Chloe

“ While he was thus amusing her in the noon-day heat, with their flocks around them reposing in the shade, Chloe imperceptibly fell asleep. Daphnis, perceiving it, laid down his pipe and while he gazed on her, charms he thus sighed to himself: "What eyes are those which are now closed in sleep! What a mouth is that which breathes so sweetly! Neither apples nor wild-flowers have so sweet a scent! Ah! But I fear to kiss it! Her lips sting me to the heart, and like new honey drive me mad! Besides, a kiss would awaken her! O chattering grasshoppers, if you chirp so loudly you will disturb my Chloe! ”

“ Chloe turned, and was walking proudly out of the room. Mrs. Shelby followed her softly, and took one of her hands, drew her down into a chair, and sat down by her.
"My poor, good Chloe!" said she.
Chloe leaned her head on her mistress' shoulder, and sobbed out, "O Missis! 'scuse me, my heart's broke,—dat’s all!"
"I know it is," said Mrs. Shelby, as her tears fell fast; "and I cannot heal it, but Jesus can. He healeth the broken hearted, and bindeth up their wounds." ”

“ CHLOE. NIGHT wind sighing through the poplar leaves,
Trembling of the aspen, shivering of the willow,
Every leafy voice of all the night-time grieves,
Mourning, weeping over Chloe's pillow.
Chloe, fresher than the breeze of dawn,
Fairer than the larches in their young spring glory,
Brighter than the glow-worms on the dewy lawn,
Hear the dirge the green trees sing to end your story:—
"Chloe lived and Chloe loved: she brought new gladness,
Hope and life and all things good to all who met her ”

“ You must be happy! I wish I could have been present unseen in that enchanted garden while you wandered hand in hand, like Daphnis and Chloe, amid the flowers. I can see you, my Daphnis, with the light of young love in your eyes, tender, enraptured, and ardent; while Chloe in your arms, so young and soft and fresh, vowing she would ne'er consent--consented. Roses and violets and honeysuckle! Oh, my friend, I envy you. It is so good to think that your first love should have been pure poetry. ”

“ There is no one else who understands everything. But why did you? You never made jokes about kissing other people before!”
“It is detestable,” I said, “and it's no excuse to repeat that it was only because I am so happy. And yet it's true. Am I forgiven?”
Now what made me talk that nonsense? And suppose Chloe had laughed at it or, on the other hand, had taken it seriously, where should we have been? Now, Heaven be praised for the gift of understanding. If Chloe had done, had looked, anything but what she did do and look—But Chloe is Chloe, and, thank God, mine. ”

“ I said; "the hymns of earth are very sweet; you can wait a little longer, can't you?"
"Don't you talk, child; you'll make your head ache again. Yes, old Chloe is willing to wait; there's honey and sugar left on the ground for her to find, only she's old now, she can't stoop to pick it up as well as she could once."
"What do you mean, Chloe?"
"Didn't I tell ye you mustn't talk, Miss Anna? Don't be trying to trouble yourself with old Chloe's meanings: they haven't any understanding in them for other people to find out." ”

“ Yolande was not allowed to help at all in the organizing of the house-warming. An obedient execution of Chloe's orders was all that was permitted her. And when I saw the charming docility with which she carried these out, and her rigorous abstention from even the pointing of an uninvited finger at any pie of Chloe's, I confess that I was humbled and abashed, as in the presence of a soul greater than my own.
No one who has not given a party of the dimensions of ours can have the least idea of the Herculean labors involved. ”

“ The Thracian Chloe now commands me, skillful in sweet modulations, and a mistress of the lyre; for whom I would not dread to die, if the fates would spare her, my surviving soul.
Lyd. Calais, the son of the Thurian Ornitus, inflames me with a mutual fire; for whom I would twice endure to die, if the fates would spare my surviving youth.
Hor. What! if our former love returns, and unites by a brazen yoke us once parted? What if Chloe with her golden locks be shaken off, and the door again open to slighted Lydia. ”

“ I remember thee by the Nymphs, by whom heretofore I have sworn in yonder Cave, whither we will go as soon as ever the Snow melts. But it lies very deep, Chloe, and I fear I shall melt first. Courage man, the Sun burns hot. I would it burnt like that fire which now burns my very heart. You do but gibe and cousen me! I do not, by the Goats, by which thou didst once bid me to swear to thee. While Chloe was holding on her Antiphona to Daphnis, Nape call'd, and in they ran, with more birds then had been taken the day before. ”

“ I think I may be pardoned for taking Yolande by the shoulders and shaking her as she held out to Chloe's eyes a trembling left hand on which shone the gold signet ring which I had noted a hundred times on our tenant's finger.
“Then why did you say it was so flat and unromantic, and drive me to inventing a romance for you? It was all your fault, Chloe. No, there isn't any man in India. There isn't any man at all but the one—there never has been. ”

“ It did not need a magician to know that husband and wife were truly reunited, and though some might have been inclined to label Chloe Carstairs poor-spirited in that she had apparently forgiven her husband's mistrust so easily, Anstice told himself that Chloe was a woman in a thousand, that this very forgiveness and lack of any natural resentment showed the unalloyed fineness, the pure gold of her character, as nothing else could have done. ”

“ Chloe sobbed. It was a bitter moment for her. She looked at the invitation-cards. She thought of the panthers and of the Prince and Princess, and became rapidly, and very naturally, hysterical.
"Is it—oh, is it quite impossible?" she said in a broken voice.
"Quite. If you were a man, now!" ”

“ Past the first bud of youth, mature in body and mind; Chloe stirs my soul to feelings, which till this hour I had never appreciated. Fifty years old—and even now unblest with the joys of family life! Oh Chloe! Chloe! If only you had crossed my path earlier!... I ... I might not have drunk so much Caecubum and Falernian! When Hymen opens his bosom to receive us, the rock of offence fades away.... Alas mistress, if the spring-tide of life could but blossom for me once more! If I could again rest my head on the bosom of a loving woman...! Trajectum, city of my heart, home of my youth! ”

“ A slight color comes to her bright cheek, for it is impossible to misunderstand his eloquent glance.
"Are you?" she says; "but that is wrong. Fie on't! Was ever Corydon really in love with his Chloe—or are his affections always confined to the fluttering ribbons, and the crook, wreathed with flowers, which make her a pleasant object only, like a picture?"
Jacques sighs.
"I am not a Corydon," he says, "much less have I a Chloe—at least, who treats me as Chloes should treat their faithful shepherds. My Chloe runs away when I approach, and her crook turns into a shadow which I grasp in vain at. ”

“ Ole Chloe is always stumbling on good luck," said the old negress, laughing, "all for dis," said she, exhibiting an old metal "charm" attached to a string inside her dress. "Good-by—we shall see. I come for you agin, Massa Charley, for my ole missis berry childish, when she wants a ting she will hab it, and de debbel hisself can't help it—yah, yah."
As the door closed on old Chloe's weird figure, Rose almost felt as if her words were prophecies. What if the law of nature should set aside all other law and bring in a verdict for Charley? ”

“ He is on Chloe's side, and he will be found no despicable enemy by the Methymnæans. Be not uneasy then, nor perplex yourself; arise, shew yourself to Lamon and Myrtale, who have thrown themselves on the earth in despair, under the idea that you too are carried off by the enemy. To-morrow Chloe and her flocks shall return, when you shall tend them together, and together shall play upon your pipe.—Leave your future fates to the care of Love. ”

“ Chloe was indignant to think "Miss 'Lisbeth" thought she couldn't get supper without help, and Miss 'Lisbeth was vexed with Chloe for being cross. And then, when supper came, the tea seemed to be very unwilling to be swallowed, and the new bread was full of large lumps that choked a person, and the lamps didn't burn clearly at all,—and—and—when Chloe, still sulky, had cleared the table, Lizzy sat down on a low cricket beside her mother's stuffed rocking-chair, and had as good a cry as ever she had in her life, and felt much better for it. ”

“ He frowned involuntarily.
"Oh, I suppose we shall be straight some day;" the tone, however, belied the words. "When once the British workman gets in, it's the deuce to get him out."
"The old house had such a charm!" said Chloe softly.
Roger made no reply. He rode stiffly beside her, looking straight before him. Chloe, observing him without appearing to do anything of the kind, asked herself whether the Apollo radiance of him were not already somewhat quenched and shorn. A slight thickening of feature—a slight coarsening of form—she thought she perceived them. ”

“ Chloe. Is that hard-favour'd gentleman a poet too, Cytheris? Cyth. No, this is Hermogenes: as humorous as a poet, though: he is a musician. Chloe. A musician! then he can sing. Cyth. That he can, excellently; did you never hear him? Chloe. O no: will he be entreated, think you? Cyth. I know not.—Friend, mistress Chloe would fain hear Hermogenes sing: are you interested in him? Gal. No doubt, his own humanity will command him so far, to the satisfaction of so fair a beauty; but rather than fail, we'll all be suitors to him. Her. 'Cannot sing. Gal. Prithee, Hermogenes. ”

“ Give Chloe to me to wife: I know how to play on the pipe, to prime vines, and to plant trees: I also know how to plough, and to winnow the corn in the breeze: how I can tend flocks, Chloe herself can testify. I had fifty goats at first, I have doubled their number. I have reared some fine large he-goats, whereas before I was obliged to borrow those belonging to others. I am young and your neighbour, against whom no one has any complaint. I was brought up by a goat, Chloe by a sheep: and, though I am so far superior to her other suitors, I will not be outdone by them even in presents. ”

“ The sisters made their way back to their little kitchen, but though they had now eggs in plenty and new milk for their coffee they felt too excited to eat.
“How can it have come about?” said Arminel. “Chloe, have you wished for anything without telling me?”
“Have you?” said Chloe, in her turn. “One of us wishing alone would not have been enough. All I know is, that in the night I felt so sorry for you that I said to myself if only your wish could be fulfilled I would give up my own.” ”

“ Chloe. "But tell me, don't you ever feel afraid at night, when you wake up and hear all sorts of strange noises, like sighs and moans and people walking and whispering?"
"Oh yes, very often. But, Aunt Chloe, if you are afraid in your snug pretty little room with Bateson within call, and your whistle just at your head, I wonder what you would say to sleeping where Lucy and I used to do, in one corner of the great deserted dormitory, with half the house shut up and in ruins, and those great awful caverns underneath it." ”

“ Whatever deserts he might place between himself and Mrs. Fairmile, Daphne would imagine them together.
Meanwhile, there was that Lilliput bond, that small, chafing entanglement, which Chloe had flung round him in her persistence about the letters. There was, no doubt, a horrid scandal brewing about Mrs. Weightman, Chloe's old friend—a friend of his own, too, in former days. Through Chloe's unpardonable indiscretions he knew a great deal more about this lady's affairs than he had ever wished to know. ”

“ How great, then, was her surprise to see him, as she entered, hold out his hand with a smile, saying, in the kindest tone, "Come here to me, my daughter!"
She obeyed, gazing wonderingly into his face.
He drew her to him; lifted her to his knee; folded her in his arms, and kissed her tenderly. He had not bestowed such a loving caress upon her—nor indeed ever kissed her at all, excepting on the evening after Chloe's departure—since that unhappy scene in his sick-room; and Elsie, scarcely able to believe she was awake, and not dreaming, hid her face on his breast, and wept for joy. ”

“ Bates and Mary wrought, unaided, in the kitchen, for Chloe, in the abrupt reaction from despair, became suddenly enlightened as to a far more important matter than even food. She had nothing to wear, save yellow, which Aunt George could never abide, and pale blue, in which Uncle Bletherthwaite always remarked how washed-out she looked. ”

“ Chloe. Now in sincerity they be the finest kind of men that ever I knew: Poets! Could not one get the emperor to make my husband a poet, think you? Cris. No, lady, 'tis love and beauty make poets: and since you like poets so well, your love and beauties shall make me a poet. Chloe. What! shall they? and such a one as these? Cris. Ay, and a better than these: I would be sorry else. Chloe. And shall your looks change, and your hair change, and all, like these? Cris. Why, a man may be a poet, and yet not change his hair, lady. Chloe. ”

“ I am not sure that Chloe did not weep for joy. Though as a rule, one knows, that sort of weeping is only done in books. You see, we really had worked so very, very hard. However much in love one may be, one does not like to work ten hours a day. Though two may not grudge it as the price of life together. I wrote, Chloe illustrated—we worked hard—hard—hard, and earned enough to keep body and soul and the two of us together in our microscopic house.
“The Bandbox” we called it, but on its gatepost it called itself Ross Villa. And now—a hundred a year, and a house—such a house. ”