Grace Elizabeth King

“ Ah, to the end a woman loves to celebrate her conquest! It is the last touch of misfortune with her to lose in the old, the ugly, and the commonplace her youthful lord and master. If one could look under the gray hairs and wrinkles with which time thatches old women, one would be surprised to see the flutterings, the quiverings, the thrills, the emotions, the coals of the heart-fires which death alone extinguishes, when he commands the tenant to vacate.
Honorine's hands chilled with the ice of sixteen as she approached scissors to the white mustache and beard. ”

“ And if a child inside be wakeful and precocious it is not dreams alone that take on reflections from the balcony outside: through the half-open shutters the still, quiet eyes look across the dim forms on the balcony to the star-spangled or the moon-brightened heavens beyond; while memory makes stores for the future, and germs are sown, out of which the slow, clambering vine of thought issues, one day, to decorate or hide, as it may be, the structures or ruins of life. ”

“ And after the family went to bed they could still hear her, sitting on the bank of the bayou, or up in her window, singing and looking at the moon traveling across the lily prairie—for all its beauty and brightness no more beautiful and bright than a heart in love.
It was just past the middle of the week, a Thursday night. The moon was so bright the colors of the lilies could be seen, and the singing, so sweet, so far-reaching—it was the essence of the longing of love. Then it was that the miracle happened to her. Miracles are always happening to the Acadians. ”

“ It is the end of dreams, marriage; and that is the good thing about it. God lets us dream to keep us quiet, but he knows when to wake us up, I tell you. The blue bows knew! And now, you see, I prefer my husband to my brun; in fact, Loulou, I adore him, and I am furiously jealous about him. And he is so good to Clementine and the poor little children; and see his photograph—a blond, and not good-looking, and small!
But poor papa! If he had been alive, I am sure he never would have agreed with God about my marriage. ”

“ God is always pretty near a sick woman's couch; but nearer even than God seems the sick-nurse—at least in that part of the country, under those circumstances. It is so good to look through the dimness and uncertainty, moral and physical, and to meet those little black, steadfast, all-seeing eyes; to feel those smooth, soft, all-soothing hands; to hear, across one's sleep, that three-footed step—the flat-soled left foot, the tiptoe right, and the padded end of the broomstick; and when one is so wakeful and restless and thought-driven, to have another's story given one. ”

“ Every week new families were coming into the great back chamber; every week they passed out: babies, boys, girls, buxom wenches, stalwart youths, and the middle-aged—the grave, serious ones whom misfortune had driven from their old masters, and the ill-reputed ones, the trickish, thievish, lazy, whom the cunning of the negro-trader alone could keep in circulation. All were marketable, all were bought and sold, all passed in one door and out the other—all except her, little Mammy. As with her lameness, it took time for her to recognize, to understand, the fact. ”

“ As soon as the noise of a real miracle in it gets abroad, every one is for hurrying thither at once with their needs and their prayers, their candles and their picayunes; and the little miracle chapel, perhaps despite itself, becomes with mushroom growth a church, and the church a cathedral, from whose resplendent altars the cheap, humble ex-voto tablets, the modest beginnings of its ecclesiastical fortunes, are before long banished to dimly lighted lateral shrines. ”

“ Who in the world knows better than he the gulf between the real and the ideal, the limitations between the natural and the romantic?
Yes, one could see her, in that time-honored thin silk dress of hers stiffened into brocade by buckram underneath; the high, low-necked waist, hiding any evidences of breast, if there were such evidences to hide, and bringing the long neck into such faulty prominence; and the sleeves, crisp puffs of tulle divided by bands of red velvet, through which the poor lean arm runs like a wire, stringing them together like beads. ”

“ In a flash all Anne Marie's ill luck ran through Jeanne Marie's mind; how her promised husband had proved unfaithful, and Jeanne Marie's faithful; and how, ever since, even to the coming out of her lottery numbers, even to the selling of vegetables, even to the catching of the rheumatism, she had been the loser. But above all, as she looked at Anne Marie in the bed, all the misery came over Jeanne Marie of her sister's not being able, in all her poor old seventy-five years of life, to remember the pressure of the arms of a husband about her waist, nor the mouth of a child on her breast. ”

“ Our oars waked the waters of the bayou, as motionless as a sleeping snake under its misty covert—to continue the poetical language or thought. The ripples ran frightened and shivering into the rooty thicknesses of the sedge-grown banks, startling the little birds bathing there into darting to the nearest, highest rush-top, where, without losing their hold on their swaying, balancing perches, they burst into all sorts of incoherent songs, in their excitement to divert attention from the near-hidden nests: bird mothers are so much like women mothers! ”

“ And though there were a God and a heaven awaiting us,—by that same God, Josephine, I believe that our first thought in awakening would be the last in dying,—confession,—and that our first rush would be to the feet of one another for forgiveness. For there are some offenses that must outlast the longest oblivion, and a forgiveness that will be more necessary than God's own. Then our hearts will be bared to one another; for if, as you say, there are no secrets at our age, there can still be less cause for them after death. ”

“ Sometimes to women, listening to the stories of their grandmothers, it seems better to have lived then than now—her grandmother was at that time a young wife. It was the day of arduous, if not of long, courtship before marriage, when every wedding celebrated the close of an original romance; and when young couples, for bridal trips, went out to settle new States, riding on a pillion generally, with their trousseaux following as best they could on sumpter mules; to hear the grandmother describe it made one long to be a bride of those days. ”

“ When I think of a woman's memory—in fact, I do not like to think of a woman's memory. One can intrude in imagination into many places; but a woman's memory—"
Mr. Horace seemed to lose his thread. It had been said of him in his youth that he wrote poetry—and it was said against him. It was evidently such lapses as these that had given rise to the accusation. And as there was no one less impatient under sentiment or poetry than madame, her feet began to agitate themselves as if Jules were perorating some of his culinary inanities before her. ”

“ Always her favorite mistresses were there—tall, delicate matrons, who came themselves, with great fatigue, to select kindly-faced women for nurses; languid-looking ladies with smooth hair standing out in wide bandeaux from their heads, and lace shawls dropping from their sloping shoulders, silk dresses carelessly held up in thumb and finger from embroidered petticoats that were spread out like tents over huge hoops which covered whole groups of swarming piccaninnies on the dirty floor ”

“ Pupasse stood in the corner. Curiously, she always sought refuge in the very sanctum of punishment, her face hidden in her bended arms, her hoops standing out behind, vouchsafing nothing but tears, and the promise to tell Madame Joubert. And three o'clock approaching! And Madame Joubert imminent! But Pupasse really could not go to confession without her sins. They all recognized that; they were reasonable, as they assured her.
A crisis quickens the wits. They heard the cathedral clock strike the quarter to three. They whispered, suggested, argued—bunched in the farthest corner from Pupasse. ”

“ In New Orleans the victim seems ever to walk down Royal street and up Chartres, or vice versa. One would infer so, at least, from the display in the shops and windows of those thorough-fares. Old furniture, cut glass, pictures, books, jewelry, lace, china—the fleece (sometimes the flesh still sticking to it) left on the brambles by the driven herd. If there should some day be a trump of resurrection for defunct fortunes, those shops would be emptied in the same twinkling of the eye allowed to tombs for their rendition of property. ”

“ When one loves, it is as if everything was known of and seen by the other; not only all that passes in the head and heart, which would in all conscience be more than enough to occupy the other, but the talking, the dressing, the conduct. It was then that the back hair was braided and the front curled more and more beautifully every day, and that the calico dresses became stiffer and stiffer, and the white crochet lace collar broader and lower in the neck. ”

“ But women are that way. When once they begin to love, their hearts are magnifying-lenses for them to feel through. "And my heart hungers to commence right here, now, at once! It seems to me I cannot wait. Ah, madam, no more stage, no more opera!" speaking quickly, feverishly. "As I said, it may be your beautiful spring, your flowers, your birds, and your numbers of children. I have always loved that place most where there are most children; and you have more children here than I ever saw anywhere. Children are so beautiful! ”

“ It was a miracle that the pilot ever got her up into the pilot-house; but pilots have a lonely time, and do not hesitate even at miracles when there is a chance for company. He would place a box for her to climb to the tall bench behind the wheel, and he would arrange the cushions, and open a window here to let in air, and shut one there to cut off a draft, as if there could be no tenderer consideration in life for him than her comfort. ”

“ With the sun shining in the proper direction, one might distinguish more, and with love shining like the sun in the eyes, one might see, one might see—a heart full.
It was only the eyes, however, which could make such a quick voyage to the Zévérin Theriots; a skiff had a long day's journey to reach them. The bayou sauntered along over the country like a negro on a Sunday's pleasuring, trusting to God for time, and to the devil for means. ”

“ Yes, it was she, the whilom dugazon of the opera troupe. Not that she ever was a dugazon, but that was what her voice once aspired to be: a dugazon manquée would better describe her.
What a ghost! But they always appeared like mere evaporations of real women. For what woman of flesh and blood can seriously maintain through life the rôle of sham attendant on sham sensations, and play public celebrant of other women's loves and lovers, singing, or rather saying, nothing more enlivening than: "Oh, madame!" ”

“ It was her hoop-skirt that best testified to her height. It was the period of those funnel-shaped hoop-skirts that spread out with such nice mathematical proportions, from the waist down, that it seemed they must have emanated from the brains of astronomers, like the orbits, and diameters, and other things belonging to the heavenly bodies. Pupasse could not have come within three feet of the wall with her hoop-skirt distended. To have forced matters was not to be thought of an instant. ”

“ And in that country the women love to sit and talk together of summer nights, on balconies, in their vague, loose, white garments,—men are not balcony sitters,—with their sleeping children within easy hearing, the stars breaking the cool darkness, or the moon making a show of light—oh, such a discreet show of light!--through the vines. And the children inside, waking to go from one sleep into another, hear the low, soft mother-voices on the balcony, talking about this person and that, old times, old friends, old experiences ”

“ Adorine—women live through this week by the grace of God, or perhaps they would be as unreasonable as the men—Adorine could look across the prairie to the little red roof during the day, and could think across it during the night, and get up before day to look across again—longing, longing all the time. ”