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Updated: May 13, 2025
Before me, across back yards, leafless trees, and a litter of packing-cases and straw, rose up a dark rampart of houses, in the midst of it a lit window. I saw a poorly furnished sitting-room a table with a sewing machine, a paraffin lamp, a chair with an antimacassar. A man in his shirt sleeves sat there by the table, smoking a pipe.
The air of those rooms was saturated with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourishing, so succulent that I could not enter them without a sort of greedy enjoyment, particularly on those first mornings, chilly still, of the Easter holidays, when I could taste it more fully, because I had just arrived then at Combray: before I went in to wish my aunt good day I would be kept waiting a little time in the outer room, where the sun, a wintry sun still, had crept in to warm itself before the fire, lighted already between its two brick sides and plastering all the room and everything in it with a smell of soot, making the room like one of those great open hearths which one finds in the country, or one of the canopied mantelpieces in old castles under which one sits hoping that in the world outside it is raining or snowing, hoping almost for a catastrophic deluge to add the romance of shelter and security to the comfort of a snug retreat; I would turn to and fro between the prayer-desk and the stamped velvet armchairs, each one always draped in its crocheted antimacassar, while the fire, baking like a pie the appetising smells with which the air of the room, was thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny freshness of the morning had already 'raised' and started to 'set, puffed them and glazed them and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible though not impalpable country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which, barely waiting to savour the crustier, more delicate, more respectable, but also drier smells of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the patterned wall-paper I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered quilt.
I could hear the muttered French still going on, but I did not know where the coal was and could not fetch it myself. I must break in upon her rhapsodizing. "Delle Boulanger!" I called from my open door. "Delle Boulanger!" The talking stopped. In a few moments Delle Josephine appeared, calm and smiling, minus the hat and the antimacassar. "Coming, monsieur"
"I have had no time to sleep. I shall sleep to-night." He leaned back in the small green arm-chair and rested his head against a coarse netted antimacassar. His eyes caught Regina's, but she was looking down thoughtfully at her hands, which lay in her lap together but not clasped. Peasant women often do that; their hands are resting then, after hard work, and they are thinking of nothing.
David, with a sigh, returned the crochet antimacassar carefully to its place on the chair back. "Eric, last night, to be honest, I thought that, if I found I could not help this girl, it would be the best thing that could happen, as far as you were concerned. But since I have seen her well, I would give my right hand if I could do anything for her.
Then he handed the bowl, from which once again the blue smoke curled upwards, to Miss Holmes, and gently and gracefully let the antimacassar fall over it and her head, which it draped as a wedding veil might do. A few seconds later she threw off the antimacassar and cast the bowl, in which the fire was now out, on to the floor.
But the shilling would almost certainly suffice. Had not the donative antimacassar already established a claim upon the Treachers' gratitude? Again, the stars in their courses seemed to be fighting for Miss Gabriel's design. For as the two ladies climbed the hill on Mr.
The straight-backed chairs upholstered in yellow and brown silk stood close sentry under the prints, in their antimacassar uniforms. Two yellow and brown arm-chairs guarded the white faience stove. The sofa against the wall frowned sternly at the whatnot on the opposite side. Andrew's orderly soul felt aghast at this mathematical tidiness. Even the old slovenly chaos was better.
The very old lady in the antimacassar touched Ann Veronica's arm suddenly, and said, in a deep, arch voice: "Talking of love again; spring again, love again. Oh! you young people!"
There was a loud tapping at the door. Bernadine threw an antimacassar half over the box, but he was too late. De Grost and Hagon had crossed the threshold. The woman stood like some dumb creature. Hagon, transfixed, stood with his eyes riveted upon Bernadine. His face was distorted with passion; he seemed like a man beside himself with fury.
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