Man-woman relationships -- Fiction; Married women -- Fiction; Vermont -- Fiction
Marise noted with envy how he gave all of himself to that momentary
examination, entirely escaped from any awareness of that tyrannical self
which in her own heart always clamored like a spoiled child for
attention. The impersonal concentration of his look as he turned the
metal about between those strong dusty hands, gave to his face the calm,
freed expression not to be bought for any less price than a greater
interest in one's work than in one's self. "They'll do," pronounced
Neale. This was evidently a thought spoken aloud, for it did not occur
to him to make any pretense of including the two women in his interest.
He set down the casting he held, and went off into the freight-house,
calling loudly, "Charlie! Charlie! Those mandrels have come. I wish
you'd . . ." his voice died away as he walked further into the dusky
freight-shed.
Marise happening to glance at Eugenia now, caught on her face an
expression which she took to be annoyance at a breach of manners. She
reflected, "Eugenia must find Neale's abrupt American ways perfectly
barbaric." And she was surprised to feel for the first time a rather
scornful indifference to all that was involved in Eugenia's finding them
barbaric. Heavens! What did it matter? In a world so filled with awful
and portentous and glorious human possibilities, how could you bother
about such things?
There was a silence. Mr. Welles and Paul had been standing near,
aimlessly, but now, evidently taking the silence for the inevitable
flatness of the flat period of waiting for a train, Mr. Welles drew the
little boy away. They walked down the cinder-covered side-tracks,
towards where the single baggage truck stood, loaded with elegant,
leather-covered boxes and wicker basket-trunks, marked "E. Mills. S.S.
Savoie. Compagnie Generale Transatlantique." Among them, out of place
and drab, stood one banal department-store trunk labeled, "Welles. 320
Maple Avenue. Macon, Georgia."
The departure of the old man and the little boy left the two women
alone. Eugenia stepped closer to Marise and took her hand in her own
gloved fingers. She looked at it intently, with the expression of one
who is trying to find words for a complicated feeling. Marise made an
effort to put herself in the receptive mood which would make the saying
of it easier, but failed. The fall of the big pine roared too loudly in
her ears. She looked without sympathy or admiration at Eugenia's
perfection of aspect. "To look like that, she must care for looks more
than anything else. What can she know about any real human feeling?"
Marise asked herself, with an intolerance she could not mitigate.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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