Gertrude Hall Brownell

“ No one so well as Chloris, accustomed to its senile vagaries, could make the worn thing discourse music; her greatest successes on it were old-time compositions written in the day of spinet and harpsichord, minuets with a sprinkling of grace-notes, things not sonorous or profound. To-night, playing for no one's praise, she plunged haphazard into the melodies most sympathetic at the moment, stormy and subtle, melancholy and intricate and modern. It was Chloris's one proud gift, this effectiveness at the piano. ”

“ God is real, God lasts, and the love of Him. Human passion passes away. One might almost say that it does not exist. It is like a physical pain: it tortures, you try to locate it, you fix your mind upon the presumed seat of it—it is not there, there is no pain; and presently, when you are well, you cannot call up a remembrance of the sensation. I feel fitted to write a book on this subject. I thought I could never endure my life without Damon—dear, dear Damon! Yet I live and am improved in health. ”

“ She looked mournful in her black things—not the new, crisp crape of well-to-do bereavement, but a poor gentlewoman's ordinary shabby black. Her cheeks had lost their pretty roundness; the effect of her eyes was more than ever melancholy. The pale little face, set in its faint-colored hair, framed in its black bonnet, might pass a hundred times unnoticed: it had little to arrest the attention; but attention, by whatever chance once secured, must be followed by a gentle, compassionate interest in the breast of the beholder. This emotion felt Gregory. ”

“ How different seemed the old house to Emmie returning! She settled down in it with the sense of passionate contentment. I can imagine in a dove restored to the cote after escaping the fowler's snare and the rage of wintry storms. How shut it was against the cold! how safe from arrogant men demanding money! Life in it now seemed to her one round of luxurious pleasures: one could sleep undisturbed, tea and buttered bread came as regularly as the desire for them; flowers bloomed at every season on mantel-shelf and table ”

“ Within the shadow of the shop was discerned a watchful, wrinkled old face, chiefly differing from a parrot's in the slyness of its eyes. Fraisier catching sight of it thought of a witch on guard over a princess enchanted and imprisoned in a glass-case.
The little group in front of Madame Finibald's dispersed, formed anew with other [70] faces many times in the hour; Fraisier remained, his eyes climbing up, sliding down the golden ropes of hair.
At last, though the girl gave no sign, he was made uncomfortable by the sense that she must, even without looking, have seen how long he stood. ”

“ Before the time Chloris had at last rigidly fixed for a formal visit came a message from Cytherea inviting her. Hard as she sought to discover a reason for misliking the dainty note, she could find none; it was irreproachable, and Chloris dressed herself for the occasion with a divided mind, the preponderant part of which was finally comfort: she should at least grapple now with a reality.
She came to Cytherea's house at evening under Damon's escort. As one approached it among the trees it looked rather more like one's idea of an Eastern temple than a sea-coast cottage. ”

“ It is a deliverance. I will not give it one regret; no, not one." She felt suddenly that she did not love Italy: it had betrayed her. "It is you, you who are to blame," she said, full of helpless resentment, shaking a pale small hand vaguely from the window out at the balmy moonlit world; "you, soft air! you, flower smell! you, velvety firmament with the many-colored stars! I was a simple soul: my common life was enough for me; you sowed in my unguarded heart all the seeds of vain dreams, and fostered them. And they bear no fruit ”

“ No woman on earth had such hair!
He did wish for a moment that Green, his new friend, might see her—he was proud of her. One night, when they had sat grinding together for mutual assistance, the oil giving out, Green had told him of a cousin of his. Fraisier had said nothing of any girl. He only wished that Green might see the hair of this girl whose name he had foreborne to speak.
Good-bye, Minnie! He should be working like a slave all through the burning golden days—let her think of him a little. He should be very lonesome. ”

“ Ah, this summer, so endearingly begun, to be ended so—and Chloris, in a confusion of bliss, almost as if to give herself a countenance towards herself, took up her book again, finding moonlight and wild azaleas and whippoorwills between the lines, a dappled, singing shingle, a golden beach, velvet winds from over sea. ”

“ How ravishingly you do your hair! And that little hat! Now, who in the world but you would have a hat like that? Oh, you rare darling! Do you know you are greatly improved? You are thinner, but it suits you. You always were a beauty, you know. Yes, you were! But you have acquired so much besides—such an interesting air—yes, you have!—so much expression. No one could see you without—gospel truth, Chlo! But, yes—I will—I will hold my tongue. Did you bring your music at least, for there is a piano, such as it is. ”

“ When in little less than an hour she heard the breaking again, on the quiet air, of the fatuous silvery jingle, she let her playing fall to a mere musical murmur, and lis [215] tened, acutely, burning all the while with shame.
"Go slowly, Humphrey," she caught, in a rich, sweet voice; "I want to listen to the music."
"She plays really wonderfully. I have never heard playing I preferred to hers," came in a well-known deeper voice, at which Chloris's cheeks waxed hotter still. She pressed her foot on the pedal and shut herself within a wall of dinning, buzzing sound. ”

“ Darling and her reverend cousin leaned over the banisters and shouted, heartily, "Catherine! I say, Catherine!" Mrs. Bonnet fairly scampered up-stairs, with the mistaken Jetty, who thought this was the beginning of a romp, hard after her, trying to catch her by the heels.
She entered Mrs. Darling's room with no affectation of soft-stepping, threw up the window—the sharp outer air cut into the scented warmth like a silver axe—and began pushing things briskly into their places. She digressed from her labors a moment to get from the closet a black moiré, which she examined, then replaced. ”

“ The pure noon light made the statues in the King's Garden, where Paula walked sometimes, look dazzlingly white against the sombre walls of clipped laurel. The open country now was full of blossoming fruit trees; Paula often begged Veronika to alight from the carriage and gather for her the flowers she saw shining in the grass—primroses and violets, tulips, narcissi, fleurs-de-lis. ”

“ There was little to see, nothing that might not have belonged to any one in the wide world as well as to that boy; not one of these sordid appurtenances reminded her of him, except the music on the table—but any fiddler might have just such music.
She rose to her feet as if jerked by a hidden string, and walked stiffly towards the door, saying, "It is evidently not the one. This one's name is Drastus Fenton, you say. The one I seek is Dorastus Sibbemol. Good-morning, ma'am." ”

“ Chloris looked on in some wonder. Cytherea seated herself half away from the keyboard, one nonchalant arm over the back of her chair, her curly forehead on her hand; and, the first to smile at her own affectation, played an elaborate waltz, very languidly, with her left hand.
Impossible for the eyes to leave her a moment while she performed her pretty trick; and ably enough she performed it, with an adorable cream-white hand.
Chloris seemed to be slowly returning to consciousness. What perfection was here! [219] Nature had given this creature everything. ”

“ The great child and the little, full of a [23] sense of play, went up the stairs hand in hand. Tibbie could scarcely take account of what was happening to her, such was the pure delight of the adventure.
"This is the dining-room; this is the sitting-room; this is the receiving-room; this, now prepare—this is Mrs. Darling's own room!"
Up went the light; the rose-paper walls, the rose-chintz dumpy chairs, the silver-laden dressing-table, the pink and white draped bed, leaped into sight. Tibbie stood still, open-lipped. ”

“ A third street went from one to the other, as the little bar does across the A, but crooked, as a child's hand would draw it. This street was narrow, gloomy, and relatively quiet. The tide of traffic kept to the larger streets; the small street knew, beyond the occupants of its own houses and visitors to these, few but hurried foot-travellers who used it as a short cut, and people of inferior pretensions coming there to trade. The ground-story of almost every house was a shop; a person might have spent a life without real necessity for leaving the street. ”

“ Fidele could not get out her words, for Chloris's hand was across her lips.
"Hush!" she pleaded, quite earnestly. "Say nothing about it! When a thing has been spoken it seems to exist! You don't [243] understand—I don't understand either. Who is consistent? Who knows what he wants? Who knows ever what he is doing? How many creatures we crush just walking across the grass! A path opens ahead, we take it blindly, not knowing whither it leads. With good reason we say we grope in the dark. Let us have the grace, then, when a moment's illumination is granted us, to go by its light. ”

“ He did not incline to the latter interpretation of their plainness; he rather laid to a touching innocence of the mode's dictates Mamsell Veronika's pelerine and the black lace tabs on the sides of her head; the antiquated cut [120] of Paula's deep violet gown, the little black silk mitts that covered her pale pretty hands to the point where her rings began. These were numerous rather than rich, and gave the impression of being heirlooms—things worn for a memory: brilliants mounted in darkening silver, enamels, carnelians; one showed a pale gleam of human hair. ”

“ They stood his babbled vituperation and baby blows with smiling patience for a little, trying to converse coherently under them; then, when he burst into angry tears, with a sigh the mother bore him off to be lectured and calmed, resuming her conversation with Gregory at a more opportune moment. Before Gregory she never spoke of her husband.
With the passing months her cheek got back its freshness, her eye its clear brightness. Now a haunting fear awoke in her breast: Aunt Lucretia was wearying of her presence. She had heard all of her injuries till the story was stale. ”

“ But the hours passing broke down and carried off more and more all the gallant props of pride and resolution, and at last Chloris sat in the galloping car, a drooping runaway, who looked steadily out of the window, and saw the flying scene through tears. [224] Contemptible, countrified Chloris, with her freckles and inferior clothes, and so ordinary notions of conduct and taste, running away from comparison with the peerless Cytherea; taking her envy and weakness out of sight till she got strength to disguise them. ”

“ Then both girls fell to giggling like schoolgirls, from mere association of this meeting with other meetings; and in a moment were talking lightly and inconsecutively, in an involuntary imitation of old days; and Fidele had taken her friend's arm tightly under her own, intertwined their fingers, and was dragging her along at a hop-and-skip pace.
"What a godsend you are to me!" she exclaimed, rapturously. "There is not a soul in this forsaken place to whom one can talk like a Christian. Oh, but we are slow! Oh, but we are primitive! ”

“ I am sure one sees such eyes only in Italy, half asleep, yet deeply intelligent, that when you look in them you think a thousand things—"
"You certainly took in a great deal at a glance," said Veronika.
[114]
"Oh, I could tell you much else," laughed Paula; "beside that he wore a pink in his button-hole and carried a roll of music."
"Veronika," she said, after a pause, jumping up from her chair and walking about excitedly as before, "we must be very happy here. We must begin at once. Think how much time we have lost—all our years up to this day. ”

“ DORASTUS
She had large violet eyes, of a melancholy effect, and fine honey-colored hair, flowing smoothly over her ears. She looked excessively meek and always a little apprehensive, as if accustomed to reproaches, yet never quite hardened to them. One easily supposed her to be an orphan. ”

“ Yet there was a suggestion of childishness in its abstracted expression; she wore the sort of look one has seen on the face of a little girl playing at being somebody else far more splendid than herself. A close observer might have suspected that she really thought it rather grand to sit there in the gorgeousness of her hair, and was amused with pretending not to know that a soul looked on. ”