Sophie

“ One more question, Sophie, dear. In the period of your early love, you and you husband were, I am certain of it, very anxious to please each other. Never could a toilet be fresh or pretty enough. You heightened by painstaking and agreeableness every charm you possessed; indeed, your only thought was to please your husband, to captivate him always, and to keep him always in love. Your Charles, no doubt, preferred some delicate perfume, and your beautiful hair, your garments, exhaled that sweet odour, which, in time of absence, materialises, so to speak, the memory of a beloved woman. ”

“ Here Sophie was obliged to interfere again, and translate.
"They ask why it is a feast-day, father."
"Because we are going to have a friend visit us, and when a friend comes to see us, it is always a feast," replied the old man, with a smile somewhat constrained.
"Ah, we must not forget the purse," said Dutertre to his wife.
"Wait a moment," replied Sophie, gaily, to her husband, as she pointed to a little rose-coloured box on the table, "do you think that I, any more than you, could forget our good M. Pascal, our worthy benefactor?" ”

“ Sophie had a sensation of hunger satisfied in the life she was leading. Some indefinable hunger of her soul was satisfied by breathing the pure, calm air of the Ridge again, and by feeling her life was going the way the lives of other women on the Ridge were going. She expected her life would go on like this, days and years fall behind her unnoticed; that she and Potch would work together, have children, be splendid friends always, live out their days in the simple, sturdy fashion of Ridge folk, and grow old together. ”

“ As bare and comfortless the room, so was Miss Sophie's lonely life. She rented these four walls from an unkempt little Creole woman, whose progeny seemed like the promised offspring of Abraham,—multitudinous. The flickering life in the pale little body she scarcely kept there by the unceasing toil of a pair of bony hands, stitching, stitching, ceaselessly, wearingly on the bands and pockets of pants. ”

“ I live for you always so long as I live. If I die, it will be in the thought of you, and they will kill no prouder man than Sophie's lover. To have won your love (ah, by to-morrow night, yes!) and to die for France—would it be ill done for a short life? By my faith, no! I'll make my bow to my ancestors without shame. 'I, too, have done my part, messieurs!' say I, as I sit down with my fore-fathers. Sophie, adieu! You won't forget? I don't think you can quite forget. Your picture rides with me, your star shines ahead. ”

“ But it's no use us thinking we can buy Sophie's experience for her. She's got to live ... and she's got to suffer."
Busy with her opal-cutting, and happy with her thoughts, Sophie had no idea of the misgiving Michael and Maggie Grant had on her account, or that anyone was disturbed and unhappy because of her happiness. She sang as she worked. The whirr of her wheel, the chirr of sandstone and potch as they sheared away, made a small, busy noise, like the drone of an insect, in her house all day; and every day some of the men brought her stones to face and fix up. ”

“ But Sophie, destiny-ridden, gave no heed to Charles, save as a friend who had made her dread him even while she was still fond of him, and Lucius Crandon stepped in just when her nerves, awakened to the existence of actual love, were beginning to calm from the shock and even to set towards curiosity—just when she was most receptive. Pitiful and ignorant Sophie, whose only protection from gross housemates and a hot-blooded, cold-hearted lover, was a dreamer as guileless as herself! ”

“ But Sophie was quite a girl, and the character of her beauty was that of girlhood. The check was blooming, and the mouth was rosy, and the clear blue eyes seemed as if they had never known a deeper shadow than that of their own soft and long eyelashes. It was a sweet and a happy face, and no wonder that little Mimi looked upon it with sudden love and confidence. Poor child, she had known cold, hunger, the hard word, and the angry blow—all life’s small share of happiness had been in her own heart—in the gladness which, even under the harshest circumstances, seems inseparable from childhood. ”

“ Sophie opened it, and cries of admiration followed, for lying on the soft cotton was a lovely set of coral. Rosy pink branches, highly polished and fastened with gold clasps, formed necklace, bracelets, and a spray for the bosom. No note or card appeared, and the girls crowded round to admire and wonder who could have sent so valuable a gift.
"Can't you guess, Sophie?" cried Dora, longing to own the pretty things. ”

“ Sophie came forward with a sudden movement, the tall meadowsweet dragging at the hem of her gown, and the man at the stile turned and raised a clearcut English face, half pleasantly scornful and wholly alluring.
"You have frightened them away," he smiled, and he indicated two pheasants that flashed into the undergrowth at her approach.
Sophie frowned, disdaining a reply.
"You are always late," he said, easily. ”

“ What good fortune!" said Sophie, rising immediately, and going to meet the young girl.
"Madame," added the servant, mysteriously, "Agatha wants to know if M. Pascal likes his peas with sugar or bacon?"
"Charles!" called Sophie, merrily, to her husband, "this is a grave question, what do you think of it?"
"Make one dish of peas with sugar, and the other with bacon," replied Charles, thoughtfully.
"It takes mathematicians to solve problems," replied Sophie, then, taking her children by the hand, she added: "I want Antonine to see how large and pretty they are." ”

“ Sophie is fair, and delicate, and accomplished, the very personification of refinement, natural and acquired, and the antipodes of all which Ernest, ere he saw her, had begun to dread in the untaught Meeta of his memory. I am not surprised at all at his loving Sophie, but I cannot at all understand how the simple and single-hearted Meeta can feign so long and so well, as on your supposition she has done. ”

“ Not but that Sophie was a good girl. She had a capital heart, a good, true womanly one, and was loving and obliging; but still she was one of the desperately painstaking, conscientious sort of women whose very blood, as they grow older, is devoured with anxiety, and she came of a race of women in whom housekeeping was more than an art or a science,—it was, so to speak, a religion. Sophie’s mother, aunts, and grandmothers, for nameless generations back, were known and celebrated housekeepers. ”

“ Can any one refuse you anything? Do you remember when we were at school, as soon as a petition was to be addressed to our mistress you were always chosen as ambassadress; and they were right, for, really, you seem to possess a talisman for obtaining all you want."
"I assure you, my good Sophie," replied Madeleine, smiling in spite of herself, "I assure you I am often a magician without trying to be one. My God!" added the marquise, laughing, "how many fine extravagances I have to tell you. But we will see, some other time. Come, dear Sophie, good-bye,—will see you soon." ”

“ They had taken into themselves the faint, musky fragrance of the withered herbage and the paper daisies. They had gazed among the stars for hours. When it was time to go home, Sophie sat up.
"I love to lie against the earth like this," she said.
"We seem to get back to the beginning of things. You and I are no more than specks of dust on the plains ... under the skies, Potch ... and yet the whole world is within us...." ”

“ He loves you as much and perhaps even more than in the past, poor foolish child, because you are the wife whose fidelity has been tested, the tender mother of his children; but you are no longer the infatuating mistress of the past, nor has he that tender, passionate love for you he felt in the first days of your wedded bliss. What I say to you, my good Sophie, may be a little harsh, but the good God knows what he has made us. He has created us of immaterial essence. Neither are we all matter, but neither are we all mind. ”

“ Sophie, fallen from a life of ease to one of privation, yet regarded it no sacrifice to exchange annoyance and ennui, though surrounded by luxury, for seclusion with one whose ardent affection, brilliant imagination, and entire confidence, could easily supply every void, and fill her existence with interest and delight. ”

“ There are places enough, kept warm and light and bright and merry, where boys can go whose mothers' parlors are too fine for them to sit in. There are enough to be found to clap them on the back, and tell them stories that their mothers must not hear, and laugh when they compass with their little piping voices the dreadful litanies of sin and shame. In middle life, our poor Sophie, who as a girl was so gay and frolicsome, so full of spirits, had dried and sharpened into a hard-visaged, angular woman,—careful and troubled about many things, and forgetful that one thing is needful. ”

“ But at length, at length, Sophie, I must tell you the real truth. The poor fellow is in love with me. You may laugh, or perhaps you are shocked? I wish I could see you just now. He has not of course said a word to me, but those large dark eyes of his can not lie.... At these words I believe you will laugh. What wonderful eyes those are which speak unconsciously! I have seen any number of men try to make theirs expressive who only managed to look idiotic. ”

“ Madame Sophie was haughty; Madame Louise a devotee. Mademoiselle Genet never quitted the Princesses’ apartments; but she attached herself most particularly to Madame Victoire. This Princess had possessed beauty; her countenance bore an expression of benevolence, and her conversation was kind, free, and unaffected. The young reader excited in her that feeling which a woman in years, of an affectionate disposition, readily extends to young people who are growing up in her sight, and who possess some useful talents. ”

“ Sick to the soul, Sophie put on her outdoor things once more and struck out over the moors, walking blindly to try and get away from the horror that was in her. As she went all the strength of her nature, inherited from the father who could keep up a pose and plan a revenge on an agonized death-bed; the strength, which had concentrated itself during her girlhood on her ambitions, that had then made her love for Crandon, now turned to a deep hatred and rage that seemed to settle, cold and hard, on the very muscles of her body. ”

“ A marriage so contracted, with a woman of Sophie's character, could by no possibility turn out a happy or even endurable union. She would not be likely long to survive it; if she did, it would be to suffer a life more painful than any death; for no one depended more than Sophie upon integrity and nobility in those she loved ”

“ Whether in the palace or the cottage, marriage, not to be intolerable must be one of affection, nothing can supply its place; and what can be said in defence of a system which coldly puts attachment aside, and where even mutual liking—love is a holier word—where even liking is a chance.
Sophie was essentially gentle and feminine in her nature, she would have been happy under any circumstances, had she but been beloved. Care she would have soothed, sorrow she could have shared without a murmur, let her but have been loved in return. ”

“ She had been up town to carry the great, black bundle of pants and vests to the factory and receive her small pittance, and on the way home stopped in at the Jesuit Church to say her little prayer at the altar of the calm, white Virgin. There had been a wondrous burst of music from the great organ as she knelt there, an over-powering perfume of many flowers, the glittering dazzle of many lights, and the dainty frou-frou of silken skirts of wedding guests filing and tripping. So Miss Sophie stayed to the wedding, for what feminine heart, be it ever so old and seared, does not delight in one? ”

“ He improved Sophie’s education, which, as may be easily imagined, had been more than neglected. He lavished all his care upon her, gave her professors, and, art seconding nature, Sophie at sixteen had grown into a model of beauty and perfection in every genre. At that time he was recalled by his Court, and, to spare his pupil the dangers of a sea-voyage, he intended to come back by way of Poland and Germany. ”

“ Despair and desperation were in the restive movement of Sophie's hands.
"I'm afraid of him," she said, "of the power of my love for him ... and there's no future that way. With you there is a future. I can work with you and Michael for the Ridge.... You know I do care for you too, Potch dear, and I want to have the sort of life that keeps a woman faithful ... to mend your clothes, cook your meals, and——"
Potch quivered to the suggestions she had evoked. He saw Sophie in a thousand tender associations—their home, the quiet course their lives might have together. ”

“ And since a look of innocence and the bloom of youth may, and very often do, appear on the faces of individuals who are far from being innocent or even young, it may well be that Sophie in 1810, servant-maid in a brothel though she was, still kept a look of country freshness and health, unjaded enough to whet the dulled appetence of a bagnio-haunting old rip. ”

“ The conversation of Madeleine and Sophie was interrupted by the arrival of Antonine, who, impetuous as joy, youth, and happiness, entered the room, saying:
"Sophie, I knew yesterday that Madeleine would be here this morning, and I ran in to tell you that—"
"Not a word more, little girl!" gaily replied the marquise, kissing Antonine on the forehead; "we have not a moment to lose; we must be to-day as we used to be in school, waiting-maids for Sophie." ”

“ The bundle grew larger each day, and Miss Sophie grew smaller. The damp, cold rain and mist closed the white-curtained window, but always there behind the sewing machine drooped and bobbed the little black-robed figure. Whirr, whirr went the wheels, and the coarse jean pants piled in great heaps at her side. The Claiborne street car saw her oftener than before, and the sweet, white Virgin in the flowered niche above the gold-domed altar smiled at the little penitent almost every day.
"Ma foi," said the slatternly landlady to Madame Laurent and Michel one day, "I no see how she live! Eat? ”