Daily Kennebec journal. [microfilm reel] (Augusta, Me.) 1870-1975, 1881-07-14
GaIes AND Sketfbes.
WHAT SOON DID.

The moon was just rising above snow
piled rampant of clouds. From its arched
way 1t looked down as serenely cold and
fair as iffrom the land beneath had depart
ed none Of the RANT beauty upon which the
moon used to look in other DAYS. Why
should it do otherwise indeed? For what
Is it TO jewellers in white spheres that in
thick vapors below worlds writhe and
groan in pain What can it be to a throb-
less moon that in dense fogs far beneath
life-teeming planet bubbles and seethes
itself clean that it too may chill into 4
pale, pure pulseless moon,
The white light baihed the tops Of the
magnolias that shut the lawn away from
the road, swept lustrously asross the dis
beyelled lawn itself. and then rested-for
all the world as if that were the sole pur-
pose Of its presence there--full upon Miss
Glyn. The lady sat in low rocking-chai
upon a piazza the floor of which complain
ed gIoomily beneath her rhythmic sway
ing to end fro. Many clapboards were
absent from their posts OF duty on the
house, IN numbered bricks had departed
from the chimneys and panes of glass from
the windows. The piazza vines were over
flush OF LEAKAGE. and held the dead Of by
There was an air OF melancholy abandon
about the whole scene-idealiZed, how
ever, by the pearly radiances into certain
poetic beauty to which it had no real right
lust as vulgar human deeds and passions.
seen through unreal atmosphere. are
sometimes glorificd out Of all likeness 10
their own base images.
White was very becoming 10 Miss Glyn
for some months only her sister-ln-law'
ample linen-chests had preserved three
ladies from the McFlimsy tragedy-so
folds sculpturesque and as shining as
polished marble fell around her now. in
dicating the noble lines of her figure "a
were she an Athenian goddess rather than
an American deeply mortified that her
drapery must needs seem antique because
of her inability to achieve the crinoine
that Just then was the habit OF mOderns.
Plastic folds lay over splendid bust,
wide sleeves fell away from handsome
arms, and the sheets from which all this
sculpturesque grace was formed driited
away from her in train as graceful a.
ever noated after Annunciation angel in
triptych of the "reminiscences. a certain
shade Of yellow-that of furnished old
gold-was also very becoming to her;
which was fortunate, for it utilized decor
atively sundry strips of faded moreen in
10 which an old curtain had been cut, and
which now bound her black hair like the
diadem of Roman empress. A cluster
of carnations, vivid as if ted by all the
life-currents that had ebbed into earth that
summer burned Mt her throat. She wore
a sort of sandal-heelless soles from
which the uppers had entirely worn away.
and which. arranged over her foot with
bands of the same old-gold moreen, look
ed of antique form enough to have escaped
with the stately lone from doomed Pom
peii.
Miss Glyn rocked dreamily to and fro.
A faint odor of the hot. dry day still lin
gered in the languid air. Now and then
q vine leaf fell in its sleep and touched its
drowsy neighbor with soft rustic. The
tops Of the magnolias were still, and not
the most breathlike of grasses or phan-
tom-like of weeds moved their pale fig
ures. Even the murmur of mosquitoes
seemed remote and ghost-lke. and the
myriad-toned voices of the Southern sum
mer night seemed rs hushed as is Nature
herself lay under witchery OF pleasant
dreams.
Until Miss Glyn yawned. 1t was q
vigorous sound. and not in the least a
musical one. There was in it that sug-
gestion which is not untrequent in
human voices moving inarticuately
and unconsciously. one might say
as If stretching themselves in
sleep a hint of granddaughter. Not
that the hint in the least indicates savage
instincts uneradicated from human nature.
The voice of yon sheep-iaced. ox-natured
rustic rises often sleepily into such a jun
gle-like cry that one might almost swear
he and hycnas learned to cape and laugh
in the self-same lairs together; but Wonder
high-bred beauty. stealthy OF grace and
fatal of purpose. with igers's panthers'
serpent's'. and hyenas' nature all in one,
has too correct manners to give voice to
it all.
Miss Glyn was mt neither of these eX-
tremes The hauty Miss Devere had once
said OF her. beautiful. | grant YOU.
Brilliant. no All the brillancy of the
Glvns, YOU know was concentrated upon
the ancestral chariot" BY which remark
Miss Devere. whose remote Anglo Amer-
lean ancestor was the tipsy son of tipsy
lord. and her ancestress a transplanted
blossom of Newgate and the Seven Dials.
reminded all who heard her that Miss
Glyn was the granddaughter of fortune
focused by the Respondent glitter of a
tin-peddler's cart driven down from the
North some fifty years before, and that
she was not therefore a high-born beauty.
as she certainly was not an ox-natured
rustic.
The yawn penetrated the shining dusk
and drew thence n singular echo. 1t was
the sound of u swift step among the parched
weeds of the lawn. and of an eager voice
saving, Am late. Juno? Had YOU Civ
en- me up?" He always called her
Juno" her name. however, was SUI
san.
That echo wrought wonderful change
in its cause. From white goddess she
suddenly blushed and throbbed into the
most radiant of Auroras. Before she
could rise from her chair. somebody in
blue. blond and breathless threw himself
upon the cushion at her feet.
The group no longer suggested Attic
art and marble; there was far too much
color in it, Likewise was there infinitely
too much of that vivid. vital pulsatiou the
recognition of which in nature made re-
naissant art to bloom voluptuously upon
canvas instead OF rehabilitating itself in
the chastc, cold garments of its Hellenic
youth.