to herself and shutting her eyes--"now
about the next page the 'portly burgess' will address the heroine as
'Mistress,' and will say, 'An' whither away so early?'" She turned over
to verify. She was wrong. The portly burgess had said: "Good morrow,
Mistress Priscilla. An' where away so gaily bedizened?" She sighed as
she put the manuscript away. "Why, and, oh, why _will_ they do it!" she
murmured.
The next one, 1123, was a story "Compiled from the Memoirs of One Perkin
Althorpe, Esq., Sometime Field-Coronet in His Majesty's Troop of Horse,"
and was sown thick with objurgation--"Ods-wounds!" "Body o' me!" "A
murrain on thee!" "By my halidom!" and all the rest of the sweepings and
tailings of Scott and the third-rate romanticists.
"Declined," said Rosella, firmly, tossing it aside. She turned to 1124:
"About three o'clock of a roseate day in early spring two fashionables
of the softer sex, elegantly arrayed, might have been observed
sauntering languidly down Fifth Avenue.
"'Are you going to Mrs. Van Billion's musicale tonight?' inquired the
older of the two, a tall and striking demi-brunette, turning to her
companion.
"'No, indeed,' replied the person thus addressed, a blonde of exquisite
coloring. 'No, indeed. The only music one hears there is the chink of
silver dollars. Ha! ha! ha! ha!'"
Rosella winced as if in actual physical anguish. "And the author calls
it a 'social satire'!" she exclaimed. "How can she! How can she!"
She turned to the next. It was written in script that was a model of
neatness, margined, correctly punctuated, and addressed, "Harold
Vickers," with the town and State. Its title was "The Last Dryad," and
the poetry of the phrase stuck in her mind. She read the first lines,
then the first page, then two.
"Come," said Rosella, "there is something in this." At once she was in a
little valley in Boeotia in the Arcadian day. It was evening. There was
no wind. Somewhere a temple, opalescent in the sunset, suggested rather
than defined itself. A landscape developed such as Turner in a quiet
mood might have evolved, and with it a feeling of fantasy, of
remoteness, of pure, true classicism. A note of pipes was in the air,
sheep bleated, and Daphne, knee-deep in the grass, surging an answer to
the pipes, went down to meet her shepherd.
Rosella breathed a great sigh of relief. Here at last was a
possibility--a new writer with a new, sane view of his world and his
work. A new poet, in fine.
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