Red Pepper's Patients: With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in ParticularRichmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
General
Red Pepper's Patients: With an Account of Anne Linton's Case in Particular
Richmond, Grace S. (Grace Smith)
Physicians -- Fiction
It was as if the twilight were falling, with the stars coming
out one by one. By and by they were all shining, and I was on
a mountain top somewhere, with the wind blowing softly
against my face. It was dark and I was all alone, but I
didn't mind, for I was strong, strong again, and I knew I
could run down by and by and be with people. Then a storm came
on, and I lifted my face to if and loved it, and when it died
away the stars were shining again between the clouds.
Somewhere a little bird was singing--I opened my eyes just
there, and your Franz was looking at me and smiling, and I
smiled back. He seemed so happy to be making me happy--for he
was, of course. After a while it was dawn--the loveliest dawn,
all flushed with pink and silver, and I couldn't keep my eyes
shut any more for looking at the musician's face. He is a real
musician, you know, and the music he makes comes out of his
soul.
When it was all over and he and Mrs. Burns were gone, my tray
came in. This is a frightful confession, but I am not a real
musician; I merely love good music with some sort of
understanding of what it means to those who really care, as
Franz does. To me, after all the emotion, my tray looked like
a sort of solid rock that I could cling to. And I had a piece
of wonderful beefsteak--ah, now you are laughing! Never
mind--I'll show you the two scenes.
Upon the second sheet was something which made Jordan King open his
eyes. There were two little drawings--the simplest of pencil sketches,
yet executed with a spirit and skill which astonished him. The first was
of Franz himself, done in a dozen lines. There was no attempt at a
portrait, yet somehow Franz was there, in the very set of the head, the
angle of the lifted brow, the pose of the body, most of all in the
indication of the smiling mouth, the drooping eyelids. The second
picture was a funny sketch of a big-eyed girl devouring food from a
tray. Two lines made the pillows behind her, six outlined the tray, a
dozen more demonstrated plainly the famishing appetite with which the
girl was eating. It was all there--it was astonishing how it was all
there.
"My word!" he said as he laid down the sheets--and took them up again,
"that's artist work, whether she knows it or not. She must know it,
though, for she must have had training. I wonder where and how."
He called Miss Arden and showed her the sketches.
"Dear me, but they're clever," she said. "They look like a child's
work--and yet they aren't."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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