Authors, English -- 19th century -- Biography; Jefferies, Richard, 1848-1887
"So fair a complexion could not brown even in summer, exposed to
the utmost heat. The beams indeed did heighten the hue of her
cheeks a little, but it did not shade to brown. Her chin and neck
were wholly untanned, white and soft, and the blue veins roamed at
their will. Lips red, a little full perhaps; teeth slightly
prominent, but white and gleamy as she smiled. Dark-brown hair in
no great abundance, always slipping out of its confinement and
straggling, now on her forehead, and now on her shoulders, like
wandering bines of bryony. The softest of brown eyes under long
eyelashes; eyes that seemed to see everything in its gentlest
aspect, that could see no harm anywhere. A ready smile on the face,
and a smile in the form. Her shape yielded so easily at each
movement that it seemed to smile as she walked. Her nose was the
least pleasing feature--not delicate enough to fit with the
complexion, and distinctly upturned, though not offensively. But it
was not noticed; no one saw anything beyond the laughing lips, the
laughing shape, the eyes that melted so near to tears. The torn
dress, the straggling hair, the tattered shoes, the unmended
stocking, the straw hat split, the mingled poverty and
carelessness--perhaps rather dreaminess--disappeared when once you
had met the full untroubled gaze of those beautiful eyes.
Untroubled, that is, with any ulterior thought of evil or cunning;
they were as open as the day, the day which you can make your own
for evil or good. So, too, like the day, was she ready to the
making."
The miserable, hapless fate of poor Dolly, the horrible tragedy of her
life and death, is told with relentless truth and fidelity. In Arcadia
such things may happen, and, I suppose, do constantly happen. The story
belongs properly to the chapter on English country life last quarter of
the nineteenth century, which, when it is written, will, I think, be
taken altogether from the works of Jefferies and Thomas Hardy.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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