Stella has since sworn the girls liked it. I suspect in this statement a certain parsimony as to the truth. They giggled too much and were never entirely free from that haunting anxiety concerning their skirts.
We danced together, Stella and I, to the strains of the last Sousa two-step (it was the “Washington Post”), and we conversed, meanwhile, with careful disregard of the amenities of life, since each feared lest the other might suspect in some common courtesy an attempt at—there is really no other word—spooning. And spooning was absurd.
Well, as I once read in the pages of a rare and little known author, one lives and learns.
-I asked Stella to sit out a dance. I did this because I had heard Mr. Lethbury—a handsome man with waxed mustachios and an absolutely piratical amount of whiskers—make the same request of Miss Van Orden, my just relinquished partner, and it was evident that such whiskers could do no wrong.
+I asked Stella to sit out a dance. I did this because I had heard Mr. Lethbury—a handsome man with waxed mustachios and an absolutely piratical amount of whiskers—make the same request of Miss Van Orden, my just relinquished partner, and it was evident that such whiskers could do no wrong.
Stella was not uninfluenced, it may be, by Miss Van Orden’s example, for even in girlhood the latter was a person of extraordinary beauty, whereas, as has been said, Stella’s corners were then multitudinous; and it is probable that those two queer little knobs at the base of Stella’s throat would be apt to render their owner uncomfortable and a bit abject before—let us say—more ample charms. In any event, Stella giggled and said she thought it would be just fine, and I presently conducted her to the third piazza of the hotel.
There we found a world that was new.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-10.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-10.xhtml index 56714cf..c4b8284 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-10.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-10.xhtml @@ -91,10 +91,10 @@“No, I’m a precious angel,” she composedly responded, with a flavour of quotation.
“Well! it is precisely the intervention of the Dragon, Gladys, which proves the story is literature,” I announced. “Don’t you pity the poor Dragon, Gladys, who never gets a chance in life and has to live always between two book-covers?”
She said that couldn’t be so, because it would squash him.
-“And yet, dear, it is perfectly true,” said Mrs. Hardress. The lean and handsome woman was regarding the pair of us curiously. “I didn’t know you cared for children, Mr. Townsend. Yes, she is my daughter.” She carried Gladys away, without much further speech.
+“And yet, dear, it is perfectly true,” said Mrs. Hardress. The lean and handsome woman was regarding the pair of us curiously. “I didn’t know you cared for children, Mr. Townsend. Yes, she is my daughter.” She carried Gladys away, without much further speech.
Yet one Parthian comment in leaving me was flung over her shoulder, snappishly. “I wish you wouldn’t imitate John Charteris so. You are getting to be just a silly copy of him. You are just Jack where he is John. I think I shall call you Jack.”
“I wish you would,” I said, “if only because your sponsors happened to christen you Gillian. So it’s a bargain. And now when are we going for that pail of water?”
-Mrs. Hardress wheeled, the child in her arms, so that she was looking at me, rather queerly, over the little round, yellow head. “And it was only Jill, as I remember, who got the spanking,” she said. “Oh, well! it always is just Jill who gets the spanking—Jack.”
+Mrs. Hardress wheeled, the child in her arms, so that she was looking at me, rather queerly, over the little round, yellow head. “And it was only Jill, as I remember, who got the spanking,” she said. “Oh, well! it always is just Jill who gets the spanking—Jack.”
“But it was Jack who broke his crown,” said I; “Wasn’t it—Jill?” It seemed a jest at the time. But before long we had made these nicknames a habit, when just we two were together. And the outcome of it all was not precisely a jest. …
“Is it another woman? I won’t mind. I won’t be jealous. I won’t make scenes, for I know you hate scenes, and I have made so many. It was because I cared so much. I never cared before, Jack. You have tired of me, I know. I have seen it coming. Well, you shall have your way in everything. But don’t leave me, dear! oh, my dear, my dear, don’t leave me! Oh, I have given you everything, and I ask so little in return—just to see you sometimes, just to touch your hand sometimes, as the merest stranger might do. …”
So her voice went on and on while I did not look at her. There was no passion in this voice of any kind. It was just the long monotonous wail of some hurt animal. … They were playing the “Valse Bleu,” I remember. It lasted a great many centuries, and always that low voice was pleading with me. Yes, it was uncommonly unpleasant; but always at the back of my mind some being that was not I was taking notes as to precisely how I felt, because some day they might be useful, for the book I had already outlined. “It is no use, Jill,” I kept repeating, doggedly.
Then Armitage came smirking for his dance. Gillian Hardress rose, and her fan shut like a pistol-shot. She was all in black, and throughout that moment she was more beautiful than any other woman I have ever seen.
-“Yes, this is our dance,” she said, brightly. “I thought you had forgotten me, Mr. Armitage. Well! goodbye, Mr. Townsend. Our little talk has been very interesting—hasn’t it? Oh, this dress always gets in my way—”
+“Yes, this is our dance,” she said, brightly. “I thought you had forgotten me, Mr. Armitage. Well! goodbye, Mr. Townsend. Our little talk has been very interesting—hasn’t it? Oh, this dress always gets in my way—”
She was gone. I felt that I had managed affairs rather crudely, but it was the least unpleasant way out, and I simply had not dared to trust myself alone with her. So I made the best of an ill bargain, and remodeled the episode more artistically when I used it later, in Afield.
“In London for the season. And why is your wife rushing on to Paris, John?”
“Shopping, as usual. Yes, I believe I did suggest it was as well to have it over and done with. Anne is very partial to truisms. Besides, she has an aunt there, you know. Take my advice, and always marry a woman who is abundantly furnished with attractive and visitable relations, for this precaution is the true secret of every happy marriage. We may, then, regard the Hardress incident as closed?”
“Oh, Lord, yes!” said I, emphatically.
-“Well, after all, you have been sponging off them for a full year. The adjective is not ill-chosen, from what I hear. I fancy Mrs. Hardress has found you better company after she had mixed a few drinks for you, and so—But a truce to moral reflections! for I am desirous once more to hear the chimes at midnight. I hear Francine is in Milan?”
+“Well, after all, you have been sponging off them for a full year. The adjective is not ill-chosen, from what I hear. I fancy Mrs. Hardress has found you better company after she had mixed a few drinks for you, and so—But a truce to moral reflections! for I am desirous once more to hear the chimes at midnight. I hear Francine is in Milan?”
“There is at any rate in Milan,” said I, “a magnificent Gothic Cathedral of international reputation; and upon the upper gallery of its tower, as my guidebook informs me, there is a watchman with an efficient telescope. Should I fail to meet that watchman, John, I would feel that I had lived futilely. For I want both to view with him the Lombard plain, and to ask him his opinion of Cino da Pistoia, and as to what was in reality the middle name of Cain’s wife.”
“Yes, only I was the slave, I think, and you—er—I mean, there goes the roof, and it is an uncommonly good thing for posterity you thought of the trapdoor. Good thing the wind is veering, too. By Jove! look at those flames!” I cried, as the main body of the Continental toppled inward like a house of cards; “they are splashing, actually splashing, like waves over a breakwater!”
I drew a deep breath and turned from the conflagration, only to encounter its reflection in her widened eyes. “Yes, I was a Trojan warrior,” I resumed; “one of the many unknown men who sought and found death beside Scamander, trodden down by Achilles or Diomedes. So they died knowing they fought in a bad cause, but rapt with that joy they had in remembering the desire of the world and her perfect loveliness. She scarcely knew that I existed; but I had loved her; I had overheard some laughing words of hers in passing, and I treasured them as men treasure gold. Or she had spoken, perhaps—oh, day of days!—to me, in a low, courteous voice that came straight from the back of the throat and blundered very deliciously over the perplexities of our alien speech. I remembered—even as a boy, I remembered.”
She cast back her head and laughed merrily. “I reckon,” said she, “you are still a boy, or else you are the most amusing lunatic I ever met.”
-“No,” I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, “that tale about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen—and the gods be praised for it!—can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose, with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she
+“No,” I murmured, and I was not altogether playacting now, “that tale about Polyxo was a pure invention. Helen—and the gods be praised for it!—can never die. For it is hers to perpetuate that sense of unattainable beauty which never dies, which sways us just as potently as it did Homer, and Dr. Faustus, and the Merovingians too, I suppose, with memories of that unknown woman who, when we were boys, was very certainly some day, to be our mate. And so, whatever happens, she
Abides the symbol of all loveliness, diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-15.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-15.xhtml index 18c198a..0ff4949 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-15.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-15.xhtml @@ -36,7 +36,7 @@
“And why should you be living,” I said, in half-conscious absurdity, “when she is dead? Why, look, Bettie! even that fly yonder is alive. Setebos accords an insect what He grudges Stella! Her dying is not even particularly important. The big news of the day is that the President has started his Pacific tour, and that the Harvard graduates object to his being given an honorary degree, and are sending out seven thousand protests to be signed. And you’re alive, and I’m alive, and Peter Blagden is alive, and only Stella is dead. I suppose she is an angel by this. But I don’t care for angels. I want just the silly little Stella that I loved—the Stella that was the first and will always be the first with me. For I want her—just Stella—! Oh, it is an excellent jest; and I will cap it with another now. For the true joke is, I came to Fairhaven, across half the world, with an insane notion of asking you to marry me—you who are ‘really’ sorry that Stella is dead!” And I laughed as pleasantly as one may do in anger.
But the girl, too, was angry. “Marry you!” she said. “Why, Robin, you were wonderful once; and now you are simply not a bad sort of fellow, who imagines himself to be the hit of the entire piece. And whether she’s dead or not, she never had two grains of sense, but just enough to make a spectacle of you, even now.”
“I regret that I should have sailed so far into the north of your opinion,” said I. “Though, as I dare assert, you are quite probably in the right. So I’ll be off to my husks again, Bettie.” And I kissed her hand. “And that too is only for old sake’s sake, dear,” I said.
-Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train. And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt “Good evening, gentlemen,” as I passed Clarriker’s Emporium, where Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had left them there two years ago.
+Then I returned to the railway station in time for the afternoon train. And I spoke with no one else in Fairhaven, except to grunt “Good evening, gentlemen,” as I passed Clarriker’s Emporium, where Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal were sitting in arm chairs, very much as I had left them there two years ago.
I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read The Apostates, and, as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely well-meaning. Tonight I was superintending the process.
+I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read The Apostates, and, as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely well-meaning. Tonight I was superintending the process.
“For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate,” said I; “and it may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul, Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent café! Try now, nunky! try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you.”
-Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was “frosted” to a nicety. We were drinking “Mamie Taylors” that summer, you may remember; and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar.
+Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the contents of my tall and delectably odored glass. It was “frosted” to a nicety. We were drinking “Mamie Taylors” that summer, you may remember; and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar.
“Oh, I say, you know!” observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth chapter, and flung down the book.
“Rot, utter rot,” I assented pleasantly; “puerile and futile trifling with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your sturdy common sense instantly detected. In fact,” I added, hopefully, “I think that chapter is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In Afield, you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the noblest sentiments, the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father’s whiskey and water; and ‘Old-Fashioned’ and ‘Fair Play’ have been obliging enough to write to the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low moral standards of today. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot to show you—all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit, and my fine impersonal attitude, and the survival of the fittest, and so on.”
But Uncle George refused to be comforted. “Look here, Bob!” said he, pathetically, “why don’t you brace up and write something—well! we’ll put it, something of the sort you can do. For you can, you know.”
“Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second edition before publication?” I softly queried. “I had no money. I was ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle’s deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread.” I refilled my glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. “This time next year,” said I, as dreamily, “I shall be able to afford cake; for I shall have written As the Coming of Dawn.”
-Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. “You catch me lending you any money for your—brief Biblical words!” he said.
+Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. “You catch me lending you any money for your—brief Biblical words!” he said.
“For the reign of subtle immorality,” I sighed, “is well-nigh over. Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly—sordidly, at times—and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!”
-“Dearest Robert!” remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, “you are sadly passé: that pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago.”
+“Dearest Robert!” remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, “you are sadly passé: that pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago.”
“The point is well taken,” I admitted, “for our life of today is already reflected—faintly, I grant you—in the best-selling books. We have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have tossed over the contents of every closet in the ménage à trois. And I—moi, qui vous parle—I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in Afield; and henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence.”
“Saul among the prophets,” Uncle George suggested, helpfully.
“Quite so,” I assented, “and my first prophecy will be As the Coming of Dawn.”
-Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. “Mad, quite mad!” said he, in parenthesis.
+Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. “Mad, quite mad!” said he, in parenthesis.
“I shall be idyllic,” I continued, sweetly; “I shall write of the ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met after last night’s kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is love—the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I will!”
I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table.
-“H’m!” said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; “going back to renew associations with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her grandchildren terribly in the way.”
+“H’m!” said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; “going back to renew associations with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her grandchildren terribly in the way.”
“It is imperative,” said I—“yes, imperative for the scope of my book, that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban product to serve my purpose. And I can’t find anyone who will.”
Uncle George whistled softly. “ ‘Honourable young gentleman,’ ” he murmured, as to himself, “ ‘desires to meet attractive and innocent young lady. Object: to learn how to be idyllic in three-hundred pages.’ ”
There was no commentary upon his text.
-“I say,” queried Mr. Bulmer, “do you think this sort of thing is fair to the girl? Isn’t it a little cold-blooded?”
+“I say,” queried Mr. Bulmer, “do you think this sort of thing is fair to the girl? Isn’t it a little cold-blooded?”
“Respected nunky, you are at times very terribly the man in the street! Anyhow, I leave the Green Chalybeate tomorrow in search of As the Coming of Dawn.”
-“Look here,” said Mr. Bulmer, rising, “if you start on a tour of the country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a liver-pill and go to bed! I don’t promise anything, mind, but perhaps about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there,” he added unkindlily, “are not built for those full rich figures.”
+“Look here,” said Mr. Bulmer, rising, “if you start on a tour of the country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a liver-pill and go to bed! I don’t promise anything, mind, but perhaps about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there,” he added unkindlily, “are not built for those full rich figures.”
So it was Uncle George Bulmer who presently left the Green Chalybeate, to pursue Mrs. Chaytor with his lawless arts. I stayed out the season.
+So it was Uncle George Bulmer who presently left the Green Chalybeate, to pursue Mrs. Chaytor with his lawless arts. I stayed out the season.
Now I cannot conscientiously recommend the Green Chalybeate against your next vacation. Once very long ago, it was frequented equally for the sake of gaiety and of health. In the summer that was Marian’s the resort was a beautiful and tumble-down place where invalids congregated for the sake of the nauseous waters—which infallibly demolish a solid column of strange maladies I never read quite through, although it bordered every page of the writing-paper you got there from the desk-clerk—and a scanty leaven of persons who came thither, apparently, in order to spend a week or two in lamenting “how very dull the season is this year, and how abominable the fare is.”
But for one I praise the place, and I believe that Marian Winwood also bears it no ill-will. For we two were very happy there. We took part in the “subscription euchres” whenever we could not in time devise an excuse which would pass muster with the haggard “entertainer.” We danced conscientiously beneath the pink and green icing of the ballroom’s ceiling, with all three of the band playing “Hearts and Flowers”; and with a dozen “chaperones”—whom I always suspected of taking in washing during the winter months—lined up as closely as was possible to the door, as if in preparation for the hotel’s catching fire any moment, to give us pessimistic observal. And having thus discharged our duty to society at large, we enjoyed ourselves tremendously.
For instance, we would talk over the book I was going to write in the autumn. That was the main thing. Then one could golf, or drive, or—I blush to write it even now—croquet. Croquet, though, is a much maligned game, as you will immediately discover if you ever play it on the rambling lawn of the Chalybeate, about six in the afternoon, say, when the grass is greener than it is by ordinary, and the shadows are long, and the sun is well beneath the treetops of the Iron Bank, and your opponent makes a face at you occasionally, and on each side the old, one-storied cottages are builded of unusually red bricks and are quite ineffably asleep.
@@ -80,20 +80,20 @@Thus I dandled the child of my brain for a long while, and arrayed it in beautiful and curious garments, adorning each beloved notion with far-sought words that had a taste in the mouth, and would one day lend an aroma to the printed page; and I rejoiced shamelessly in that which I had done. Then it befell that I went forth and sought the luxury of a Turkish bath, and in the morning, after a rubdown and an ammonia cocktail, awoke to the fact that the world had been going on much as usual, that winter.
-Young Colonel Roosevelt seemed not to have wrecked civilization, after all, according to the morning Courier-Herald, despite that Democratic paper’s colorful prophecies last autumn in the vein of Jeremiah. To the contrary, Major-General McArthur was testifying before the Senate as to the abysmal unfitness of the Filipinos for self-government; the Women’s Clubs were holding a convention in Los Angeles; there had been terrible hailstorms this year to induce the annual ruining of the peach-crop, and the submarine Fulton had exploded; the California Limited had been derailed in Iowa, and in Memphis there was some sort of celebration in honor of Admiral Schley; and the Boer War seemed over; and Mr. Havemeyer also was before the Senate, to whom he was making it clear that his companies were in no wise responsible for sugar having reached the unprecedentedly high price of four and a half cents a pound.
+Young Colonel Roosevelt seemed not to have wrecked civilization, after all, according to the morning Courier-Herald, despite that Democratic paper’s colorful prophecies last autumn in the vein of Jeremiah. To the contrary, Major-General McArthur was testifying before the Senate as to the abysmal unfitness of the Filipinos for self-government; the Women’s Clubs were holding a convention in Los Angeles; there had been terrible hailstorms this year to induce the annual ruining of the peach-crop, and the submarine Fulton had exploded; the California Limited had been derailed in Iowa, and in Memphis there was some sort of celebration in honor of Admiral Schley; and the Boer War seemed over; and Mr. Havemeyer also was before the Senate, to whom he was making it clear that his companies were in no wise responsible for sugar having reached the unprecedentedly high price of four and a half cents a pound.
The world, in short, in spite of my six months’ retiring therefrom, seemed to be getting on pleasantly enough, as I turned from the paper to face the six months’ accumulation of mail.
A few weeks later, I sent for Mr. George Bulmer, and informed him of his avuncular connection with a genius; and waved certain typewritten pages to establish his title.
-Subsequently I read aloud divers portions of As the Coming of Dawn, and Mr. Bulmer sipped Chianti, and listened.
+A few weeks later, I sent for Mr. George Bulmer, and informed him of his avuncular connection with a genius; and waved certain typewritten pages to establish his title.
+Subsequently I read aloud divers portions of As the Coming of Dawn, and Mr. Bulmer sipped Chianti, and listened.
“Look here!” he said, suddenly; “have you seen The Imperial Votaress?”
I frowned. It is always annoying to be interrupted in the middle of a particularly well-balanced sentence. “Don’t know the lady,” said I.
-“She is advertised on half the posters in town,” said Mr. Bulmer. “And it is the book of the year. And it is your book.”
+“She is advertised on half the posters in town,” said Mr. Bulmer. “And it is the book of the year. And it is your book.”
At this moment I laid down my manuscript. “I beg your pardon?” said I.
“Your book!” Uncle George repeated firmly; “and scarcely a hair’s difference between them, except in the names.”
“H’m!” I observed, in a careful voice. “Who wrote it?”
-“Some female woman out west,” said Mr. Bulmer. “She’s a George Something-or-other when she publishes, of course, like all those authorines when they want to say about mankind at large what less gifted women only dare say about their sisters-in-law. I wish to heaven they would pick out some other Christian name when they want to cut up like pagans. Anyhow, I saw her real name somewhere, and I remember it began with an S—Why, to be sure! it’s Marian Winwood.”
+“Some female woman out west,” said Mr. Bulmer. “She’s a George Something-or-other when she publishes, of course, like all those authorines when they want to say about mankind at large what less gifted women only dare say about their sisters-in-law. I wish to heaven they would pick out some other Christian name when they want to cut up like pagans. Anyhow, I saw her real name somewhere, and I remember it began with an S—Why, to be sure! it’s Marian Winwood.”
“Amaimon sounds well,” I observed; “Lucifer, well; Larbason, well; yet they are devils’ additions, the names of fiends: but—Marian Winwood!”
“Dear me!” he remonstrated. “Why, she wrote A Bright Particular Star, you know, and The Acolytes, and lots of others.”
The author of As the Coming of Dawn swallowed a whole glass of Chianti at a gulp.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-18.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-18.xhtml index 47fc857..5ca6fae 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-18.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-18.xhtml @@ -79,7 +79,7 @@I groaned once more. “It was a girl,” I darkly said.
“Of course,” assented Rosalind, beaming as to the eyes. Then she went on, and more sympathetically: “Now, Jaques, you can tell me the whole story.”
“Is it necessary?” I asked.
-“Surely,” said she, with sudden interest in the structure of pine-cones; “since for a long while I have wanted to know all about Jaques. You see Mr. Shakespeare is a bit hazy about him.”
+“Surely,” said she, with sudden interest in the structure of pine-cones; “since for a long while I have wanted to know all about Jaques. You see Mr. Shakespeare is a bit hazy about him.”
“So!” I thought, triumphantly.
And aloud, “It is an old story,” I warned her, “perhaps the oldest of all old stories. It is the story of a man and a girl. It began with a chance meeting and developed into a packet of old letters, which is the usual ending of this story.”
Rosalind’s brows protested.
diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-19.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-19.xhtml index 8872e5d..5573be1 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-19.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-19.xhtml @@ -84,12 +84,12 @@But, for all this, I meditated for a long while upon what Lizzie had said. It was true that I was really fond of “proper” little Rosalind Jemmett; concerning myself I had no especial illusions; and, to my credit, I faced what I considered the real issue, squarely.
We were in Aunt Marcia’s parlour. Rosalind was an orphan, and lived in turn with her three aunts. She said the other two were less unendurable than Aunt Marcia, and I believed her. I consider, to begin with, that a person is not civilised who thumps upon the floor upstairs with a poker, simply because it happens to be eleven o’clock; and moreover, Aunt Marcia’s parlour—oh, it really was a “parlour,”—was entirely too like the first night of a charity bazaar, when nothing has been sold.
The room was not a particularly large one; but it contained exactly three hundred and seven articles of bijouterie, not estimating the china pug-dog upon the hearth. I know, for I counted them.
-Besides, there were twenty-eight pictures upon the walls—one in oils of the late Mr. Dumby (for Aunt Marcia was really Mrs. Clement Dumby), painted, to all appearances, immediately after the misguided gentleman who married Aunt Marcia had been drowned, and before he had been wiped dry—and for the rest, everywhere the eye was affronted by engravings framed in gilt and red-plush of Sanctuary, Le Hamac, Martyre Chrétienne, The Burial of Latané, and other Victorian outrages.
+Besides, there were twenty-eight pictures upon the walls—one in oils of the late Mr. Dumby (for Aunt Marcia was really Mrs. Clement Dumby), painted, to all appearances, immediately after the misguided gentleman who married Aunt Marcia had been drowned, and before he had been wiped dry—and for the rest, everywhere the eye was affronted by engravings framed in gilt and red-plush of Sanctuary, Le Hamac, Martyre Chrétienne, The Burial of Latané, and other Victorian outrages.
Then on an easel there was a painting of a peacock, perched upon an urn, against a gilded background; this painting irrelevantly deceived your expectations, for it was framed in blue plush. Also there were “gift-books” on the centre table, and a huge volume, again in red plush, with its titular “Album” cut out of thin metal and nailed to the cover. This album contained calumnious portraits of Aunt Marcia’s family, the most of them separately enthroned upon the same imitation rock, in all the pride of a remote, full-legged and starchy youth, each picture being painfully “coloured by hand.”
“Do you know why I want to marry you?” I demanded of Rosalind, in such surroundings, apropos of a Mrs. Vokins who had taken a house in Lichfield for the winter, and had been at school somewhere in the backwoods with Aunt Marcia, and was “dying to meet me.”
+“Do you know why I want to marry you?” I demanded of Rosalind, in such surroundings, apropos of a Mrs. Vokins who had taken a house in Lichfield for the winter, and had been at school somewhere in the backwoods with Aunt Marcia, and was “dying to meet me.”
She answered, in some surprise: “Why, because you have the good taste to be heels over head in love with me, of course.”
I took possession of her hands. “If there is anything certain in this world of uncertainties, it is that I am not the least bit in love with you. Yet, only yesterday—do you remember, dear?”
She answered, “I remember.”
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@She left Lichfield the next day but one, and spent the following winter with the aunt that lived in Brooklyn. She was Rosalind Gelwix the next time I saw her. …
-And Aunt Marcia, whose taste is upon a par with her physical attractions, inserted a paragraph in the “Social Items” of the Lichfield Courier-Herald to announce the breaking-off of the engagement. Aunt Marcia also took the trouble to explain, quite confidentially, to some seven hundred and ninety-three people, just why the engagement had been broken off: and these explanations were more creditable to Mrs. Dumby’s imagination than to me.
+And Aunt Marcia, whose taste is upon a par with her physical attractions, inserted a paragraph in the “Social Items” of the Lichfield Courier-Herald to announce the breaking-off of the engagement. Aunt Marcia also took the trouble to explain, quite confidentially, to some seven hundred and ninety-three people, just why the engagement had been broken off: and these explanations were more creditable to Mrs. Dumby’s imagination than to me.
And I remembered, then, that the last request my mother made of me was to keep out of the newspapers—“except, of course, the social items.” …
Meantime, during these years, I had fallen in and out of love assiduously. Since the Anabasis of lad’s love traverses a monotonous country, where one hill is largely like another, and one meadow a duplicate of the next to the last daffodil, I may with profit dwell upon the greensickness lightly. It suffices that in the course of these four years I challenged superstition by adoring thirteen girls, and, worse than that, wrote verses of them.
I give you their names herewith—though not their workaday names, lest the wives of divers people be offended (and in many cases, surprised), but the appellatives which figured in my rhymes. They were Heart’s Desire, Florimel, Dolores, Yolande, Adelais, Sylvia, Heart o’ My Heart, Chloris, Felise, Ettarre, Phyllis, Phyllida, and Dorothy. Here was a rosary of exquisite names, I even now concede; and the owner of each nom de plume I, for however brief a period, adored for this or that peculiar excellence; and by ordinary without presuming to mention the fact to any of these divinities save Heart o’ My Heart, who was, after all, only a Penate.
Outside the elevated orbits of rhyme she was called Elizabeth Hamlyn; and it afterward became apparent to me that I, in reality, wrote all the verses of this period solely for the pleasure of reading them aloud to Bettie, for certainly I disclosed their existence to no one else—except just one or two to Phyllida, who was “literary.”
-And the upshot of all this heartburning is most succinctly given in my own far from impeccable verse, as Bettie Hamlyn heard the summing-up one evening in May. It was the year I graduated from King’s College, and the exact relation of the date to the Annos Domini is trivial. But the battle of Manila had just been fought, and off Santiago Captain Sampson and Commander Schley were still hunting for Cervera’s “phantom fleet.” And in Fairhaven, as I remember it, although there was a highly-colored picture of Commodore Dewey in the barbershop window, nobody was bothering in the least about the war except when Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal foregathered at Clarriker’s Emporium to denounce the colossal errors of “imperialism.” …
+And the upshot of all this heartburning is most succinctly given in my own far from impeccable verse, as Bettie Hamlyn heard the summing-up one evening in May. It was the year I graduated from King’s College, and the exact relation of the date to the Annos Domini is trivial. But the battle of Manila had just been fought, and off Santiago Captain Sampson and Commander Schley were still hunting for Cervera’s “phantom fleet.” And in Fairhaven, as I remember it, although there was a highly-colored picture of Commodore Dewey in the barbershop window, nobody was bothering in the least about the war except when Colonel Snawley and Dr. Jeal foregathered at Clarriker’s Emporium to denounce the colossal errors of “imperialism.” …
“Thus, then, I end my calendar diff --git a/src/epub/text/chapter-20.xhtml b/src/epub/text/chapter-20.xhtml index 0de77bb..94650ac 100644 --- a/src/epub/text/chapter-20.xhtml +++ b/src/epub/text/chapter-20.xhtml @@ -23,25 +23,25 @@
“After almost two years!” sighed I, ever so happily. But I continued, with reproach, “To go without a word—that very day—”
“Mamma—” she began.
I recalled the canary-bird, and the purple shawl. “I sought wildly,” said I; “you were evanished. The propriétaire was tearing his hair—no insurance—he knew nothing. So I too tore my hair; and I said things. There was a row. For he also said things: ‘Figure to yourselves, messieurs! I lose the Continental—two ladies come and go, I know not who—I am ruined, desolated, is it not?—and this pig of an American blusters—ah, my new carpets, just down, what horror!’ And then, you know, he launched into a quite feeling peroration concerning our notorious custom of tomahawking one another—
-“Yes,” I coldly concluded into Mrs. Clement Dumby’s ear, “we all behaved disgracefully. As you very justly observe, liquor has been the curse of the South.” It was of a piece with Kittie Provis to put me next to Aunt Marcia, I reflected.
+“Yes,” I coldly concluded into Mrs. Clement Dumby’s ear, “we all behaved disgracefully. As you very justly observe, liquor has been the curse of the South.” It was of a piece with Kittie Provis to put me next to Aunt Marcia, I reflected.
And mentally I decided that even though a portion of my assertions had not actually gone through the formality of occurring, it all might very easily have happened, had I remained a while longer in Liége; and then ensued a silent interval and an entrée.
“And so—?”
“And so I knocked about the world, in various places, hoping against hope that at last—”
“Your voice carries frightfully—”
-I glanced toward Mrs. Clement Dumby, who, as a dining dowager of many years’ experience, was, to all appearances, engrossed by the contents of her plate. “My elderly neighbour is as hard of hearing as a telephone-girl,” I announced. She was the exact contrary, which was why I said it quite audibly. “And your neighbour—why, his neighbour is Nannie Allsotts. We might as well be on a desert island, Elena—” And the given name slipped out so carelessly as to appear almost accidental.
+I glanced toward Mrs. Clement Dumby, who, as a dining dowager of many years’ experience, was, to all appearances, engrossed by the contents of her plate. “My elderly neighbour is as hard of hearing as a telephone-girl,” I announced. She was the exact contrary, which was why I said it quite audibly. “And your neighbour—why, his neighbour is Nannie Allsotts. We might as well be on a desert island, Elena—” And the given name slipped out so carelessly as to appear almost accidental.
“Sir!” said she, with proper indignation; “after so short an acquaintance—”
“Centuries,” I suggested, meekly. “You remember I explained about that.”
She frowned—an untrustworthy frown that was tinged with laughter. “One meets so many people! Yes, it really is frightfully warm, Colonel Grimshaw; they ought to open some of the windows.”
“Er—haw—hum! Didn’t see you at the Anchesters.”
-“No; I am usually lucky enough to be in bed with a sick headache when Mrs. Anchester entertains. Of two evils one should choose the lesser, you know.”
+“No; I am usually lucky enough to be in bed with a sick headache when Mrs. Anchester entertains. Of two evils one should choose the lesser, you know.”
In the manner of divers veterans Colonel Grimshaw evinced his mirth upon a scale more proper to an elephant; and relapsed, with a reassuring air of having done his duty once and for all.
“I never,” she suggested, tentatively, “heard any more of your poem, about—?”
“Oh, I finished it; every magazine in the country knows it. It is poor stuff, of course, but then how could I write of Helen when Helen had disappeared?”
The lashes exhibited themselves at full length. “I looked her up,” confessed their owner, guiltily, “in the encyclopaedia. It was very instructive—about sun-myths and bronzes and the growth of the epic, you know, and tree-worship and moon-goddesses. Of course”—here ensued a flush and a certain hiatus in logic—“of course it is nonsense.”
“Nonsense?” My voice sank tenderly. “Is it nonsense, Elena, that for two years I have remembered the woman whose soft body I held, for one unforgettable moment, in my arms? and nonsense that I have fought all this time against—against the temptations every man has—that I might ask her at last—some day when she at last returned, as always I knew she would—to share a fairly decent life? and nonsense that I have dreamed, waking and sleeping, of a wondrous face I knew in Ilium first, and in old Rome, and later on in France, I think, when the Valois were kings? Well!” I sighed, after vainly racking my brain for a tenderer fragment of those two-year-old verses, “I suppose it is nonsense!”
“The salt, please,” quoth she. She flashed that unforgotten broadside at me. “I believe you need it.”
-“Why, dear me! of course not!” said I, to Mrs. Dumby; “immorality lost the true cachet about the same time that ping-pong did. Nowadays divorces are going out, you know, and divorcees are not allowed to. Quite modish women are seen in public with their husbands nowadays.”
-“H’mph!” said Mrs. Dumby; “I’ve no doubt that you must find it a most inconvenient fad!”
+“Why, dear me! of course not!” said I, to Mrs. Dumby; “immorality lost the true cachet about the same time that ping-pong did. Nowadays divorces are going out, you know, and divorcees are not allowed to. Quite modish women are seen in public with their husbands nowadays.”
+“H’mph!” said Mrs. Dumby; “I’ve no doubt that you must find it a most inconvenient fad!”
I ate my portion of duck abstractedly. “Thus to dive into the refuse-heap of last year’s slang does not quite cover the requirements of the case. For I wish—only I hardly dare to ask—”
“If I were half of what you make out,” meditatively said she, “I would be a regular fairy, and couldn’t refuse you the usual three wishes.”
“Two,” I declared, “would be sufficient.”
@@ -63,38 +63,38 @@“You—you couldn’t have fallen in love—really—”
“It was not in the least difficult,” I protested.
“And you don’t even know my name—”
-“I know, however, what it is going to be,” said I; “and Mrs. ’Enry ’Awkins, as we’ll put it, has found favour in the judgment of connoisseurs. So after dinner—in an hour—?”
+“I know, however, what it is going to be,” said I; “and Mrs. ’Enry ’Awkins, as we’ll put it, has found favour in the judgment of connoisseurs. So after dinner—in an hour—?”
“Oh, very well! since you’re an author and insist, I will be ready, in an hour, to decline you, with thanks.”
“Rejection not implying any lack of merit,” I suggested. “This is damnable iteration; but I am accustomed to it.”
-But by this, Mrs. Provis was gathering eyes around the table, and her guests arose, with the usual outburst of conversation, and swishing of dresses, and the not always unpremeditated dropping of handkerchiefs and fans. Mrs. Clement Dumby bore down upon us now, a determined and generously proportioned figure in her notorious black silk.
-“Really,” said she, aggressively, “I never saw two people more engrossed. My dear Mrs. Barry-Smith, you have been so taken up with Mr. Townsend, all during dinner, that I haven’t had a chance to welcome you to Lichfield. Your mother and I were at school together, you know. And your husband was quite a beau of mine. So I don’t feel, now, at all as if we were strangers—”
+But by this, Mrs. Provis was gathering eyes around the table, and her guests arose, with the usual outburst of conversation, and swishing of dresses, and the not always unpremeditated dropping of handkerchiefs and fans. Mrs. Clement Dumby bore down upon us now, a determined and generously proportioned figure in her notorious black silk.
+“Really,” said she, aggressively, “I never saw two people more engrossed. My dear Mrs. Barry-Smith, you have been so taken up with Mr. Townsend, all during dinner, that I haven’t had a chance to welcome you to Lichfield. Your mother and I were at school together, you know. And your husband was quite a beau of mine. So I don’t feel, now, at all as if we were strangers—”
And thus she bore Elena off, and I knew that within ten minutes Elena would have been warned against me, as “not quite a desirable acquaintance, you know, my dear, and it is only my duty to tell you that as a young and attractive married woman—”
“And so,” I said in my soul, as the men redistributed themselves, “she is married—married while you were pottering with books and the turn of phrases and immortality and such trifles—oh, you ass! And to a man named Barry-Smith—damn him, I wonder whether he is the hungry scut that hasn’t had his hair cut this fall, or the blancmange-bellied one with the mashed-strawberry nose? Yes, I know everybody else. And Jimmy Travis is telling a funny story, so laugh! People will think you are grieving over Rosalind. … But why in heaven’s name isn’t Jimmy at home this very moment—with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of paregoric on his mantelpiece—instead of here, grinning like a fool over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren’t you married—married years ago—with a home of your own, and a victoria for Mrs. Townsend and bills from the kindergarten every quarter? Oh, you bartender of verbal cocktails! I believe your worst enemy flung your mind at you in a moment of unbridled hatred.”
-So I snapped the stem of my glass carefully, and scowled with morose disapproval at the unconscious Mr. Travis, and his now-applauded and very Fescennine jest. …
+“And so,” I said in my soul, as the men redistributed themselves, “she is married—married while you were pottering with books and the turn of phrases and immortality and such trifles—oh, you ass! And to a man named Barry-Smith—damn him, I wonder whether he is the hungry scut that hasn’t had his hair cut this fall, or the blancmange-bellied one with the mashed-strawberry nose? Yes, I know everybody else. And Jimmy Travis is telling a funny story, so laugh! People will think you are grieving over Rosalind. … But why in heaven’s name isn’t Jimmy at home this very moment—with a wife and carpet-slippers and a large-size bottle of paregoric on his mantelpiece—instead of here, grinning like a fool over some blatant indecency? He ought to marry; every young man ought to marry. Oh, you futile, abject, burbling twin-brother of the first patron that procured a reputation for Bedlam! why aren’t you married—married years ago—with a home of your own, and a victoria for Mrs. Townsend and bills from the kindergarten every quarter? Oh, you bartender of verbal cocktails! I believe your worst enemy flung your mind at you in a moment of unbridled hatred.”
+So I snapped the stem of my glass carefully, and scowled with morose disapproval at the unconscious Mr. Travis, and his now-applauded and very Fescennine jest. …
I found her inspecting a bulky folio with remarkable interest. There was a lamp, with a red shade, that cast a glow over her, such as one sometimes sees reflected from a great fire. The people about us were chattering idiotically, and something inside my throat prevented my breathing properly, and I was miserable.
-“Mrs. Barry-Smith,”—thus I began—“if you’ve the tiniest scrap of pity in your heart for a very presumptuous, blundering and unhappy person, I pray you to forgive and to forget, as people say, all that I have blatted out to you. I spoke, as I thought, to a free woman, who had the right to listen to my boyish talk, even though she might elect to laugh at it. And now I hardly dare to ask forgiveness.”
-Mrs. Barry-Smith inspected a view of the Matterhorn, with careful deliberation. “Forgiveness?” said she.
+“Mrs. Barry-Smith,”—thus I began—“if you’ve the tiniest scrap of pity in your heart for a very presumptuous, blundering and unhappy person, I pray you to forgive and to forget, as people say, all that I have blatted out to you. I spoke, as I thought, to a free woman, who had the right to listen to my boyish talk, even though she might elect to laugh at it. And now I hardly dare to ask forgiveness.”
+Mrs. Barry-Smith inspected a view of the Matterhorn, with careful deliberation. “Forgiveness?” said she.
“Indeed,” said I, “I don’t deserve it.” And I smiled most resolutely. “I had always known that somewhere, somehow, you would come into my life again. It has been my dream all these two years; but I dream carelessly. My visions had not included this—obstacle.”
She made wide eyes at me. “What?” said she.
“Your husband,” I suggested, delicately.
-The eyes flashed. And a view of Monaco, to all appearances, awoke some pleasing recollection. “I confess,” said Mrs. Barry-Smith, “that—for the time—I had quite forgotten him. I—I reckon you must think me very horrid?”
+The eyes flashed. And a view of Monaco, to all appearances, awoke some pleasing recollection. “I confess,” said Mrs. Barry-Smith, “that—for the time—I had quite forgotten him. I—I reckon you must think me very horrid?”
But she was at pains to accompany this query with a broadside that rendered such a supposition most unthinkable. And so—
“I think you—” My speech was hushed and breathless, and ended in a click of the teeth. “Oh, don’t let’s go into the minor details,” I pleaded.
-Then Mrs. Barry-Smith descended to a truism. “It is usually better not to,” said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing the façade of Notre Dame, “You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so much older than I—”
+Then Mrs. Barry-Smith descended to a truism. “It is usually better not to,” said she, with the air of an authority. And latterly, addressing the façade of Notre Dame, “You see, Mr. Barry-Smith being so much older than I—”
“I would prefer that. Of course, though, it is none of my business.”
-“You see, you came and went so suddenly that—of course I never thought to see you again—not that I ever thought about it, I reckon—” Her candour would have been cruel had it not been reassuringly overemphasized. “And Mr. Barry-Smith was very pressing—”
+“You see, you came and went so suddenly that—of course I never thought to see you again—not that I ever thought about it, I reckon—” Her candour would have been cruel had it not been reassuringly overemphasized. “And Mr. Barry-Smith was very pressing—”
“He would be,” I assented, after consideration. “It is, indeed, the single point in his outrageous conduct I am willing to condone.”
“—and he was a great friend of my father’s, and I liked him—”
“So you married him and lived together ever afterward, without ever throwing the tureen at each other. That is the most modern version; but there is usually a footnote concerning the bread-and-butter plates.”
She smiled, inscrutably, a sphinx in Dresden china. “And yet,” she murmured, plaintively, “I would like to know what you think of me.”
“Why, prefacing with the announcement that I pray God I may never see you after tonight, I think you the most adorable creature He ever made. What does it matter now? I have lost you. I think—ah, desire o’ the world, what can I think of you? The notion of you dazzles me like flame—and I dare not think of you, for I love you.”
-“Yes?” she queried, sweetly; “then I reckon Mrs. Dumby was right after all. She said you were a most depraved person and that, as a young and—well, she said it, you know—attractive widow—”
+“Yes?” she queried, sweetly; “then I reckon Mrs. Dumby was right after all. She said you were a most depraved person and that, as a young and—well, she said it, you know—attractive widow—”
“H’m!” said I; and I sat down. “Elena Barry-Smith,” I added, “you are an unmitigated and unconscionable and unpardonable rascal. There is just one punishment which would be adequate to meet your case; and I warn you that I mean to inflict it. Why, how dare you be a widow! The court decides it is unable to put up with any such nonsense, and that you’ve got to stop it at once.”
“Really,” said she, tossing her head and moving swiftly, “one would think we were on a desert island!”
“Or a strange roof”—and I laughed, contentedly. “Meanwhile, about that ring—it should be, I think, a heavy, Byzantine ring, with the stones sunk deep in the dull gold. Yes, we’ll have six stones in it; say, R, a ruby; O, an opal; B, a beryl; E, an emerald; R, a ruby again, I suppose; and T, a topaz. Elena, that’s the very ring I mean to buy as soon as I’ve had breakfast, tomorrow, as a token of my mortgage on the desire of the world, and as the badge of your impendent slavery.” And I reflected that Rosalind had, after all, behaved commendably in humiliating me by so promptly returning this ring.
@@ -102,10 +102,10 @@“Yes—otherwise?” I prompted.
“—he would never ask me to wear an opal. Why,” she cried in horror, “I couldn’t think of it!”
“You mean—?” said I.
-She closed the album, with firmness. “Why, you are just a child,” said Mrs. Barry-Smith. “We are utter strangers to each other. Please remember that, for all you know, I may have an unbridled temper, or an imported complexion, or a liking for old man Ibsen. What you ask—only you don’t, you simply assume it—is preposterous. And besides, opals are unlucky.”
+She closed the album, with firmness. “Why, you are just a child,” said Mrs. Barry-Smith. “We are utter strangers to each other. Please remember that, for all you know, I may have an unbridled temper, or an imported complexion, or a liking for old man Ibsen. What you ask—only you don’t, you simply assume it—is preposterous. And besides, opals are unlucky.”
“Desire o’ the world,” I said, in dolorous wise, “I have just remembered the black-lace mitts and reticule you left upon the dinner-table. Oh, truly, I had meant to bring ’em to you—Only do you think it quite good form to put on those cloth-sided shoes when you’ve been invited to a real party?”
-For a moment Mrs. Barry-Smith regarded me critically. Then she shook her head, and tried to frown, and reopened the album, and inspected the crater of Vesuvius, and quite frankly laughed. And a tender, pink-tipped hand rested upon my arm for an instant—a brief instant, yet pulsing with a sense of many lights and of music playing somewhere, and of a man’s heart keeping time to it.
-“If you were to make it an onyx—” said Mrs. Barry-Smith.
+For a moment Mrs. Barry-Smith regarded me critically. Then she shook her head, and tried to frown, and reopened the album, and inspected the crater of Vesuvius, and quite frankly laughed. And a tender, pink-tipped hand rested upon my arm for an instant—a brief instant, yet pulsing with a sense of many lights and of music playing somewhere, and of a man’s heart keeping time to it.
+“If you were to make it an onyx—” said Mrs. Barry-Smith.