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It was beautiful to remember Petrarch's description of his golden-haired, dark-eyed love, fair and tall as a lily, sitting in the grass among the violets, where her bare feet gleamed whiter than the daisies when she took off her sandals. Even Nicolete, flower of Provençal song, had no whiter feet than Laura, I am sure!
But to Lily this peace was not an interlude, but an end. Life for her was over. Her bright dreams were gone, her future settled. Without so putting it, even to herself, she dedicated herself to service, to small kindnesses, and little thoughtful acts. She was, daily and hourly, making reparation to them all for what she had cost them, in hope. That was the thing that had gone out of life. Hope.
"Yes, yes, I know," said Lily; a look of deeper pain swept over her face. "And the fate of the poor women; oh, the fate of the women!" "Yes, it's a matter of statistics," went on Radbourn, pitilessly, "that the wives of the American farmers fill our insane asylums. See what a life they lead, most of them; no music, no books. Seventeen hours a day in a couple of small rooms dens.
And now Maurice said to himself again that perhaps after all the cry of the child had been imagination, a symptom of illness in him from which he had perhaps even through some obscure physical change recovered completely. Yet Lily had believed in the cry and believed in the unquiet spirit behind it. But women are romantic, credulous The train rocked in a rapture of motion.
Lips may dissemble, but there is no need of speech when heart meets its mate. Jack gathered her to his breast and soothed her as best he could. It was so good to look in her face and to hear her voice; her heart was so pure and her soul so lily white: her eyes like violets wet with the morning dew....
A hum of shrill voices reverberated against the low ceiling, leaving Lily shut out in a little circle of silence. She felt a sudden pang of profound loneliness. She had lost the sense of time, and it seemed to her as though she had not spoken to any one for days. Her eyes sought the faces about her, craving a responsive glance, some sign of an intuition of her trouble.
For I remembered how the spearmint had smelled in the garden when Stillman Dane and I stepped on it in the dark and how bright the moon was, and I knew nobody could be unhappy very long. "I telephoned for a carriage," said Aunt Elizabeth. "There it is." She and mother were going down the stairs, and suddenly I felt I couldn't have her go like that. "Oh, Aunt Aunt Lily!" I called. "Stop!
And amidst all this ingenuous prattle there came flashes of a quick intellect, a lively fancy, nay, even a poetry of expression or of sentiment. It might be the talk of a child, but certainly not of a silly child. But as soon as the dance was over, the little ones again gathered round Lily.
They lived there, a score of them, in a dark well among the lily pads, where a cold spring bubbled up from the bottom; and their moods and humors were a perpetual source of worry or amusement, according to the humor of the fisherman himself. For days at a time they would lie in the deep shade of the lily pads in stupid or sullen indifference. Then nothing tempted them.
Doctor Smalley, making rounds in a nearby hospital and answering the emergency call, found her lying on her bed, fully conscious and in great pain, while her husband bent over her in seeming agony of mind. She had broken her leg. He sent Doyle out during the setting. It was a principle of his to keep agonized husbands out of the room. Life had beaten Lily Cardew.
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