Miss Holland

“ It was over, and here she was, conscious of her surroundings.
Something must be swiftly woven up with the treasure she held in her hands or she would drop into the crude spaces of this midday light and lose the threads. She heard Miss Holland, as if in response to her need, leave the little back room and go upstairs. ”

“ Unmarried women were all buds that had never opened to the full beauty of the mature flower. They were of the uninitiated and as long as they remained so would never attain their full powers. Miss Holland, now, was a fine woman, efficient, capable, executive, but how much more able and efficient and remarkable if she had married! ”

“ Holland.
Why on earth should you think of him?
Lady Wanley.
Oh, I’m such a fool, Ambrose.
Holland.
My dear, what do you mean?
Lady Wanley.
After all, I’m not a girl—I’m the mother of two healthy boys with enormous appetites. I think the man has bewitched me.
Holland.
Good Lord!
Lady Wanley.
It’s no good saying that. Of course he’s the most fascinating creature I’ve ever seen in my life.
Holland.
You don’t mean to say you’re seriously in love with him?
Lady Wanley.
A widow with a sense of humour is never seriously in love with anybody.
Holland. ”

“ Escape from Miss Holland’s obliviousness of the sounds of the court.
She is dull not to hear. Or strong? Dull strength in not hearing.
Noisy home-comings in the spring. Strident, hideous voices in a reeling procession along the court and dying away in the distance. Drunken monologues. Every sound echoing near and clear in the narrow court. And she heard nothing. The cobbler, noisily taking down his shutters in the early light had called her from sleep, not from feverish dreams. ”

“ The earth forgotten in the sky!
Then by the sunlight warmly kissed,
Far up, in rainbow glory set,
Rayed round with gold and amethyst,
She saw upon the great rosette
The Saviour's visage, pale and trist.
"Oh Crown of Thorns!" she softly breathed;
"Oh precious crown of love divine!
Oh brow with trickling life enwreathed!
Oh piercing thorns and crimson sign!
I hold you mine in love bequeathed.
"But not for sake of these or thee!
I must win love as thou hast won.
The thorns are mine, and all must see,
In sacrifice, and service done,
The loving Lord they love in me." ”

“ My companions and I get on perfectly, and I am filled with admiration of Miss Holland’s strong, decided nature, and her perfect knowledge of all she wishes and intends, combined with great good-nature. ”

“ He tossed a handful of the gems down where his minion lay,
Who snatched a jewel from the drift, and swiftly sped away
With his command to Nourmahal, who waited to obey.
But needlessly the mandate fell of silence on the crowd,
For when the Empress swept the path, ten thousand heads were bowed,
And drum and vina ceased their din, and no one spoke aloud.
As comes the moon from out the sea with her attendant breeze,
As sweeps the morning up the hills and blossoms in the trees,
So Nourmahal to Selim came: then fell upon her knees! ”

“ It has been justly said that he makes use of landscape to express his own bitterness and weariness, his own dreams, and that he contemplates his country with a sort of sadness, and creates groves of trees in which to hide it. The veiled light of Holland is the image of his soul; no one feels more exquisitely its melancholy sweetness; no one represents like him, with a ray of languid light, the sad smile of some afflicted creature. ”

“ He is the fire-side friend, the assiduous companion of the infirm or sick; over his book the faces of betrothed lovers first approach each other; his verses are the first to be learned by the child, and the last to be pronounced by the grandfather. No poet was ever more beloved. Every Hollander smiles at the sound of his name, and no foreigner has been in Holland without learning to pronounce it with sympathy and respect. ”

“ I feel Holland is little changed from what he was as a schoolboy and an undergraduate—the same joyous spirit, unbroken good temper, quick perception and insight, warm sympathy, love of friends, kind interest in lives of all sorts, delight in young people—these never fail. He never seems to let the burden of life and the sadness of things depress his cheery, hopeful spirit. ”

“ Away behind was a roomful of independent strangers, also aware of the square set ever before their eyes. This was freedom, in company, enriched. The sense of imprisonment she had felt on coming down the street with Miss Holland, the tangible confirmation when Miss Holland, laughter sounding in the tones of her confidently talking voice, suddenly took her arm, of the note struck too soon, and too high, vanished altogether in the freedom of this neutral territory. ”

“ Blazons its galaxy of stars.
No more to party strife the slave,
And freed from Hate's infernal spells,
Love pays her tribute to the brave,
And snows her holy immortelles
O'er friend and foe, where'er his grave.
On every Decoration Day
The white-haired Mildred finds her mounds
Decked with the garnered bloom of May—
Flowers planted first within her wounds,
And fed by love as white as they.
And Philip's first-born, strong and sage,
Through Heaven's design or happy chance
Finds the old church his heritage,
And still, The Mistress of the Manse,
Sits Mildred, in her silver age! ”

“ Hastings rustled away for her bonnet. Miss Holland sat where the afternoon light, falling through the corner window, smote her hair to a glory of pale colour, and St. George's eyes wandered to the glass through which the sun fell. It was a thin pane of irregular pieces set in a design of quaint, meaningless characters, in the centre of which was the figure of a sphinx, crucified upon an upright cross and surrounded by a border of coiled asps with winged heads. The window glittered like a sheet of gems. ”

“ Without her she was lost in them, a moving form whose sounds impinged less surely upon their stillness than the sounds of the mice scampering over the attic floor.
All through the week in coming home late each evening to the certainty of talk, to hurried sleep in the orderliness created by Miss Holland, there had been a glad sense of life renewed. New, exciting life, bringing at first the surprise of an escape homeward that had left the London years unreal ”

“ You are too good to them. They are always making a tool of you; last session about the slaves; and now sending you to India.’ I always do my best to keep my temper with Lady Holland for three reasons: because she is a woman; because she is very unhappy in her health, and in the circumstances of her position; and because she has a real kindness for me. But at last she said something about you. This was too much, and I was beginning to answer her in a voice trembling with anger, when she broke out again: ‘I beg your pardon. Pray forgive me, dear Macaulay. ”

“ George eagerly. "She seemed to me a very wonderful woman, Miss Holland; almost a woman of another world. She is not mulatto—her features are quite classic; and she is not a fanatic or a mad-woman. She is, of her race, a strangely superior creature, and I fancy, of high cultivation; and I am convinced that at the foundation of her attempt to take your life there is some tremendous secret. ”

“ Thy cheeks are softer than the silks that shimmer at my feet,
And purer heart than thine in woman's breast hath never beat!
"My first love—and my only love—Oh babe of Candahar!
Torn from my boyish arms at first, and, like a silver star
Shining within another heaven, and worshipped from afar,
"Thou art my own at last, my own! ”

“ Old Holland is proud of his young wife, and I hooked him to a certainty.”
“Holland!” cried his lordship, more pettishly than ever—“Holland is conservative to the backbone. We were always sure of Holland.”
“Well, well,” said Ferdinand, in a voice of toleration, “we are at least as sure of him as ever.”
The allowance in the young man's manner exasperated the old nobleman. But he liked his young friend in spite of his insolence and tranquil swagger, and he dreaded to say something which might be too strong for the occasion. ”

“ The woman spoke, not loudly, but with such passion and intensity of meaning that Mr Holland was conscious of a curious sensation as he heard her. She was tall and thin, about thirty, not bad looking, but precisely the type of woman the ordinary rake, seeking for a victim, would, if he had his senses about him, have left severely alone. She was distinctly not a person to be trifled with. ”

“ Holland's children are very fine, happy-looking children, and he does seem so to enjoy them. His little boy, in reply to the commonplace, aggravating question of
"Who loves you? Nobody in this world loves you!"
"Yes, there is somebody: papa loves me, I know—I am sure!" and throwing himself on his back on his Aunt Mary's lap, he looked up at his father with such a sweet, confident smile. ”

“ People, hiding the chairs. It would be pain to bring friends in. Cruelty to ask anyone to endure the room for an hour.
There would be no tea-parties.
When her attention returned, Miss Holland’s dead belongings had changed a little. They were forgotten and familiar. Here, after all, was a room and a window, and the things were sufficient. Unobtrusive, like dowdy clothes. She remembered how, between-whiles, she loved dowdiness. How her heart went forth with mysterious desire to thoroughly dowdy, flat-haired women. Women who had no style but their set of beliefs. ”

“ Lionel Holland’s flamboyant animalism and sex assurance stood in her eyes for prime qualities. She was superficially feminine and loved a brute. The woman of delicate upbringing, who astonishes her friends by her inexplicable infatuation for a boaster who is obviously a cad and a bully despite his physical advantages, is twin sister to the lady of the slums who worships the brute who blackens her eyes and kicks her as an amusing conclusion to the week’s work. ”

“ Even more than the air of gentility that surrounded her, Jeannette esteemed the shrewd brain, nimble wit and judgment of this woman. It seemed a sad and sorry thing to her that so splendid a personality, so fine an intellect should have had so little opportunity for self-expression in the world, and that at sixty, Miss Holland should be no more than what she seemed: an old maid, growing yearly more and [Pg 457] more crippled, passing what days remained to her with her nephew and her nephew’s family, somewhat of a problem, somewhat in the way! ”

“ What wonder that these little maidens, with skilled fingers, and clear heads, and vigorous bodies, grew into three keen-witted and charming women, around whom we find grouped that rich array of talent which suddenly raised Holland to a unique literary distinction! ”

“ The plains of Holland, which, seen for the first time excite a vague and agreeable sensation of sadness, and present, in their uniformity, a hundred new and admirable effects which divert the fancy, end, however, by producing weariness and ennui even in those who are by nature inclined to understand and enjoy their peculiar form of beauty. There comes a day when the stranger travelling in Holland suddenly feels an irresistible longing for heights to which he may lift his eyes and his thoughts ”

“ Surely Emily knows as well as I do that there are always some arrangements to make in a busy household.”
“Then am I to write that they are welcome?”
“Yes; we can’t well do anything else. Another cup of tea, dear?”
Here follows a pause. Mr Van Elst puffs away contentedly at his cigar, while his wife begins to fidget a little. At last, laying her hand on her husband’s, she says, hesitatingly, “Do you know why their coming is not very convenient just now, dear boy? the godown is nearly empty.”
“Empty again? My dear Jo, what on earth becomes of the things?” ”

“ And then he continued, impelled to vent his wrath on something,—“But living is so confoundedly dear here, that a fellow is at his wits’ end to know what to do. And then come visitors to ruin you altogether.... They asked for an answer by wire,” he added, after a pause.
“Well, it does cost a good deal of money,” said Jo; “but, oh dear! if it is to please them!—”
When the morning of the 5th came, the Van Elsts’ neighbour over the way congratulated himself on his single blessedness, remarking to his dog, “That’s what comes of getting married.” ”

“ He has abundant time to pick the bone leisurely before the guests appear, with the immediate request from Emily that the door may be closed.
“Oh, cousin,” Max exclaims, “it will be so frightfully stuffy here!”
“Yes, but there’s such a draught just now; and that’s so dangerous for Piet’s complaint, you see. So—if you don’t mind?”
They seat themselves, and the “boys” begin to wait. Jo is glad to see that the cook has exerted herself to the very 361utmost, and throws a contented little nod across to her husband, as much as to say, “Now, haven’t you a clever little wife?” ”

“ The whole house and furniture is of the year twenty—the girls too. Is none of them going to appear? Hortense surely doesn’t require to make such a toilette.”
He pulled the bell. It had given no sound for the last ten years;—but, as it happened, the maid was just passing the door.
“Look here, my girl—you seem smart enough—just run upstairs and tell your mistress I have only ten minutes to spare, and I have to go out of town again directly.”
“Thank Heaven!” thought Mevrouw, when the maid came up with the message, “then he won’t stay to dinner!” ”

“ And when we saw the broad-shouldered, broad-chested and broad-everywhere women of Holland we concluded that it would be a brave or reckless husband who would be unkind to one of them, and mighty dangerous because the women are stronger than the men, and any woman could whip four men at the drop of the hat, because she could take off her wooden shoes and strike out and a man would think he had been hit by a railroad tie. ”