DOI article:
Crackanthorpe, Hubert: The Haseltons
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.21806#0155
By Hubert Crackanthorpe
I5I
VII
“ You can go to bed, Hodgson. I will turn off the light.”
The man retired silently. It was a stage-phrase that rose
unconsciously to her lips, a stage-situation with which she was
momentarily toying.
Alone, she perceived its absurd unreality. Nothing, of course,
would happen to-night: though so many days and nights she had
been waiting. The details of life was clumsy, cumbersome : the
simplification of the stage, of novels, of dozing dreams, seemed,
by contrast, bitterly impossible.
She took up the book again, and read on, losing herseif for a
while in the passion of its pages—a passion that was all glamorous,
sentimental felicity, at once vague and penetrating. But, as she
paused to reach a paper-knife, she remembered the irrevocable,
prosaic groove of existence, and that slow drifting to a dreary
commonplace—a commonplace that was hers—brought back all
her aching listlessness. She let the book slip to the carpet.
Love, she repeated to herseif, a silken web, opal-tinted, veiling
all life ; love, bringing fragrance and radiance ; love with the
moonlight Streaming across the meadows ; love, amid summer-
leafed woods, a-sparkle in the morning sun ; a simple clasping of
hands ; a happiness, child-like and thoughtless, secure and
intimate. . . .
And she—she had nothing—only the helpless child ; her soul
was brave and dismantled and dismal ; and once again started the
gnawing of humiliation—inferior even to the common people,
who could be loved and forget, in the midst of promiscuous
squalor. Without love, there seemed no reason for life.
I5I
VII
“ You can go to bed, Hodgson. I will turn off the light.”
The man retired silently. It was a stage-phrase that rose
unconsciously to her lips, a stage-situation with which she was
momentarily toying.
Alone, she perceived its absurd unreality. Nothing, of course,
would happen to-night: though so many days and nights she had
been waiting. The details of life was clumsy, cumbersome : the
simplification of the stage, of novels, of dozing dreams, seemed,
by contrast, bitterly impossible.
She took up the book again, and read on, losing herseif for a
while in the passion of its pages—a passion that was all glamorous,
sentimental felicity, at once vague and penetrating. But, as she
paused to reach a paper-knife, she remembered the irrevocable,
prosaic groove of existence, and that slow drifting to a dreary
commonplace—a commonplace that was hers—brought back all
her aching listlessness. She let the book slip to the carpet.
Love, she repeated to herseif, a silken web, opal-tinted, veiling
all life ; love, bringing fragrance and radiance ; love with the
moonlight Streaming across the meadows ; love, amid summer-
leafed woods, a-sparkle in the morning sun ; a simple clasping of
hands ; a happiness, child-like and thoughtless, secure and
intimate. . . .
And she—she had nothing—only the helpless child ; her soul
was brave and dismantled and dismal ; and once again started the
gnawing of humiliation—inferior even to the common people,
who could be loved and forget, in the midst of promiscuous
squalor. Without love, there seemed no reason for life.