DOI article:
Harland, Henry: The bohemian girl
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21805#0024
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The Bohemian Girl
she were disposed to take the world, more or less, with a grain of
salt j at the same time there was something rieh, warm-blooded,
luxurious, suggesting that she would khow how to savour its
pleasantnesses with complete enjoyment. But if you feit that she
was by way of being the least bit satirical in her view of things,
you feit too that she was altogether good-natured, and even that,
at need, she could show herseif spontaneously kind, generous,
devoted. And if you inferred that her temperament inclined
rather towards the sensuous than the ascetic, believe me, it did not
lessen her attractiveness.
At the time of which I am writing now, the Sentiment that
reigned between Nina and Old Childe’s retinue of young men
was chiefly an esprit-de-corps. Later on we all feil in love with
her ; but for the present we were simply amiably fraternal. We
were united to her by a common enthusiasm ; we were fellow-
•celebrants at her ancestral altar—or, rather, she was the high
priestess there, we were her acolytes. For, with her, filial piety
did in very truth partake of the nature of religion ; she really,
literally, idolised her father. One only needed to watch her for
three minutes, as she sat beside him, to understand the depth and
ardour of her emotion : how she adored him, how she admired
him and believed in him, how proud of him she was, how she
rejoiced in him. u Oh, you think you know my father,” I
remember her saying to us once. “ Nobody knows him. No-
body is great enough to know him. If people knew him they
would fall down and kiss the ground he walks on.” It is certain
she deemed him the wisest, the noblest, the handsomest, the most
gifted, of human kind. That little gleam of mockery in her eye
died out instantly when she looked at him, when she spoke of him
or listened to him ; instead, there came a tender light of love, and
her face grew pale with the fervour of her affection. Yet, when
he
The Bohemian Girl
she were disposed to take the world, more or less, with a grain of
salt j at the same time there was something rieh, warm-blooded,
luxurious, suggesting that she would khow how to savour its
pleasantnesses with complete enjoyment. But if you feit that she
was by way of being the least bit satirical in her view of things,
you feit too that she was altogether good-natured, and even that,
at need, she could show herseif spontaneously kind, generous,
devoted. And if you inferred that her temperament inclined
rather towards the sensuous than the ascetic, believe me, it did not
lessen her attractiveness.
At the time of which I am writing now, the Sentiment that
reigned between Nina and Old Childe’s retinue of young men
was chiefly an esprit-de-corps. Later on we all feil in love with
her ; but for the present we were simply amiably fraternal. We
were united to her by a common enthusiasm ; we were fellow-
•celebrants at her ancestral altar—or, rather, she was the high
priestess there, we were her acolytes. For, with her, filial piety
did in very truth partake of the nature of religion ; she really,
literally, idolised her father. One only needed to watch her for
three minutes, as she sat beside him, to understand the depth and
ardour of her emotion : how she adored him, how she admired
him and believed in him, how proud of him she was, how she
rejoiced in him. u Oh, you think you know my father,” I
remember her saying to us once. “ Nobody knows him. No-
body is great enough to know him. If people knew him they
would fall down and kiss the ground he walks on.” It is certain
she deemed him the wisest, the noblest, the handsomest, the most
gifted, of human kind. That little gleam of mockery in her eye
died out instantly when she looked at him, when she spoke of him
or listened to him ; instead, there came a tender light of love, and
her face grew pale with the fervour of her affection. Yet, when
he