Una L. Silberrad

“ Day by day, and year by year, they lived this quiet life, with a drive for a rare holiday treat, and the discovery of a new flower as the goal of all hope and ambition. Things did not happen to them, bad things that needed doubtful remedies; they had never had to scratch for their living, and show one face outwards and another in. They, none of them, ever wanted to do things; they had not the courage. How much of virtue was lack of courage and a desire not to be remarkable?
Julia asked herself the question defiantly, and did not hear Joost come out of the house. ”

“ Rawson-Clew agreed, and they talked of other things. Julia held the opinion that when an evil has to be endured, not cured, there is no good in discussing it over and over again; she had a considerable gift for making the best of other things besides opportunities.
But the fog did not lift soon; it did not grow denser, but it did not grow less; it just lay soft and chilly, casting a white pall of silence on all things, closing day before its time, and making it impossible to say when evening ended and night began. ”

“ If after Herr Van de Greutz had a secret worth anything to England, it was that which had brought Rawson-Clew to the little town. She was as sure of it as she was that it was the blue daffodil which had brought her.
The hateful blue daffodil! Daily, to possess it grew more imperative. The intercourse with this man, the curious seeming equality that was being established between them, cried aloud for the paying of the debt, and the establishing of the reality of equality. She longed almost passionately to be able to regard herself, to know that the man had reason to regard her, as his equal. ”

“ An easy place for a man to miss his way with a gale blowing and the sand dancing blinding reels. A hard place for a man to travel far when he had to face the wind; a strong man would have found it very tiring, a weak man might well have given it up, driven to waiting for a lull in the weather. As for a man in the Captain's health—when Julia thought of it she hurried on, although she knew if her father had to-day, as he had all through his life, followed the line of least resistance, the chances were that her help would be of little avail to him now. ”

“ But the mystery of production and generation, even in the vegetable world, was not a subject that modesty permitted Joost to discuss with a girl. His manner showed it, to her impatient annoyance, as he hastily introduced another aspect of man's first estate. "If we were not fallen," he added, "we should have no opportunity to rise. That, indeed, would be a loss; is it not the struggle which makes the grand and fine characters which we admire?"
"I don't admire them," Julia returned; "I admire the people who are born good, because they are a miracle." ”

“ You have it in your power to be bad or to be good; you know which is which, for you have seen badness, and know it as men who live see it. You have fought with it and conquered; you have struggled, you do struggle, you have strength in you. That is why you are like a lantern that is sometimes bright and sometimes dim, but always a beacon."
"I am nothing of the sort," Julia said sharply. ”

“ Rawson-Clew reminded her; "of course not, you have not lost it, and could not easily. I did not mean that; I only meant that it would interfere with your success as an adventuress."
"It would not," Julia persisted; "I don't care about people a bit; it isn't that, it is simply that I am sick of deception, that is why I am telling you the truth. And as for the other thing—the daffodil"—she forgot that he did not know about it—"I couldn't take it from any one so silly, so childish, so trusting." ”

“ Julia laughed a little. "You think my family would object? They would; but, you see, I should be retiring from them as well as from the world, the corduroy might be part of my bulwarks."
"I don't think you could afford it even for that; do you think women ever can afford that kind of disregard for appearances?"
"Plain ones can," she said; "it is the only compensation they have for being plain; not much, certainly, seeing what they lose, but they have it. When you can never look more than indifferent, it does not matter how much less you look." ”

“ On the shelves the bulbs lay, every one smooth and clean and dry, sorted according to kind and quality; Mijnheer knew them all; he could, like a book-lover with his books, put his hand upon any that he wished in the dark. It seemed to Julia that there were hundreds upon hundreds of different sorts. Not only hyacinths and tulips and such well-known ones in endless sizes and varieties, but little roots with six and seven syllable names she had never heard before, and big roots, too, and strange cornery roots, a never-ending quantity. ”

“ Gillat. And it is doubtful if, in all the country round, there was a happier man than he who tended Julia's plants in Julia's garden, and drove parties of chattering children along the quiet lanes, and sat on warm summer evenings beside his old friend's grave in Halgrave churchyard. He had forgotten many things, old slights and old pains, and old losses; forgotten, perhaps, most things except love. Foolish Johnny, God's fool, basking in God's sunshine.
And Julia and Rawson-Clew were married, very quietly, without any pomp or ostentation at all. ”

“ What! Are you indignant, Mevrouw, at such a charge? Are you not turning out, with no character and no chance—a good enough imitation of hanging—a girl who has been no more than foolish, just the same as if she had committed the greatest sin?"
Vrouw Heigen broke in angrily, and Vrouw Snieder and Denah, inexpressibly shocked; Mijnheer was also shocked, but he, and they too, were vaguely uneasy under the reproach. Julia was satisfied; more especially as her experience of them led her to expect they would, though never persuaded they had made a mistake, yet feel more uneasy by and by. ”

“ To the right lay the sandhills, a place of unsteady outline, earth and sky alike pale and blurred as the north-west wind fled seawards, lifting and whirling the fine particles till the air seemed full of them; it was impossible to think of any one choosing that way.
"We will go down the road to begin with," Julia said, and started.
All through the early part of the afternoon they searched; sometimes stopped for a moment by a gust of wind; Julia caught and whirled, Johnny brought to a panting standstill. ”

“ Everywhere was sunny and everything looked as if it had had its face washed; week days in the town always looked to Julia like Sundays, and Sundays, this Sunday in particular, looked like Easter.
In time they came to the trees that bordered the canal; there were old Spanish houses here, a beautiful purplish red in colour, and with carving above the doors. Julia looked up at her favourite doorpiece—a galleon in full sail, a veritable picture in relief, unspoiled by three hundred years of wind and weather. ”

“ She wished from her heart that the Van Heigens had been different sort of people—almost any other sort, then she would not have had these tiresome feelings—Johnny and Johnny's watch, Joost Van Heigen—there was something about them all that was hatefully embarrassing. No self-respecting thief robbed a child; even the most apathetic conscience revolted at such an idea. No gentleman worthy of the name attacked an unarmed man, the preparedness of the parties made all the difference between murder and fair fight. ”

“ Too late for her cherished plan, too late for any of the things she had hoped, too late for triumph, or joy, or satisfaction; too late to demonstrate the once hoped for equality; too late for the fulfilling of anything but a dogged purpose. For a moment she looked at the cheque, feeling the irony which had sent her the means of paying [354] his debt now that her father lay in his coffin, indifferent to his good name and his honour; unable, alike, to clear or be cleared, to wrong or be wronged ”

“ Julia told him there were plenty who would. As they came back, stopping to fasten each door after them, he remarked, "I think girls are usually brought up with too much protection; I mean girls of our class, they are too much shielded; one has them for the house only; if they were flowers I would call them stove-plants."
Julia laughed. "You believe in the emancipation of women then?" she said; "you would rather a woman could take care of herself, and not be afraid, than be womanly?" ”

“ He had never regarded Julia in that light; he found her certainly more entertaining as a companion, though also very far short of the standard as a woman and an ornament.
"The people in the engine-room," he observed, "would certainly be more useful in an emergency; still, life is not made up entirely of emergencies."
"No," Julia answered; "and in between times such people are better not on show—I know that; that is why I do not care for the drawing-room side of things, I don't know enough to shine in them." ”

“ Julia got up and lit it, and drew the blind, shutting out the grey sheet of the canal and the slanting rain.
"Dear me," Mevrouw said once again, "how bad the rain must be for Joost!"
Julia agreed, but reminded her—also once again—that it was possibly not raining in Germany.
Mijnheer looked up from his paper to remark that the weather was very bad for the crops.
"It is bad for every one," his wife rejoined; "but worse of all for you. You should be in bed. Indeed, it is not fit that you should be up; the house is like a cellar this evening." ”

“ The cotton blouse that Julia wore became limp and wet as if it had been dipped in water; she could see the fog condensing in beads on her companion's coat almost like hoar frost; it lay on every low-growing rose bush and bramble that they stepped upon, a curious transformer of all near objects, a complete obliterator of all more distant ones.
They pushed on as quickly as might be, climbing little hills, descending into hollows; stumbling among rabbit holes, threading their way through thickets ”

“ Julia bought her cakes, and went about the town feeling as holiday-like as the gayest peasant there, although she had no wonderful holiday head-dress of starched lace and gold plates. She did not see any one she knew, except old Marthe, Herr Van de Greutz's housekeeper. She had met the old woman several times when she was marketing, and was on speaking terms with her now, so she had to stop and listen to her troubles. ”

“ Mijnheer, you are a very good man, Mevrouw is a virtuous woman, and Vrouw Snieder also, all of you. I have often admired your goodness; when you were least conscious of it it preached [157] to me, making me ashamed of my wickedness. But now that you, in your goodness, have taken to preaching to me yourselves, I am no longer ashamed, for it is clear that your goodness dares to do a thing that no man's wickedness would; it turns the foolish and indiscreet into sinners and sinners into devils; it makes the way of wrong-doing very easy. ”

“ Joost was a sentimentalist, it is true, and the bulb had come from Julia, winged by an appeal from her. But he was also a bulb grower, and he was that before he was anything else and afterwards too, and the daffodil was a marvel of nature, a novelty, a thing beyond words to a connoisseur. The lover asked that the token should be kept hidden from the eyes of men; but the grower cried that the flower should be given to the light of heaven and should grow and bloom accord [334] ing to Nature's plan. For days the lover was uppermost and the old pain back. ”

“ Men are rather blockheaded on the subject of fashion, and seldom see the charm in the innately unbecoming and unsuitable, no matter what decrees it.
He looked back to the empty opposite corner, and, though until that moment he had not really thought of Julia since he left Mr. Gillat yesterday, he put her there in imagination now. He did not want her there, he did not want her anywhere (there are some wines which a man does not want, that still rather spoil his taste for others) . ”

“ She was courageous, too, cheerfully enduring, laughing in the face of disaster, patient when action was impossible and when it was possible—he found himself smiling when he recalled her—surely there was never one more gay, more ready, more steady, more quietly alert than she when there was a struggle with men or matters in the wind. She had brains of a sort, there was no doubt of that; it was possible to imagine one would not grow tired of her undiluted company as one would of the other sort of woman. ”