One Year
An excerpt from the beginning of the:
INTRODUCTION.
The year I am going to write about is the only one worth writing about in the whole of my eventless career. There are such things as long, even stretches of road, broken only at one spot by the excitement of a raging torrent, or such things as still summer days, shaken at only one moment by the thrill of an isolated thunderclap,—only to these things can I liken my peaceful and mildly dull life, cut, as it were, into two distinct halves by that one year into which was crowded all that I have ever known of violent emotions, of apprehension, and even of horror. And yet it is probable that but for Agnes Jeffrey that year would have remained unchronicled, and those sentiments unrecorded. It was but a few weeks ago, during the Whitsuntide holidays, which, as usual, I was spending at Broadfield, that Agnes put into my hands a bundle of letters on which I recognised my own writing, and tied together with a green ribbon which had scarcely begun to fade.
"You should make a story of that," she said to me, taking her youngest child on her arm as she spoke.
I untied the green ribbon, my eye catching the rosy flush of the Austrian stamps, and immediately the memories began to surge. Agnes, with her child on her arm, had left the room; I was alone with the dead past. One page after another did I unfold, here skimming along, there spelling out, and presently let them all drop together on the table, and gazed out on the softly rolling landscape with eyes that saw neither the blossoming hedgerows nor the vividly green meadows, but rather the flat line of horizon, the straight roads, the wattled willow palings of a far-off land. In the pleasant vicarage garden the first crimson rose had opened overnight; but, although in spirit, too, I looked upon roses, they were roses of a different hue, and of a lower, more rustic, growth: in place of the well trimmed lawn it was waving patches of grass that I saw; instead of the irreproachable paths, rough gravel richly matted with dandelion tufts. And through * it all a face looked at me—dark-eyed, colourless, exquisite, §*d stabbed me to the heart with its phantom gaze. .
Oh, Jadwiga! beautiful Jadwiga! shall I ever be able to forget your eyes? Shall I ever see .their like again? Assuredly neither one nor the other. Make a story of it? Was not that what Agnes had said? No need of that, surely,—the story was there already, ready-made to my hand; my letters told it, and what my letters left out, my memory—not more faded yet than that green ribbon—could supply. If ever I
to do it, now was the time. Sooner would have been too soon, for you have to step back from your model before you can get its right proportions; later might be too late, by laying a haze of oblivion over many even significant details.
I may as well say at once that I am not the heroine of the romance I am about to recount. In order, once for all, to crush this idea in the reader's mind, the simplest course will be to give a truthful personal description. At the moment that I write this I am thirty-six years old, so even five years ago, when the events to be recorded took place, I was out of the twenties. My hair is brown—not golden .brown, or ruddy brown, or "shadowy brown"—but just simply a good, honest, unexciting brown. My eyes, which are grey, can likewise lay no claim to any further adjective. My complexion I have heard described as "opaque," and I know that my nose is dumpy. Add to this somewhat broad cheek-bones, and a figure more remarkable for solidity than grace, and I think that even the most sanguine reader will not expect to find me figuring in any ultra-romantic situation. What Henry could ever see in me has always been a mystery to my humble comprehension. Surely the eyes of all men are not made on the same plan, and very lucky it is for us, the plain women of the world. No, I am not the heroine, only a witness of that strange family drama of which my letters to Agnes Jeffrey give the outline. In order to explain how I came to be a witness, it is necessary for me to speak of my own affairs, which I will do as briefly as possible.
Henry and I had known each other long before I had got into long skirts or he into the regulation manly garment. When we began to be fond of each other I can't rightly say, because I don't remember any time when it was otherwise. I know that when he told me of his intention of never marrying any woman but myself I was scarcely surprised, nor even pretended to be so—it seemed such an almost inevitable conclusion to our childish intimacy. Neither did it necessarily mean that he would marry me any more than the others, for we both possessed a fair portion of commonsense, which the sober, middle-class atmosphere in which we grew up had helped to develop. I was only sixteen and he only twenty...
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INTRODUCTION.
The year I am going to write about is the only one worth writing about in the whole of my eventless career. There are such things as long, even stretches of road, broken only at one spot by the excitement of a raging torrent, or such things as still summer days, shaken at only one moment by the thrill of an isolated thunderclap,—only to these things can I liken my peaceful and mildly dull life, cut, as it were, into two distinct halves by that one year into which was crowded all that I have ever known of violent emotions, of apprehension, and even of horror. And yet it is probable that but for Agnes Jeffrey that year would have remained unchronicled, and those sentiments unrecorded. It was but a few weeks ago, during the Whitsuntide holidays, which, as usual, I was spending at Broadfield, that Agnes put into my hands a bundle of letters on which I recognised my own writing, and tied together with a green ribbon which had scarcely begun to fade.
"You should make a story of that," she said to me, taking her youngest child on her arm as she spoke.
I untied the green ribbon, my eye catching the rosy flush of the Austrian stamps, and immediately the memories began to surge. Agnes, with her child on her arm, had left the room; I was alone with the dead past. One page after another did I unfold, here skimming along, there spelling out, and presently let them all drop together on the table, and gazed out on the softly rolling landscape with eyes that saw neither the blossoming hedgerows nor the vividly green meadows, but rather the flat line of horizon, the straight roads, the wattled willow palings of a far-off land. In the pleasant vicarage garden the first crimson rose had opened overnight; but, although in spirit, too, I looked upon roses, they were roses of a different hue, and of a lower, more rustic, growth: in place of the well trimmed lawn it was waving patches of grass that I saw; instead of the irreproachable paths, rough gravel richly matted with dandelion tufts. And through * it all a face looked at me—dark-eyed, colourless, exquisite, §*d stabbed me to the heart with its phantom gaze. .
Oh, Jadwiga! beautiful Jadwiga! shall I ever be able to forget your eyes? Shall I ever see .their like again? Assuredly neither one nor the other. Make a story of it? Was not that what Agnes had said? No need of that, surely,—the story was there already, ready-made to my hand; my letters told it, and what my letters left out, my memory—not more faded yet than that green ribbon—could supply. If ever I
to do it, now was the time. Sooner would have been too soon, for you have to step back from your model before you can get its right proportions; later might be too late, by laying a haze of oblivion over many even significant details.
I may as well say at once that I am not the heroine of the romance I am about to recount. In order, once for all, to crush this idea in the reader's mind, the simplest course will be to give a truthful personal description. At the moment that I write this I am thirty-six years old, so even five years ago, when the events to be recorded took place, I was out of the twenties. My hair is brown—not golden .brown, or ruddy brown, or "shadowy brown"—but just simply a good, honest, unexciting brown. My eyes, which are grey, can likewise lay no claim to any further adjective. My complexion I have heard described as "opaque," and I know that my nose is dumpy. Add to this somewhat broad cheek-bones, and a figure more remarkable for solidity than grace, and I think that even the most sanguine reader will not expect to find me figuring in any ultra-romantic situation. What Henry could ever see in me has always been a mystery to my humble comprehension. Surely the eyes of all men are not made on the same plan, and very lucky it is for us, the plain women of the world. No, I am not the heroine, only a witness of that strange family drama of which my letters to Agnes Jeffrey give the outline. In order to explain how I came to be a witness, it is necessary for me to speak of my own affairs, which I will do as briefly as possible.
Henry and I had known each other long before I had got into long skirts or he into the regulation manly garment. When we began to be fond of each other I can't rightly say, because I don't remember any time when it was otherwise. I know that when he told me of his intention of never marrying any woman but myself I was scarcely surprised, nor even pretended to be so—it seemed such an almost inevitable conclusion to our childish intimacy. Neither did it necessarily mean that he would marry me any more than the others, for we both possessed a fair portion of commonsense, which the sober, middle-class atmosphere in which we grew up had helped to develop. I was only sixteen and he only twenty...
One Year
An excerpt from the beginning of the:
INTRODUCTION.
The year I am going to write about is the only one worth writing about in the whole of my eventless career. There are such things as long, even stretches of road, broken only at one spot by the excitement of a raging torrent, or such things as still summer days, shaken at only one moment by the thrill of an isolated thunderclap,—only to these things can I liken my peaceful and mildly dull life, cut, as it were, into two distinct halves by that one year into which was crowded all that I have ever known of violent emotions, of apprehension, and even of horror. And yet it is probable that but for Agnes Jeffrey that year would have remained unchronicled, and those sentiments unrecorded. It was but a few weeks ago, during the Whitsuntide holidays, which, as usual, I was spending at Broadfield, that Agnes put into my hands a bundle of letters on which I recognised my own writing, and tied together with a green ribbon which had scarcely begun to fade.
"You should make a story of that," she said to me, taking her youngest child on her arm as she spoke.
I untied the green ribbon, my eye catching the rosy flush of the Austrian stamps, and immediately the memories began to surge. Agnes, with her child on her arm, had left the room; I was alone with the dead past. One page after another did I unfold, here skimming along, there spelling out, and presently let them all drop together on the table, and gazed out on the softly rolling landscape with eyes that saw neither the blossoming hedgerows nor the vividly green meadows, but rather the flat line of horizon, the straight roads, the wattled willow palings of a far-off land. In the pleasant vicarage garden the first crimson rose had opened overnight; but, although in spirit, too, I looked upon roses, they were roses of a different hue, and of a lower, more rustic, growth: in place of the well trimmed lawn it was waving patches of grass that I saw; instead of the irreproachable paths, rough gravel richly matted with dandelion tufts. And through * it all a face looked at me—dark-eyed, colourless, exquisite, §*d stabbed me to the heart with its phantom gaze. .
Oh, Jadwiga! beautiful Jadwiga! shall I ever be able to forget your eyes? Shall I ever see .their like again? Assuredly neither one nor the other. Make a story of it? Was not that what Agnes had said? No need of that, surely,—the story was there already, ready-made to my hand; my letters told it, and what my letters left out, my memory—not more faded yet than that green ribbon—could supply. If ever I
to do it, now was the time. Sooner would have been too soon, for you have to step back from your model before you can get its right proportions; later might be too late, by laying a haze of oblivion over many even significant details.
I may as well say at once that I am not the heroine of the romance I am about to recount. In order, once for all, to crush this idea in the reader's mind, the simplest course will be to give a truthful personal description. At the moment that I write this I am thirty-six years old, so even five years ago, when the events to be recorded took place, I was out of the twenties. My hair is brown—not golden .brown, or ruddy brown, or "shadowy brown"—but just simply a good, honest, unexciting brown. My eyes, which are grey, can likewise lay no claim to any further adjective. My complexion I have heard described as "opaque," and I know that my nose is dumpy. Add to this somewhat broad cheek-bones, and a figure more remarkable for solidity than grace, and I think that even the most sanguine reader will not expect to find me figuring in any ultra-romantic situation. What Henry could ever see in me has always been a mystery to my humble comprehension. Surely the eyes of all men are not made on the same plan, and very lucky it is for us, the plain women of the world. No, I am not the heroine, only a witness of that strange family drama of which my letters to Agnes Jeffrey give the outline. In order to explain how I came to be a witness, it is necessary for me to speak of my own affairs, which I will do as briefly as possible.
Henry and I had known each other long before I had got into long skirts or he into the regulation manly garment. When we began to be fond of each other I can't rightly say, because I don't remember any time when it was otherwise. I know that when he told me of his intention of never marrying any woman but myself I was scarcely surprised, nor even pretended to be so—it seemed such an almost inevitable conclusion to our childish intimacy. Neither did it necessarily mean that he would marry me any more than the others, for we both possessed a fair portion of commonsense, which the sober, middle-class atmosphere in which we grew up had helped to develop. I was only sixteen and he only twenty...
INTRODUCTION.
The year I am going to write about is the only one worth writing about in the whole of my eventless career. There are such things as long, even stretches of road, broken only at one spot by the excitement of a raging torrent, or such things as still summer days, shaken at only one moment by the thrill of an isolated thunderclap,—only to these things can I liken my peaceful and mildly dull life, cut, as it were, into two distinct halves by that one year into which was crowded all that I have ever known of violent emotions, of apprehension, and even of horror. And yet it is probable that but for Agnes Jeffrey that year would have remained unchronicled, and those sentiments unrecorded. It was but a few weeks ago, during the Whitsuntide holidays, which, as usual, I was spending at Broadfield, that Agnes put into my hands a bundle of letters on which I recognised my own writing, and tied together with a green ribbon which had scarcely begun to fade.
"You should make a story of that," she said to me, taking her youngest child on her arm as she spoke.
I untied the green ribbon, my eye catching the rosy flush of the Austrian stamps, and immediately the memories began to surge. Agnes, with her child on her arm, had left the room; I was alone with the dead past. One page after another did I unfold, here skimming along, there spelling out, and presently let them all drop together on the table, and gazed out on the softly rolling landscape with eyes that saw neither the blossoming hedgerows nor the vividly green meadows, but rather the flat line of horizon, the straight roads, the wattled willow palings of a far-off land. In the pleasant vicarage garden the first crimson rose had opened overnight; but, although in spirit, too, I looked upon roses, they were roses of a different hue, and of a lower, more rustic, growth: in place of the well trimmed lawn it was waving patches of grass that I saw; instead of the irreproachable paths, rough gravel richly matted with dandelion tufts. And through * it all a face looked at me—dark-eyed, colourless, exquisite, §*d stabbed me to the heart with its phantom gaze. .
Oh, Jadwiga! beautiful Jadwiga! shall I ever be able to forget your eyes? Shall I ever see .their like again? Assuredly neither one nor the other. Make a story of it? Was not that what Agnes had said? No need of that, surely,—the story was there already, ready-made to my hand; my letters told it, and what my letters left out, my memory—not more faded yet than that green ribbon—could supply. If ever I
to do it, now was the time. Sooner would have been too soon, for you have to step back from your model before you can get its right proportions; later might be too late, by laying a haze of oblivion over many even significant details.
I may as well say at once that I am not the heroine of the romance I am about to recount. In order, once for all, to crush this idea in the reader's mind, the simplest course will be to give a truthful personal description. At the moment that I write this I am thirty-six years old, so even five years ago, when the events to be recorded took place, I was out of the twenties. My hair is brown—not golden .brown, or ruddy brown, or "shadowy brown"—but just simply a good, honest, unexciting brown. My eyes, which are grey, can likewise lay no claim to any further adjective. My complexion I have heard described as "opaque," and I know that my nose is dumpy. Add to this somewhat broad cheek-bones, and a figure more remarkable for solidity than grace, and I think that even the most sanguine reader will not expect to find me figuring in any ultra-romantic situation. What Henry could ever see in me has always been a mystery to my humble comprehension. Surely the eyes of all men are not made on the same plan, and very lucky it is for us, the plain women of the world. No, I am not the heroine, only a witness of that strange family drama of which my letters to Agnes Jeffrey give the outline. In order to explain how I came to be a witness, it is necessary for me to speak of my own affairs, which I will do as briefly as possible.
Henry and I had known each other long before I had got into long skirts or he into the regulation manly garment. When we began to be fond of each other I can't rightly say, because I don't remember any time when it was otherwise. I know that when he told me of his intention of never marrying any woman but myself I was scarcely surprised, nor even pretended to be so—it seemed such an almost inevitable conclusion to our childish intimacy. Neither did it necessarily mean that he would marry me any more than the others, for we both possessed a fair portion of commonsense, which the sober, middle-class atmosphere in which we grew up had helped to develop. I was only sixteen and he only twenty...
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Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940014873512 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | OGB |
| Publication date: | 08/13/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| File size: | 297 KB |
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