Читать книгу The Peacock Feather. A Romance онлайн

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Peter turned into one of the fields and sat down on the grass. He took out his clasp-knife and cut the string that held the parcel, pulling forth [Pg 24]the contents. A book, green-covered, with the title in gold lettering, was in his hand.

“Under the Span of the Rainbow, by Robin Adair,” so the lettering ran. The last was, of course, a pseudonym.

Peter looked at it; then slowly, shyly, he opened the cover.

With almost just such reverence might a mother look on her new-born babe, marvelling at her own creation, and quite regardless of the fact that the same great miracle has been performed times out of number in the world, and will be performed again as frequently.

This was Peter’s child, his first-born. Through months of slow travail it had been created and brought forth. Under hedges in the open air, in barns by the light of a single candle, he had worked while dumb beasts had looked at him with mild, wondering eyes. In sunshine and in cloud it had been with him; soft winds had rustled its pages, cold blasts had crept under doors and chilled his fingers while he wrote. And now at last, fair and in dainty garb, it came forth to the world, breathing the clean freshness of open spaces, of sun and wind and rain; tender with the magic of nights, [Pg 25]buoyant with the vitality of sunrise. And yet through it all, as through his piping, lay the strange minor note, the underhint of longing.