She wanted to send me home in the car, but I would not have that, on
account of the push-cart men and the babies in my street; I got out
and walked--my heart beating fast, my blood leaping with exultation. I
reached home, and there on the bureau was the picture--but behold, how
changed! It was become a miracle of the art of colour-photography; its
hair was golden, its eyes a wonderful red-brown, its cheeks aglow with
the radiance of youth! And yet more amazing, the picture spoke! It spoke
with the most delicious of Southern drawls--referring to the “repo’t” of
my child-labour committee, shivering at the cold and bidding me pull the
“fu-uzz” up round me. And when I told funny stories about the Italians
and the Hebrews of my tenement-neighbourhood, it broke into silvery
laughter, and cried: “Oh, de-ah me! How que-ah!” Little had I dreamed,
when I left that picture in the morning, what a miracle was to be
wrought upon it.
I knew, of course, what was the matter with me; the symptoms were
unmistakable. After having made up my mind that I was an old woman, and
that there was nothing more in life for me save labour--here the little
archer had come, and with the sharpest of his golden arrows, had shot
me through. I had all the thrills, the raptures and delicious agonies of
first love; I lived no longer in myself, but in the thought of another
person. Twenty times a day I looked at my picture, and cried aloud: “Oh,
beautiful, beautiful!”
I do not know how much of her I have been able to give. I have told of
our first talk--but words are so cold and dead! I stop and ask: What
there is, in all nature, that has given me the same feeling? I remember
how I watched the dragon-fly emerging from its chrysalis. It is soft and
green and tender; it clings to a branch and dries its wings in the sun,
and when the miracle is completed, there for a brief space it poises,
shimmering with a thousand hues, quivering with its new-born ecstasy.
And just so was Sylvia; a creature from some other world than ours,
as yet unsoiled by the dust and heat of reality. It came to me with
a positive shock, as a terrifying thing, that there should be in this
world of strife and wickedness any young thing that took life with
such intensity, that was so palpitating with eagerness, with hope, with
sympathy. Such was the impression that one got of her, even when her
words most denied it. She might be saying world-weary and cynical
things, out of the maxims of Lady Dee; but there was still the
eagerness, the sympathy, surging beneath and lifting her words.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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