Didactic fiction; Political fiction; Social problems -- Fiction
"It's always been his home," she protested, finding something trivial
in this comic emphasis on sideboards and bookcases. "He cares about
good things too. Lately he's taken to buying engravings. Mr.
Pemberton interested him in them. And I think he would like to buy
pictures, if he wasn't afraid of being cheated, of making a fool of
himself."
"You'll make him out a patron of the fine arts!"
Jackson laughed merrily at the picture of Powers Jackson as a
connoisseur in art.
"Perhaps he will be yet!" she retorted stoutly. "At any rate, he is a
very dear old man."
He would not have described his uncle Powers in the same simple words.
Still he had the kindest feelings toward him, mixed with a latent
anxiety as to what the old man might do about his allowance, now that
his school days had come definitely to a close....
Thus in the long hours of that voyage, with the sound of the gurgling,
dripping water all about them, soothed by the rhythm of pounding
engines, the man and the woman came to a sort of knowledge of each
other. At least there was created in the heart of each a vision of the
other. The girl's vision was glorified by the warmth of her
imagination, which transformed all her simple experiences. In her
heart, if she had looked there, she would have seen an image of youth
and power, very handsome, with great masculine hopes, and aspirations
after unwrought deeds. Unconsciously she had given to that image
something which she could never take back all the years of her life,
let her marry whom she might!
And he could remember her, if hereafter he should come to love her, as
she was these last days. The shadow of the end of the romance was upon
her, and it left her subdued, pensive, but more lovely than ever
before. To the artist's eye in the architect her head was too large,
the brow not smooth enough, the hair two shades too dark, the full face
too broad. The blue eyes and the trembling, small mouth gave a certain
childishness to her expression that the young man could not understand.
It was only when she spoke that he was much moved; for her voice was
very sweet, uncertain in its accents, tremulous. She seemed to breathe
into commonplace words some revelation of herself....
On the morning of their arrival the lofty buildings of the great city
loomed through the mist. The architect said:--
"There are the hills of the New World! Here endeth the first chapter."
"I cannot believe it has ended," she replied slowly. "Nothing ends!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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