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"'Shh-h-h darling That's it, rest quiet." Suddenly Miss Worte flung up one arm about Sadie Barnet's neck, pressing her head downward until their faces touched. "Dee Dee darling, you you hurt." "You won't never leave me, Sadie, like you said you would? You won't leave me alone in the dark, Sadie?" "No, no, my darling; you know I won't, never, never."
With the sudden sting of heat finally across her palm, reddening it, Miss Worte flung wide her arms and her head backward, and her voice tore out without restraint. "God! God! God!" And she fell to trembling so that her knees gave way under her and she crouched on the floor with her face bared to the ceiling, rocking herself back and forth, beating her fists against her flat breasts. "God! God!
Miss Worte aimed for the eye of the needle, moistening the end of the thread with her tongue and her fluttering fingers close to her eyes. "God! I I just 'ain't got the eyes no more. I can't see, Sadie; I can't find the needle."
I know not what it is, but there is something in the writer's highly finished style that reminds me of Mendelssohn. It would almost do for the words of one of his celebrated "Lieder ohne Worte": "DEAR MISS MARIA, I hasten to acknowledge the receipt of your kind note with the inclosure for which I return my best thanks.
All her life had been passed under the shadow of the grand old Dom Kerk; she had played bo-peep behind the columns and arcades of the ruined, moss-grown cloisters; had slipped up and fallen down the steps leading to the grachts; had once or twice, in this very early life, been fished out of those same slimy, stagnant waters; had wandered under the great lindens in the Baan, and gazed curiously up at the stork's nest in the tree by the Veterinary School; had pattered about the hollow-sounding streets in her noisy wooden klompen; had danced and laughed, had quarrelled and wept, and fought and made friends again, to the tune of the silver chimes high up in the Dom chimes that were sometimes old Nederlandsche hymns, sometimes Mendelssohn's melodies and tender "Lieder ohne Worte."
Barnard's collection in general inclined to the severely classical, but we disinterred from the heap a few lighter works of an old-fashioned kind, including a volume of Mendelssohn's Lieder ohne Worte, and with one of these Miss Bellingham made trial of her skill, playing it with excellent taste and quite adequate execution.
Years had dried on her face, leaving ravages, and through her high-power spectacles her pale eyes might have been staring through film and straining to see. "Please, Dee Dee!" Miss Barnet held backward, a little singsong note of appeal running through her voice. Miss Worte jerked forward toward the open door. April dusk, the color of cold dish-water, showed through it.
They turned into a narrow aisle of street lined with unbroken rows of steep, narrow-faced houses. Miss Worte withdrew her arm sharply and plunged ahead, her lips wry and on the verge of tremoling. "When a girl gets twenty, like you, it ain't none of my put-in no more.
Off went the aunt, leaving the niece stirred into an absolute desire, instead of spending the sensible morning, to take up 'Near Neighbours', and throw herself into an easy-chair; and when she had conscientiously resisted that temptation, her pen would hover over 'Hilda's Experiences', even when she had actually written 'Dearest Mamma. She found she was in no frame to write such a letter as would be a comfort to her mother, so she gave that up, and made her sole assertion of liberty the working out of a tough double equation in Colenso, which actually came right, and put her in such good humour that she was no longer afraid of drumming the poor piano to death and Aunt Ada upstairs to distraction, but ventured on learning one of the Lieder ohne Worte; and when her Aunt Ada came down and complimented her on the sounds that had ascended, she was complacent enough to write a very cheerful letter, whilst her aunt was busied with her own.
Miss Worte nodded and closed her eyes as if she would press back the tears and let them drip inward. "Yeh, I know. I know." "Sure! Here, lemme do it, Dee Dee. I won't stay out late, dearie, if your eyes are bad. We're only going out for a little spin." Miss Worte lay back on the chintz bedspread and turned her face to the wall.
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