Laura

“ Waking in the night, with a start, Laura asked herself why she had burned the letter. As she lay there in the darkness it seemed to her that the sudden light shone in her thoughts again, and she saw everything made clear to her as she had seen it while she held Jennie Alta's hand. In that instant she had looked beyond the small personal emotions to the woman's soul with its burden of greed and sensuality, and because she had been able to do this, she had felt herself to be composed and released from hatred. ”

“ As the harp's soft sighings in the silent valley,
To high heaven reaching, lifts thy pious prayer,
Laura, be tranquil! again with health shall nourish
Thy loved companion.
O! ye gods, behold fair Laura sunk in anguish,
Kneeling, O! behold her on the grassy hill,
Mild evening's sportive zephyrs gently embracing
Her golden ringlets. ”

“ And as if it were she who were the guilty one, she knelt before her sister, taking her hand, kissing it, bathing it with her tears. Laura, seeing this woman whom she had so cruelly wronged kneel before her, closed her eyes, and for a moment was intensely pale. But her soul was strong; she was able to conquer her emotion. ”

“ Would to Heaven, Laura, that it might be so! But be that as it may, I despair of nothing if I dare hope for your love. Oh, Laura, dearest, one word to tell me that I may hope! Remember how happy we have been together; little children playing with flowers and butterflies in the gardens at Maudesley; boy and girl, rambling hand-in-hand beside the wandering Avon; man and woman standing in mournful silence by your grandfather's deathbed. The past is a bond of union betwixt us, Laura. Look back at all those happy days and give me one word, my darling—one word to tell me that you love me. ”

“ Laura. The roots that lie warm in the earth do seem more homely like to me.
Julia. Well—each one has their own way in love—and mine lies through the dark woods, and yours is in the vegetable garden. And ’tis your road that we will take this afternoon—so come along quickly with me, Laura, for the sun has already begun to change its light. ”

“ Laura!” He shook his head as one more in sorrow than in anger. “You are no longer a girl, Laura; you are a woman, the manager of a household, Laura. We trust in you. We look entirely towards you. And yet you leave your poor brother Robert without any brandy, to say nothing of me, your father. Good heavens, Laura! what would your mother have said? Think of accidents, think of sudden illness, think of apoplectic fits, Laura. It is a very grave res—a very grave response—a very great risk that you run.” ”

“ Laura’s conscience was unusually alive to-night. A glimmer of the watery moon fell on her face through the trees, and Mr. Carlton saw how grave was its expression. He divined her thoughts, as by instinct, and answered them.
“Laura, believe me, you can take too grave a view of it. When a father is unreasonably despotic, a daughter is justified in breaking through her trammels. Surely you are not wavering! Laura, Laura! you will not be the one to frustrate our plans! ”

“ That is the Laura who for centuries has beamed upon [Pg 119] humanity—a sweet, benign, refreshing presence—from within her lover's sonnets. That is the Laura in whose reality I believe, but the Laura who lies imprisoned and disguised behind the grotesque mask of mediæval art I cannot, will not, recognize. In Petrarch's utterance I find Laura, a pure spiritual shape in mind and body and soul; but in her portrait I see only Laura clogged and choked and bound about with the trammels of early art and the weight of crude, untruthful detail. ”

“ There is a cabalistic language in love, Laura—unknown to any but those who really do love, but learnt in a moment, when the mighty secret is communicated to our hearts. We speak it to each other without knowing it, dear Laura, and we are understood, without an effort, if there be sympathy between us. ”

“ Of all the people she had ever known Laura was the only one, she had sometimes declared, who had never lied to her. The world had lied to her, Kemper had lied to her, Perry had lied to her more than all; and she had come at last to feel, almost without explaining it to herself, that the truth was in Laura as in some obscure, mystic sense the sacrament was in the bread and wine upon the altar. Though she herself was quite content to slip away from her ideals, she felt that to believe in somebody was as necessary to her life as the bread she ate. ”

“ Were Laura far more beautiful, something in her manner or character might speedily have broken the spell by which she unconsciously held her captive. His emotion in no respect resembled the strong yet restful affection that he entertained for Mrs. Arnot. Was it love? Why should he love one who would not love in return, and who, both in the world's and his own estimation, was infinitely beyond his reach? ”

“ Bids Laura's absent charms to memory bloom anew.
Though Fate's severe decrees remove
Her gladsome beauties from my sight,
[Pg 122] Yet, urged by pity, friendly Love
Bids fond reflection yield delight;
If lavish spring with flowerets strews the mead,
Her lavish beauties all to fancy are displayed!
When to this globe the solar beams
Their full meridian blaze impart,
It pictures Laura, that inflames
With passion's fires each human heart:
And when the sun completes his daily race,
I see her riper age complete each growing grace. ”

“ Whatever will you accuse me of next, Jane?”
“Hush, Laura! falsehood will not mend wrong-doing. Evening after evening you steal out to meet him. Last night I wanted you and I heard you were outside. I saw you come in, Laura, with the disguising shawl over your head. Laura, my dearest sister, I do not wish to speak harshly, but surely you cannot have reflected on how great is the degradation!” ”

“ Laura was not an advanced female, with a mission; she was simply a young and lovely woman, capable of the noblest action and feeling should the occasion demand them, but naturally luxurious and beauty-loving in her tastes, and inclined to shun the prosaic side of life. ”

“ Laura. How is it then with you?
Julia. [Pointing.] There—see that blue thing yonder flying from one blossom to another. That’s how ’tis with me. Shut me up close in one place, I perish. Let me go free, and I can fly and live.
Laura. You do talk a powerful lot of foolishness that no one could understand.
Julia. O, do not let us talk at all. Let us bide still, and get ourselves refreshed by the sweetness and the wildness of the forest.
Julia turns away and gives herself up to the enjoyment of the wood around her.
Laura arranges her ribbons and smoothes out her gown. ”

“ What she couldn't believe Laura believed in her stead; where she was powerless even to be good, Laura became not only good but noble. And through all her friendship, from that first day at school to the present moment, she remembered now that no hint of jealousy had ever looked at her from Laura's eyes. "A thrush could hardly borrow the plumage of a paroquet," Trent had said; and the brilliant loveliness which had disturbed the peace of other women she had known, had produced in Laura only an increasing delight, a more fervent rapture. ”

“ But Laura, tender, kind, judicious Laura, with her man’s head and her woman’s heart (a rare alliance, constituting human perfection) , argued and soothed and coaxed and reasoned, until Annie’s self-upbraiding horror yielded to her gentle persuadings, as did of old the demon which tormented Saul to the melody of David’s harp: and indeed there is on earth no music sweeter than a loving woman’s voice. ”

“ There was a delicious garden, too, full of fragrant bushes and arbors and rustic seats, and two [Pg 10] fountains rained liquid diamonds into marble basins. But Laura did not play in the garden.
The truth is, Laura was a petted, spoiled, wayward little creature, always depending upon others for entertainment, too lazy to amuse herself, and much less inclined to study or to find happiness in being useful. ”

“ Laura is only two years older than I, but how well she had understood and how sympathetic she was! It was the motherhood within her, I suppose, that drove her to the marriage and the kiddies.
The scent of those summers comes to my nostrils now, the fragrance of lilac and honeysuckle, that brought ideas to one's head, dreams of achievement, of perfection and happiness. Who has that cottage now, I wonder? Poor Laura's dreams have been distorted into a very dismal sort of reality. And what of my own? But here is Griselda and she is announcing Dibdin. ”

“ Laura, waked up to the appreciation of a far more manly and noble nature, in love with Warrington, and then going back to Pendennis, and marrying him! Such infirmity might be true of some women, but not of such a woman as Laura; we resent the inconsistency, the indelicacy of the portrait. ”

“ Or was it that Laura's creative instinct had builded an image out of her own ideals which she had called by Gerty's name? He did not know—he could not even attempt to answer—but the very confusion of his thoughts strengthened the emotional interest which Laura had aroused. And as each new and vivid sensation effaces from the mind every impression that has gone before it, so at this moment, in the ardent awakening of his temperament, there existed no memory of the past occasions upon which other women had allured as irresistibly his inflamed imagination. ”

“ The radiance which belonged to an inner illumination rather than to any outward flush of colour, had suffused Laura's face, until she seemed to glow with an animation which revealed itself not only in her look and voice, but in her whole delicate figure, so fragile, yet so full of energy. There was something unnatural, almost feverish in the brightness of her eyes and in the rapid gestures of her small expressive hands. To Gerty she appeared to resemble a beautiful wild bird, helplessly beating its wings in the fowler's net. ”

“ Laura, what does your look mean?”
“Thank him! Did you not know him?”
“No. Laura, while you speak the truth flashes on me. It was that man. It was Adair! You have returned with him?”
“No, no, no!” cried Laura, clinging yet more closely to Beatrice. “You have not heard—they did not tell you?”
“I see—I see it all—I understand your terror—it is you whom they have not told. Charles’s letter said that, and it was all driven from my mind at seeing you. Laura, you do not suppose—you have no such foolish thoughts—no. That was Ernest Adair at the door?” ”

“ And Laura, rather to Roger's surprise, became an enthusiast down there. She worked like a slave at rehearsals, and upon the costumes she spent money with a lavish hand. Moreover, instead of being annoyed, as Edith was, at Deborah's prominence in the press, Laura gloried in it, as though this "radical" sister of hers were a distinct social asset among her giddy friends uptown. For even Laura's friends, her father learned with astonishment, had acquired quite an appetite for men and women with ideas—the more "radical," the better. ”

“ Laura pulled open a drawer where her laces and fine muslins were kept, and turned its contents over with her white and nimble fingers.
“Now what has Sarah done with them?” she exclaimed, as the sleeves did not appear to show themselves. “She is as careless as she can be. If those sleeves are lost———”
Laura broke off her words and flew to the bell, ringing it so sharply that it echoed through the house. Laura had inherited her father’s impatient temper, and the girl flew up; she knew that her mistress brooked no delay in having her demands attended to. ”

“ When Laura is walking through a passage-way, with her hands spread before her, she knows instantly every one she meets, and passes them with a sign of recognition: but if it be a girl of her own age, and especially if it be one of her favourites, there is instantly a bright smile of recognition, a twining of arms, a grasping of hands, and a swift telegraphing upon the tiny fingers; whose rapid evolutions convey the thoughts and feelings from the outposts of one mind to those of the other. ”

“ So as soon as nap time came, and baby was at last quiet, Laura went out on the porch and cuddled down in the hammock, where she swung to and fro, wishing there was something nice to do, or some new kinds of dolls to play with. All at once she thought she heard a faint voice say, "What a queer child! Here she is wishing for some new plaything, and has never noticed us. She must be blind, poor child! for every morning we put on our prettiest dresses and smile at her; but she always passes us by." ”

“ Laura was presented, and then she passed on into the maelstrom of be-jeweled and richly attired low-necked ladies and white-kid-gloved and steel pen-coated gentlemen—and wherever she moved she was followed by a buzz of admiration that was grateful to all her senses—so grateful, indeed, that her white face was tinged and its beauty heightened by a perceptible suffusion of color. She caught such remarks as, "Who is she?" Superb woman!" ”

“ Laura tells me I shall require a great deal of it if the flow of blood continues. I can take no one into my confidence but you, and I entreat you to send me as much linen as you can. You see that I have been compelled to make a confidante of Laura, who is the only person allowed to enter my room at all times. If I should die, my dear husband, everybody in the convent would, of course, know the cause of my death; but I think of you, and I shudder. What will you do in your grief? Ah, darling love! ”

“ He gives us in a single line the very beau idéal of a female character, when he tells us that Laura united the highest intellect with the purest heart, "In alto intelletto un puro core." He dwells with rapture on her angelic modesty, which excited at once his reverence and his despair; but he confesses that he still hopes something from the pitying tenderness of her disposition. ”