Henry Handel Richardson

“ And this was not all: as she continued to look into Ephie’s face, she ceased to be herself; she became the man whose tastes she knew better than her own; she saw with his eyes, felt with his senses. She pictured Ephie’s face, arch and smiling, lifted to his; and she understood and excused his weakness. He had not been able to help what had happened: this was the prettiness that drew him in, the kind he had invariably turned to look back at, in the street—something fair and round, adorably small and young, something to be petted and protected, that clung, and was childishly subordinate. ”

“ As soon as Furst was out of sight, he turned into the path that led to the woods. Overhead, the sky was a monotonous grey expanse, and a soft, moist wind drove in gusts, before which, on the open meadow-land, he bent his head. It was a wind that seemed heavy with unfallen rain; a melancholy wind, as the day itself was melancholy, in its faded colours, and cloying mildness. With his music under his arm, Maurice walked to the shelter of the trees. ”

“ He found himself trying to piece things together; to fit them in, to recollect. And every now and then some sound outside would make him start up and listen . . . and listen. Was that not a footstep? . . . the step of one who might come feeling his way. . . dim-eyed with regret? There were such things in life as momentary lapses, as ungovernable impulses--as fiery contrition . . . the anguish of remorse. And yet, once more, he sat up and listened till his ears rang.
Then, not the ghostly footsteps of a delusive hope, but a hard, human crunching that made the boards of the verandah shake. ”

“ Her time was spent in writing endless, scrawly letters to Evelyn, which covered days; in sitting moodily at the top of the fir tree which she climbed in defiance of her length of petticoat glaring at sunsets, and brooding on dead delights; in taking long, solitary, evening walks, by choice on the heel of a thunderstorm, when the red earth was riddled by creeklets of running water; till Mother, haunted by a lively fear of encounters with “swags” or Chinamen, put her foot down and forbade them.
Sufferers are seldom sweet-tempered; and Laura formed no exception. ”

“ He, too, then, had a cranny in his brain, where such fancies lodged—such an eccentric, artist fancy, or whim, or superstition—as that, out of several hundred people, a single individual could distract and disturb. He . . . too!
The little word had done it. Now she knew—knew what the roses had been trying to tell her. And as if invisible hands had touched a spring in her brain, thereby opening some secret place, the memory of a certain hour returned to her, returned with such force that she fell on her knees, and pressed her face to the seat of the sofa. On the floor beside her lay the roses. ”

“ Louise winced as though the words had struck her in the face. Before she answered, she stood still, in the middle of the path, and pinned on, with deliberate movements, the big white hat, beneath the drooping brim and nodding feathers of which, her eyes were as black as coals.
“No, I should not,” she said. “Why should I? Do you think it would make him care more for me to know that I had nearly died of love for another man?” ”

“ The plains beneath were veiled in haze; detached sounds mounted from them: the prolonged barking of a dog, the drone of an approaching train. Round about them, the air was heavy with the scent of the sun-warmed pines. Maurice had taken her hand and sat holding it: it was the one thing that existed for him. All else was vague and unreal: only their two hearts beat in all the universe. ”

“ The men at the windlasses spat into their horny palms and bent to the crank: they paused only to pass the back of a hand over a sweaty forehead, or to drain a nose between two fingers. The barrow-drivers shoved their loads, the bones of their forearms standing out like ribs. Beside the pools, the puddlers chopped with their shovels; some even stood in the tubs, and worked the earth with their feet, as wine-pressers trample grapes. The cradlers, eternally rocking with one hand, held a long stick in the other with which to break up any clods a careless puddler might have deposited in the hopper. ”

“ Miss Jensen, in James’s hat, with her skirts pinned up; Madeleine earnest and decisive on the bank of snow; the maze and laughter of the FRANCAISE; Miss Martin’s slim, straight figure as he pushed her before him. He did not try to control these details, nor was he conscious of a mental effort; they stood out for an instant, as vivid sensations, then glided by, to make room for others. ”

“ The noise that rose from the livestock, on ground floor and upper storey, was ear-splitting: pigs grunted; cocks crowed, turkeys gobbled, parrots shrieked; while rough human voices echoed and re-echoed under the lofty roof. There was a smell, too, an extraordinary smell, composed of all the individual smells of all these living things: of fruit and vegetables, fresh and decayed; of flowers, and butter, and grain; of meat, and fish, and strong cheeses; of sawdust sprinkled with water, and freshly wet pavements—one great complicated smell, the piquancy of which made Laura sniff like a spaniel. ”

“ Not a soul was visible but herself. She sat on a seat, the only living creature in the scene, and the past rose before her with resistless force: the intensity of her happiness; the base cruelty of his conduct; her misery, her unspeakable misery; her forlorn desolation, which was of a piece with the desolation around her, and which would never again be otherwise, though she lived to be an old woman.—How long she sat thinking things of this kind, she did not know. ”

“ It was a bitterly cold night, of milky-white moonlight; each bush and shrub carved its jet-black shadow on paths and grass. Across Evelyn’s bed fell a great patch of light: this, or the chill air would, it was to be trusted, wake her. Meanwhile Laura sat in her thin nightgown and shivered, feeling the cold intensely after the great heat of the day. She hoped with all her heart that she would be lucky enough to get an inflammation of the lungs. Then, Evelyn would be sorry she had been so cruel to her. ”

“ On the summit of one of the clay heaps, a woman shot into silhouette against the sky. An odd figure, clad in a skimpy green petticoat, with a scarlet shawl held about her shoulders, wisps of frowsy red hair standing out round her head, she balanced herself on the slippery earth, spinning her arm like the vane of a windmill, and crying at the top of her voice: "Joe, boys!--Joe, Joe, Joey!" ”

“ To him, the gradual unfolding of their love had been a wonderful revelation; to her, a repetition, and a paler and fainter one, of a tale she already knew by heart. And the knowledge of this awakened a fresh distrust in him. If she had loved that first time, as she had asserted, as he had seen with his own eyes that she did, desperately, abandonedly, how had it been possible for her to change front so quickly, to turn to him and love anew? Was such a thing credible? Was a woman’s nature capable of it? ”

“ Mary was rectitude in person: and it cannot be denied that, to Laura, this was synonymous with hard, narrow, ungracious. Not quite a prig, though: there was fun in Mary, and life in her; but it was neither fun nor vivacity of a kind that Laura could feel at ease with. Such capers as the elder girl cut were only skin-deep; they were on the surface of her character, had no real roots in her: just as the pieces of music she played on the piano were accidents of the moment, without deeper significance. To Mary, life was already serious, full of duties. ”

“ It had rained a little, and the pavements were damp and shining. The wind had dropped to a mere morning breeze, which met him at street-corners. Before his mind’s eye rose a vision of the coming day. He saw one of those early spring days of illimitable blue highness and white, woofy clouds, which stand stationary where the earth meets the sky; the brightness of the sun makes the roads seem whiter and the grass greener, bringing out new tints and colours in everything it touches. ”

“ People’s faces grew as wizened as the skins of old apples; throats and lungs were choked by the grey dust, which whirled through the streets, and made breathing an effort.
In the outlying cemetery it was still bleaker than in the shelter of the houses. Over this stretch of ground the wind swept as over the surface of a sea. The grave-diggers related the extraordinary difficulty they had had in digging the grave; the earth that had been thrown up lay cracked into huge, frozen lumps. ”

“ What such a moment holds within it, is something which has never existed for us before, something it has never entered our minds to go out and seek—the corner of earth, happened on by chance, which comes most near the Wineland of our dreams; the page, idly perhaps begun, which brings us a new god; the face of the woman who is to be our fate—but, whatever it may be, let it once exist for us, and the soul responds forthwith, catching in blind haste at the dimly missed ideal. ”

“ At night, in her own room, lying wakeful with hot cheeks and big eyes, Ephie went over in memory all that had taken place at their last meeting, or built high, top-heavy castles for the future. She was absurdly happy; and her mother and sister had never found her more charming and lovable, or richer in those trifling inspirations for brightening life, which happiness brings with it. ”

“ The window of Mahony's room faced a wide view: not a fence, hardly a bit of scrub or a tuft of grass-tree marked the bare expanse of uneven ground, now baked brown as a piecrust by the December sun. He looked across it to the cemetery. This was still wild and unfenced—just a patch of rising ground where it was permissible to bury the dead. Only the day before—the second anniversary of the Eureka Stockade—he had watched some two to three hundred men, with crepe on their hats and sleeves, a black-draped pole at their head, march there to do homage to their fallen comrades. ”

“ The sun was getting low; the foliage of the trees in the opposite gardens was black, with copper edges, against the refulgence of the sky. She leaned her hands on the sill, and gazed fixedly at the stretch of red and gold, which, like the afterglow of a fire, flamed behind the trees. Her eyes were filled with it. She did not think or feel: she became one, by looking, with the sight before her. ”

“ A string of contemptuous epithets for himself rose to his lips. But when he looked back at the group, the reason of his folly was apparent to him; at the sight of this other beside her, a sharp twinge of jealousy had run through him and disturbed his balance. He gazed ardently at her in the hope that she would look round, but it was only the man—he was caressing his slight moustache and hitting at loose stones while the girls talked—who turned, as if drawn by Maurice’s stare, and looked full at him, with studied insolence. ”

“ The rest was drowned in the wild chromatic passages that Krafft sent up and down the piano with his right hand, while his left followed with full-bodied chords, each of which exceeded the octave. Before, however, there was time to laugh, this riot ceased, and became a mournful cadence, to the slowly passing harmonies of which, Krafft sang:
I am weary of everything that is, under the sun. I sicken at the long lines of rain, which are black against the sky; They drip, for a restless heart, with the drip of despair: For me, winds must rage, trees bend, and clouds sail stormily. ”

“ In the pure breath of the wind, as it gustily swept the earth, was a promise of things vernal, of the tender beauties of a coming spring; but there was still a keen, delightful freshness in the air, a vague reminder of frosty starlights and serene white snow—the untrodden snow of deserted, moon-lit streets—that quickened the blood, and sent a craving for movement through the veins. ”

“ Ned's appearance gave him a pleasant shock: it was just as if Polly herself, translated into male terms, stood before him. No need, now, to cudgel his brains for her image! In looking at Ned, he looked again at Polly. The wide-awake off, the same fine, soft, black hair came to light--here, worn rather long and curly --the same glittering black eyes, ivory-white skin, short, straight nose; and, as he gazed, an offshoot of Mahony's consciousness wondered from what quarter this middle-class English family fetched its dark, un-English strain. ”

“ For out of it all rose the vague, crude picture of woman as the prey of man. Man was animal, a composite of lust and cruelty, with no aim but that of brutally taking his pleasure: something monstrous, yet to be adored; annihilating, yet to be sought after; something to flee and, at the same time, to entice, with every art at one's disposal.
As long as it was solely a question of clandestine knowledge and ingenious surmisings, Laura went merrily with the rest: here no barrier shut her off from her companions. ”

“ Laura was in a strange room, with strange, indifferent girls; and for a time she felt as lonely as she had done in those unthinkable days when she was still the poor little green “new chum”.
Her companions were not wilfully unkind to her—her last extravagance had been foolish, not criminal—and two or three were even sorry for the woebegone figure she cut. But her idolatrous attachment to Evelyn had been the means of again drawing round her one of those magic circles, which held her schoolfellows at a distance. And the aroma of her eccentricity still clung to her. ”

“ And have you not thought to yourself, with a shudder, that some day, in this selfsame way, under the same indifferent sky, among a group of loiterers as idly curious as these, you yourself will be carried out, feet foremost, like a bale of goods, like useless lumber, all will and dignity gone from you, never to enter there again?—there, where all the little human things you have loved, and used, and lived amongst, are lying just as you left them—the book you laid down, the coat you wore—now all of a greater worth than you. ”