Maria Thompson Daviess

“ Suddenly a great, beautiful warmth melted the horror of pride and humiliation that had frozen my heart as Nickols had stepped from my side to that of Martha in acknowledgment of her claim upon him for the saving of the child. All fear for her or us or the babies passed from me. My soul had gone out into a darkness, called on some great Power that must be there directing such a thing as was happening to us, and calm and clear the answer of courage flowed into me.
Then without another moment's hesitation I stepped forward and held out my arms to Gregory Goodloe for Martha. ”

“ I answered to him as I drew nearer and laid my hand with timidity upon the sleeve of his coat.
“My God, boy, do they grow many like you in France?” was the answer that the great Gouverneur Faulkner made to me as he looked down into the adoration of my eyes raised to his, with a question that was of deep bewilderment.
“France has grown many young and fine men who—who die, my Gouverneur Faulkner for her in the trenches, where I must soon go,” I answered him with my head drawn to its entire height in the likeness of the old Marquis of Grez and Flanders. ”

“ I shall keep my word to myself and propose to Richard if my contract with Jane and the Five seems to call for it. In the meantime if I choose to cry myself to sleep it is nobody's business.
I wonder if a mist rises up to Heaven every night from all the woman-tears in all the world, and if God sees it, as it clings damp around the hem of His garment, and smiles with such warm understanding that it vanishes in a soft glow of sleep that He sends down to us! ”

“ Returning from New York to the Riverfield Road through the Harpeth Valley, I also discovered upon the damsel Spring a hint of a soft young costume of young green and purple and yellow that was as yet just a mist being draped over her by the Southern wind.
"I feel like the fairy princess being driven into a land of enchantment, Mr. Golden Bird," I remarked as I leaned back upon the soft old cushions and took in the first leisurely breath of the air of the open road that my lungs had ever inhaled: one simply gulps air when seated in a motor-car. ”

“ Rose Mary lifted quick welcoming eyes to his and went on with her work with bowl and paddle. Everett had some time since got to the point where it was well-nigh impossible for him to look directly into Rose Mary's deep eyes, quaff a draft of the tenderness that he always found offered him and keep equanimity enough to go on with the affairs in hand. What business had a woman's eyes to be so filled with a young child's innocence, a violet's shyness, a passion of fostering gentleness, mirth that ripples like the surface of the crystal pools, and—could it be dawning—love? ”

“ As she spoke, Mother Mayberry smiled delightedly at the singer girl and drew her closer. Mother's voice at most times was a delicious mixture of banter and caress.
"Perhaps I'll stay always," said the singer lady as she drew close against the gray print shoulder. "When I look around me I feel as if I had awakened in a beautiful world with no more dirty, smoky cities that hurt my throat, no more hot, lighted theaters, no noises, and everything is just a great big bouquet of soft smells and colors." ”

“ I love Nickols and am entirely unsatisfied with him. He is the Whistler nocturne that my Sorolla nature demands, and he eternally makes me hold out my hand to grasp—nothing. He stands just beyond. I am unable to decide whether he does or does not love me. In New York he lives his life among the artists and fashionable people with whom his highly successful profession throws him, and I don't see why he cares to come back here where he was born and reared, in pursuit of a woman like me. I am as elemental as a shock of wheat back on one of father's meadows and Nickols is completely evolved. ”

“ Andrew crouched close beside her to the windward. And the ruthless old moon that was putting the stars out of business by the second was not in the least abashed to find them gazing at her as she blustered up over the ridge, round and red with exertion.
"Were you alone on that pier?" asked Caroline with the utmost naïveté, as she snuggled down deeper into the collar of the sweater.
"I'm generally alone—in most ways," answered Andrew, the suspicion of a laugh covering the sadness in his tone. "I seem to see myself going through life alone unless something happens—quick!" ”

“ A serious disposition can make more trouble for itself by its own seriousness than all the misfortunes that come can make for it. If I had just a little touch of Roxanne Byrd's foamy spirits, I would be a much more comfortable companion for myself. All night I lay awake, anchored in the middle of the huge old Byrd bedstead, and sorrowed over the misfortune that had come to Roxanne and the Idol. Over and over I went in my mind to see where I could clear Mr. Rogers of my suspicions until my thoughts were so pale in color that I could hardly make them out, and at last I fell asleep in despair. ”

“ I exclaimed, heartily, as I grasped his arm with enthusiasm. "You are so wonderful, Peter."
"Dear, dearest Betty," said Peter, as he put his arm through mine, and we both began to swing back and forth on the gate. "It is so marvelous to have a woman respond to your every mood as you do to mine. It is like having in one's possession an angel incarnate in her own harp." ”

“ Sallie is the most perfectly lovely woman I almost ever saw. She has great violet eyes with black lashes that beg you for a piece of your heart, and her mouth is as sweet as a blush rose with cheeks that almost match it in rosiness. She and the babies always remind me of a cluster rose and roses, flower and buds, and I don't see why every man that sees her is not mad about her. They all used to be before she married, and I suppose they will be again as soon as the crepe gets entirely worn off her clothes. ”

“ I say now and I shall always maintain that the most wonderful tenderness in the world is that with which a man who had known a woman all his life, who has grown with her growth, has shared her laughter and her tears, and knows her to her last feminine foible or strength, takes her into his arms. Matthew crouched down upon the grass beside me and gathered me against his breast, away from the dreadful monster-inhabited shadows, and made me feel that a new day could dawn upon the world. ”

“ Her sad eyes looked out over Harpeth Valley, which lay in a swoon with the midsummer heat. The lush blue-grass rose almost knee deep around the grazing cattle in the meadows, and in the fields the green grain was fast turning to a harvest hue. Almost as far as her eyes could reach along Providence Road and across the pastures to Providence Nob, beyond Tilting Rock, the land was Alloway land and had been theirs for what seemed always. She could remember what each good-by to it all had been when she had gone out over the Ridge in her merry girlhood and how overflowing with joy each return. ”

“ Johnson had put all the flowers out of hers and Mrs. Cain's garden all over everything, and the table was a mass of soft pink roses that were shedding perfume and nodding at one another in their most society manner. There is no glimmer in the world like that which comes from really old polished silver and rosewood and mahogany, and one's great-great-grandmother's hand-woven linen feels like Oriental silk across one's knees. ”

“ For all women now in the world who have the love of a man in their hearts, and for those unborn who will come into that possession, I pray that they may be given the opportunity to plant in the hearts of those men of their desire the seed of a fine loyalty and service and comradeship, and that they may some day look into his eyes and see that seed slowly expand into a great white flower of mate love, as I beheld bloom for me in the eyes of my beloved Gouverneur Faulkner. ”

“ The sorrow that had come they had endured for the night and now they were ready to rise up and meet joy for the morning. In the children of nature the emotions maintain their elemental balance and their sense of the proportions of life is instinctively true.
"Look, honey-bird, who's coming!" said Mother Mayberry, just as she was turning to seat herself in her rocking-chair, tired out as she was with the strain of the long day. "Run, meet 'em at the gate!" And up Providence Road came the old Deacon and Eliza hand in hand, with Martin Luther trailing wearily behind them. ”

“ Jeffries stood in the middle of the reincarnated old garden, looked for a long time at the Poplars, which was like a green encrusted gem with its old purple red brick under the vines, glanced again and again at the chapel with its weathered stone that stood beyond the silver-leafed graybeards, then let his eye wander down the broad elm-bordered main street past the courthouse and past the Settlement to the river bending around it all.
"Money couldn't build anything like it, Powers," he said to Nickols at his side. "Time and gentle living have formed it as a jewel is made in a matrix. ”

“ But if the five miles of Providence Road had been a delight, as Redwheels and I ran along it, the dirt lane that led to The Briers was an intoxicating joy. The wet earth, the drenched cedars, the oak buds, the spongy moss, the reddening blackberry-bushes, and the sprouting grain, all mingled in a queer creation odor that went right through the pores of my skin into my vitals and made me feel as strong as an ox, or rather, as Sam's new mule. ”

“ I didn't know what it was then, but I do now; it is a land-love that lies deep in the heart of every man who is born out in meadows and fields. They never get over it and sometimes transmit it even to the second generation. I felt it stir and run in my blood as we rumbled and bumped up the long avenue of tall old elm-trees that led through deep fields which were even then greening with blue-grass and from which arose a rich loamy fragrance, and finally arrived at the most wonderful old brick house that I had ever seen in all of my life ”

“ Uncle Tucker's large eyes brightened with relief for a second and then clouded with a mist of tears.
"What were you saving it for, child?" he asked with a quaver in his sweet old voice, and his hand clasped hers more closely. "You don't ever have what pretty women like you want and need, and that's what grinds down on me most hardest of all. You are young and—and mighty beautiful, and looks like it's wrong for you to lay down yourself for us who are a good long way on the other side of life's ridge. ”

“ Perhaps you and I have just explored the heart of David Kildare so far. But a heart as fine as his isn't going to pump fool blood into any man's brain—eh?"
"Sometimes and about some things, you do me a great injustice, Major," answered Phoebe slowly, with a serious look into the keen eyes bent upon hers. "Of all the 'glad crowd', as David calls us, I am the only woman who comes directly in contact with the struggling, working, hand-to-hand fight of life, and I can't help letting it affect me in my judgment of—of us. I can't forget it when—when I amuse myself or let David amuse me. ”

“ I said with a great soothing.
“He will not, sir, he will not!” answered my Uncle, the General Robert, with a great impatience. “Half the blood in your veins is the good red blood I gave you, sir, and never forget that. Look what a man it has made of you!”
“Yes, my Uncle Robert,” I answered with a great sadness but also some amusement. In my heart I prayed that always when I had left him he would think that blood to be the good red blood of a man of honor and not of a woman of lies. ”

“ I love them swaying on their stems in the wind, and I like to snatch them and crush the life out of them against my breast and face. I have been to bed every night this spring with a bunch of cool violets against my cheek, and I feel that I am going to dance with my tall row of hollyhocks as soon as they are old enough to hold up their heads and take notice. They always remind me of very stately gentlemen, and I have wondered if the little narcissus weren't shaking their ruffles at them.
A real love-letter ought to be like a cream puff with a drop of dynamite in it. Alfred's was that kind. ”