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Most people who have the narrative gift that great and rare endowment have with it the defect of telling their choice things over the same way every time, and this injures them and causes them to sound stale and wearisome after several repetitions; but it was not so with the Paladin, whose art was of a finer sort; it was more stirring and interesting to hear him tell about a battle the tenth time than it was the first time, because he did not tell it twice the same way, but always made a new battle of it and a better one, with more casualties on the enemy's side each time, and more general wreck and disaster all around, and more widows and orphans and suffering in the neighborhood where it happened.
"But it was the fortune of war! the fortune of war, and a cruel fortune it is at the best!" The Lady de Tilly pressed her hand to her bosom to suppress the rising emotion. "Alas, Chevalier! poor widows! I feel all they suffered. War is indeed a cruel fortune, as I too have had reason to learn." "And what became of the poor women, godfather?"
There is another subject for a picture for you, my friend Claude: but your gayer fancy will prefer the scene just as you are sketching it now, as still and bright as if this coast had never seen the bay darkened with the grey columns of the waterspouts, stalking across the waves before the northern gale; and the tiny herring-boats fleeing from their nets right for the breakers, hoping more mercy even from those iron walls of rock than from the pitiless howling waste of spray behind them; and that merry beach beside the town covered with shrieking women and old men casting themselves on the pebbles in fruitless agonies of prayer, as corpse after corpse swept up at the feet of wife and child, till in one case alone a single dawn saw upwards of sixty widows and orphans weeping over those who had gone out the night before in the fulness of strength and courage.
"I will tell you my theory, Mercy!" Christina went on. "The lady is the widow of an Indian officer perhaps a colonel. Some of their widows are left very poor, though, their husbands having been in the service of their country, they think no small beer of themselves!
For his house over his head he had gratitude. For his Bible and his spiritual books he had gratitude. For his opportunities of reading and study, as also for ten o'clock in the morning when the widows and orphans of King's Cliffe came to his window, and so on. A grateful heart feeds itself to a still greater gratitude on everything that comes to it.
The young maidens marched before him sounding their cymbals and other instruments of music. All the tribe rejoiced; and when Khaled appeared, he distributed clothing to the widows and orphans, and invited his companions and friends to the feast he was preparing for his wedding. All the Arabs of the country came in a crowd to the marriage.
From that date the Government of India decided "to allow the practice," as recognised and encouraged by the Hindoo religion, except in cases of compulsion, drugging, widows under sixteen, and proved pregnancy. The police natives were to be present, and to report every case.
Ivy's been after me agin to send him to the Widows and Orphans' Home. She says she can git him in, and they'll learn him to read and write." "Well, he ain't goin'! I guess as long as I'm a payin' the grocery bills, I got a right to say who'll eat the food! What's that you are hidin'?" Maria, who had been attempting to remove something surreptitiously from the table, looked apologetic.
And her sympathy manifested itself in practical ways those of the woman confidante of every love affair since the world began. Why should the Princess Zobraska not interest herself in some of the philanthropic schemes of which the house in Portland Place was the headquarters? There was one, a Forlorn Widows' Fund, the presidency of which she would be willing to resign in favour of the Princess.
Where rich Pharisees adopt a standard of life that can only be maintained by devouring widows' houses and oppressing the orphan, the needs of the hour bring to the front a man who will swing the pendulum to the other side. When society plays tennis with truth, and pitch-and-toss with all the expressions of love and friendship, certain ones will confine their speech to yea, yea, and nay, nay.
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