Margarita's Soul: The Romantic Recollections of a Man of Fifty. Josephine Daskam Bacon
its arms on either side desolate, scrubby and forbidding, with not a hint of life. Suddenly, as he stared, wondering, and Margarita stood quiet beside him, a long, quavering bellow came from behind him.
"It is the cow," said Margarita reassuringly, as he whirled around, "she is calling Caliban to milk her, I suppose."
Again the impatient, minor bellow rose on the air, and Roger perceived that what he had carelessly passed over as a great sand dune was in reality a square cottage built of sand, apparently, for it was precisely the colour and texture of sand, sloping off in a succession of outbuildings, just as the cliffs and dunes slope, windowless, nearly, from that side at least, and offering only the anxious cow, peering from the furthest outhouse, as evidence of life. Close up to it on one side, the right, a great, cliff-like spur of rock shot up and ran like a wall for fifty feet, then fell away gradually into the sand of the beach which ran up to meet it; the cottage itself was perched on the beach edge, and beyond it, on the left side, the straggling grass began. They moved on toward this house, then, and as they neared it a long, melancholy howl echoed the cow's lament, a howl with a baying, mellow undertone that lingered on the morning air. For it was honest morning now, a September morning, blowing wild-grapes and sea sand and bayberry into Roger's nostrils. As he stared at the house a great hound crept around the corner of it, baying monotonously, but as he saw Margarita he left off and ran to her, arching his brindled head. He was a Danish hound, beautifully brindled and very massive. She fondled him quietly, smiling as he clumsily threw his great paws about her waist, and pushed him down.
"I am very hungry," said Margarita abruptly, "I think I will have Caliban bring me some warm milk."
She turned her direction slightly and made for the cow stall, and as he stood by the door Roger saw that whatever the internal structure of the building might be, it was certainly covered with rough sand.
"Here is Caliban now," she added, and a loutish looking fellow, small-eyed, heavy-lipped and shock-haired, appeared to rise out of the ground before them, dangling a milk pail on his arm. At sight of Margarita his jaw dropped, he shivered violently and appeared ready to faint, but as she called encouragingly to him he mustered courage to approach and feel of her skirt timidly. He was evidently feeble-minded as well as dumb, for with a sort of croak he dropped the bucket and began to dance clumsily up and down, snapping his fingers the while. Plainly he had thought her gone for good and this was his thanksgiving.
"Milk the cow, Caliban, I am thirsty," said Margarita impatiently, after a moment of this, "and get me some bread. Make haste with it."
He started on a run for the door furthest from the cow stall and appeared almost immediately with a large silver mug and a huge piece torn from a loaf. Squatting beside the cow he balanced the mug between his knees and deftly milked it full. She seized it, drained it thirstily and began munching her bread, holding the mug out to him again to be filled a second time. She bit great mouthfuls from the loaf, like a child of four, and Roger watched her, half amused, half irritated.
"You are not accustomed to the exercise of hospitality, I see," he said finally, and as she looked at him over the silver mug inquiringly, he explained.
"I have walked for more than an hour and I am hungry, too, Miss Margarita," he said. "Won't you offer me anything to eat and drink?"
She shook her head doubtfully.
"I need this bread myself," she said, "and no one drinks from this cup but me. I should not like it. If Caliban will get you another … "
"Surely he will if you tell him to," Roger suggested mildly.
"Very well," she returned indifferently, "when he has finished milking, I will," and she continued her meal, adding, "I do not think he likes you, for he shows his teeth. He did that when the doctor came to see my father."
I asked Margarita a year or two after this to describe for me how she first entertained Roger: I had already a good idea of his initial hospitality to her in the French restaurant. Here is her letter.
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