Kate Trimble Sharber

“ One of the things we enjoyed most at Cousin Eunice's was walking out to a lovely old cemetery not very far from her house. It is so old and so beautiful that you're sure all the people in the graves must have gone to Heaven long ago. Along in April, when the iris and lilies-of-the-valley are in bloom and the birds and trees and sky all seem to be so happy, you look around at those peaceful graves and you don't believe in hell one bit. You think God is a heap better than folks give Him credit for being. ”

“ The candlelight shone against the canvas, and glittered in dancing little waves over the name-plate on the frame.
"Portrait of the Artist, by Himself."
"Was it a comfort to her, I wonder?" my lover said, his thoughts only half with the past.
"A torturing comfort—the kind a woman like her demands," I answered. "She had to go to it every hour in every day—and look at it—to make her heart ache, because it was only a picture. She was a human being—as well as a novelist, so that such as this could only add to her anguish. ”

“ We all felt so sorry for him, for, from the first minute he looked at her he was in love; and it's a terrible thing to be in love and engaged at the same time, when one is with one girl and the other to another! And it was so plain that the eyes of the potatoes could see it! But Bertha hadn't an idea of giving up anybody as good-looking as Rufe to another somebody as good-looking as Cousin Eunice, which mother said was a shame, and she never did such a thing when she was a girl; but Mammy Lou said it was no more than Rufe deserved for not being more careful. ”

“ Yet you must not get the impression from this that Guilford was a bad sort! Why, no woman could ride in an elevator with him for half a minute without realizing that he was the flower-of-chivalry sort of man! He always had a little way of standing back from a woman, as if she were too sacred to be approached, and in her presence he had a habit of holding his hat clasped firmly against the buttons of his coat. You can forgive a good deal in a man if he keeps his hat off all the time he's talking to you!
"'Shocked?'" I repeated.
"Your mother always plans for your happiness, Grace." ”

“ That blessed Waterloo! He's the sweetest thing I know anything about! Just about this time I reckon he's begging his "Daddy-boy" to sing Feep Alsie, Ben Bolt, for that's been his precious little sleepy song ever since he's been born.
When I think of those three and how happy they are, and how satisfied they are just to be together, I know that Rufe told me the truth that day, a long, long time ago! There is only one subject worth writing about—or one object worth living for! May every one of you grandchildren find just such an object, and be as happy as they are while living for it! ”

“ Outside the limousine was breathing softly.
I don't remember what we talked about going in to town, or whether we talked at all or not; but when the machine slowed up at the Herald building 210 and Maitland Tait helped me out, there was the same light shining from his eyes that shone there the night before—the light that made the glint of the silver oars on Cleopatra's Nile barge turn pale—and the radiance half blinded me.
"Grace, you don't want me to say anything to-night—I can see that," he said. "And you are right—if you are still bound to that other man! ”

“ And Cousin Eunice doesn't have just a plain parlor at home to receive her beaux in; she has a studio. A studio is a room full of things that catch dust. And the desire of her life is to write a little brown-backed book 13 that people will fill full of pencil marks and always carry around with them in their suit-cases. She doesn't neglect her outside looks, though, just because her mind is so full of great thoughts. No indeed! Her fountain pen jostles against her looking-glass in her hand-bag, and her note-book gets dusted over with pink powder.
Now, Bertha is entirely different! ”

“ I ran the whole gamut of her emotions—'twixt love and duty—and I came out of it feeling that—well, certainly I felt that a conservatory is a room where eavesdroppers hear no good of themselves!
"Is everybody crazy to-night?" I whispered to Guilford, as we paused for a moment before the dancing commenced just outside one of the downy, silky reception rooms—quite apart from the noisy ballroom farther back—and I saw two people inside. The girl was seated before the piano, and was singing softly, while the man stood at her side, listening with a rapt expression. ”

“ Cousin Eunice is like a lovely iris, and Ann Lisbeth is like a Marechal Niel rose. Miss Cis Reeves used to look like a bright, happy little pansy, but that was before the twins were born. Now her collar to her shirtwaist always hikes up in the back and shows the skin underneath and her hat (whenever she gets a chance to put on a hat) is over one ear, and lots of 242 times she looks like she wishes nobody in her family ever had been born, especially the twin that cries the loudest. ”

“ Mammy Lou called us to breakfast just then, but I could eat only four soft-boiled guinea eggs, wondering what on earth Cassius had said in reply when Jean said genuflections to him.
"Pshaw! The rest isn't worth telling," she said with a weary look, as I pulled her down on the steps right after breakfast and begged her to go on about Cassius. "It ended with a disappointment—like everything else that has a man connected with it! You're a lucky girl to be in love with Lord Byron so long, for dead men break no hearts!" ”

“ She scrambled about for a book on a table near at hand—and I began to see daylight.
"Oh, a player-piano, and an electric coupé—all in one day! I see! My fairy godmother—who was old Aunt Patricia, and she looked exactly like one—has turned the pumpkin into a gold coach! You two plotters have been putting your heads together to have me get rich quick and gracefully!"
"We understand that this stroke of fortune is going to make a great change in your life, Grace," Guilford said gravely. He was always grave—and old. ”

“ I had never before in my life heard of his wishing to speak to Delia Ramage, but she was the nearest one to him, so he veered across to her side, while I was left alone with the new arrival. This is called heaping coals of fire.
"I was glad to see you—a moment ago," Maitland Tait said in that low intimate tone which is usually begotten only by daily or hourly thought. Take two people who have not seen each other for a week, nor thought of each other, and when they meet they will shrill out spontaneous, falsetto tones—but not so with two people whose spirits have communed five minutes before. ”

“ Not one of us knew what to think of such a strange disease till all of a sudden I remembered Bertha's bad habit! And then I knew it was all off with Aunt Laura and the marrying. It wasn't very long till they all caught on to what it was on her face; and the worst part of it was that Brother Sheffield said he believed she did it a-purpose. He rose up very proud, and looking kinder relieved and said he could never marry a woman who would "defile herself with the trade-mark of Jezebel." ”

“ I have spent all the days of my life hating aristocracy."
"Oh, my feeling for him is not caused by his aristocracy," I made haste to explain. "And indeed, the Christies were very commonplace people until he elevated them into the ranks of fame. He was not only an artist of note, but he was a very strong man. It is this part of his history that I revere, and when I was a very young girl I 'adopted' him—from all the rest of my ancestors—to be the one I'd care for and feel a pride in." ”

“ Fairfax says the blue smoke will curl up from his cabin chimney at sunset and form a "symphony in color" against the green tree-tops; and he can lead the "untrammeled life." He is begging Miss Irene to go and lead it with him, I'm sure; and she's half a mind to do it, but can't bear the thoughts of it when she remembers Doctor Bynum's eyes and hands. Altogether the poor girl looks as uncertain as if she was walking on a pavement covered with banana peelings. ”

“ If there is ever a season when a woman's system is predisposed toward the malady known as sex love, it is when some man is magnanimous about another man. And Guilford's manner at that instant was magnanimous—and I already had fifty-seven other varieties of affection for him! I decided then, in the twinkling of my fan chain, which I was agitating rather mercilessly, that if Guilford were the kind of a man I could love, he'd be the very man I should adore. ”

“ And when she's expecting him at night her eyes shine like they had been greased; and I can tell from the way she breathes quick when she hears the gate open that she loves him. Yes, she adores the sound of his rubber heels on the front porch; but she won't give in to him. She's punishing him for the Bertha part of it. Mother says she's very foolish, for men will be men, especially on nights in June; but Mammy Lou says she's exactly right; and I reckon mammy knows best, for she's been married a heap more times than mother ever has. ”

“ Just because he's old, and drank out of the same canteen with my grandfather I made a habit of 88 keeping fresh flowers in his gray Rookwood vase. This spot of color, together with the occasional twinkle from his eyes, made the only break in the dusty newspapery monotony of the room. He looked up from his desk, and his face brightened as he saw my holiday attire.
"Well, Grace?"
He started up, big and shaggy—and wistful—like a St. Bernard. I like old men to look like St. Bernards—and young ones to look like greyhounds. ”

“ Why don't you come away? You are a man first, an artist afterward—and it is the man that I love!
"And, Jim, do you know how much I love you? Do you know how your face leads me on?—It is your face I must have now, darling. Portrait of the Artist, by Himself, is a title I have often smiled over, wondering how a man could be induced to paint his own features, but now I know! It is always because some woman has so clamorously demanded it—a woman who loved him! ”

“ That night they said well, they had found out they couldn't live in the city, and they weren't going to be separated from me, and I had to be educated; so Rufe then told them that a governess was the next best thing. This sounded so much like a young girl in a book that at first I was delighted. A governess is a very clean person that always expects you to be the same. Only in books they are usually drab-colored young ladies without any nice clothes or parents, but the son of the family falls in love with them, much to their surprise, and they lose their job. ”

“ I did want that player-piano tremendously—although I had about as much use for an electric coupé, under my present conditions in life, as I had for a perambulator.
"Grace, you're—indelicate!" mother said, her voice trembling. "Guilford's a man!"
"A man's a man—especially a Kentuckian!" I answered. "You're not shocked at my mention of colts and—and things, are you, Guilford?"
My betrothed sat down and lifted from the bridge of his nose that badge of civilization—a pair of rimless glasses. ”

“ It ain't any easy matter to keep a diary with a baby in the house, especially if he's at the watchable age, although he's such a darling one that you don't begrudge him the trouble he makes. Before you more than get a sentence set down you have to drop everything and run and jerk the palm-leaf fan out of his hands, which he takes great pleasure in ramming the handle of down his throat. Then he eats great handsful of the Virginia Creeper leaves if you leave him on the porch for a minute by himself. ”

“ I had made my way to the desk of the sporting editor, who writes poetry and pretends he's so aerial that he never knows what day of the week it is, but when you pin him down he can tell you exactly what you want to know—from the color of the bride's going-away gown to the amount the bridegroom borrowed on his life insurance policy. ”

“ Cousin Eunice said she thought sending post-cards was the one melancholy pleasure of traveling, and so I bought a quarter's worth at every place.
Traveling is a melancholy pleasure when you have a baby that you won't let drink a drop of water unless it has had the germs all stewed in 263 it. Waterloo is getting to be such a big boy now, too; but he still talks like a telegram—just the most important words of what he wants to say, with all the others left out. He's crazy about foot-ball, chewing-gum and billy-goats. ”

“ You believe in a "dual personality"? Well, they're mine! They quarrel within me! They dispute! They pull and wrangle and seesaw in as many different directions as a party of Cook tourists in Cairo—coming into the council-chamber of my conscience to decide everything I do, from the selection of a black-dotted veil to the emancipation of the sex—while I sit by as helpless as a bound-and-gagged spiritual medium.
"They're not going to affect her future," mother said, but a little gasp of fear showed that if she'd been a Roman Catholic she would be crossing herself. ”

“ I've often heard Doctor Gordon say that diseases have a "period of incubation," but I believe that love is one disease that doesn't incubate. It just comes, like light does when you switch on the electricity. This morning Mr. Gayle came so early that Rufe went into the sitting-room and began to poke fun at him, as usual.
"Hello, old man," he said, shaking hands with him. "I'm surely glad to see that it's you. Thought of course when the door-bell rang so soon after breakfast that it was an enlarged picture agent!" ”

“ The rest of the fabrication was cut short and drowned out by the shriek of a trolley-car, grinding noisily round a curve of the track at that instant. 126 It was the five-o'clock car, and I had grown to watch for its shriek as fearfully as ever Cinderella listened for the stroke of twelve from the castle clock. For me there was never a garden party without its trolley-car back to the city—its hateful, five-o'clock car—its hurried, businesslike, hungry summons—while ice in tea glasses tinkled to the echo. ”

“ Professor Young and Mrs. Young both kept remarking all day how lovely it was to be able to spend the Fourth of July in a cool ravine instead of in the horrid city where there were so many smells of gunpowder and little boys. ”

“ There you are kept too busy to think—but here I can do nothing else!—Or perhaps I am quite wrong, and it is not a matter of London and Lancashire, after all, but the more primal one of your being a man, and my being a woman! Do I love the more? I wonder? And yet, I don't think that I care much! I am willing to love more abjectly than any woman ever loved before—if you care for me just a little in return. ”

“ You hear a heap of talking these days about "the divine mission of woman," especially from long-haired preachers that don't believe in ladies voting; and another heap of talk about the "rights" of women from the ladies themselves.
There was so much of it going on last winter when I was at Rufe's that I told some of it to Mammy Lou when I came home. She says it's every speck a question of dish-washing when you sift it down to the bottom. The women are tired of their job and the men are too proud to do it unless the window shades are pulled down. ”

“ Then—in that instant—I knew what life was going to mean to me. And I felt as if I had the great joy of the world—hugged close—in a circle of radiance—like the Madonna della Sedia!
"I can be good—a very good woman—if I have your face before me," I told him.
After a while he smiled, then took my hand and drew me to a shadowy corner of the room. ”

“ Now, 104 the bad part about making your living out of poetry or art is that so often you don't do it. This is the way with Julius. He draws fully as good as other artists, but he never has been able to get people to notice it. Professor Young says his work lacks "the divine spark," and so the poor young man has to heat his coffee over the gas-jet, like they always have to do in pitiful magazine stories. So much poetry and art have made him real thin, with strange flannel shirts, and he looks half like a writing person and half like a hero which was raised out West. ”

“ This piece of sarcasm came from old great-great-aunt, Patricia Christie, who never took sides with anybody in family disputes, because she hated them one and all alike. She rose from her chair now and hobbled on her stick into the midst of the battle-field.
"Let me see! Let me see!"
"She's remarkably like Uncle Lancelot, aunty," Cousin Pollie declared with a superior air of finality.
"She's a thousand times more like my father than I, myself, am," poor little mother avowed stanchly. ”

“ Bertha knows if Aunt Laura could get Brother Sheffield to marry her she would unwill the 60 money from the baby; so she thinks up things to tell me to do to keep them from being together, and I've been doing them. One time I hid her purple Sunday bonnet, then her curls to keep her from going to prayer-meeting, but I'm glad to say that I have never taken the dimes which Bertha said she would give me for doing them. I hate Aunt Laura enough to do mean things to her myself, which is a better principle than to do them just for dimes. ”

“ Guilford, under the impulse induced by a white tissue gown and big red roses, had suffered an unusual heart-action already and had spent half an hour whispering 171 things in my ear which made me feel embarrassed and ashamed. The only thing which can possibly make a lifelong engagement endurable is the brotherly attitude assumed by the lover in his late teens. ”

“ My desk was really in the wildest disorder. The tin top of the mucilage bottle had disappeared, the bottle had been overturned, its contents had been lavished upon the devoted head of a militant suffragette, and she was pinioned tightly to my blotting-pad.
"The elevator to Success is not running—take the stairs," grinned a framed motto above the desk.
"You take a—back seat!" I said, jumping up and turning the thing to the wall. "What do I care about success, if it's the sort of thing connected with typewriters, offices, copy paper and a pot of paste? I'm—I'm des-qua-mat-ing!" ”

“ Walker said?"
"Probably so. The Seven Oaks gardens are very lovely in June."
At the mention of gardens his eyes wandered, with what I fancied was a tinge of homesickness, toward the colorful flowering spaces beyond the box hedges. There were acres and acres of typical English gardens back there; and the odor of the sweet old-fashioned shrubs came in on gentle heat waves from the open area. He looked as if he would like to be back there in those English-looking gardens—with all the people gone. ”