Mrs. Fisher

“ Fisher has been practising all her life. She has often said that her first thought, duty, and effort were due to her home; her second, to her church and Sunday-school; and, if she had any reserve strength, it was at the service of any good cause that needed it the most. In addition to more pressing duties she has found time to advocate and labor for the enfranchisement of woman, giving her opportunity to rise to her highest level. LUCY B. FISHER Mrs. Fisher was among the earliest to join the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, and has remained an earnest and consistent member. ”

“ Fisher!”
Her face when she lifted her head was full of laughter. Too extraordinary, the developments produced by San Salvatore. She and Mrs. Fisher . . . but she saw them being fast friends.
“Where are the others?” asked Mrs. Fisher. “Thank you—dear,” she added, as Mrs. Wilkins put a footstool under her feet, a footstool obviously needed, Mrs. Fisher’s legs being short.
“I see myself throughout the years,” thought Mrs. Wilkins, her eyes dancing, “bringing footstools to Mrs. Fisher. . .”
“The Roses,” she said, straightening herself, “have gone into the lower garden—I think lovemaking.” ”

“ Ben Fisher passed and paused.
“Pretty, ain’t she?” said the old woman; “a dainty mossel for any man.”
“Ay,” said Fisher quietly, “ay,” and passed on, wondering to himself, as many another man has done before him—why this girl was so priceless in his eyes—and why, seeing that she was so, he might not have her rather than this reckless outlaw, who would make her the toy of his idle hours, and when she became a burden to him throw her aside, like a worn-out horse or a dog he had no further use for. ”

“ Everett offered his arm to Mrs. Fisher, and led the way to the table, where the guests seated themselves as they wished, gazing, meanwhile, with amused eyes at the feast before them. A short silence followed, and then the conversation started up once more, as Mr. Fisher, with one despairing glance at his wife, attacked the vast ham before him, and Mrs. Fisher began to pour out the pale, watery effusion which filled the teapot. Allie and Marjorie were already bestirring themselves to pass the plates and cups about the table ”

“ Later on Marise fell into a real sleep, deep and unbroken, and when she woke up, much later than usual, to find Mlle. Hasparren all dressed, the folding-bed put away, the window open and the sunshine coming in, she found that she seemed to have grown stronger since yesterday, that the black pit was not so fathomless. She felt infinitely older and as though she would never laugh again. She lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling, thinking fixedly about what had happened, and found that she could endure it now without crying out or bursting into tears as she had done yesterday. ”

“ Hasparren lay breathing deep, her dark face relaxed in a selfless quiet that was not more selfless than her waking look, Marise lay looking out at the stars and the mountains, thinking, trembling, sometimes feeling hot bitter tears in her eyes, sometimes feeling her heart swell high with strange, unearthly aspiration.
Mlle. Hasparren was right. She had always been right. To keep clear of all troubling, maddening, personal relations that were sure to end by poisoning you, not to want anything for yourself, to give all for music—how safe you would be, to live like that. ”

“ Not till the hot water was safely delivered, and her father's comments on bad service diminished to a distant solitary mutter, did Marise go into her own room to dress. She had no hot water, either, but she washed in cold, scorning with all her heart the childishness of men, and laughing childishly at the picture her father had made, shouting and indignant, billowing in his shirt and trousers. He and Biron! One had always to be smoothing them down and wrapping them up in the little things they wanted. It must be truly lovely to be married to one, as poor Mélanie was! ”

“ Aunt Victoria made her way up the gang-plank to the landing dock, achieving dignity even there. Felix sprang after her, to hand her her chair, and Helene and Sylvia followed. Mrs. Marshall-Smith sat down at once, opening her dark-purple parasol, the tense silk of which was changed by the hot Southern sun into an iridescent bubble. "We will wait here till the steward gets our trunks out," she announced." It will be amusing to watch the people." ”

“ The aroma of utter sincerity was like the scent of a wildflower growing in the sun, spicy, free. She wondered at a heart like his that could be at once ardent and subtle, that could desire so profoundly (the deep vibrations of that voice of yearning were in her ears still) and yet pause, and stand back, and wait, rather than force a hair's breadth of pretense. How he had liberated her! And once she found herself thinking, "I shall have sables myself, and diamonds, and a house as great as Molly's, and I shall learn how to entertain ambassadors, as she will never know." ”

“ It was, therefore, with great satisfaction, after having summoned the necessary attendance, and sent his young betrothed to rest, that Fisher walked home on a fine fresh morning.
It was true he had taken a step most people would call very imprudent, thus to encumber himself with a young wife at the very outset of his career; certainly, he had never intended any such thing. He had always resolved to be patient, and have a little store of money by him, before he persuaded any one to begin the world with him. ”

“ When you read Home Fires in France you will understand why one man who read proof on it exclaimed:
“If every one knew this book as I know it there would be no doubt of it selling 100,000 copies at once.{300}”
With The Squirrel-Cage, published in 1912, Mrs. Fisher became a novelist. It was followed by two books on child training, A Montessori Mother (1913) and Mothers and Children (1914) , and then the teacher resumed the rôle of storyteller with The Bent Twig. Before The Squirrel-Cage Mrs. Fisher was merely the author of a few textbooks. ”

“ She will fall off the precipice, or walk right into a bear’s den, the first thing.”
“Oh, I’ll trust her,” answered her mother, smiling; “and then, Mrs. Fisher will be so near, and so ready to take care of her if it is cold or wet; it isn’t as if she were going off into a wild place; of course, then, I shouldn’t let her go without some grown woman with them.” ”

“ Around and around, every slow dawn brought exactly the same sequence of tiresome, insignificant events. Only stolid, vegetable natures like Isabelle's could endure it. Flora's small, thin, white hands fluttered piteously out into the air as though trying physically to lay hold on something else. There must be something else. The tears stood for a moment in her blue eyes, not so blue now as they had been—oh, she knew how they were fading!
She went through the corridor into the salon, and pulling the curtains aside, stepped into the alcove where her writing desk stood. ”

“ She was not hurt at all, only frightened half to death! She was not just a woman in love, ready to give herself up to a man. She was Marise in love with Neale.
He had come up to them now, his breath coming fast as though he had been running. For an instant he did not speak, taking her hand silently in his. All that life had made of him looked out on her from his clear eyes. ”

“ Over the coffee and Chartreuse, facing another well-satisfied man sat another secretive woman, talking in one key, feeling in another, and finding the process far from enlivening. Down below the surface of the sparkling, chatting Marise, drooped a listless, dispirited Marise for whom a birthday was a most depressing occasion. ”

“ Marshall, a field of brown stubble, a distant grove of beech-trees, and beyond and around them the immense sweeping circle of the horizon. The very breath of the pure, scentless winter air was to come back to her nostrils in after years.
"Sylvia," her mother went on, "it is one of the responsibilities of men and women to help each other to meet on a high plane and not on a low one. And on the whole—health's the rule of the world—on the whole, that's the way the larger number of husbands and wives, imperfect as they are, do live together. Family life wouldn't be possible a day if they didn't." ”

“ Fisher, and she will have it that 'Liza Em'ly's put her father into the book, soul and body. There's a man called Mr. Lexicon as is a lawyer in the book, and Mrs. Fisher says it's the minister. I wouldn't swear as it wasn't the minister myself, but I hate to believe it, for a girl as'll put her father in a book would be equal to most anything, I should suppose. But Mrs. Fisher's sure it's the minister; she says she knew him right off by his ear-muffs. Only 'Liza Em'ly has disguised the ear-muffs by calling them overshoes. Mr. Lexicon has always got on his overshoes. ”

“ When she stepped into the salon, she did not for a moment see that Maman was already there, because she stood at one side of the window, half hidden in the thick tapestry curtain, looking out through the lace over the glass. By the expression of her back, Marise knew that she, too, was looking at Mme. Garnier's son on the bench. For an instant, as though Marise's fingers had dropped on white-hot metal, the wild idea came to her that it was at Maman that Jean-Pierre was smiling, that it was for Maman that he sat there. ”

“ She rose to this one. "I don't know," she said as quietly as he, with as utter a bravery of bare sincerity, "I don't know how much I care for you—but I think it is a great deal." She rose upon a solemn wing of courage to a greater height of honesty. Her eyes were on his, as clear as his. The mere beauty of her face had gone like a lifted veil. For a instant he saw her as Sylvia herself did not dream she could be. "It is very hard," said Sylvia Marshall, with clear eyes and trembling lips of honest humility, "for a girl with no money to know how much she cares for a very rich man." ”

“ Them big ships ain't got no way for folks in little boats to git on. And he'd ask you thirty lire, anyhow. That's a fierce price. Say, if you'll wait a minute, I can get you a man that'll do it for—" Mrs. Marshall-Smith and Hélène had followed, and now broke through the line of ill-smelling loungers. Mrs. Marshall-Smith took hold of her niece's arm firmly, and began to draw her away with a dignified gesture. "You don't know what you are doing, child," she said with a peremptory accent of authority. "You are beside yourself. Come with me at once. This is no—"
Sylvia did not resist her. ”

“ Nothing gives one such self-confidence, she reflected, as the certainty of having the right sort of hat. How much better "chic" was than beauty!
With the hat still in her hand, her very eyes on it, she saw there before her, as plainly as though in a crystal ball, Marise's attitude as she had stood with Marsh that evening before at the far end of the garden. Her body drawn towards his, the poise of her head, all of her listening intently while he talked . . . one could see how he was dominating her. ”

“ Marise saw everyone's eyes turn to the center of the room and looked back to the plant. The big pink bud was beginning visibly to swell.
A silence came into the room. No one coughed, or stirred, or scraped a chair-leg. It was as though a sound would have wounded the flower. All those human souls bowed themselves. Almost a light shone upon them . . . a phrase from Dante came to Marise's mind . . . "la mia menta fu percossa da un fulgore . . ."
With a quick involuntary turn she looked at Marsh, fearing his mockery of her, "quoting the Paradiso, about Vermont farmers!" ”

“ You never saw anything in your life so funny! All of us wrong side up, with our heads ... oh, ha! ha! ha!"
She and Marise went off into peals of laughter which they immediately suppressed to giggles and then to smothered muffled gasps, as they saw the Reverend Mother's dignified black draperies moving down the side-aisle. They'd hear from it at school if Reverend Mother caught them in such a breach of manners as laughing in a public place!
"Who won the prize, my darling?" whispered Jeanne, in Marise's ear, as she smoothed down the collar of her coat. ”

“ The picture was printed indelibly on the child's wide eyes sensitized by the darkness; and long after the sound of the gay little song had died away, long years after the sound of the light footstep was silent, Marise could see, hung on the blackness around her bed at night, the shining picture, golden-bright in the quivering, living flame of the candle, the dense waxy petals of the camellia against the vaporous blonde hair, the smiling curved lips, the velvet white of the slender bare neck and arms, the rich sheen of the mauve satin flowing about the quick, light feet. ”

“ Marise saw the look, knew what it meant, felt it push her forward, knew in anticipation how that sort of look and what lay back of it would be always pushing her forward into what she hated.
With a long breath she stepped into the street, into the road that stretched before her. She held her head high, with an angry pride. The concierge-soul of the world must never know what was inside her life. The thing to do, the only thing she saw that was tolerable to do, was to take care that she was not being fooled. ”

“ An odor of cloves came up spicily into the air as Marise opened the drawer. How like Cousin Hetty to have that instead of the faded, sentimental lavender. She had perhaps put those towels away there last night, with her busy, shaking old hands, so still now. All dead, the quaintness, the vitality, the zest in life, the new love for little Elly, all dead now, as though it had never been, availing nothing. There was nothing that did not die. ”