The loving attentions of the gentleman having improved our notion of the boy, we found ourselves craving the slightest association.
the reverend everly thomas
With this new-established prince.
roger bevins iii
Soon the line of people waiting to speak to the lad ran down the path as far back as the tan sandstone home of Everfield.
hans vollman
XXVII.
I will be brief.
jane ellis
I doubt it.
mrs. abigail blass
Mrs. Blass, please. Everyone will get a— the reverend everly thomas
“Once at the Christmastide Papa took us to a wonderful village festival.” Ugh.
mrs. abigail blass
Please don’t crowd. Simply stay in line. All will be accommodated.
hans vollman
She yips and yips and must always be first. In all things. How, please tell me, does she merit such— mrs. abigail blass
You could learn a thing or two from her, Mrs. Blass. Look at her posture.
hans vollman
How calm she remains.
the reverend everly thomas
How clean her clothing is kept.
roger bevins iii
Gentlemen?
If I may?
Once at the Christmastide Papa took us to a wonderful village festival. Above a meatshop doorway hung a marvelous canopy of carcasses: deer with the entrails pulled up and out and wired to the outside of the bodies like tremendous bright-red garlands; pheasants and drakes hung head-down, wings spread by use of felt-covered wires, the colors of which matched the respective feathers (it was done most skillfully); twin pigs stood on either side of the doorway with game hens mounted upon them like miniature riders. All of it bedraped in greenery and hung with candles. I wore white. I was a beautiful child in white, long rope of hair hanging down my back, and I would willfully swing it, just so. I hated to leave, and threw a tantrum. To assuage me, Papa bought a deer and let me assist him in strapping it to the rear of the carriage. Even now, I can see it: the countryside scrolling out behind us in the near-evening fog, the limp deer dribbling behind its thin blood-trail, stars blinking on, creeks running and popping beneath us as we lurched over groaning bridges of freshcut timber, proceeding homeward through the gathering— jane ellis
Ugh.
mrs. abigail blass
I felt myself a new species of child. Not a boy (most assuredly) but neither a (mere) girl. That skirt-bound race perpetually moving about serving tea had nothing to do with me.
I had such high hopes, you see.
The boundaries of the world seemed vast. I would visit Rome, Paris, Constantinople. Underground cafés presented in my mind where, crushed against wet walls, a (handsome, generous) friend and I sat discussing—many things. Deep things, new ideas. Strange green lights shone in the streets, the sea lapped nearby against greasy tilted moorings; there was trouble afoot, a revolution, into which my friend and I must— Well, as is often the case, my hopes were…not realized. My husband was not handsome and was not generous. He was a bore. Was not rough with me but neither was he tender. We did not go to Rome or Paris or Constantinople, but only back and forth, endlessly, to Fairfax, to visit his aged mother. He did not seem to see me, but only endeavored to possess me; would wiggle his little roach of a mustache at me whenever he found me (as he so often found me) “silly.” I would say something that I felt had truth and value in it, regarding, for example, his failure to get ahead in his profession (he was a complainer, always fancying himself the victim of some conspiracy, who, finding himself thus disrespected, would pick some trivial fight and soon be sacked) but he need only wiggle that mustache and pronounce mine “a woman’s view of the thing” and—that was that. I was dismissed. To hear him bragging about the impression he had made on some minor functionary with a “witty” remark, and to have been there, and heard that remark, and noticed the functionary and his wife barely able to refrain from laughing in the face of this pompous little nobody was…trying. I had been that beautiful child in white, you see, Constantinople, Paris, and Rome in her heart, who had not known, at that time, that she was of “an inferior species,” a “mere” woman. And then, of an evening, to have him shoot me that certain look (I knew it well) that meant “Brace yourself, madam, I will soon be upon you, all hips and tongue, little mustache having seemingly reproduced itself so as to be able to cover every entry point, so to speak, and afterward I will be upon you again, fishing for a compliment” was more than I could bear.
Then the children came.
The children—yes. Three marvelous girls.
In those girls I found my Rome, my Paris, my Constantinople.
He has no interest in them at all, except he likes to use them to prop himself up in public. He disciplines this one too harshly for some minor infraction, dismisses that one’s timidly offered opinion, lectures loudly to all regarding some obvious fact (“You see, girls, the moon hangs up there among the stars”) as if he has just that instant discovered it—then glances around to judge what effect his manliness is having on passers-by.