Page 62 - DENG502_PROSE

Prose

Notes house, where they were set up, and looked as awkward as if some one were to carry away the old
tombs they had seen lately at the Abbey, and stick them up in Lady C.’s tawdry gilt drawing-
room. Here John smiled, as much as to say, “that would be foolish indeed.” And then I told how,

This is hardly a story at all; it is so slight in substance and in texture; it is a revery
only. Yet it has its movement and its climax; it makes only a single impression;
and thus it is seen to have certain of the essential qualities of the true short-story.

when she came to die, her funeral was attended by a concourse of all the poor, and some of the
gentry too, of the neighbourhood for many miles round, to show their respect for her memory,
because she had been such a good and religious woman; so good indeed that she knew all the
Psaltery by heart, ay, and a great part of the Testament besides. Here little Alice spread her hands.
Then I told what a tall, upright, graceful person their great-grandmother Field once was; and how
in her youth she was esteemed the best dancer — here Alice’s little right foot played an involuntary
movement, till, upon my looking grave, it desisted — the best dancer, I was saying, in the county,
till a cruel disease, called a cancer, came, and bowed her down with pain; but it could never bend
her good spirits, or make them stoop, but they were still upright, because she was so good and
religious. Then I told how she was used to sleep by herself in a lone chamber of the great lone
house; and how she believed that an apparition of two infants was to be seen at midnight gliding
up and down the great staircase near where she slept, but she said “those innocents would do her
no harm;” and how frightened I used to be, though in those days I had my maid to sleep with me,
because I was never half so good or religious as she — and yet I never saw the infants. Here John
expanded all his eye-brows and tried to look courageous. Then I told how good she was to all her
grand-children, having us to the great-house in the holydays, where I in particular used to spend
many hours by myself, in gazing upon the old busts of the Twelve Caesars, that had been Emperors
of Rome, till the old marble heads would seem to live again, or I to be turned into marble with
them; how I never could be tired with roaming about that huge mansion, with its vast empty
rooms, with their worn-out hangings, fluttering tapestry, and carved oaken pannels, with the
gilding almost rubbed out — sometimes in the spacious old-fashioned gardens, which I had
almost to myself, unless when now and then a solitary gardening man would cross me — and
how the nectarines and peaches hung upon the walls, without my ever offering to pluck them,
because they were forbidden fruit, unless now and then, — and because I had more pleasure in
strolling about among the old melancholy-looking yew trees, or the firs, and picking up the red
berries, and the fir apples, which were good for nothing but to look at — or in lying a out upon the
fresh grass, with all the fine garden smells around me — or basking in the orangery, till I could
almost fancy myself ripening too along with the oranges and the limes in that grateful warmth —
or in watching the dace that darted to and fro in the fish-pond, at the bottom of the garden, with
here and there a great sulky pike hanging midway down the water in silent state, as if it mocked
at their impertinent friskings, — I had more pleasure in these busy-idle diversions than in all the
sweet flavours of peaches, nectarines, oranges, and such like common baits of children. Here John
slyly deposited back upon the plate a bunch of grapes, which, not unobserved by Alice, he had
meditated dividing with her, and both seemed willing to relinquish them for the present as
irrelevant. Then in somewhat a more heightened tone, I told how, though their great-grandmother
Field loved all her grand-children, yet in an especial manner she might be said to love their uncle,
John L—, because he was so handsome and spirited a youth, and a king to the rest of us; and,

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