DOI article:
Dixon, Ella Hepworth: The Sweet o' the Year
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.26392#0166
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The Sweet o’ the Year
tied beneath her shrivelled chin ; a loose camisole covered her
shrunken chest, a meagre petticoat revealed her bony ankles.
“Tour beauty, which is so strangely complex^ for it has not only a
child's sweetness, but a woman's seduction. Ah, you are indeed an
exquisite creature. . . .”
He raised his eyes and looked at the familiar figure of Virginie.
.... All at once the bent, unsightly form seemed invested
with the sweetness, the purity, the dignity of the young girl ;
round her head, with its sparse white hair, there rested, for an
instant, the aureole of the woman who is beloved.
“ Whether you wish it or no, you will be for ever my inspiration,
my dream, ?ny reward. I was like a man asleep, and you, Virginie,
have awoken me''
A feeble smile of satisfied vanity flickered over the old woman’s
face. She nodded her head as he went on reading, her knotted
hands twisted nervously together. Time, with his corroding
finger, had seared and branded her out of all semblance of a
woman. She represented nothing but the long, the inexorable
degradation of life.
“ Nothing will ever make me forget the unearthly beauty of your
face, nor the hours we have passed together. . . .”
Gently the young man laid the letter down. His eyes had
filled with tears ; he could no longer see the words. And
then, reverently, he folded it with the rest, and, opening the drawer
of an antique cabinet, he locked his new-found treasures up.
“ Sapristi ! Mais ce n’est pas amusant—la vie,” he muttered,
watching the bent figure of the old woman as she passed,
presently, mumbling and nodding, out of the studio, to be
swallowed up in the vague shadows of the passage. Suddenly it
felt cold and dismal in the great room.
“Non, ce n’est pas gaie, la vie,” he repeated ; “at least, not
when
The Sweet o’ the Year
tied beneath her shrivelled chin ; a loose camisole covered her
shrunken chest, a meagre petticoat revealed her bony ankles.
“Tour beauty, which is so strangely complex^ for it has not only a
child's sweetness, but a woman's seduction. Ah, you are indeed an
exquisite creature. . . .”
He raised his eyes and looked at the familiar figure of Virginie.
.... All at once the bent, unsightly form seemed invested
with the sweetness, the purity, the dignity of the young girl ;
round her head, with its sparse white hair, there rested, for an
instant, the aureole of the woman who is beloved.
“ Whether you wish it or no, you will be for ever my inspiration,
my dream, ?ny reward. I was like a man asleep, and you, Virginie,
have awoken me''
A feeble smile of satisfied vanity flickered over the old woman’s
face. She nodded her head as he went on reading, her knotted
hands twisted nervously together. Time, with his corroding
finger, had seared and branded her out of all semblance of a
woman. She represented nothing but the long, the inexorable
degradation of life.
“ Nothing will ever make me forget the unearthly beauty of your
face, nor the hours we have passed together. . . .”
Gently the young man laid the letter down. His eyes had
filled with tears ; he could no longer see the words. And
then, reverently, he folded it with the rest, and, opening the drawer
of an antique cabinet, he locked his new-found treasures up.
“ Sapristi ! Mais ce n’est pas amusant—la vie,” he muttered,
watching the bent figure of the old woman as she passed,
presently, mumbling and nodding, out of the studio, to be
swallowed up in the vague shadows of the passage. Suddenly it
felt cold and dismal in the great room.
“Non, ce n’est pas gaie, la vie,” he repeated ; “at least, not
when