United States or Timor-Leste ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
It didn't seem reasonable. Not that either Dorothy or Nicky minded when they got there. All that Nicky minded was not being at Hampstead. Being at Cheltenham he did not mind at all. He rather liked it, since Major Cameron had come to stay just outside it on purpose to annoy Bartie and took them out riding. Even Michael did not mind Cheltenham more than any other place his people might have chosen.
He was a jealous egoist; he had the morbid coldness of the neurotic, and Vera was passionate. She ought never to have married him. All the same " "All the same I shall stick to Bartie as long as it's possible. And as long as it's possible Bartie'll stick to me. But, if anything happens I want you to promise that you'll take Ronny." "You must get Frances to promise."
Bartie was long and grey, and lean even when you allowed for the thickness of his cholera belt. He wore a white scarf about his throat, for his idea was that he had cancer in it. Cancer made you look grey. He, too, had the face of a hawk, of a tired and irritable hawk. It drooped between his hunched shoulders, his chin hanging above the scarf as if he were too tired or too irritable to hold it up.
She looked on Maurice and Emmeline and Bartie as scapegoats, bearers of the hereditary taint, whose affliction left her children clean. She thought of them more and more in this sacred and sacrificial character. At fifty-two Frances could be gentle over the things that had worried and irritated her at thirty-three.
Michael had made them see that it was possible to overvalue Bartie; also that it was possible to pay too high a price for a consecrated moral attitude. In all his life the wretched Bartie had never done a thing for any of them, whereas he, Michael, owed his rather extraordinary success absolutely to Lawrence Stephen.
Bartie had not been married ten months before he wanted to get Vera out of England; and Vera had not been in India for ten weeks before he wanted her to go back. They were always coming backwards and forwards, but they never came together. Vera would be sent home first, and then Bartie would come over in a great hurry and take her out again.
They had received so much, and they had been let off so much; not one of them had inherited the taint that made Maurice and Emmeline Fleming and Bartie Harrison creatures diseased and irresponsible. They could afford to be pitiful and merciful. And now that the children were grown up Frances could afford to be pitiful and merciful herself. She could even afford to be grateful to the poor dears.
He was not going to keep Veronica without Vera. That had been tacitly understood between them long ago. If Vera went to Cameron she could not take Veronica with her without openly confirming Bartie's worst suspicion. And yet all these things, so inconceivable to Bartie, happened.
Ange! a Converse Jack Eustis two Frowenfelds! a Mossy! a Hennen Bartie Sloo McVey, McStea, a De Lavillebuevre a Thorndyke-Smith and a Grandissime again! And ah! see yonder young cannoneer half-way between these two balconies and the statue beyond; that foppish boy with his hair in a hundred curls and his eyes wild with wayward ardor!
She slipped her hand into his hand that dropped it as if it had hurt him; she touched his forehead with her small mouth, pushed out, absurdly, to keep her face as far as possible from his. For, though she was not afraid of Bartie, he was not nice either to sit on or to kiss. Half-way across the room she lingered. "I haven't sung 'London Bridge is broken down. Don't you want me to sing it?"
Word Of The Day