ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG18840"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG188401708"ᐳ“Shan’t I take her?” asked Anne.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401709"ᐳ“Sophie knows how to manage her,” answered Madame Elaguine; and sitting up, she drew the half‐wakened child close to her and kissed her with convulsive passion. Yet she let the maid carry off the little one, and merely let herself slip down on the couch with a moan, putting aside her heavy fur and passing her hands through her pale blond hair, and moaning.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401710"ᐳ“Don’t you think you had better go?” said Anne to Hamlin. “I will look after your cousin.” She would loathe to have Hamlin sitting there, looking at her, if she were in Madame Elaguine’s condition.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401711"ᐳHamlin rose.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401712"ᐳ“Stop a minute,” said his cousin faintly, turning round and fixing her vague northern blue eyes on him; “stop a minute, Walter.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401713"ᐳHamlin remained standing, his eyes involuntarily fixed upon the curious spectacle of this prostrate little figure, panting and gasping as if going to die, and half unconscious of any one’s presence—her cloak thrown back on the sofa, her hair tangled, her bare arms and neck (for it was one of her caprices always to go the play, even to the pantomime, full dress) half covered by the fur of her pelisse and the lace of her dress.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401714"ᐳ“Stay a minute; I want to explain,” repeated the Russian, in a faint voice. “Anne—dear Anne—where are you?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401715"ᐳ“Here I am,” answered Anne, in her cheerful strong voice; “do you want anything, dear Madame Elaguine?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401716"ᐳ“I want you,” and Sacha flung her arms round Anne’s neck, and drew her dark head close to her own little pale yellow one. Anne felt her arms tighten passionately round her, her little hand tighten convulsively round her neck, as if the half‐fainting woman would throttle her,—but she felt no fear, only a vague, undefinable repulsion. Madame Elaguine sighed a long sigh of relief, and loosened her hold; but she kept Anne’s face near hers, and kissed her with hot lips on the forehead.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401717"ᐳ“Dear Anne,” she said, “forgive me.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401718"ᐳ“There is nothing to forgive,” said Anne, trying to get loose and to rise to her feet. But Madame Elaguine kept her down in her kneeling posture, her arm always round Anne’s shoulder.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401719"ᐳ“I must explain it all to you,” she said, in a slow, vague tone, fixing her eyes upon Hamlin. “Don’t think me very foolish or mad; but I thought they were again trying to carry off my little Helen,—they have tried before,—and they keep writing to me, telling me that they will carry off Helen or kill me. I don’t care about that,—but Helen!” and Madame Elaguine hid her face in Anne’s iron‐black hair.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG1884010"ᐳ“I beg your pardon,” said Hamlin again; “but can you tell me how I may get some breakfast?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884011"ᐳHe could not help smiling in proffering this innocent request, so serious and almost tragic was the face of the girl.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884012"ᐳ“It’s Mr Hamlin,” tittered the children, rolling under the table, and hanging to the table‐cloth.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884013"ᐳThe young woman eyed Hamlin for a second in no very gracious manner; then answered, with a certain contemptuous listlessness in her slightly hollowed pale cheeks and beautifully curled but somewhat prominent lips—ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884014"ᐳ“I don’t know anything about your breakfast, sir.” She spoke, to his surprise, in perfect English, with only the faintest guttural Italian accent. “Mr Perry went to sketch at Massaciuccoli early this morning, and took the boy with him; Mrs Perry may never be disturbed till nine; and the cook is gone to Lucca for provisions.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884015"ᐳ“That’s very sad,” remarked Hamlin, laughing, and looking at this curious and picturesque being.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884016"ᐳThe girl seemed annoyed at being discovered in that guise, for she pulled down her white sleeves quickly.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884017"ᐳ“I suppose the cook has orders about your breakfast,” she said, in a tone which seemed to put an end to the conversation; and she took up her iron once more. “Mrs Perry did not think you would want anything so early; the cook will be back about nine.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884018"ᐳBut Hamlin would not be shaken off; the fact was, he enjoyed watching this beautiful sullen creature much as he might have enjoyed watching a cat whom he had disturbed in its sleep.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884019"ᐳ“Nine o’clock!” he said; “that’s a long time to wait. Couldn’t you give me something to eat? I saw a table spread in the next room.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884020"ᐳThe girl put down her iron with a sort of subdued irritation of manner.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884021"ᐳ“It’s the children’s breakfast, sir,” she answered; “we have neither tea nor coffee.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884022"ᐳ“We have milk,” said the eldest of the little girls pertly, “and figs.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884023"ᐳ“Milk and figs!” exclaimed Hamlin; “why, that’s a breakfast for the gods! and won’t you,” he went on rather appealingly—“won’t you share a little of it with me?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884024"ᐳ“You are Mrs Perry’s guest,” said the girl more sullenly than ever, “and of course you are welcome to anything you choose.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884025"ᐳHamlin felt rather taken aback.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884026"ᐳ“Indeed!” he said. “I don’t wish to do anything against the habits of the house, or disagreeable to you.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1884027"ᐳ“It is not against any rules,” she answered. “If you will excuse me, I will see whether the milk is heated. The children will show you the way.”ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG188401517"ᐳTHE Leigh girls never discovered which of them was in the right; and as Anne never made any further allusion to Cold Fremley, they concluded that she had not spoken to Hamlin about it. Hamlin noticed no change in her, but then he never expected to see one: Anne became gradually more silent, more indifferent, more abrupt in her answers. Some people said, “She is getting spoilt by being made too much of;” and others, like Thaddy O’Reilly, hinted that the vagaries and splendours of æsthetic society, the poems and music and improprieties of Chough and Dennistoun, the nudities and Elizabethan dramatists of Lewis, were beginning to pall upon Miss Brown. “I’ll bet anything,” said Thaddy O’Reilly, “that as soon as they are married, the new Mrs Hamlin will abandon Mantegnesque costumes, will open a bill with Worth, and insist upon hiring a house in Belgravia for at least one season.” So said Thaddy O’Reilly; but it must be added that he said it to Mrs Spencer, to alarm and anger whose hereditary high‐art passions was the little journalist’s great delight. Anne still went out into æsthetic society, she still listened to new poems and to literary discussions, she still sat to Hamlin and to half‐a‐dozen other painters; but when people at concerts or the play used to point out Miss Brown as the queen of æstheticism, they little guessed how far removed were the thoughts of this queen from her realm and her subjects. Ever since that memorable conversation about Cold Fremley, beautiful things,—all the things—poetry, painting, music, romance—which had originally surrounded Hamlin with a sort of luminous emanation in Anne’s eyes,—had grown loathsome to her. She knew that it was unfair and absurd, but she could not resist the feeling that all the fair forms and sound patterns and imaginary passions of poetry—nay, that the very beauty of nature, where any existed—were foul; and her soul shrank from them as from contamination. She began to take a grim pleasure in that sordid ugliness which had, on her arrival in London, given her such a shock, and to which Hamlin and his friends were always shutting their eyes. The fog, the black ooze, the melancholy monotony of griminess, the hideousness of the men and women in the streets, jarred upon her much less than the beautiful pictures of Italian scenery which Hamlin hung up at Hammersmith,—than the lovely, mysterious creatures in jewel‐coloured robes, wandering in distant countries of bliss and romance, which Hamlin painted. The poetry of pure beauty sickened her; and she could not take up even the purest poems of that school, not even the mere charming pieces of decoration of Morris, without putting them down with disgust. She began to feel a vague nostalgic longing after her own past: faint recollections of her father’s grimy, workshop at Spezia, of the poor little room where her mother had sat doing cheap dressmaking, returned to her. The life at Florence, the sordid life with the Perrys, the tattered furniture and ill‐swept rooms, the dirty and noisy kitchen with the haunting smell of sink; the dull routine of washing and ironing and mending, of dressing and undressing the refractory children, of teaching them their letters and trying to keep them tidy; the ill‐will, the muttered anger, the jeering scraps of song of the other servants, who resented Anne’s superiority,—all these recollections which had almost been effaced during her happy new life at Coblenz and in London, returned to her, vivid as reality, and filled her with unaccountable yearning. And yet, when she asked herself what this meant, she could not but confess that she was different from what she had then been; that she had absorbed too much of the new life ever to be happy in the old one—nay, that that very indignation with the mere selfish worship of beauty which made all things seem black in her eyes, would never have been possible had she remained a mere servant. Hamlin had redeemed her soul; he had made her a thinking and feeling being—but what for? She dared not admit to herself that it was merely in order that she should despise him.ᐸ/pᐳ
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ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG188401191"ᐳ“I am willing to judge art from an artistic standpoint; but I cannot judge from an artistic standpoint an honourable man trying to defame himself.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401192"ᐳHamlin sighed.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401193"ᐳ“Well, after all, I bade you select, and the principal thing is that you should be satisfied. But it is a pity, because those were just the best sonnets in the book; and the book will be very small without the ‘Ballad of the Fens.’”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401194"ᐳ“The ‘Ballad of the Fens’?—aren’t you going to print that? What do you mean?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401195"ᐳCould Hamlin be merely worrying her, to vent his annoyance at the loss of the sonnets?ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401196"ᐳ“The ‘Ballad of the Fens’ has been torn up,” answered Hamlin, with a kind of dogged satisfaction.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401197"ᐳ“Oh, Mr Hamlin! How could you—the finest thing you have ever written.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401198"ᐳThe ballad torn up!ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401199"ᐳ“I know you thought it good, and so did I myself. But, on reflection, I saw that my friends were right, and that such a thing would not do.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401200"ᐳHe spoke sharply, brutally, as if to bring home to Anne the unreliableness of her judgment: she had induced him to write it; she had praised it; and she wanted him to tear up those sonnets.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401201"ᐳ“It is a bad plan to keep things about which one is doubtful,” he went on; “so I tore it up. I think it was wiser; don’t you?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401202"ᐳ“No,” said Anne, in a husky voice which burst out in a way that almost frightened him; “no, no—it was . . .” but she said no more.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401203"ᐳONE morning Hamlin received two unexpected letters at breakfast. From his looks, which he was at all times quite unable to control, it was clear that one of them brought good news, while the other must be about some disagreeable matter.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401204"ᐳ“Edmund Lewis is coming the day after to‐morrow,” announced Hamlin to his aunt, to Anne, and to his guests.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401205"ᐳThere was a chorus of exclamations of surprise, sprinkled with pleasure.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401206"ᐳ“Who is Edmund Lewis?” asked Anne. “He is an old friend of mine, a charming fellow whom I have not seen for some years. Some of the drawings in the drawing‐room at Hammersmith are by him.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401207"ᐳAnne remembered the name, and the strange, beautiful, cruel, mysterious, out‐of‐drawing heads in crayon, which had curiously impressed her the first morning after her arrival in England, rose before her eyes; since then she had seen so many similar things, had got to understand so completely that mysterious, beautiful faces, with combed‐out hair, big weird eyes, and cruel lips, were so much school property, that she had become quite indifferent to them.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG188401208"ᐳ“I thought you told me that something strange had happened to him—that he had left England for good,” remarked Anne.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401209"ᐳ“Oh, it was nothing particularly strange,” interrupted little O’Reilly—“only a German lady whom he met one day, blond, fat, thirty‐five, who was nothing but a soul—you know the sort of thing—with a husband who was a great deal besides a soul (a charming man, for the rest, and quite wildly in love with the Gnädige Frau). The excess of soul having induced acute neuralgia in the lady, poor Teddy Lewis, who is a tremendous magnetiser, was called in to soothe her agonies, during which process the lady discovered that the soul‐sorrow and consequent neuralgia from which she suffered was due to the soullessness of her husband, and that only the brotherly affection of Ted could cure her. The difficulty was the husband, who loved the lady fervently, and she him, but not in a way which should satisfy her soul. Hence struggles, agonies, &c.—you’ve read it all in the ‘Wahlverwandschaften’—finally ended by the husband being implored to sacrifice himself to the spiritual exigencies of his adored wife, which absolutely required that he should divorce her and let her marry Lewis. That’s all.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401210"ᐳ“How can you talk in such a flippant way, Mr O’Reilly?” cried Mrs Spencer. “You have a way of making the most serious things seem ridiculous. Poor Mrs Lewis! she’s dead now; you needn’t make fun of her.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401211"ᐳ“Poor Mrs Lewis!” laughed O’Reilly; “well, you know you wouldn’t receive her, Mrs Spencer, when she first came to England.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401212"ᐳ“I thought her a designing woman then; I didn’t know all the circumstances.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401213"ᐳ“Come now, Edith,” interrupted her father, in his broad Scotch; “I think the less ye knew those circumstances the better it was for all concerned.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401214"ᐳ“I don’t see that at all, papa. I don’t see why a woman’s happiness should be sacrificed,” and Mrs Spencer, who was the most devoted of wives and mothers, tossed her head rebelliously. “I don’t see why the world should insist that a woman is to be satisfied with a husband who is good to her and her children. After all, she has a soul, and that requires response.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401215"ᐳ“Would you behave as Mrs Lewis did?” asked O’Reilly, “If—well—let me see—Mr Spencer were suddenly to develop an overpowering belief in the Royal Academy and in Zola?”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG188401216"ᐳ“Papa would never have let me marry a man who could ever develop such beliefs.”ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳᐸ/samplesᐳ