FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100  
101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   >>   >|  
the chill began to penetrate. She contemplated the figure before her. Undoubtedly a pretty creature, and one that would have had a success at Farringford. Strange how easily even the greatest men were moved by exteriors. She had seen with her own eyes Tennyson turn away from everybody--turn, positively, his back on a crowd of eminent people assembled to do him honour, and withdraw to the window with a young person nobody had ever heard of, who had been brought there by accident and whose one and only merit--if it be a merit, that which is conferred by chance--was beauty. Beauty! All over before you can turn round. An affair, one might almost say, of minutes. Well, while it lasted it did seem able to do what it liked with men. Even husbands were not immune. There had been passages in the life of Mr. Fisher . . . "I expect the journey has upset you," she said in her deep voice. "What you want is a good dose of some simple medicine. I shall ask Domenico if there is such a thing in the village as castor oil." Scrap opened her eyes and looked straight at Mrs. Fisher. "Ah," said Mrs. Fisher, "I knew you were not asleep. If you had been you would have let your cigarette fall to the ground." "Waste," said Mrs. Fisher. "I don't like smoking for women, but I still less like waste." "What does one do with people like this?" Scrap asked herself, her eyes fixed on Mrs. Fisher in what felt to her an indignant stare but appeared to Mrs. Fisher as really charming docility. "Now you'll take my advice," said Mrs. Fisher, touched, "and not neglect what may very well turn into an illness. We are in Italy, you know, and one has to be careful. You ought, to begin with, to go to bed." "I never go to bed," snapped Scrap; and it sounded as moving, as forlorn, as that line spoken years and years ago by an actress playing the part of Poor Jo in dramatized version of Bleak House--"I'm always moving on," said Poor Jo in this play, urged to do so by a policeman; and Mrs. Fisher, then a girl, had laid her head on the red velvet parapet of the front row of the dress circle and wept aloud. It was wonderful, Scrap's voice. It had given her, in the ten years since she came out, all the triumphs that intelligence and wit can have, because it made whatever she said seem memorable. She ought, with a throat formation like that, to have been a singer, but in every kind of music Scrap was dumb except this one music of the sp
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   76   77   78   79   80   81   82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100  
101   102   103   104   105   106   107   108   109   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

Fisher

 

people

 

moving

 

careful

 

indignant

 

appeared

 
charming
 

neglect

 
touched
 
advice

docility

 
illness
 
triumphs
 

circle

 
wonderful
 

intelligence

 
singer
 

formation

 
memorable
 

throat


dramatized

 
version
 

smoking

 

playing

 

actress

 

forlorn

 

sounded

 

spoken

 

velvet

 

parapet


policeman

 

snapped

 

Domenico

 
window
 
person
 

withdraw

 

honour

 

eminent

 

assembled

 

beauty


chance

 

Beauty

 
conferred
 

brought

 
accident
 
creature
 

pretty

 
success
 
Farringford
 

Strange