FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138  
139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   >>   >|  
nurse--when you are strong enough--who will take you across. Now I must go. Can you just tell me first where the boy is?" Almost inaudibly she gave an address in Kentish Town. He saw that she could bear no more, and he rose. "Try and sleep," he said in a voice that wavered. "I'll see you again to-morrow. You're all right here." She made no reply, and seemed again either asleep or unconscious. As he stood by the bed, looking down upon her, scenes and persons he had forgotten for years rushed back into the inner light of memory:--that first day in Lebas's atelier when he had seen her in her Holland overall, her black hair loose on her neck, the provocative brilliance of her dark eyes; their close comradeship in the contests, the quarrels, the ambitions of the atelier; her patronage of him as her junior in art, though her senior in age; her increasing influence over him, and the excitement of intimacy with a creature so unrestrained, so gifted, so consumed with jealousies, whether as an artist or a woman; his proposal of marriage to her in one of the straight roads that cut the forest of Compiegne; the ceremony at the Mairie, with only a few of their fellow students for witnesses; the little apartment on the Rive Gauche, with its bits of old furniture, and unframed sketches pinned up on the walls; Anna's alternations of temper, now fascinating, now sulky, and that steady emergence in her of coarse or vulgar traits, like rocks in an ebbing sea; their early quarrels, and her old mother who hated him; their poverty because of her extravagance; his growing reluctance to take her to England, or to present her to persons of his own class and breeding in Paris, and her frantic jealousy and resentment when she discovered it; their scenes of an alternate violence and reconciliation and finally her disappearance, in the company, as he had always supposed, of Sigismondo Rocca, an Italian studying in Paris, whose pursuit of her had been notorious for some time. The door opened gently, and Miss Alcott's grey head appeared. "The doctor!" she said, just audibly. Buntingford followed her downstairs, and found himself presently in Alcott's study, alone with a country doctor well known to him, a man who had pulled out his own teeth in childhood, had attended his father and grandfather before him, and carried in his loyal breast the secrets and the woes of a whole countryside. They grasped hands in silence. "You know who
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134   135   136   137   138  
139   140   141   142   143   144   145   146   147   148   149   150   151   152   153   154   155   156   157   158   159   160   161   162   163   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
quarrels
 

atelier

 

doctor

 

persons

 

Alcott

 
scenes
 
poverty
 

resentment

 
jealousy
 

frantic


breeding

 

present

 
England
 

growing

 
discovered
 

reluctance

 
extravagance
 
traits
 

unframed

 

furniture


sketches

 

pinned

 

witnesses

 

apartment

 

Gauche

 

alternations

 

ebbing

 

vulgar

 

coarse

 

fascinating


temper

 
steady
 

emergence

 

mother

 

Italian

 
pulled
 

attended

 
childhood
 

presently

 
country

father
 

grandfather

 
countryside
 
grasped
 

silence

 

carried

 
breast
 

secrets

 
downstairs
 

Sigismondo