That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the DayDehan, Richard
General
That Which Hath Wings: A Novel of the Day
Dehan, Richard
World War, 1914-1918 -- Fiction
It is typical of the human butterfly Saxham dealt with, that his clothes
pleased Margot. She liked their characteristic mingling of elegance
with simplicity. Some fashionable doctors got themselves up like
elderly bloods, others affected garments dating from the year One.
There was neither perfume upon Saxham’s handkerchief nor flue upon his
coat-sleeve. His shirt of soft white cashmere, his slightly starched
linen cuffs and narrow double collar were fastened with plain buttons of
mother o’ pearl, the black silk necktie was blameless of pin or ring.
The handsome gold chronometer he carried because it had been presented
to him by the Staff and patients of St. Teresa and St. Stanislaus. The
chain attached to it—rather worn and shabby now—was of woven red-brown
hair.
The hair of his wife. A creamy-pale Niphetos rose stood where her hands
had placed it near his writing-pad, in a tall, slender beaker of
green-and-gold Venetian glass. His eyes drank at the beauty of the
lovely scarce-unfolded blossom. Perhaps the resemblance of the fair
flower to the beloved giver softened the lines of the stern square face
into the smile that Margot liked, as he found her eyes again, saying:
"Perhaps I could better answer your question by telling you how another
patient bore herself in—circumstances akin to yours. Will it tire you?
I promise not to be unduly prolix. And to listen commits you to no
course of action. Now, shall I go on?"
"I’d love you to go on!"
Always in extremes, the little wayward creature. She flushed and
sparkled at the Doctor as he took from its place on his writing-table a
triptych photograph-frame in gold-mounted mother-o’-pearl, folded the
leaves so as to reveal but one of the portraits, and held under Margot’s
eyes the delicately-tinted photograph of a girl of twenty. The portrait
had been taken the year following Saxham’s return from South Africa with
his young wife.
"How beautiful!" Margot exclaimed.
"Beautiful, as you say, but does she look happy?"
Margot wrinkled her dainty eyebrows, puzzling out the question. Did she
look happy, the girl of the portrait, whose face and figure might have
served one of the old Greek masters as model for an Artemis to be carved
upon a gem? Well, perhaps not quite happy, now one came to look again.
The black-lashed eyes of golden hazel were full of wistful sadness,
there was a faintly indicated fold between the fine arched eyebrows,
much darker than the rippling red-brown hair, whose luxuriance seemed to
weigh down the little Greek head. The closely-folded, deeply-cut lips
spoke dumbly of sorrow, the nymph-like bosom seemed rising on a breath
of weariness. Something was lacking to complete her beauty. So much
was plain even to Margot. But not until the Doctor showed by the side
of the first, the second portrait, did she realise what that Something
was.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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