The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck 53Part 8 · Chapter 3
18
Literature · Fantasy
The Rivet in Grandfather's Neck 53
Part 8 · Chapter 3
CabellEnglish
That night, after his guests had retired, Colonel Musgrave smoked a cigarette on the front porch of Matocton. The moon, now in the zenith, was bright and chill. After a while, Musgrave raised his face toward it, and laughed.
"Isn't it--isn't it funny?" he demanded, echoing Anne's query ruefully.
"Eh, well! perhaps I still retained some lingering hope; in a season of discomfort, most of us look vaguely for a miracle. And, at times, it comes, but, more often, not; life isn't always a pantomime, with a fairy god-mother waiting to break through the darkness in a burst of glory and reunite the severed lovers, and transform their enemies into pantaloons. In this case, it is certain that the fairy will not come. I am condemned to be my own god in the machine."
Having demonstrated this to himself, Musgrave went into the house and drugged his mind correcting proofsheets--for the Lichfield Historical Association's Quarterly Magazine--and brought down to the year 1805 his "List of Wills Recorded in Brummell County."
