Twin Tales: Are All Men Alike, and, The Lost Titian — John Shaqi
Twin Tales: Are All Men Alike, and, The Lost TitianStringer, Arthur
General
Twin Tales: Are All Men Alike, and, The Lost Titian
Stringer, Arthur
Canadian fiction
But the fact that Gerry essayed little more than a stiff bow as he
passed by did not greatly trouble Teddie, for about this time she fell
secretly in love with an Episcopalian curate of delicate health and
indescribably melancholy eyes, a young man with a face like a Shelley
and an audible and asthmatic manner of breathing. And at the same time
that he sobered Teddie down a great deal his health improved perceptibly
under Teddie’s arduous campaign of forced feeding. She even extended
those ventral activities to the despatching of marrons and _bar de luc_
to hospital wards, and spoke of giving up her life to prison reform, and
argued on the beauties of the monastic life, and for a time considered
taking the veil. But the Shelley with the melancholy eyes unfortunately
developed a cough and for the sake of his health was transferred to a
curacy in southern California. This deportation gave every promise of
fanning the flame which it should have tempered, translating the exile
into a figure ideally romantic—until Teddie learned that on his western
migration he had inconsiderately married a certain ex-contralto of the
First Presbyterian Church who had graduated into the Chautauqua Circuit.
Teddie thereupon threw herself into golf and spent whole days on the
Tuxedo links, and the gardenia-white once more darkened down to the
beechnut brown. She became as hard as nails, both in body and spirit,
and did her best to forget to remember her asthmatic young curate’s pet
story of the Bishop who said “Assouan” every time he fuzzled the turf,
because Assouan, of course, was acknowledged to be the biggest “dam” in
the world.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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