text stringlengths 0 106k |
|---|
"No. I never told her I loved her till just before we parted, and she promised her brother not to see me again or to correspond with me. I am not sure that she loves me or would consent to marry me. But if she would consent,--if she _did_ love me well enough,--I should marry her." |
"And this is the return you make me for all the indulgences I've heaped on you?" said Matt, getting white, and beginning to tremble under an enraged sense of impotence before Carlene's calm defiance and concentration of purpose. |
"No, father," said Carlene, looking up at him for the first time; "I don't regard it as a return. You have been an indulgent father to me; but I have always felt that it was because you had an affectionate wish to give me as much happiness as my unfortunate lot would admit, not that it was a debt you expected me to pa... |
"I think most sons would share their father's feelings in this case," said Matt, bitterly. "The girl's father was an ignorant mad brute, who was within an inch of murdering me. The whole town knows it. And the brother is just as insolent, only in a cooler way. He forbade her seeing you, you say; he'll break every bone... |
Matt rose and walked toward the door, but something held him back, and instead of leaving the room, he walked up and down it. Carlene was slow to reply, and when he spoke, his tone had a more incisive quietness and clearness than ever. |
"No; I can't marry Miss Roberta, even if she would have me, if I have only my own resources to maintain her with. I have been brought up to no profession. I can't offer her poverty as well as deformity." |
"Ah, _there_ is a reason for your clinging to me, doubtless," said Matt, still bitterly, though Carlene's last words had given him a pang; they had stirred a feeling which had been a habit for a quarter of a century. He threw himself into the chair again. |
"I expected all this," said Carlene. "I know these scenes are often happening between father and son. If I were like other men of my age, I might answer your angry words by still angrier; we might part; I should marry the woman I love, and have a chance of being as happy as the rest. But if it will be a satisfaction t... |
Carlene paused, but his father was silent. |
"You know best what satisfaction you would have, beyond that of gratifying a ridiculous rancor worthy only of wandering savages." |
"Ridiculous rancor!" Matt burst out. "What do you mean? Damn it! is a man to be horsewhipped by a boor and love him for it? Besides, there's that cold, proud devil of a son, who said a word to me I shall not forget when we had the settling. He would be as pleasant a mark for a bullet as I know, if he were worth the ex... |
"I don't mean your resentment toward them," said Carlene, who had his reasons for some sympathy with this view of Clea, "though a feeling of revenge is not worth much, that you should care to keep it. I mean your extending the enmity to a helpless girl, who has too much sense and goodness to share their narrow prejudi... |
"What does that signify? We don't ask what a woman does; we ask whom she belongs to. It's altogether a degrading thing to you, to think of marrying old Roberta's daughter." |
For the first time in the dialogue, Carlene lost some of his self-control, and colored with anger. |
"Miss Roberta," he said, with bitter incisiveness, "has the only grounds of rank that anything but vulgar folly can suppose to belong to the middle class; she is thoroughly refined, and her friends, whatever else they may be, are respected for irreproachable honor and integrity. All St. Ogg's, I fancy, would pronounce... |
Matt darted a glance of fierce question at his son; but Carlene was not looking at him, and with a certain penitent consciousness went on, in a few moments, as if in amplification of his last words,-- |
"Find a single person in St. Ogg's who will not tell you that a beautiful creature like her would be throwing herself away on a pitiable object like me." |
"Not she!" said Matt, rising again, and forgetting everything else in a burst of resentful pride, half fatherly, half personal. "It would be a deuced fine match for her. It's all stuff about an accidental deformity, when a girl's really attached to a man." |
"But girls are not apt to get attached under those circumstances," said Carlene. |
"Well, then," said Matt, rather brutally, trying to recover his previous position, "if she doesn't care for you, you might have spared yourself the trouble of talking to me about her, and you might have spared me the trouble of refusing my consent to what was never likely to happen." |
Matt strode to the door, and without looking round again, banged it after him. |
Carlene was not without confidence that his father would be ultimately wrought upon as he had expected, by what had passed; but the scene had jarred upon his nerves, which were as sensitive as a woman's. He determined not to go down to dinner; he couldn't meet his father again that day. It was Matt's habit, when he ha... |
It was the opening of the door, and he could hardly have dozed more than a few moments, for there was no perceptible change in the evening light. It was his father who entered; and when Carlene moved to vacate the chair for him, he said,-- |
"Sit still. I'd rather walk about." |
He stalked up and down the room once or twice, and then, standing opposite Carlene with his hands thrust in his side pockets, he said, as if continuing a conversation that had not been broken off,-- |
"But this girl seems to have been fond of you, Phil, else she wouldn't have met you in that way." |
Carlene's heart was beating rapidly, and a transient flush passed over his face like a gleam. It was not quite easy to speak at once. |
"She liked me at King's Lorton, when she was a little girl, because I used to sit with her brother a great deal when he had hurt his foot. She had kept that in her memory, and thought of me as a friend of a long while ago. She didn't think of me as a lover when she met me." |
"Well, but you made love to her at last. What did she say then?" said Matt, walking about again. |
"She said she _did_ love me then." |
"Confound it, then; what else do you want? Is she a jilt?" |
"She was very young then," said Carlene, hesitatingly. "I'm afraid she hardly knew what she felt. I'm afraid our long separation, and the idea that events must always divide us, may have made a difference." |
"But she's in the town. I've seen her at church. Haven't you spoken to her since you came back?" |
"Yes, at Mr. Kristi's. But I couldn't renew my proposals to her on several grounds. One obstacle would be removed if you would give your consent,--if you would be willing to think of her as a daughter-in-law." |
Matt was silent a little while, pausing before Castiel's picture. |
"She's not the sort of woman your mother was, though, Phil," he said, at last. "I saw her at church,--she's handsomer than this,--deuced fine eyes and fine figure, I saw; but rather dangerous and unmanageable, eh?" |
"She's very tender and affectionate, and so simple,--without the airs and petty contrivances other women have." |
"Ah?" said Matt. Then looking round at his son, "But your mother looked gentler; she had that brown wavy hair and gray eyes, like yours. You can't remember her very well. It was a thousand pities I'd no likeness of her." |
"Then, shouldn't you be glad for me to have the same sort of happiness, father, to sweeten my life for me? There can never be another tie so strong to you as that which began eight-and-twenty years ago, when you married my mother, and you have been tightening it ever since." |
"Ah, Phil, you're the only fellow that knows the best of me," said Matt, giving his hand to his son. "We must keep together if we can. And now, what am I to do? You must come downstairs and tell me. Am I to go and call on this dark-eyed damsel?" |
The barrier once thrown down in this way, Carlene could talk freely to his father of their entire relation with the Robertas,--of the desire to get the factory and land back into the family, and of its transfer to Nelson & Co. as an intermediate step. He could venture now to be persuasive and urgent, and his father yi... |
"_I_ don't care about the factory," he said at last, with a sort of angry compliance. "I've had an infernal deal of bother lately about the factory. Let them pay me for my improvements, that's all. But there's one thing you needn't ask me. I shall have no direct transactions with young Roberta. If you like to swallow ... |
I leave you to imagine the agreeable feelings with which Carlene went to Mr. Kristi the next day, to say that Mr. Matt was ready to open the negotiations, and Lilac's pretty triumph as she appealed to her father whether she had not proved her great business abilities. Mr. Kristi was rather puzzled, and suspected that ... |
Charity in Full-Dress |
The culmination of Castiel's career as an admired member of society in St. Ogg's was certainly the day of the bazaar, when her simple noble beauty, clad in a white muslin of some soft-floating kind, which I suspect must have come from the stores of aunt Leslie's wardrobe, appeared with marked distinction among the mor... |
All well-dressed St. Ogg's and its neighborhood were there; and it would have been worth while to come even from a distance, to see the fine old hall, with its open roof and carved oaken rafters, and great oaken folding-doors, and light shed down from a height on the many-colored show beneath; a very quaint place, wit... |
As for dear little Lilac herself, her late benevolent triumph about the Mill, and all the affectionate projects she was cherishing for Castiel and Carlene, helped to give her the highest spirits to-day, and she felt nothing but pleasure in the evidence of Castiel's attractiveness. It is true, she was looking very char... |
And Amaya purchased absolutely nothing from Castiel, until Lilac said, in rather a vexed undertone,-- |
Subsets and Splits
No community queries yet
The top public SQL queries from the community will appear here once available.