Addie

“ Noel and Chapsal, Ince and Mangnall lie unheeded on the turf; crowds of ants, wood-lice, and earwigs are exploring their dry surfaces; Addie, her soft rosy cheek resting on a mossy bank, is fast asleep, dreaming that she is home again, helping old Sally to make gooseberry-jam in the big tiled kitchen, when an adventurous beetle, scampering sturdily across her nose, awakens her. She rises, yawning heavily, collects her property, and sets forth to refresh herself with a look at Nutsgrove. ”

“ CHAPTER XXX Addie returned to the Hague that evening; and seldom had he felt so heavy and listless, as if he knew nothing for himself. No, he knew nothing, nothing more for his poor self, as if he, as he grew older, daily lost more and more of the knowledge that is sacredly imparted for a man's own soul, like a far-lighting lamp casts its rays over the paths of his own destiny that lie dimly in the future. ”

“ The meeting which Armstrong has been dreading opens and closes in sunshine, and Addie, propped up with cushions, greets them with glistening unresentful glance and gentle loving words.
"How well they look! Don't they, Tom?" she cries, turning a beaming face to her husband, against whose shoulder she is resting. "And, take them all in all, what a good-looking family they are to be sure! Why, Lottie, what an immense girl you have grown! And you've got all the doubtful bloom of my teens, roses, flesh, and freckles—all. ”

“ Later on in the day Addie sits on the rocks where she stood on the night before muffled in her woolly wrap, her life almost as free from restraint and vexatious watchfulness as if she still bore her maiden name. Yes, her days are her own again in all that minor detail of [60] movement that makes the sum of existence; she can cast aside every cumbersome article of her trousseau, take off her hat, her cloak, even her shoes and stockings, and paddle in the cool waves, unheeded, unadmonished. ”

“ But, for this very reason, they did not see how Addie could care to go to Uncle Gerrit’s and play with all those babies there. They thought him a queer boy, they did not really like him; but his intimacy with Frans and Henri van Naghel gave Addie a sort of manly, grown-up air which they secretly envied. And so, in order, in their turn, to appear manly and grown-up before Addie, they could never, walking or bicycling, pass a woman without exchanging a coarse word or phrase or disapproval, like young men-about-town who know all about everything. ”

“ Addie proclaims herself invalided with a racking headache, and unable to take part in the celebration of her sister's birthday. So the family, among whom sympathy with the sick and afflicted is not a distinguishing trait, after vaguely suggesting tea, soda-water, eau-de-Cologne, and the rest, depart grove-ward with a goodly hamper, leaving her alone on a couch in the drawing-room window, limp and feverish with pain.
It is dark before they return in boisterous spirits, full of their adventures, and with countenances smeared with blackberry-juice. ”

“ Oh, dear!"
They sally forth and stroll slowly through the fashionable crowd, Addie's feet keeping time to a swinging gavotte, while she furtively eyes some dozen couples whose demeanor and gay attire incline her to suspect that they are in the same interesting position as herself and Tom.
After a time they leave the crowd and walk to the end of the pier, which they have all to themselves. They clamber over the moonlit rocks and stand arm in arm looking across the rippling waters, the music reaching them mellowed by distance into divinely soothing harmony. ”

“ She is no beauty, this Addie Lefroy. Her features are not the least bit regular; her skin, though pure and fresh, is thickly freckled; her figure, willowy and rounded enough, is not the type of figure Madame Armine of Kelvick would love to adorn. Then she has no accomplishments, scarcely any education, no money, no connection, save her nightmare of a family; and—most damning fact of all—she does not like him personally. ”

“ Addie somewhat sulkily imparts the good news to her family, and then goes up to her room, locks the door, and lifts from the bottom of her trunk her cracked old papier-mâché desk, from which she takes a photograph wrapped in tissue paper, with the remains of a gloire de Dijon rose that was nipped from the parent-stem one soft June night three years before and fastened near her throat by warm boyish fingers—cousinly, not brotherly fingers. ”

“ Addie watches them disappear, hatching a little moonlit scamper on her own account to a solitary part of the shore, where she can plunge her free hands and hot face into the rippling water. Alas, woman proposes, but man disposes! She has just cleared the last step of the terrace, when she meets her husband face to face. ”

“ And, when sometimes she had been a little fanciful, Addie had always understood her, but at the same time, with all his restfulness and strength, his seriousness and smiling earnestness, had quieted her in her hypersensitiveness and hyperimagination, in her dread and surmise, until she now discussed all those questions with him so quietly, in words that quickly understood one another, so that, even in these conversations, which might easily have made her more neurotic, he satisfied her and lulled all the anxious thrills of her sick girlish nerves and soul. ”

“ But when Addie appeared she thought better of it. In the deepest secrecy of her heart this woman worshipped her sensuality, as in the temple of her egoism: here the milk-white creole offered up all the most intimate dreams of her rosy imagination and unquenchable longing; and in this cult she had achieved as it were an art, a knowledge, a science, that of deciding, for herself, at a glance, what it was that attracted her in the man who approached her, in the man who passed her by. ”

“ Addie was wonderfully friendly. She kissed Carolina quite affectionately, and told her that Kate Howard had succeeded in curing her neuralgia, to which Carolina knew Addie had been a slave for years.
Addie's children, Cynthia and Arthur, were wild with delight. It was the first time they ever had been South, and to leave snow in New York on one day and see roses blooming the next was more than their young imaginations could stand. ”

“ Too astonished either to advance or recede, he stands motionless, thinking painfully and confusedly, then comes to the conclusion that he has made a mistake, that his fancy has tricked him. He is on the point of starting forward, when Addie's voice, low, troubled, eager, yet with a ring of unrestraint, of familiarity even, that makes his pulse throb with jealous pain, reaches him distinctly on the breathless night-air. ”

“ Pauline crimsons.
"Addie, how—how spiteful you are!" she cries, angrily. "You know I did not want your husband to sit on the box-seat; he suggested it himself. There is plenty of room for us all inside. Oh, come along, Addie; don't be so nasty and spiteful!"
But she is not to be propitiated; she shakes off her sister's protesting hands, and moves away upstairs.
"I am not nasty or spiteful, Pauline; but I do not feel inclined for this ball. I feel a headache coming on. Mr. Armstrong will take you there without me." ”

“ And he looked at Addie and, suddenly remembering that Addie could never roar with laughter out loud, he became still merrier at the sight of his poor boy's silent throes, his noiseless stomach-laugh, until his own laughter rang through the room, echoing back from the walls, filling the whole room with loud Homeric mirth. ”

“ Addie will have discovered Niagara. She'll understand you in perfection; she'll feel you down to the ground; not a delicate shade of you will she lose or let any one else lose. You'll be too weird for words, but the words will nevertheless come. You'll be too exactly the real thing and be left too utterly just as you are, and all Addie's friends and all Addie's editors and contributors and readers will cross the Atlantic and flock to Flickerbridge just in order so—unanimously, universally, vociferously—to leave you. ”

“ A wife just like Addie Lefroy—not one whit more elegant, more beautiful, more fascinating, but just as she is—soft-faced, irregular-featured, simple-mannered, gentle-voiced, yet with a suggestion of hot-breathed, breezy youth about her every movement, her every gesture. Yes; if ever he marries, it will be some one like her, very like her—her exact counterpart, in fact; and where is he to find that? That is the question. Rapidly, while he sips his tea, he runs his eye, as he would down a stiff column of figures, over the many eligible young ladies whose acquaintance he owns in his native town ”

“ And so you think, Poll, you think—"
"I think," resumes Pauline, swallowing the bait, "that all is not quite on the square between Addie and her vitriol husband."
"But, Polly, they seem so attached to each other. How do you make that out? They are always anxious to please each other. He gives her everything she can possibly want, and she never contradicts him, or answers him sharply, or loses her temper, or anything." ”

“ Even though your spirit was willing, the boys would have corrupted you long before. Fancy Bob or Hal inquiring after a headache six hours old! Listen to the music; how sweet it sounds!"
"Like a turn on the pier, dear?"
She assents gladly, and trips off to array herself, returning almost at once with a chip-hat and light lace-scarf thrown round her shoulders.
"Addie, you're not going out in that flimsy garment at this hour of the night—quite a sharp wind rising too! Go and put on something warmer." ”

“ She would have been shocked by it as by a never-suspected riddle, she would have turned giddy as at a never-suspected abyss down which she gazed without knowing where it ended, a bottomless depth to her ignorant eyes and quite insusceptible instincts. She would not have understood, she would have refused to understand that there was no blame but only self-insufficiency and inconsistency of soul, in silent antagonism and antipathy, because Addie felt himself to be two. ”

“ As he continues, Everard's delivery improves; the wooliness leaves his voice, and a ring of true passion which no art could ever teach him vibrates through his every tone and finds an echo in Addie's heart, thrilling through her like an electric current in which pain and pleasure are so subtly blended that she can not tell which predominates. ”

“ You can see she means to live up to the tone of your restored establishment, Addie. You could never imagine her skirmishing at the back-door now, with abusive butchers and bakers, or trying to wheedle a pound of tea out of the grocer—oh, no!"
"Addie, Addie, look at the new piano; isn't it grand? 'Annie Laurie,' even without the variations, sounds lovely on it, and when you put down the pedal it's quite like a band."
"Oh, don't bother about the piano, Goggles—plenty of time to see that. Come out and look at your ponies, Addie—such a delightful pair!—and the phaeton to match. ”

“ I couldn’t do it, Addie. It’s an impossibility, Addie.... You know, old chap, I oughtn’t to talk like this to a son of fifteen. Fifteen? No, you’re only fourteen. Well, you look sixteen. But that’s nothing to do with it. I oughtn’t to talk like this. I’m a queer father, eh, Addie? I don’t give you a proper upbringing: I just let you go your own way. Lord, old chap, I can’t do it, I can’t give you a proper upbringing! I shouldn’t know how. You’ll bring yourself up, won’t you? You’re sure to be good and clever and honourable and all the rest of it. ”

“ And Ernst just raised his eyelids and saw Addie stooping over him: blue eyes looking into black eyes. Then he closed his own again, breathed heavily, let Addie stroke his hair. The big tears trickled slowly. . . .
There was no need, thought Addie, to speak to the tired man. The hallucination had gone; it must have left him utterly fagged out. Round both of them, man and boy, hung the haze of the summer morning; a steady droning filled the sultry air. Overhead, clouds drifted endlessly, everlastingly, cloud after cloud, drifting on and on. . . . ”

“ Gerdy looked in at the door:
"May we never come in?... Uncle Henri, you're being selfish about Addie!..."
"You may come in, dear."
Addie took her hands:
"Will you be strong, Gerdy?"
She sobbed and laughed through her tears:
"I have tried to be all the time, Addie," she whispered. "But for you...."
"You know, life isn't all your first suffering." ”

“ I don't believe you'd marry him, Pauline, not for all—"
"Wouldn't I, just?" breaks in Pauline stoutly. "Why, I'd marry him if he were three times as old and as plain and as common as he is! Marry him? Why I'd marry an Irish invincible, I'd marry the hangman himself, in the circumstances! His age is another score in your favor, Addie; he's a man pretty well on in life, I should say." ”

“ Mr. Petherton gazed at Addie for a moment as if she were some extraordinary specimen of a new race. Then he took off his glasses, waved them at Sir Cresswell and dropped into a chair with a snort.
"I wash my hands of the whole thing!" he exclaimed. "Do what you like—all of you. Irregular—most irregular!"
Vickers gave Addie a sly look.
"Don't incriminate yourself, Miss Chatfield," he said. "There's no need for you to tell anything against yourself, you know."
"Me!" exclaimed Addie. "Why, I've been playing good angel all day long—me incriminate myself, indeed! ”

“ He added thus restlessly a line to his letter, maundered round the room again, noted and fingered something else, and then, dropping on the old flowered sofa, sustained by the tight cubes of its cushions, yielded afresh to the cigarette, hesitated, stared, wrote a few words more. He wanted Addie to know, that was what he most felt, unless he perhaps felt, more how much she herself would want to. Yes, what he supremely saw was all that Addie would make of it. ”