Margaret Wade Campbell Deland

“ Long will Old Chester remember that occasion: The little house, lighted from garret to cellar; candles in every possible spot; flowers all about; the mantel-piece heaped with bundles; William King's bird-cage hanging in the window; Uncle Davy's fiddle twanging in the kitchen; and Miss Lydia in front of the smoky fireplace, banked now with larkspurs and peonies—Miss Lydia in a light, bright blue silk dress trimmed with lace; Miss Lydia in white kid gloves, buttoned with one button at the wrist, and so tight that the right glove split across the back when she began to shake hands. ”

“ It was a pastel of spring—a dappled sky, apple blossoms, clover, and the river's sheen of gray-blue. All about her were the beginnings of summer—the first exquisite green of young leaves; oaks, still white and crumpled from their furry sheaths; horse-chestnuts, each leaf drooping from its stem like a hand bending at the wrist; a thin flicker of elm buds, still distrustful of the sun. Later, this delicate dance of foliage would thicken so that the house would be in shadow, and the grass under the locusts on either side of the front door fade into thin, mossy growth. ”

“ There was a breathless moment; then Truth, nobly naked, spoke: "Maurice, duty is the first thing in the world;—not happiness. If you thought it was your duty to marry Lily, I wouldn't say a word. You would never know that I cared. Never! I'd just stand by, and help you. I'd live in the same house with her, if it would help you! But—" her voice shook; "you don't think it's your duty. You know it isn't! You know that it would make things worse for Jacky,—not better, as Eleanor wanted them to be. So why shouldn't you be happy? Oh, it's artificial, to refuse to be happy!" ”

“ But Lois was young. The next morning, when she pushed back her windows, she felt joy bubble up in her soul as unrestrainedly as though she had never said a word to Gifford which could make his heart ache. The resistance and spring of the climbing roses made her lean out to fasten her lattices back, and a shower of dew sprinkled her hair and bosom; and at the sudden clear song of the robin under the eaves, she stood breathless a moment to listen, with that simple gladness of living which is perhaps a supreme unselfishness in its entire unconsciousness of individual joy. ”

“ Once Blair opened his lips to bid her notice that the overhanging willows and chestnuts mirrored themselves so clearly in the water that the skiff seemed to cut through autumnal foliage, and the sound of the ripple at the prow was like the rustle of leaves; but the preoccupation in her face silenced him. It was after four when, brushing past a fringe of willows, the skiff bumped softly against a float half hidden in the yellowing sedge and grass at Willis's landing. Blair got out, and drawing the boat alongside, held up his hand to his wife, but she ignored his assistance. ”

“ It was almost midnight before he took his lamp and went up-stairs; at David's door he hesitated, and then went in. The little boy was lying curled up like a puppy, his face almost hidden in his pillow, but his cheek glowing red under the soft thatch of hair. Dr. Lavendar, shading his lamp with one hand, looked down at him a long time. On the wall behind him and half-way across the ceiling, the old man's shadow loomed wavering and gigantic, and the light, flickering up on his face, deepened the lines of age and of other people's troubles. ”

“ The soul will be ready for him when he comes then; will even welcome him, for after a while Life grows a little tired and is ready to grasp that cool hand and rest. We all know how to meet Death then, with dignity and patience. But to meet him to-morrow—to-day, even, when we are full of our own business, of our own urgent affairs—the mere interruption of it is maddening. Across the solemnity of the thought comes with grotesque incongruity an irritated consciousness of the inconvenience of dying. ”

“ He started as if she had struck him.
“Lewis, Lewis, let us go home!”
The flame of mystical satisfaction went out of his face as a lighted candle goes out in the wind.
“There isn’t any home now, Athalia,” he said, with a sombre look; “there’s only a house. Come in,” he added, heavily; “we must talk this out.”
She followed him, and for a moment they neither of them spoke; he fumbled about in the warm darkness for a match, and lifting the shade, lighted the lamp on the table; then he looked at her. “Athalia,” he said, in a terrified voice, “I am—I am a Shaker!” ”

“ But when Maurice discovered that such acquaintance had also its risks, the shock was agonizing. He was overwhelmed with disgust and shame. Once, at his desk, brooding over what had happened, his whipping instinct of truthfulness roused a sudden, frantic impulse in him to go home and confess to Eleanor, and ask her to forgive him. She never would, of course! No woman would; Eleanor least of all. But oh, if he only could tell her! As he couldn't, remorse, with no outlet of words, smoldered on his consciousness, as some hidden and infected wound might smolder in his flesh. ”

“ Sara gave her very self—her power, her charm, her sweet and generous enthusiasms—fully and freely into the little, mean hands that were held out to take all they could get. “Because,” she said to herself, again, “the only way to reach her is to love her. Love is the greatest thing in the world! I’ve no doubt I would have been just as bad as Nellie if I hadn’t had so much love.” This thought made the girl rise, and go and push her mother’s sewing aside, and kiss her, with a little half laughing break in her voice, and her eyes suddenly wet with tears. ”

“ Lois said at last, "I would go back to Lockhaven; I would go, if it had to be in disguise!"—
"Not if you loved John," Helen answered.
"How can you bear it?" Lois whispered, looking up into the calm face with a sort of awe which checked her tears. "It is so cruel, Helen, you cannot forgive him."
"There is nothing to forgive; I hoped you would understand that, Lois. John cannot do anything else, don't you see? Why, I would not love him as I do, if, having such convictions, he was not true to them. He must be true before anything else." ”

“ Semple's book Philippa was silent, remembering how yellow the great flat disk of the moon had been in her dream; how it pushed up from behind the black edge of the world, and how, suddenly, the misty stubble-field was flooded with its strange light:—"you are going to have a beau!"
Philippa wished she might see the book, just to know what sort of things were read to Mary. "It isn't right to read them to the child," she thought; "it's a foolish book, Mary," she said, aloud. ”

“ It was not a personal ambition: there was no self-seeking in Fred Payton; she wanted to succeed because her success would show what women could do; show that a woman was as able as a man—as wise, as good ("better! better!" she told herself) ; show that a woman could rule, could achieve, could be "the head of the family"! The thing that was to be "in hers" was work to free women from the shackles of the old ideals, from content in sex slavery, with all its ignorances and futilities, its slackness of purpose and shameful timidities, that a man-made world had called "duties." ”

“ Even in the scorch of that insane moment, Blair Maitland flinched at such a declaration of hate. Hate like that is the left hand of Love. He had sense enough left in his madness to know that, and he could have killed David because he was jealous of such precious hate.
"You'll get over that," he assured her; neither of them saw in such an assurance the confession that he knew she loved David still. And still his smitten god was silent! "You—you hate him because he slighted you," Blair said, stammering with passion. "But for God's sake, Elizabeth, show him that you hate him. ”

“ They were not appropriate—the soft, rosy flowers beside the hard face there on the pillow; the face with its thatch of gray hair over the narrow, domelike brow, seamed and cut with wrinkles; the anxious, melancholy lips set in such icy and eternal indifference—the face of the religious egotist, stamped with inexorable sincerity, stern and cold and mean. Not a father’s face. But his daughter had put her handful of snowy flowers on the pine table, their little gnarled black stems thrust tightly down into a tumbler of water. ”

“ Howard; Howard had sense! But men generally—did they really dislike clever women? If so, it merely meant that they were afraid of Truth. They wanted women to be timid, and pretty, and useless: to be slaves and playthings!—so they fooled them into the belief that silliness was attractive, and that slavery and virtue were the same thing. It was men who had taught women to believe that awful thing her mother had said about Morty's being "the head of the family"; had taught them to believe that a man—not because he was good, or wise, or strong, but because he was a man—was the one to rule! ”

“ Eleanor said to herself. She sat there alone, thinking of Edith's defects—her big mouth, her bad manners, her loud voice; and as she thought,—watching the waders all the while with tear-blurred eyes until a turn in the current hid them—she felt this new dislike flowing in upon her: "He talks to her; and forgets all about me!" ... She was deeply hurt. "He says she has 'brains.' ... He doesn't mind it when she says she 'doesn't care for music,' which is rude to me! And she talks about jealousy! She knows I'm jealous. Any woman who loves her husband is jealous." ”

“ It was very unlike Milly's dresses—dark, good woollens, made rather tight, for Milly, short and stout and forty-three, aspired (for her Thomas's sake) to a figure,—which is always a pity at forty-three. Furthermore, Helen Hayes's hands, very white and heavy with shining rings, lay in lovely idleness in her lap; and that is so much more restful in a woman's hands than to be fussing with sewing "or everlasting darning," Thomas thought. In fact, what with her lovely idleness and her praise of his boy, Tom Dilworth thought he had rarely seen so pleasing a young woman. ”

“ Her little white bed; the old cherry-wood dressing-case, with its shining brass rings and spotless linen cover; the morning sunshine dancing with the shadows of the leaves, and falling in a golden square upon the floor; the curtains at the south window blowing softly to and fro in the fresh wind, and the flutter of wings outside in the climbing roses; even the bunch of white lilacs on the little table, apparently all just as she had left them nearly a year ago. Lockhaven and theology were behind her, and yet in some indefinable way she was a stranger in a strange land. ”

“ Even that whirlwind of anger at Benjamin Wright's contempt had only roused her to buttress her shelter with declarations that she was not harming anybody. But sitting there between William King and his wife, in the midst of decorously mournful Old Chester, she knew she could never say that any more; not only because a foolish and ill-balanced youth had been unable to survive a shattered ideal, but because she began suddenly and with consternation to understand that the whole vast fabric of society rested on that same ideal. ”

“ Elizabeth looked at him with perfectly uncomprehending eyes. The innocence of them did not touch him. For the second time in her life she was at the mercy of Love. "Blair is fond of me," she said; "he never would give me a divorce. He has told me so a hundred times. Do you suppose I haven't begged him to let me go? On my knees I begged him. No, David, there is no way out except—"
"There is a way out if you love me enough to—come to me. Then," he said in a whisper, "he will divorce you and we can be married. Oh, Elizabeth, death is not the way out; it is life, dear, life! Will you live? ”

“ The yard in front of the house was so shaded by ailanthus-trees that grass refused to grow there, and an iron dog, guarding the patch of bare earth, was spotted with mold.
The street was very quiet,—except when the barber's children squabbled shrilly, or Baker's livery-stable sent out a few funeral hacks, or when, from a barred window in the ell of the Payton house, there came a noisy laugh. And always, on the half-hour, the two mules went tinkling along, their neat little feet cupping down over the cobblestones, and their trace-chains swinging and sagging about their heels. ”

“ Maurice thought, "does she know it?"
It seemed as if Johnny, puffing at his pipe, and slapping a mosquito on his lean brown hand, answered his thought:
"Edith's astonishingly young. She doesn't realize that she's grown up." There was a pause; "Or that I have."
Maurice was silent; he suddenly felt old. These two—these children!—believing in love, and in each other, were in a world of their own; a world which knew no hidden household in the purlieus of Mercer; no handsome, menacing, six-year-old child; no faded, jealous woman, overflowing with wearisome caresses! ”

“ Miss Harriet drew in her breath. "It's being trapped that is so awful, Willy. The consciousness that you can't get out. It isn't the—the pain of it; it's being trapped."
William King, looking at the poor tawny creature of the desert and free winds and life that dealt death with passion, blinked suddenly behind his glasses. "But you trap things yourself," he protested, a moment afterwards.
"Oh, but I don't keep 'em trapped; I kill 'em," she defended herself. "I couldn't keep things shut up. I'd be as bad as Annie if I saw any living creature that wasn't free to get out-of-doors." ”

“ Love of good was really love of God, in her mind. Heaven meant righteousness, and hell an absence from what was best and truest; but Helen did not feel that a soul must wait for death before it was overtaken by hell. It was very simple and very short, this creed of hers; yet it was the doorway through which grief and patience were to come,—the sorrow of the world, the mystery of sin, and the hope of that far-off divine event. ”