disappear, leaving the ribbon of rail which spanned the desert world to its horizon free for our passaging--that both he and his engine radiated heat: that they gave out--as the burning bush or the flaming swords of the paradise-protectors must have given out--a message of fiery warning that suited the words he sang:
"Eplants 'isfootsteps--inthesea."
Craddock punctuated the rhythm with an appropriate stop of shrill steam which ought to have startled me: but it did not, because my outward senses had suddenly become slaves to my memory. The desert was a garden full of cool fragrance which comes with the close of an Indian day, and the only sound to be heard in it was a glad young voice repeating these words:
"Oh! God of the Battle! Have mercy! Have mercy! Have mercy!"
"Bravo! young Bertram!" said someone--even those who scarcely knew whether Bertram were his Christian or his surname called him that--"Easy to see you're fresh from the Higher Standard."
Young Bertram smiled down on us from the plinth of the marble steps leading up to the marble summer house which stood in the centre of this Garden-of-Dead-Kings.
Posed there on his pedestal, holding orb-like in his raised right hand the battered bronze cannon ball whose inscription--roughly lettered in snaky spirals--he had just translated, young Bertram reminded me of the young Apollo.
"You bet," he answered, gaily. "But what does it mean, here on this blessed ball? Who knows the story?--for there is one, of course."
The company looked at me, partly because