Doily

“ It was surely unlikely that a woman who was still beautiful, with as bright an eye and as graceful a figure as any in his court, could, after a life spent in the gayest circles, preserve the spirit of a nun. ”

“ That, if the babe upon her breast Untimely died, the gods were good,
And the child's welfare manifest. With tender guides the soul would go
And there, in some Elysian bower, The tiny bud plucked here below
Would ripen to the perfect flower. Poor simpleton ! Our faith makes plain
That, if no blest baptismal word Has cleared the babe, it bears the stain
Which faithless Adam had incurred. How philosophical an aim ! ”

“ In the light of their outstretched lanterns they saw a young woman, in the very prime and fullness of her youth, crouching in a corner, her unkempt hair hanging to the ground, her dark eyes glaring with fear, her lovely form straining away in horror from this inrush of savage blood-stained men. ”

“ Her beauty was of an ethereal type. She looked so white and light and fragile that she might have been the spirit of that storm-foam from out of which I plucked her. She had wreathed some of Madge's garments round her in a way which was quaint and not unbecoming. As I strode heavily up the pathway, she put out her hands with a pretty child-like gesture, and ran down towards me, meaning, as I surmise, to thank me for having saved her, but I put her aside with a wave of my hand and passed her. ”

“ Sometimes her eyes filled with glad tears, at the wonderful loveliness and stateliness of nature around her; the sense of beauty overcame all other feelings; filling and satisfying and also concealing a certain promise. It was certainly the will of the Creator that all things should be thus perfect, harmonious, and fair. What was not, could be made so. But then again a shadow would come over this sunshine, as Dolly remembered the anxieties she had brought from home with her. ”

“ You would not grant me any virtue in your unkindly speech, good Lady Mary, and yet you must needs confess that at least I have good store of patience, since I have not set my dogs upon your friends who have come between me and my ease. But even to the most virtuous there comes at last a time when poor human frailty may prevail, and so I pray you to remove both yourself, your priest and your valiant knight errant, lest perhaps there be more haste and less dignity when at last you do take your leave. ”

“ So I read it. The silly fellow had written:
Life is Love, the poets tell us
In the little books they sell us;
But pray, ma'am—what's of Life the use,
If Life be Love? For Love's the Deuce.
Dolly began to laugh gently, digging the pin again into her hat.
'I wonder,' said she, 'whether they used to come and sit by this old dial just as we did this morning!'
'I shouldn't be at all surprised,' said I. 'And another point occurs to me, Lady Mickleham.'
'Oh, does it? What's that, Mr. Carter?'
'Do you think that anybody measured the rain-gauge?'
Dolly looked at me very gravely. ”

“ Light hearts, light hearts, that float so gaily on a smooth stream, that are so sparkling and buoyant in the sunshine—down upon fruit, bloom upon flowers, blush in summer air, life of the winged insect, whose whole existence is a day—how soon ye sink in troubled water! Poor Dolly’s heart—a little, gentle, idle, fickle thing; giddy, restless, fluttering; constant to nothing but bright looks, and smiles and laughter—Dolly’s heart was breaking.
Emma had known grief, and could bear it better. ”

“ Was there ever woman like her, I wonder? And now her bones lie there; her beauty is all gone; and there lives of her only the unending issues of what she did. I have only to think, Dolly, and I can see her as I saw her a score of times passing in and out of this church-door. ”

“ And then suddenly a sound came out of the darkness--a low, sibilant sound, the quick, thin breathing of a woman. Quicker and thinner yet it came, as between clenched teeth, to end in a loud gasp with a dull rustle of cloth.
"What's that? Is all right?" someone asked in the darkness.
"Yes, all is right," said the Frenchman. "It is madame. She is in her trance. Now, gentlemen, if you will wait quiet you will see something, I think, which will interest you much."
Still the ticking in the hall. Still the breathing, deeper and fuller now, from the medium. ”

“ My dolly is a mystery too, [Pg 119]
And so I wonder why,
When I am washing dolly's face,
She does not pout and cry.
And then it never seemed quite right
To have the world turn round;
It seems so strange we do not fall
Or tumble off the ground. ”

“ From the first he made it evident, by his open admiration, that the daughter of the house had won his heart from the instant that he had set eyes upon her beauty and her grace. He was no backward suitor. ”

“ Dolly. Unless what?
Harry. It's something too awful.
Dolly. Oh, it isn't. Not at all. Not at all. [Goes up to the desk, brings down about ten more bills with great affected cheerfulness.] There! You see, it's nothing.
Harry. [Hastily looking at the totals.] Nothing? You call these nothing!!? [76]
Dolly. Nothing to speak about—nothing awful!
Harry. Good heavens! How any woman with the least care for her husband, or her home—— [looking at one total after another] how any woman with the least self-respect—— [Dolly goes to him, puts her arms round him, tries to embrace—he repulses her.] ”

“ You can go back then to your governess—"
"Madame!"
"Yes, yes, you cannot frighten me! What do I care for all that you can do! But I know all. Do not think that I am blind. And so you would even have married her! You, the descendant of St. Louis, and she the Scarron widow, the poor drudge whom in charity I took into my household! Ah, how your courtiers will smile! how the little poets will scribble! how the wits will whisper! You do not hear of these things, of course, but they are a little painful for your friends."
"My patience can bear no more," cried the king furiously. ”

“ Five or six evenings a week, she with her sewing and Frank with his book, settled down to such enjoyment as men go to the ends of the earth to seek, while it awaits them, if they will but atune their souls to sympathy, beside their own hearthstones. ”

“ As he lies gazing with his great serious blue eyes, his whole face suddenly lights up, his mouth turns up at one corner in the most irresistible way, and his cheeks all go off into dimples. He looks so sweet and innocent, and at the same time so humorous and wicked, that his foolish mother wants to laugh at him and to weep over him at the same time. ”

“ Tell me, comrade, is it sooth that we shall have another fling at these Frenchmen? It is so rumoured in the guard-room, and that Sir Nigel will take the field once more.'
'It is like enough, mon gar, as things go.'
'Now may the Lord be praised!' cried the other. 'This very night will I set apart a golden ouche to be offered on the shrine of my name-saint. I have pined for this, Aylward, as a young maid pines for her lover.'
'Art so set on plunder then? Is the purse so light that there is not enough for a rouse? ”

“ His eyes blazed suddenly out of his dark face. "Because there is no God but the one eternal, and all else are sticks and stones. What has this naked harlot to do with Him to whom the great firmament is but a garment and the earth a footstool? ”

“ But when we came to go through their country, and to see their bonny little steadings, and the douce quiet folk at work in the fields, and the women knitting by the roadside, and the old granny with a big white mutch smacking the baby to teach it manners, it was all so home-like that I could not think why it was that we had been hating and fearing these good people for so long. ”

“ Father upset a cup of milk over me at supper, and said afterwards that it was the milky way.’
‘It is simply maddening how men will make jokes about the most important subjects,’ said Mrs. Hunt Mortimer. ‘But I have no doubt, dear, that your dress was an exceedingly effective one. Now, for my own part, I had some idea of going as the “Duchess of Devonshire.”’
‘Charming!’ cried Mrs. Beecher and Maude. ”

“ You have brought out poets as the sun brings out flowers. How many have we not seen--Moliere, Boileau, Racine, one greater than the other? And the others, too, the smaller ones--Scarron, so scurrilous and yet so witty--Oh, holy Virgin! what have I said?"
Madame had laid down her tapestry, and was staring in intense indignation at the poet, who writhed on his stool under the stern rebuke of those cold gray eyes.
"I think, Monsieur Corneille, that you had better go on with your reading," said the king dryly.
"Assuredly, sire. Shall I read my play about Darius?" ”

“ It is his honor, and my honor, for his is mine. This is a sore trouble, mother, when we thought our life's troubles were all behind us, but we will bear it as we have borne others." He held out his stringy hand, and the two old folk sat with bowed grey heads, their fingers intertwined, strong in each other's love and sympathy. ”

“ Goodness knows how much of a nuisance he would be if it were not for a little lady named Dolly, who sits beside him, gray in color, dress and experience. At no uncertain age she has found a belated youthfulness and is starting on the first pleasure trip of her life. ”

“ There are many thousands who bear the same cross as you do."
"But where is the justice of it, doctor?" cried the young man, springing from his chair and pacing up and down the consulting-room. "If I were heir to my grandfather's sins as well as to their results, I could understand it, but I am of my father's type. I love all that is gentle and beautiful--music and poetry and art. The coarse and animal is abhorrent to me. ”

“ For an instant he seemed to forget how he had come there, but next moment he astonished his audience by waving his skinny arms above his head and crying out in a voice of rapture, "Gott sei gedanket! I am myself again. I feel I am!" ”

“ Such was the figure which rolled towards the king, bearing in his right hand his many-feathered beaver, and appearing in his person, as he was in his mind, an absurd burlesque of the monarch.
"Why, monsieur, you seem less gay than usual to-day," said the king, with a smile. "Your dress, indeed, is bright, but your brow is clouded. I trust that all is well with Madame and with the Duc de Chartres?"
"Yes, sire, they are well; but they are sad like myself, and from the same cause." ”

“ And it was seldom that she went without bringing something back for one or other of us. It was a wooden pipe for my father, or a Shetland plaid for my mother, or a book for me, or a brass collar for Rob the collie. There was never a woman more free-handed. ”

“ You know how a modern poet excused himself to his wife for all his pre-matrimonial experiences. He said that he was looking for her.’
‘Well, I do like that!’ she cried indignantly.
‘I was looking for you.’
‘You seem to have looked a good deal.’
‘But I found you at last.’
‘I had rather you had found me at first, Frank.’ He said something about supper, but she was not to be turned.
‘How many did you really love?’ she asked. ‘Please don’t joke about it, Frank. ”

“ Now when Dolly bubbles—an operation which includes a sudden turn towards me, a dancing of eyes, a dart of a small hand, a hurried rush of words, checked and confused by a speedier gust of gurgling sound—I am in the habit of ceasing to argue the question. Bubbling is not to be met by arguing. ”

“ There was a crowd around the door, and men and boys looking in at the windows. Dolly's soul was fired. But the elm boughs a little obstructed her vision; she thought she would go down and look at it from the yard. So down-stairs she ran, but as she opened [Pg 176] the door the sound of the chant rolled out into the darkness with sweet and solemn cadence:
"Glory be to God on high; and on earth peace, good will toward men."
Dolly's soul was all aglow—her nerves tingled and vibrated; she thought of the bells ringing in the celestial city ”

“ Dolly looks frightened, sees him off, goes up to writing-desk, takes out bills, looks at them, throws up her arms in despair, groans, slams down the writing-desk, looks at the chair she has touched in first act, shows great resolution, marches up and touches it. ”

“ Then he was conscious of some movement among the dressers. Were there groans too breaking in upon him, and some other sound, some fluid sound, which was more dreadfully suggestive still? His mind would keep building up every step of the operation, and fancy made it more ghastly than fact could have been. His nerves tingled and quivered. Minute by minute the giddiness grew more marked, the numb, sickly feeling at his heart more distressing. ”

“ Her foot is on the very lintel of the church, and yet he bars the way—and she, she thinks no more of the wise words and holy rede of the lady abbess, but she hath given a sobbing cry and hath fallen forward with his arms around her drooping body and her wet cheek upon his breast. A sorry sight this for the gaunt abbess, an ill lesson too for the stainless two-and-twenty who have ever been taught that the way of nature is the way of sin. ”

“ I could not curse her in my own heart, and still less could I stand by and hear another man do it; not though it was my oldest friend.
"Don't you call names!" I cried.
"Ach! you sicken me with your soft talk! ”

“ Mary was dark as night, grave-featured, plain-visaged, with steady brown eyes looking bravely at the world from under a strong black arch of brows. None could call her beautiful, and when her fair sister cast her arm round her and placed her cheek against hers, as was her habit when company was there, the fairness of the one and the plainness of the other leaped visibly to the eyes of all, each the clearer for that hard contrast. ”