Livia Drusilla

“ If I could tear these scales from my eyes and prove it is not true; but can a blind lioness fight. . . .?”
“Let us go to the garden—we only anger her. She will rave to exhaustion till she gets some sleep, and dreams she sees the head again,” murmured Drusilla. “I could wish we were out of the haunted fortress here. It is ill-fated! Do you go to Jerusalem and get the Emperor’s permission for us to leave for Rome. . . .”
“I will do that, Sister Drusilla, but do not anger her by making light of her mad love for Herod. ”

“ You are his wife, in right, if not in law, Drusilla,” said Miss Lyon, emphatically.
“I know I am so by right, and I believe I am so by law,” answered Drusilla solemnly.
“Yet those who know more of law than we do differ from us. And this makes your position, Drusilla, very doubtful, very unsafe, and deeply humiliating.” ”

“ Seeing Olivia and Ashley at the end of the lawn, Drusilla deflected her course across the grass, Davenant in her wake. Her wide, frank smile was visible from a long way off.
"This is not indiscretion," she laughed, as she advanced; "neither is it vulgar curiosity to see the lion. I shouldn't have come at all if mother hadn't sent me with a message."
Wearing a large hat à la Princesse de Lamballe and carrying a long-handled sunshade which she held daintily, like a Watteau shepherdess holding a crook, Drusilla had an air of refined, eighteenth-century dash. ”

“ But lor! the foolishest of ’em knows gold from brass, and is sure to come back to the old love and the true love, for their own interests. Goodness knows they never does anything for ours! He’ll come back, ma’am! Bad pennies always does.”
“Oh,” moaned Drusilla, “how low I have fallen! how low, to say what I have said, and to hear what I have heard! Pina, my girl, hush. You must not speak of your master in this manner, especially in my presence. It is untrue of him and disrespectful to us both,” she added, as calmly as she could force herself to speak, as she dropped into her resting chair. ”

“ Alexander—a poor girl like myself—your late housekeeper’s child—only half educated, too—I am not fit to be your wife,” she said, raising her meek eyes to his face, and then suddenly dropping them.
“Not fit to be my wife! If you are not, it is only because you are so much too good for me!” vehemently exclaimed Drusilla’s lover, and he spoke the truth.
“Oh no! Oh no! please do not say such things to me. I am but a poor, ignorant child, of very humble position. You are a gentleman of rank and wealth. Indeed, sir, it is not suitable——”
“Drusilla! You do not love me!” ”

“ In the sunshine of affection and happiness Drusilla grew beautiful and blooming. She loved her truant Alexander as faithfully as ever, but she loved him in hope and trust, and not in fear and sorrow. She felt that he was old enough, big enough and strong enough to take care of himself, even when out of her sight, while here upon her lap lay a lovely babe, a gift of the Heavenly Father to her, a soft little creature whose helplessness solicited her tenderness, whose innocence deserved it, and whose love will certainly return it. ”

“ Drusilla, who had not been permitted to attend the wedding, had been sent for to come to the funeral. She came, sorrowing bitterly over the sudden death of one who had been the kindest old friend to her.
She did not go back again to school. Mrs. Lyon, overwhelmed by the loss of the life-partner with whom she had lived so long, needed constant and affectionate attention, and entreated that her favorite should be left with her.
Under the circumstances of her bereavement Alexander could refuse his mother nothing. So Drusilla remained in attendance upon her benefactress. ”

“ Miss Guion explained, "only dignified."
"Dignified!" Drusilla cried. "I should think so. He's just like Olivia herself. It's perfectly absurd that those two should marry. Apart, they're a pair of splendid specimens; united, they'll be too much of a good thing. They're both so well supplied with the same set of virtues that when they look at each other it'll be like seeing their own faces in a convex mirror. It'll be simply awful."
Her voice had the luscious English intonation, in spite of its being pitched a little too high. ”

“ The gentry all about were eager to buy it, and willing to pay a good price for it. Drusilla used to go around to supply her customers, nights and mornings, a bright, shining milk-pail [Page 29] in each hand, and one on her head. She had learned to carry herself so steadily in consequence that she walked like a queen.
Everybody admired Drusilla, and all the young shepherds and farmers made love to her, but she did not seem to care for any of them, but to prefer tending her gold-horned cow, and devoting herself to her old father—she was a very dutiful daughter. ”

“ And he seized and kissed Drusilla’s hand, and then darted off again, in search of Anna.
And thus through Drusilla’s intervention, was Richard Hammond’s probation commuted, and the marriage of the lovers appointed to be celebrated about the middle of May.
Meanwhile Drusilla had written to “mammy,” offering to her the situation of housekeeper, and to her husband that of head gardener at Cedarwood. She had directed her letter to the care of the Reverend Mr. Hopper, at Alexandria, feeling sure that it would by this means safely reach the hands of the nurse. ”

“ McKenzie had always admired Drusilla, but tonight his attention was rather more than usual fixed upon her by a remark which Captain Hewes had made when the two men had stood alone together watching the dancers. "I have seen very little of American women—but to me Drusilla Gray seems the supreme type."
"She is very attractive."
"She is more than that. She is inspiring, the embodiment of your best ideals. When she sings one wonders that all men have not fought for democracy." ”

“ But Drusilla resolved to take it because it was the shortest to her place of destination, and in less than twenty-four hours it would take her to a little mountain hamlet within ten miles of Old Lyon Hall. True, she might meet with an 412accident on the road, but if she should lose her life she might serve Alick by that means as well or better than by preventing his marriage with Anna, since if she (Drusilla) were dead, that marriage would be no longer criminal. ”

“ When sinners can find no other excuse for sin, they plead fate.
Alexander, sitting and gazing dreamily into the lights and shadows of his glowing coal fire, said to himself that fate had set itself against his union with Anna, and fate had thrown Drusilla into his arms. He recalled the facts that his wedding with Anna, twice fixed, had been twice stopped by the hand of death; that Anna did not love him, and did love Richard Hammond: that he himself did not love Anna, but loved Drusilla; that Drusilla loved him, and had most innocently suffered reproach and injury on his account ”

“ To achieve this end, he first seduced Livilla, the wife of the son of Drusus Tiberius; then he procured by her means the death of Drusus and asked Livilla in marriage. This the emperor refused. At length,--not, however, until after Agrippina's sons had been destroyed,--Antonia, the mother of Livilla, was constrained to write to Tiberius of the conspiracy of Sejanus, and by her means he was brought to justice. Livilla was starved to death by the command of her mother.
Livia seems to have been at all times an obedient and submissive wife. She was honored by the confidence of her husband. ”

“ My dear, I am speaking fact, not flattery. Anna is beautiful; we will grant that; but she is of that large, fair style, so rare in our country that it made her a belle there, but which is too common here to make her more than one of the pretty women of the season. On the contrary, your style, Drusilla, more common in America, is extremely rare here. You will be new. You will make what women call a ‘sensation.’ Alick will see it, and he will discover his folly, if he never finds out his sin in having left you. There, Drusilla! ”

“ For certainly his embarrassments with Anna Lyon did grow out of his father’s will—will that he, Alexander, should marry her.
But Drusilla understood him as speaking in a financial sense only—as he intended that she should; and she brightened up and answered:
“Ah, well, Alick, dear, since it was not very vexatious business, never mind if it did keep you away from me a few hours longer than you or I expected. I can not hope to have you always here beside me; but you are here now; and all is made up to you, is it not?” ”

“ Drusilla allowed the explanation to pass till she had thanked him ecstatically for what he had done.
"Really, Peter, men are fine! The minute I heard Cousin Henry's wretched story I knew the worst couldn't come to the worst, with you here. I only wish you could realize what it means to have a big, strong man like you to lean on."
Davenant looked pleased; he was in the mood to be pleased with anything. He had had so little of women's appreciation in his life that Drusilla's enthusiasm was not only agreeable but new. He noticed, too, that in speaking Drusilla herself was at her best. ”

“ He nearly uttered an oath consigning his cousin to perdition, but he caught himself in time, and added: “Miss Anna and myself are parted (by a hundred miles of space,”) was his mental reservation the first.
“She has broken with you, then?” said Drusilla, who never dreamed of such a possibility as his breaking faith with any one.
“Yes, she has, (in effect,”) was his mental reservation the second.
“Oh, how could—how could she do it?” inquired Drusilla, incredulously; for to her fond, worshipping heart, it seemed that any woman who could break faith with Alexander must be insane or lost. ”

“ But her last sentiment was spoken sotto voce and did not reach the ears of her inattentive mistress.
Instead of deriving the consolation from the sacred volume which indeed she was too much overcome to seek, Drusilla dropped her head upon its open pages and seemed to pray, or weep, in silence.
“To think, when she gets wiolent, I have to knock her down with a dose of walerian this way! It’s a most like murder. And how’s it a gwine to end? I wish mammy would come. I hope she ’aint got no engagement nowhere else,” muttered Pina to herself as she went and made up the bed. ”

“ Lyon was a great trial to any immature and half-cultivated voice like Drusilla’s, however excellent the quality of that voice might naturally be; and Drusilla knew this, and thence her imploring and deprecating glances.
“You are too exacting, mother. She cannot sing that; I do not think any woman under thirty years old could, unless she had had a very remarkable and precocious experience,” said Alexander, laughing.
“Ay, you say that because you know nothing of the intuitions of genius. You must hear your protégée sing, and you will understand better,” said Mrs. Lyon. ”

“ And though Anna being in half mourning refrained from dancing, she seldom retired from the scene until one or two o’clock.
For many days and nights Drusilla bore this state of things with exceeding patience and cheerfulness; always accepting his excuses for leaving her in the morning, and always having the lighted windows, the warm drawing-room, the bright fire and the hot supper to welcome him at night. But ah! worship him as she would, she was but a soul encased in flesh and blood, and her health and spirits from loneliness and late hours, long continued, began to suffer. ”

“ The wildest shriek that might ever rise from dying victim in its rooms, could never be heard by human ears without.
As Drusilla remembered these circumstances her very soul grew sick with terror. And was it any wonder?
She was a young, delicate, impressible woman. And on this dark night, and in this isolated house she was quite alone. Her man-servant was in his loft over the stables, where he slept, with pistols by his side, to guard the valuable horses. And her maid-servant was in her attic over the kitchen, in a distant part of the dwelling. ”

“ Olivia said, trying to sound her friend's ideas, "from one point of view I scarcely know him."
"You know him well enough to be in love with him." Drusilla felt that that committed her to nothing.
"That doesn't imply much—not necessarily, that is. You can be in love with people and scarcely know them at all. And it often happens that if you knew them better you wouldn't be in love with them." ”

“ When the world has stung you nearly to death or to madness, my dear, you may judge more truly and less tenderly of it. And now, Drusilla, hear me. You do not go to Cedarwood; you do not leave our protection until your husband claims you of us. ”

“ Doctor McKenzie wondered if it could be said of his own daughter. Set side by side with Drusilla, Jean seemed a childish creature, unstable, swayed by the emotion of the moment. Yet her fire matched Drusilla's, her dreams outran Drusilla's dreams.
Two officers passed the table.
"How any man can keep out of it," Drusilla said. "Some day I shall put on a uniform and pass for a boy—"
"Why not go over as you are?"
"They won't let me now. But some day they will. I can drive a car—there ought to be a place for me." ”

“ Drusilla laughed. "It is worth more than the ride to have you say 'rippin'' like that."
"She makes fun of me," the Captain complained; "some day I shall take her over to England and show her how our gentle maidens look up to me."
"Your gentle maidens," Drusilla stated, "are driving ambulances or making munitions. When the Tommies come marching home again they will find comrades, not clinging vines."
"And they'll jolly well like it," said the big Englishman; "a man wants a woman who understands—"
This was law and gospel to Derry. "Of course. Jean, dear, may I tell Drusilla?" ”