Harriet Prescott Spofford

“ Oh, Christ! She loves to live!"
The morning star hung like a great jewel melting into the gold-gray of the sky. But Reuel saw nothing of it; he saw a little dark figure flying down the path like a witch on a broomstick. "It's all right!" Sally was exclaiming, as soon as she was near enough to be heard just under her breath. "No!" putting a hand like a grip of steel on Reuel's arm. "Not on yer life! Ye can't see her yit. I wouldn't let you fer a farm."
Reuel stood a moment, bewildered, half stunned. And then his face quivered, the tears gushed out. "Oh!" he cried. "Oh, I want my father!" ”

“ You're like the man in the 'Morte d'Arthur' who wanted his wife hideous before the court, but beautiful when alone with him."
"Precisely," said Captain Gilbert, laughing. "And I wish we had those days back—days when a man owned his wife, like any other precious thing, till a stronger took her——"
"It's always a stronger that takes her, one way or another."
"He'll be stronger than the laws of the universe if he takes you, that's all," said the Captain, lifting her in his arms and walking down the room with her as if she had been a child; "for by all the laws of the universe you are mine! ”

“ But she had never wished for wealth. In those early days when he had given her the pin she wanted only the health and strength she had, to make his home blessed; and love wrought in her every thought and step, and gave her face, as he felt without thinking, a glorified look.
That face of hers never seemed to him exactly to grow old, although so many years had wrought their work upon it, although Martin had come to man's estate, and was married, and his children had been born on the place with which he struggled for a living. ”

“ And then the soft glow filling the room and working some magic with John Somers's sleep, he opened his mouth and began to sing—to sing as a sleepy child sings to itself—hardly more than a tuneful murmur, a measured breath—an old hymn they had learned at singing-school together. "Land o' Dreams!" sighed Mrs. Somers. "He's in it, awake or asleep. The reel thin's can't hurt him much. It's me that senses 'em. To have him carin' fer that gel for her mother's sake—that's w'at 'twill come to. ”

“ That is all any man-child may look forward to! What every mother finds she has brought her son into the world for!' Then I said, 'Perhaps one day there will be no more wars.' And she passed on with her boy, crying, 'Will the sun rise in the west?' She was a dark and handsome girl, and when she looked at the boy her bitter laugh melted, in spite of her, into a smile of pride and joy."
"No more wars," said the King, half sadly. "No more dreams of empire." ”

“ François went at once, with Aimée's glad cry ringing in his ears, to a man who worked for a milliner, and he came back next day rich with tiny remnants of silk and satin and velvet of all deep or delicate tints in which a rose and her green leaves are ever born, with long strips of his own ribbons, with wax and wire and gum, with crystal beads, and even with scissors. It was against the rules. But what are rules for except to break?
François sought the directress, and told her the simple story. "There is no wrong in the child," he said. ”

“ And when a huge motor-car, offensively red, shot along like a comet, the low sun shining on its burnished brasses and its fiery varnish, then the swiftness and ease of motion, the sense of luxury and power, struck a chord of which he had never been conscious, and the condition of those who could command such things suddenly rose before him like an angel with a flaming sword. ”

“ And the old earth born anew,
⁠And the east a bursting rose.
Music of birds and bees,
⁠Wild and full as the Dorian mood,
The whir of the wing, and the breeze
⁠Bringing the spice of the wood.
Dear the dreams of the night,
⁠And sweet are the hours that are gone. ”

“ Perry did not know herself; and when the Perry children came into the world one after another, Miss Mahala had vivid apprehensions, only quieted by the thought of Mrs. Perry's angelic personality. And yet she knew that a many-colored ray may fall through a crystal and leave it white and limpid as spring water. However, life with the elder might have nullified all the colored ray, she fancied. Yet she watched Una and St. John and Luke and Steve and the twins and at last little Peace with an anxiety that would have disturbed their father and mother had they known of it. ”

“ They do not serve any interest of art. They give what is exaggerated and revolting. They do not give the thrill that shakes the blood in your veins at the blast of the trumpet. They should be suppressed. Men die in battle? They must die sometime. Better in the rush and the struggle than in bed of a fever!"
"Made of dust, ground to dust, returned to dust," said the Jester.
But the King saw the tear on Eirene's cheek as, in a corner of one canvas, she saw a woman with her frightened weanling on her arm, searching among the dead for her man. ”

“ He had cut off the branch of a tree that bore a nest of tent-caterpillars, and there had fallen with it the half-built home of some birds who had carried the little bunch of cotton-wool up where they could pick it to bits at their leisure. And the grandmother felt it a miraculous restoration of a sacred thing. For the pretty bawble symbolized to her not only memory of the dead baby, but the devotion of her husband, who would have given her the wealth of the world if he could have reached it. ”

“ And in the instant of that last sigh John Mowbray knew, by some other than the sense of sight, that Captain Gilbert, masterful, laughing, debonair, towered like a shaft of sunlight before him.
"You are wronged of nothing," a voice that had no sound was ringing in his ears. "The bindweed falls that leans upon a straw. You would have made her happy if you might. But you could not conquer the unconquerable will. And I have come for my own!"
"As a destroying force—destroying joy, destroying life!" cried John Mowbray. ”

“ He heard a child's glad cry saluting the early sun; he heard a boy's clear clarion call as he drove the cattle over the hill on a misty morning, all the green world, the white air, washed with dew. And then the voice was a man's, low and tender, when he himself was burning up with a pneumonia. ”

“ One does not know all things. One will not reject the new, the untried. She would consider. By and by she herself took the gift of François to Aimée, and summoned Adriane there. If she had not been a woman of courage she would not have been in her position. She was not afraid of Adriane with the scissors, "Make a rose," she commanded. And Adriane with great insouciance began to form the flower, leaf by leaf, finishing in a frenzy of delight.
"It is not perfect," said the directress. "Had a rose ever such a heart as that 'twould cease to be a rose. ”

“ She must tell him a man was not to play fast and loose with her. She must tell him she never wanted to see his face again. Then the little old voice within quavered in its high-pitched key, "Is that Lisha on the step?" Lisha was the husband dead and gone this three-score years. ”

“ The bobolink's nest down on the floor of the long meadow, in its tangle of sunbeams and the shadow of tall grasses, with the soft flower-scented wind stirring just above it, did not hold more happiness than this old farm-cottage held. But one day the shadow of a man fell athwart the grass and shut the sun away; and the bobolink knew it meant the morrow's mowing, and ruin. And one day Father James saw the shadow of a man fall across the farm. ”

“ But Grandma remembered those old days, and more vividly than the things of the present; to her her husband was still and eternally young and handsome, strong and upright. While she sat in her soft darkness, she was often living again in this and that part of the drama of their life. Sometimes it was recollection of the electric thrill that shot through her like a sort of glad pang the first time he ever took her hand and made her feel all at once that he belonged to her and she to him forever. ”

“ When he came home in the afternoon, he worked in the small garden, while his wife sat there with the child; and in other hours not given up to the worship of little Jolly he wrought towards the perfection of the model of his machine. Lie never allowed himself to think of it a moment while at his desk.
It would have been difficult to find a man more content with fate than Joliffe Harrison was the day he saw his machine finished in all its potentiality. Various people—his neighbors and friends—had long been interested in its progress, and were forming a company to put it on the market. ”

“ One day the Queen Eirene heard of the work of a famous painter of battle scenes, whose pictures represented with a terrible truthfulness the crudest details of the field, the bleeding wounds, the headless shapes, the corpses trampled out of likeness by maddened horses plunging and rearing to their death, the agony that bit the dust, the gaping horror of the stone-dead face, the pools and rills of blood. ”

“ He had seen Si Martin, pale, thin, downcast; although a wreck, yet the wreck of a certain beauty; plainly a man who had come home to die, and to die soon. Somehow it was painful to John Somers that he hated that man. ”

“ And peace reigned again in the poor prison and in the heart of the directress.
"Oh, how good is the air, the wind, the sky, the sun, the freedom, the rustling of the leaf!" cried Aimée, as she sat at work on her flowers in François's window. "How sad for my poor sisters of the prison! But I shall go often to bring them the breath of the outdoors."
"But, yes," said Francois. "Thou art always thinking for others." ”

“ You go down-stairs, Reuel, quick metre. Wake up, Mis' Dow! It's time ter hyper. Rub her feet, w'ile I git the brandy. Three o'clock to-night 'll tell the story!"
Lyra and the great constellations wheeled slowly overhead, while Reuel walked up and down, up and down the path between the hollyhocks all night. At every turn in his walk he looked up with a sinking heart and a dull horror at the window's faint glimmer. And suddenly he fell on his knees; he didn't dare pray, he only murmured over and over: "She's sech a young thing! She never done wrong in her born days. She loves to live. ”

“ I hardly knew there was a little Pete. I had half a mind to go and buy a pair for Jolly."
"Oh no!" whispered Louie. "Something might happen. He—he might not live to wear them."
"Don't say such a thing, Louie!" he cried, sharply.
"You dear goose!" said Louie.
"Strange,—a man always wants a son, to carry on his race," said Mr. Harrison presently. "And the boy doesn't. He has his mother's traits, and carries on his mother's race—with modifications, of course. And there you are. It's left to the daughter to take the father's traits, as he took his mother's. Don't you see?" ”

“ He worked out the foot-rest of the car and began to break with it the soil about the roots of the tree. And then he saw that the earth had been torn up by a thunderbolt fallen there not long since, stripping the bark off the tree, too, but making his work more easy.
"There's nothing there at all!" cried Mary. "It's all our imagination."
"There's nothing like effort," he replied. ”

“ And before she knew it the strong arms were about her, and she was hiding her face on his shoulder.
What an evening of deep, serene happiness it was! Side by side they looked into the future, and its glow shed a light over them. "It is too much, too much happiness," she said, as they parted. "Something will hinder. I—I shall not be allowed—" And she grew very pale.
"Thank heaven, there is no one to allow or to disallow," said John Mowbray. ”

“ She saw the bounds of the kingdom retreat into far horizons; dreams of conquest curtained her sleep.
He remembered a day when she stood with him, a child, on the top of a tower on the border, her scarf blowing in the wind, and she pointed toward the great plains with their wandering tribes and grazing herds. "All that," she said, "is to be yours. When you have strength of body and soul to take it. Doubtless in the long-gone days it belonged to your house. Boundless, beautiful, inexhaustible! ”

“ There is one climbing over the wall of the queen's garden to see the world go by; it begs me to come for it, in a whisper as soft—oh, as soft as its breath. It is a rose of perfection. Some day I shall go for it." She went; and the gardeners found her in the queen's garden, with her lifted skirt full of the great heavy-headed damask blooms.
It was in vain that grandam and Suzanne and Justine pursued the officers with outcry and vociferation concerning the irresponsibility of the poor papillon; that François followed with comforting words for her till the prison gates were closed upon him. ”

“ She had never quite felt like giving it to Martin's wife,—Martin had been the only child left to them. At one time she thought she would keep it for Jerry's wife,—although to Jerry, Martin's son, all girls were yet as shadows. At another time she felt she ought to give it to Louisa, who was to be married some day;—but she loved Emmy best. And then she didn't know. She had an intimate fancy that, after all, she would like to have it buried with her,—she would like to rise at the last day with the pin on; she had always asked to be laid away in a white gown ”

“ Men across whose minds could never come a dream of the possibility that he had so lately escaped, who had denied themselves so much, whose wives had helped them do it, that they might prove their faith in him. To whom, indeed, through the way in which their confidence, their companionship, and encouragement had held up his hands, the machine belonged almost as much as it did to him, the dear fellows! ”

“ And Mary began to have a strange foreboding about the main building, as of some baleful influence there that might harm the child. So her husband took the child with her and went all over the main building, and showed her there was nothing there but emptiness, not even gloom; for how could gloom live in a place flooded with sunshine through all its many windows? After the twin babies came, Mary had the clothes hung there to dry. ”

“ Gilbert as much as when they turned to look at her—she was the woman whom this wonder among men had chosen out of all the women on the earth. But they always found it well worth their while to look at her. "The Lord may have thought He made the most beautiful thing possible when He made this rose," the Captain said to her once, stooping to a wayside bramble, "but I think He made the most beautiful thing when He made a woman. And you are a woman and a rose, too!" ”

“ Will you, for the sake of pleasing a sentimentalist who gives you no heir to your crown, to your name, who puts an end to your race and dynasty, will you sit still and become a thing aside, degenerate into a tenth-rate principality, while other Powers seize these provinces and hem you in, laugh at the fable of your old prestige, and make nothing of you? ”