Andrea Doria

“ Their minds move far more swiftly than ours. They are more hungry to get everything possible out of life. Doria is a child in many ways; but a delightful, poetical child. I think England rather chills him; yet he vows there are no rich women in Italy. He longs for Italy all the same. I expect he will go home again presently. He will leave Uncle Ben in the spring—so he confides to me; but do not whisper it, for my uncle thinks highly of him and would hate to lose him. He can do everything and anticipates our wishes and whims in the most magical way. ”

“ Dorian took a book from the shelf as if to read; but visions intruded of some beautiful volumes, now somewhere down the canal, a mass of water-soaked paper. He could not read. He finished his last chocolate, said his prayers, and went to bed.
Saturday was always a busy day with Dorian and his mother; but that morning Mrs. Trent was up earlier than usual. The white muslin curtains were already in the wash when Dorian looked at his mother in the summer kitchen.
"What, washing today!" he asked in surprise. Monday was washday.
"The curtains were black; they must be clean for tomorrow." ”

“ What would be the music of the spheres to one bereft of hearing? What gain would come to a man with a heart of stone to be in an environment of perfect and eternal love!"
Dorian finished the reading and laid the paper on the desk. For some time he sat very still, thinking of these beautiful words from his dear friend to him. Surely, Uncle Zed was very much alive in any environment which his beautiful life had placed him. Would that he, Dorian, could live so that he might always be alive to the good and be dead to sin. ”

“ He may have been one of the Wesleyan sort, like such a lot of the Cornish; he may have been a kill-joy, too; but whether he was or not, he hadn't quite converted her in the time, and what I'm seeing now, I judge, is the young woman slowly coming back to herself under the influence of this Latin chap. He's cunning, too. He knows how to tickle her vanity, for even she has got a bit of womanly conceit in her, though less vain of her wonderful face no woman could be. But Doria has taken good care to hint his ambition is well lost for love ”

“ You're the best man I know. I have never met anyone as good as you, no, not even my father—nobody. You're far above me. You always have been willing to sacrifice yourself for others; and now—what I fear is that you are just doing this, saying this, out of the goodness of your heart and not because you really—really love me."
"Carlia, stop—don't."
"I know you, Dorian. I've heard you and Uncle Zed talk, sometimes when you thought I was not listening. I know your high ideals of service, how you believe it is necessary for the higher to reach down to help and save the lower. Oh, I know, Dorian ”

“ Over his bed hung an artist's conception of "Lorna Doone," a beautiful face, framed in a mass of auburn hair, with smiling lips, and a dreamy look in her eyes.
"That's my girl," Dorian sometimes said, pointing to this picture. "No one can take her from me; we never quarrel; and she never scolds or frowns." ”

“ The world has cried out against us both, but it has always worshipped you. It always will worship you. You are the type of what the age is searching for, and what it is afraid it has found. I am so glad that you have never done anything, never carved a statue, or painted a picture, or produced anything outside of yourself! Life has been your art. You have set yourself to music. Your days are your sonnets."
Dorian rose up from the piano, and passed his hand through his hair. "Yes, life has been exquisite," he murmured, "but I am not going to have the same life, Harry. ”

“ He reflected uncomfortably that Mark Brendon must hear every word about to pass; but there was no help for that.
"Our Italian way is to approach the parents of the loved one," explained Doria. "To win you is to be far on my way, for you stand to her in the place of parent. Is it not so? She cannot live alone. She was not meant by God to be a single woman, or a widow woman. There is a saying in my tongue, 'She who is born beautiful is born married.' I terribly fear that somebody else will come." ”

“ Thousands who knew him not were looking forward to Adrian Boldero's new book. We, who loved him, were peculiarly interested. Somehow or other we had not touched before so intimately on the subject. To my surprise he frowned and snapped impatient fingers.
"I haven't told Doria anything about it. It isn't my way. My work's too personal a thing, even for Doria. She understands. I know some fellows tell their plots to any and everybody—and others, if they don't do that, lay bare their artistic souls to those near and dear to them. ”

“ The grand danger would be that Doria should find himself alone with Albert, even for a moment. That is the situation to circumvent and avoid at any cost. Let nothing induce you to lose sight of one or other; and even should Doria obviously make a run for it before I return, don't be deceived by that, or go after him. He may adopt any ruse to get you guessing when I have gone—that is, if he suspects me of some immediate step. But if I go without leading him to feel any very grave suspicion as to my object in going, we may surprise him before his own stroke is struck. ”

“ So he was and, of course, he knows he can't do that with Jenny's twenty thousand; but love casts out a good many things besides fear. It blights ambition—for the time being anyway—and handicaps a man on every side in the race for life. All Doria wants now is Jenny Pendean, and he'll get her if I'm a judge. I wouldn't mind too much either, if they could stop along with me and go on as we're going; but of course that wouldn't happen. As it is Doria has come to be a friend. He does all he's paid to do and a lot more ”

“ Mark leaped aboard the waiting motor boat and they were soon speeding back to Dartmouth, while Doria spoke eagerly. But the passenger felt little disposed to gratify the Italian's curiosity. Instead he asked him a few questions respecting himself and found that the other delighted to discuss his own affairs. Doria revealed a southern levity and self-satisfaction that furnished Brendon with something to think about before the launch ran to the landing-stage at Dartmouth.
"How comes it you are not back in your own country, now the war is over?" he asked Doria. ”

“ He busied himself with chores and his books, and he did not relax in his ward duties. Once in a while he saw Carlia at the meeting house, but she absented herself more and more from public gatherings, giving as an excuse to all who inquired, that her work bound her more closely than ever at home.
Dorian and his mother frequently talked about Uncle Zed and the hopes the departed one had of the young man. "Do you really think, mother, that he meant I should devote my life to the harmonizing of science and religion?" he asked. ”

“ He opened the drawers and found them filled with papers and clippings, covering, as Dorian learned, a long period of search and collecting. He opened again the package which he had out the evening of Uncle Zed's death, and looked over some of the papers. These, evidently, had been selected for Dorian's special benefit, and so he settled himself comfortably to read them. The very first paper was in the old man's own hand, and was a dissertation on "Faith." and read thus: "Some people say that they can believe only what they can perceive with the senses. Let us see: The sun rises, we say. ”

“ Only remember that I'm not in this case for my health, and, so far, I have had no reason whatever to eliminate anybody."
"We know some things without proof and are proud to take them on trust," answered Brendon. "Have I not seen Mrs. Doria under affliction and in situations unspeakably difficult? She has been marvellously brave. After her own great sorrow, her only thought was her unfortunate relations. She buried her own crushing grief—"
"And in nine months was married to another man."
"She is young and you have seen for yourself what her husband is. ”

“ Let us have our coffee in the music-room, Dorian. You must play Chopin to me. The man with whom my wife ran away played Chopin exquisitely. Poor Victoria! I was very fond of her. The house is rather lonely without her. Of course, married life is merely a habit, a bad habit. But then one regrets the loss even of one’s worst habits. Perhaps one regrets them the most. They are such an essential part of one’s personality.”
Dorian said nothing, but rose from the table, and passing into the next room, sat down to the piano and let his fingers stray across the white and black ivory of the keys. ”

“ This is what God does when He says that His work and His glory is to bring to pass the immortality and eternal life of man'."
"How true that is," said the mother.
"Yes," added Dorian after a thoughtful pause, "I am just wondering how and to what extent I am fulfilling any obligation which is resting on me by reason of blessings I am enjoying. Let's see—we are not rich, but we meet every call made on us by way of tithing and donations; we are not very wise, but we impart of what we have by service; we are not very strong—I fear, mother, that's where I lack. ”

“ Lord Henry laughed. "If a man treats life artistically, his brain is his heart," he answered, sinking into an arm-chair.
Dorian Gray shook his head and struck some soft chords on the piano. "'Like the painting of a sorrow,'" he repeated, "'a face without a heart.'"
The elder man lay back and looked at him with half-closed eyes. "By the way, Dorian," he said after a pause, "'what does it profit a man if he gain the whole world and lose' – how does the quotation run? – 'his own soul'?"
The music jarred, and Dorian Gray started and stared at his friend. "Why do you ask me that, Harry?" ”

“ Now I'll tell you how the cat's jumping. She's jumping in the dark—I'll allow that; but what I seem to see dimly is this: that Giuseppe Doria knows a great deal more about the man in the red waistcoat than we do. I hardly think Doria is the man to murder my old friend; but I'm not so sure that, if somebody else wanted to take the step, Doria would prevent him.
"If Albert disappeared, you've got to remember that Doria's wife would be the worldly gainer. Why anybody should want to kill Albert to put money into Jenny's pocket I cannot say. ”

“ He guessed to what Doria possibly referred and felt concern but no surprise. The other continued.
"Ambition may succumb before beauty. Ancestral castles may crumble before the tide of love, as a child's sand building before the sea. Too true!"
Doria sighed and looked at Brendon closely. The Italian stood in a tight-fitting jersey of brown wool, a very picturesque figure against his dark background. The other had nothing to say and prepared to descend. He guessed what had happened and was concerned rather with Jenny Pendean than the romantic personality before him. ”

“ Father seems to think he's all right, but I don't like him. Oh, Dorian, why don't you come around oftener?"
Mrs. Duke sank into a chair and wiped away the tears from her eyes with the corner of her apron. Dorian experienced a strange sinking of the heart. Again he asked who this Mr. Lamont was.
"He's a salesman of some kind, so he says. He drives about in one of those automobiles. Surely, you have seen him—a fine-looking fellow with nice manners and all that, but—"
"And does Carlia go out with him?"
"He has taken her out riding a number of times. ”

“ His life is dreadful. But you, Dorian, with your pure, bright, innocent face, and your marvellous untroubled youth – I can't believe anything against you. And yet I see you very seldom, and you never come down to the studio now, and when I am away from you, and I hear all these hideous things that people are whispering about you, I don't know what to say. Why is it, Dorian, that a man like the Duke of Berwick leaves the room of a club when you enter it? Why is it that so many gentlemen in London will neither go to your house or invite you to theirs? ”

“ Dorian looked critically back and forth. "The sky is redder," be decided.
"And yet if I make my picture as red as the sky naturally is, many people would say that it is too red to be true. I'll risk it anyway." Then she carefully laid on a little more color.
"Nature itself, our teacher told us, is always more intense than any representation of nature."
She worked on in silence for a few moments, then without looking from her canvas, she asked: "Do you like being a farmer?"
"Oh, I guess so," he replied somewhat indefinitely. "I've lived on a farm all my life, and I don't know anything else. ”

“ But you are quite right, Dorian. I should have shown myself more of an artist. It was foolish of me, and yet I couldn't help it. Oh, don't leave me, don't leave me." A fit of passionate sobbing choked her. She crouched on the floor like a wounded thing, and Dorian Gray, with his beautiful eyes, looked down at her, and his chiselled lips curled in exquisite disdain. There is always something ridiculous about the emotions of people whom one has ceased to love. Sibyl Vane seemed to him to be absurdly melodramatic. ”

“ It seemed it would not be long for the end.
"Dorian."
"Yes, Uncle Zed, can I do anything for you?"
"No"—barely above a whisper—"nothing else matters—you're a good boy—God bless you."
The dying man lay very still. As Dorian looked at the face of his friend it seemed that the mortal flesh had become waxen white so that the immortal spirit shone unhindered through it. The young man's heart was deeply sorrowful, but it was a sanctified sorrow. Twice before had death come near to him. He had hardly realized that of his father's and he was not present when Mildred had passed away ”