The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 3, December, 1884 — John Shaqi
The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 3, December, 1884Various
History
The Bay State Monthly — Volume 2, No. 3, December, 1884
Various
Massachusetts -- Periodicals; New England -- Periodicals
Later that same morning a gentleman calling upon Mistress Katie Archdale
was told that he would find her with friends in the garden. Walking
through the paths with a leisurely step which the impatience of his mood
chafed against, he came upon a picture that he never forgot.
Great stretches of sunshine lay on the garden and in it brilliant beds
of flowers glowed with their richest lights, poppies folded their
gorgeous robes closely about them, Arab fashion, to keep out the heat;
hollyhocks stood in their stateliness flecked with changing shadows from
the aspen tree near by. Beds of tiger lilies, pinks, larkspur,
sweetwilliams, canterbury bells, primroses, gillyflowers, lobelia,
bloomed in a luxuriance that the methodical box which bordered them
could not restrain. But the garden was by no means a blaze of sunshine,
for ash trees, maples, elms, and varieties of the pine were there.
Trumpet-vines climbed on the wall, and overtopping that, caught at
trellises prepared to receive them, and formed screens of shadows that
flickered in every breeze and changed their places with the changing
sun. But it was only with a passing glance that the visitor saw these
things, his eyes were fixed upon an arbor at the end of the garden; it
was covered with clematis, while two great elms met overhead at its
entrance and shaded the path to it for a little distance. Under these
elms stood a group of young people. He was unannounced, and had
opportunity without being himself perceived, to scan this little group
as he went forward. His expression varied with each member of it, but
showed an interest of some sort in each. Now it was full of passionate
delight; then it changed as his look fell upon a tall young man with
dark eyes and a bearing that in its most gracious moments seemed unable
to lose a touch of haughtiness, but whose face now was alive with a
restful joy. The gazer, as he perceived this happiness, so wanting in
himself, scowled with a bitter hate and looked instantly toward another
of the party, this time with an expression of triumph. At the fourth and
last member of the group his glance though scowling, was contemptuous;
but the receiver was as unconscious of contempt as he felt undeserving
of it. From him the gazer's eyes returned to the person at whom he had
first looked. She was standing on the step of the arbor, an end of the
clematis vine swaying lightly back and forth over her head, and almost
touching her bright hair which was now towered high in the fashion of
the day. She was holding a spray of the vine in her hand. She had
fastened one end in the hair of a young lady who stood beside her, and
was now bringing the other about her neck, arranging the leaves and
flowers with skilful touches. Three men, including the new-comer,
watched her pretty air of absorption, and the deftness of her taper
fingers, the sweep of her dark lashes on her cheek as from the height of
her step she looked down at her companion, the curves of her beautiful
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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