Miss Keeldar

“ I acquire deliberately both knowledge and liking: the acquisition grows into my brain, and the sentiment into my breast; and it is not as the rapid springing produce which, having no root in itself, flourishes verdurous enough for a time, but too soon falls withered away. Attention, Henry! Miss Keeldar consents to favour you. ”

“ We may give one day to dreaming, but the next we must awake; and I shall awake, to purpose, the morning you are married to Sir Philip Nunnely. The fire shines on you and me, and shows us very clearly in the glass, Miss Keeldar; and I have been gazing on the picture all the time I have been talking. Look up! What a difference between your head and mine!—I look old for thirty!"
"You are so grave; you have such a square brow; and your face is sallow. I never regard you as a young man, nor as Robert's junior." ”

“ About this time, strange feelings hovered round Fieldhead; restless hopes and haggard anxieties haunted some of its rooms. There was an unquiet wandering of some of the inmates among the still fields round the mansion; there was a sense of expectancy that kept the nerves strained.
One thing seemed clear. Sir Philip was not a man to be despised: he was amiable; if not highly intellectual, he was intelligent. Miss Keeldar could not affirm of him—what she had so bitterly affirmed of Sam Wynne—that his feelings were blunt, his tastes coarse, and his manners vulgar. ”

“ In summer, when you rise early, and run out into the fields to wet your feet with the dew, and freshen your cheek and uncurl your hair with the breeze, you always call him to follow you: you call him sometimes with a whistle that you learned from me. In the solitude of your wood, when you think nobody but Tartar is listening, you whistle the very tunes you imitated from my lips, or sing the very songs you have caught up by ear from my voice: I do not ask whence flows the feeling which you pour into these songs, for I know it flows out of your heart, Miss Keeldar. ”

“ We can with difficulty just imagine her a prosperous heiress, loving and loved, high-spirited and even hoydenish; but with her cavalier fantasy informed by a gracious splendour all her own, we can just imagine Emily Brontë as Shirley Keeldar, but scarcely Shirley Keeldar writing 'Wuthering Heights.' Emily Brontë away from her moors, her loneliness, her poverty, her discipline, her companionship with genius, violence and degradation, would have taken another colour, as hydrangeas grow now red, now blue, according to the nature of the soil. ”

“ It is not easy to imagine a Shirley Keeldar rising early in the morning and performing the hardest portion of the household labor in order to spare an aged servant; yet that was what Emily Brontë did.
Excepting her early tale, "The Professor," which has been given to the public since her death, Charlotte wrote but one other novel—"Villette." This work, of which the scene is laid in Belgium, is regarded by many as her best. Its incidents are less thrilling than those of "Jane Eyre," its style less fiery. Nevertheless it is not lacking in passion ”

“ Miss Keele, on the other hand, held herself somewhat aloof from the gallant fellow's attentions. She acted on every occasion as a dignified and reserved woman, never for an instant giving herself away or letting herself go. ”

“ Marta said. "You'll kill yourself working! Can you not come in now?"
"Just a little while. Bring me a lantern."
Ramsay heard Hans Van Doorst murmur, "A fisherman, that one," and a yellow lantern glowed behind him. It was nothing more than a tallow candle set in a glass case but, Ramsay thought, he really didn't need a stronger light. So sensitive had his fingers become to the feel of the net, and so expert was he in knitting new meshes, that, almost, he would have been able to do it with his eyes closed. He worked on while, held alternately by Hans and Pieter, the lantern moved with him. ”

“ This room with its books was Mr Keeling’s secret romance: all his life, even from the days of the fish-shop, the collection of fine illustrated books had been his hobby, his hortus inclusus, where lay his escape from the eternal pursuit of money-making and from the tedium of domestic life. There he indulged his undeveloped love of the romance of literature, and the untutored joy with which design of line and colour inspired him. ”

“ One quality, and one alone, had power to move him in man, woman, or beast. It was the quality he called Spirit.
In that Kate was not lacking. Rumors of the wild Kildares, always rife in a countryside they had made famous for generations with their amusements, did not abate after the coming of a new mistress to Storm. Of the society of her own sex, she had little or nothing. The few women of her class within driving distance were careful to call once—Kildare was not a man to antagonize. But they did not come again. Kate was not sorry. She found them less interesting than their men-folk. ”

“ Therefore if they are wise, the best thing they can do is, like Prospero, to drown the magic book beneath the waters of absorbing employment. Often it will float up again to the surface, and each time it must be prodded back with averted eyes. So, for Keeling, a love that could not be realised once crowned the hill-tops of his nature ”

“ The fire died out of Keeler's eyes; Pelham was so patently in earnest. “I'd not indulge in heroics,” said Keeler. “But I'd ask you to explain, and if you couldn't I'd throw you out of here, wounded shoulder or not.”
“Spoken like a man, Keeler,” said Pelham. “But I have a man in New York who comes from Juno, who knows Minnie Grey extremely well. He says that she left Juno about two years ago and has never been heard from since. He says that your Minnie Grey is an impostor. Now, did you tell your fiancee about the mishap to the mechanism of your grating?” ”

“ There was an awful earnestness in Grandpa Keeler's eye and in his tone, that invested his words with due solemnity. Grandma, struggling with the wind, had not heard them. She entered the Ark, however, cheerful though panting.
"Bijonah Keeler," said she, in accents of real affection, "I wouldn't have you out in that wind for no money—not for no money, nor our teacher, neither. Why, no stronger than she is now, it 'ud take the breath right out of our teacher's body! ”

“ Kelver. There is one of me must worship, adore a woman madly, abjectly; grovel before her like the Troubadour before his Queen of Song, eat her slipper, drink the water she has washed in, scourge himself before her window, die for a kiss of her glove flung down with a laugh. She must be scornful, contemptuous, cruel. There is another I would cherish, a tender, yielding creature, one whose face would light at my coming, cloud at my going; one to whom I should be a god. There is a third I, a child of Pan—an ugly little beast, Mrs. Kelver ”

“ Perhaps some day when Lord and Lady Inverbroom are in Bracebridge again, we might all have lunch together there.’
For the last six months Keeling had been obliged to keep a hand on himself when he was with his wife, for either she had developed an amazing talent for putting him on edge, or he a susceptibility for being irritated by her. Both causes{285} probably contributed, for since her accession to greatness, her condescension had vastly increased, while he on his side had certainly grown more sensitive to her pretentiousness. ”

“ Erect, deep-bosomed, with the warm brown flush of her cheeks, her level gaze, her tender mouth with the deep corners that mean humor—Kate Kildare, from girlhood to old age, would find in eyes that gazed on her the unconscious tribute that many women never know, and for that reason happily do not miss. ”

“ Oh, I was so proud of being a Kildare, one of the Kildares of Storm; so ashamed of anything that did not quite come up to the standard of—of my father! Bah—my father! Not even man enough to take the consequences of his sin, to stand by them. My father," she cried fiercely, "was a coward! And I thought that everything that is good in me, pride and courage, and truthfulness, whatever manly virtues I may have, came from him, instead of—from you!"
"No, no—from yourself, dear," said Kate, quickly. "For everything that is best in you, you have yourself to thank." ”

“ I will try to mend it."
"I worked on a net in Three Points!" Ramsay said eagerly. "I stayed for a while with Pierre LeDou, and because there was nothing else to kill time, I helped Madame LeDou knit a gill net! This cannot be too different!"
"You!" For a moment Ramsay thought Hans was going to kiss him. "So! Everything works our way! Yaah? You fix the seine!" His face fell. "No. We must have new twine. Now where will I get it?"
"I have some," Marta spoke up. "Good linen twine, easily a match for anything in this seine."
"And you would give it?" Pieter asked incredulously. ”

“ Aldrich and I had our subtleties as to whether his mind about women was not so Chinese as somewhat to infect his manner. Keeler was too really modest to be of any rebellious mind towards the society which ignored him, and of too sweet a cheerfulness to be greatly vexed by it. He lived on in the house of a suave old actor, who oddly made his home in Cambridge, and he continued of a harmless Bohemianism in his daily walk, which included lunches at Boston restaurants as often as he could get you to let him give them you, if you were of his acquaintance. ”

“ A fifth could only be content with a true friend, a comrade wise and witty, a sharer and understander of all joys and thoughts and feelings. And a last, Mrs. Kelver, yearns for a woman pure and sweet, clothed in love and crowned with holiness. Shouldn't we be a handful, Mrs. Kelver, for any one woman in an eight-roomed house?”
But my mother was not to be discouraged. “You will find the woman one day, Hal, who will be all of them to you—all of them that are worth having, that is. And your eight-roomed house will be a kingdom!”
“A man is many, and a woman but one,” answered Hal. ”

“ Celinda great in Birth, greater in Meen, Yet none so humble as this Fair-One's seen. Her Youth and Beauty justly might disdain, But the least Pride her Glories ne're did stain. [Pg 78] Celinda of each State th'ambitious Strife, At once a Noble Virgin, and a Wife Who, while her Gallant Lord in Forraign parts Adorns his Youth with all accomplisht Arts, Grows ripe at home in Vertue, more than Years, And in each Grace a Miracle appears! ”

“ Keeler, a regular romance.”
Rex began to look nervous. He feared that his escapade with Harrington was about to be related. But Roy skillfully told the main points in Miles’s career without encroaching on this.
Mr. Keeler stayed until ten o’clock, and while they were talking and laughing in the parlor, the twins were thinking of what was going on in the room above.
When they went to kiss their mother good night they saw that she knew. The girls exclaimed at once at sight of her face.
“You are ill,” cried Eva.
“No, Eva,” rejoined Mrs. Pell, “it is worse than illness.” ”

“ Oh, Kate Kildare, whatever manhood I may have I owe—"
"To your father," she said.
"Perhaps. But whatever good there is in me, you kept alive."
"Dear, dear! And that's why," she cried, with an attempt at lightness, "you feel it your duty to strike attitudes in your pulpit and keep the good alive in the rest of us?"
"That's why," he said, soberly, "But not you, Miss Kate. I do not preach to you. No man alive is good enough to preach to you." ”

“ The weeks that followed were the most contented of Kate Kildare's life, despite her loneliness in her great house, with no companion except the negro servants and Mag's baby. She felt like a captain who has carried his ship into port after a stormy passage. Her children were provided for; they were safe; life, which had treated her so harshly, was powerless to hurt them now. It was an attitude of mind that is apt to be rather tempting to the gods....
Jacqueline entered into her new rôle with touching eagerness. Somewhat to his surprise, Philip found her quite invaluable in his parochial work. ”

“ The wind, that had fanned their left cheeks since they'd started, was now full in their faces and Barbara bent her head against it. She had an overwhelming sense of something terrible about to be. It was as though a great, grim beast lurked in the overcast sky and was preparing to pounce on them.
Ellis set off at a canter, and Barbara's mount kept close at his heels. She sensed a difference in the horse. He too knew that a storm was on the way and he feared it. But he had an animal's blind faith in Ellis. The wind's whine became a savage snarl, and Barbara bent her head further. ”

“ Kildare suddenly rose, and he saw for the first time how tall she was. "I am not and have never been a woman of the world, but I know men, if that is what you mean. And I know"—her voice cut like a whip—"that when these things occur among men of honor, at least the names of their victims are not mentioned." ”

“ Possibly "La Belle Dame sans Merci" borrows a hint from the love-crazed knight in Coleridge's "Love," who is haunted by a fiend in the likeness of an angel; but here the comparison is to Keats' advantage. Not even Coleridge sang more wildly well than the singer of this weird ballad strain, which has seemed to many critics [36] the masterpiece of this poet, wherein his "natural magic" reaches its most fascinating subtlety and purity of expression. ”