All along the River: A NovelBraddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
General
All along the River: A Novel
Braddon, M. E. (Mary Elizabeth)
English fiction -- 19th century
There were only men on board. There was no woman to whose compassion
she could appeal, no woman to lend her clothes to cover her. She
saw herself once again in the Venetian glass, in her long trained
petticoat of muslin and lace, so daintily fresh when she dressed for
the ball--muslin and lace soddened by the sea, torn to shreds where
her feet had caught in the flounces as she stumbled down the companion
during last night’s storm. A fitting costume in which to travel from
Arcachon to London, verily! She opened a door leading to an inner
cabin, which contained bed and bath, and all toilet appliances. Hanging
against the wall there were three dressing-gowns, the lightest and
least masculine of the three being a robe of Indian camel’s hair,
embroidered with gray silk--a shapeless garment with loose sleeves and
a girdle.
Here, within locked doors, she made her hurried toilet, with much cold
water. She brushed her long, ragged hair with one of the humblest of
the brushes. She would not take so much as a few drops from the great
crystal bottle of eau de Cologne which was held in a silver frame
suspended from the ceiling. Nothing of his would she touch, nothing
belonging to the man who wanted to pour his fortune into her lap, to
make his life her life, his estate her estate, his name her name, could
she but survive the ordeal of the divorce court, and shake off old ties.
She rolled her hair in a large coil at the back of her head. She put
on the camel’s hair dressing-gown, and tied the girdle round her long,
slim waist, and having done this she looked altogether a different
creature from that vision of haggard shame which she had seen just
now with loathing. She had a curious Puritan air in her sad coloured
raiment, and braided hair.
Scarcely had she finished when she heard the dip of oars, and looking
out in an agony of horror at the apprehension of Lostwithiel’s return,
she saw a boat laden with two big milliner’s baskets, and with a woman
sitting in the stem. The men who were rowing this boat were not of the
crew of the _Vendetta_.
She had not long to wonder. She unlocked her door, and went into the
adjoining cabin, while the boat came alongside, and woman and baskets
were hauled upon the deck.
Three minutes afterwards the cabin-boy knocked at her door, and told
her that there was a person from Arcachon to see her, a dressmaker with
things that had been ordered for her.
She unlocked the door, for the first time since she locked it at dawn,
and found herself face to face with a smiling young person, whose black
eyes and olive complexion were warm with the glow of the south, golden
in the eyes, carnation on the plump, oval cheeks.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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