Jacqueline

“ Your father, Jacqueline, loves you dearly. He knows nothing about your character.”
“You don't need to tell me that,” said Jacqueline. She was absorbed by the bare stern reality of her stepmother's words.
“But I do. And I know something of the world, You are a person absolutely certain to make a mess of any marriage which for the next few years you would make for yourself. You are intelligent—far more intelligent than the people set over you—so you have this enormous belief in your own judgments; you are lonely, emotional, starved for affection.” ”

“ But the strength of Jacqueline faded and grew small; her arms fell to her side; she stepped back, with a rising pallor taking the place of the red. For Mary, brushing her hands, one gloved and one bare, before her eyes, returned the stare of the mountain girl with equal scorn. A mighty loathing filled up her veins in place of strength. ”

“ Jacqueline had no mother and no friend that was dear enough to her, to teach her unwilling soul the great lesson of self-control and sacrifice.
“You will say that is strange. That situated as she was, she ought to have found friends both dear and congenial; but that would be to declare that Jacqueline was like others of her age and class, whereas she was single and alone; a dark-browed girl, who allured the gaze of both men and women, but who cared but little for any one till—But wait, child. I shall have to speak of matters that will cause your cheeks to blush. ”

“ There was a wave of honeysuckle, too faint and deadly sweet. A party of men, boatmen or waggoners, went by, and as they passed, broke into rough laughter.
Jacqueline rose, letting fall the letter. With her hand to her forehead she stood for a minute, then moved haltingly to the window. Her eyes were blank; she wanted air, she knew, and for the moment she knew little else. She was whelmed in deep waters, and all horizons were one. When she reached the casement, she could only cling to the sill, raise her eyes to the stars, and find nothing there to help her understand. ”

“ If there is no man before me, I will win you yet! There is little reason, God knows, why you should care for me, but I shall strive to make that reason greater!"
"There is reason," answered Jacqueline. "I think highly, highly of you! You would make a woman happy;—all her life she would travel a sunny road! I prize your friendship—I am loth to lose it. But as for me,"—she locked her hands against her breast,—"there is that within me that cries, The shadowed road!—the shadowed road!"
She rose, and Cary rose with her. "Forgive me," she said. "Is it not cruel that we hurt each other so? ”

“ Before the dying fire he found Jacqueline in her white gown, the amethysts about her throat, and her scarf of silver gauze fallen from her hand upon the floor. In her young face and form there should have been no hint, no fleeting breath of tragedy, but to-night there was that hint and that breath. The fire over which she bent and brooded seemed to leave her cold. The room was no longer brightly lighted, and she appeared mournfully a part of the hovering shadows. Her spirit had power to step forth and clothe the flesh. Almost always she looked the thing she felt. ”

“ I know that in Jacqueline you would have a good wife— a wife far better than the Jacqueline you would have married formerly. She has paid dearly for her experience of life, and has profited by its lessons, so that she is now worthy of you, and sincerely repentant for her childish peccadilloes."
"Giselle," said Fred, "look me full in the face—yes, look into my eyes frankly and hide nothing. Your eyes never told anything but the truth. Why do you turn them away? Do you really and truly wish this marriage?" ”

“ And she passed on, giving a kind smile to Jacqueline, whom she knew, having seen her several times in the convent parlor, and whom she thought a nice girl, notwithstanding what she called her “fly-away airs”—“the airs they acquire from modern education,” she said to herself, with a sigh.
“Those poor ladies would have us think of nothing but a future life,” said Jacqueline, shrugging her shoulders.
“We ought to think of it first of all,” said Giselle, who had become serious. “Sometimes I think my place should have been among these ladies who have brought me up. ”

“ All the morning Jacqueline sat by the sick woman’s bedside, moistening her parched lips with water, cooling her feverish brow with refreshing compresses, and tending to every unspoken want with a devotion born of love and remorse. At no time did Vrouw Voorhaas become sane and conscious of her surroundings, and her feverish delirium increased as the day wore on. It wrung the girl’s tender heart to hear her cry out against the pangs of hunger and imagine that she must continually deny herself for the children’s sake. ”

“ Caroline gave a little squeak, and clutched the side of the door.
“Don’t be scared, goose!” bade Jacqueline, stepping forward. “It’s only me.”
Caroline’s pale little hands fluttered to her throat as if she wanted to push off something that choked her.
“Y-yes,” she stammered. “H-hello, Jackie.”
That was all Caroline said. She didn’t help Jacqueline one bit, though she must have known that Jacqueline hadn’t come there simply to say: “Hello!” She just clung to the side of the door and stared like somebody who expects to be hit.
“I’m not a ghost,” said Jacqueline, impatiently. ”

“ But in the Cornellisen home were preparations of quite another character,—for it was the wedding day of Jacqueline. Grown into a fair and noble womanhood was this same Jacqueline of splendid promise, who had so bravely discharged what seemed to her the highest duty, in the days of the memorable siege. She was going to marry loyal, true-hearted Pieter de Witt who had learned to love her in the terrible days when they tended the starving and plague-stricken together. Patiently had he waited and watched her grow to be a sweet, unselfish woman. ”

“ Only by the strong arm of her man could the woman and her child live; but all that was over and done with. Where civilization was established, woman was the friend and equal of man.
Jacqueline moved a little, uneasy and resentful at the thoughts that came to her. Those half legendary loves that were the glory of the civilized world, those names which had, after hundreds of years, still the power to stir the heart—Romeo and Juliet, Hero and Leander, Paul and Virginia—magic names of imperishable glamour and beauty! ”

“ Her eyes took on a starry softness quite different from their usual glint of mischief, the rich blood in her cheeks came and went with her thoughts, her very hair had a sort of sheen upon it like the luster on the wings of pigeons in the spring. Blossom time, that comes once in life to every woman, with its perilous short gift of the power that moves the world, had come in turn to Jacqueline. It is a moment when a girl most needs her mother; but Kate's thoughts were elsewhere. ”

“ Once already, when Jacqueline was hardly out of baby-clothes, the great painter had made an admirable sketch of her tousled head, a sketch in which she looked like a little imp of darkness, and this sketch Madame de Nailles took pains should always be seen, but it bore no resemblance to the slender young girl who was on the eve of becoming, whatever might be done to arrest her development, a beautiful young woman. ”

“ Jacqueline hardly heard her, She was thinking:
“Must he always wireless the office? Does he think I'm not old enough to read? Does he forget I exist, or is it that woman who won't let him admit that I am more interested in his return than anyone else?”
She thought about not going to the pier to meet them. And when he asked her at the house, as she kissed him coldly, “Why were you not at the pier, Jacqueline?” she would answer with dignity, “I had no knowledge that you were coming, father.” “What? Did not Williams let you know?” “Why did not you yourself let me know?” ”

“ Jemima, exquisite and fragile as a snow-spirit in her white tulle, descended with the queenly stateliness that seems possible only to very small women; but Jacqueline, pink as a rose, flushed and dewy as if she had just been plucked from the garden, took the final steps with a run and landed in her mother's arms, despite Mag's warning.
"Aren't we perfectly grand?" she demanded. "Did you ever see anything as beautiful as us? ”

“ Hubert Marien, from his place behind Madame de Nailles's chair, had often before watched Jacqueline as he was watching her at this moment. She had grown up, as it were, under his own eye. He had seen her playing with her dolls, absorbed in her story-books, and crunching sugar-plums, he had paid her visits—for how many years? He did not care to count them.
And little girls bloom fast! How old they make us feel! Who would have supposed the most unpromising of little buds would have transformed itself so soon into what he gazed upon? ”

“ Jacqueline on a milk-white palfrey, with her mother at her left hand, rode at the head of them all. There are a few quaint old pictures which show her to have been slender and tall, brown-haired, and without the high cheek bones which are so usual in her countrywomen. On this occasion her appearance was royal indeed. She wore a gown of cloth of gold, which glittered in the warm June sunshine. Her coif, or headdress, was bound by many a chain of gold and jewels, suitable to her rank as Dauphine of France and Daughter of Holland. ”

“ He must address his letter to Caroline Tait and then Jacqueline would receive it. But in order to get him to do such an extraordinary thing, she would have to explain to him how she happened to have become Caroline. Oh, shivering chimpanzees, and also woolly rhinoceroses! For Jacqueline was afraid of Judge Blair, if she was afraid of anybody, and besides, like a blundering grown-up, he would probably write straight off to the Gildersleeves and tell them everything that she had told him. ”

“ The other twisted her hands together, moaning: "And I have followed him, even to the place where he keeps his—woman? Ah, how I hate myself; how I despise myself. I'm unclean—unclean in my own eyes!"
"Wait!" called Jacqueline. "You are leaving too soon. The night is cold."
"I am going. There is no need to gibe at me."
"But wait—he will want to see you! I will tell him that you have been here—that you came clear up the valley of the Old Crow to see him and beg him on your knees to love you—he'll be angry to have missed the scene!" ”

“ The tears of disappointment rose to Jacqueline’s eyes. She blinked them rapidly away. She must not let this hateful woman see her cry. But she was so sorry for Grandma—and so sorry for herself! She remembered how hopefully she had dressed for the little trip to Longmeadow, only an hour ago—how she had made herself so extra neat, with a hair ribbon, too—the look of the upper drawer, as she tossed its contents over—handkerchiefs, stockings, underwear—a Japanese lacquer box. ”

“ That night, when Philip came at his usual time, Jacqueline settled the matter once for all. She perched upon the arm of his chair, holding his head against her shoulder so that he could not look at her.
"Reverend Flip, dear," she began, "I want you to tell me something—truly, truly, truth now! Before it is too late. People shouldn't marry each other unless they're going to be quite honest with each other, should they?" ”

“ Poor Jacqueline! He pitied her without knowing what for, with a great outburst of sympathy, and an honest desire to do anything in the world to make her happy. Was it really possible that she could have been enduring any grief that summer when she had seemed so madly gay, so ready for a little flirtation? Young girls must be very skilful in concealing their inmost feelings! ”

“ Jacqueline, thank heaven, has never yet been in what is called the world. She only visits those with whom she is on terms of intimacy."
"An intimacy which includes all Paris," said Madame d'Argy, raising her eyes to heaven. "If she does not go to great balls, it is only because her stepmother is bored by them. ”

“ And Madame de Nailles, in her turn, smiled somewhat bitterly.
“Well,” said Jacqueline’s father, after a few moments’ reflection, “it may be as well that she should weigh for and against a match before deciding. She may spend several years that are difficult and dangerous trying to find out what she wants and to make up her mind.”
“Several years?”
“Hang it! You would not marry off Jacqueline at once?”
“Bah! many a girl, practically not as old as she, is married at sixteen or seventeen.” ”

“ When the doorbell rang the maid of all work pushed the button and stood waiting at the top of the stairs. There was a pause, a moment's whispering, then light footsteps flying through the corridor, and:
"Where on earth have you been for a week?" asked Cynthia Lessler, coming into Jacqueline's little parlour, where the latter sat knitting a white wool skating jacket for herself.
Jacqueline laid aside the knitting and greeted her visitor with a warm, quick embrace.
"Oh, I've been everywhere," she said. "Out in Westchester, mostly. To-day being Sunday, I'm at home." ”

“ I am the daughter of one physician, and am about to become the wife of another! What more can I ask? I am content, Gysbert!”
“But is it not splendid,” said the boy, “that the Prince is to be present at the wedding! Thou art much honored, Jacqueline, and I am wild to see him again. He is still my hero and ideal!” ”

“ TWO PENNIES TO SPEND Jacqueline waked early on her first morning at the Conway farm. With a rooster crowing under your window, you need no alarm clock, and with a cozy six-year-old at your side, inclined to snuggle on a warm morning, you have no inducements to lie abed.
So Jacqueline jumped up and dressed herself. She put on the Peggy Janes that she had marked with approval the night before, and she slipped her bare feet into Caroline’s old sneakers. She washed her face and hands at the marble-topped washstand. ”