Part 1 (1/2)
Theo.
by Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett.
MRS. BURNETT'S NOVELETTES.
_Mrs. Frances Hodgson Burnett is one of the most charming among American writers. There is a crisp and breezy freshness about her delightful novelettes that is rarely found in contemporaneous fiction, and a close adherence to nature, as well, that renders them doubly delicious. Of all Mrs. Burnett's romances and shorter stories those which first attracted public attention to her wonderful gifts are still her best. She has done more mature work, but never anything half so pleasing and enjoyable.
These masterpieces of Mrs. Burnett's genius are all love stories of the brightest, happiest and most entertaining description; lively, cheerful love stories in which the shadow cast is infinitesimally small compared with the stretch of sunlight; and the interest is always maintained at full head without apparent effort and without resorting to the conventional and hackneyed devices of most novelists, devices that the experienced reader sees through at once. No more sprightly novel than ”Theo” could be desired, and a sweeter or more beautiful romance than ”Kathleen” does not exist in print, while ”Pretty Polly Pemberton”
possesses besides its sprightliness a special interest peculiar to itself, and ”Miss Crespigny” would do honor to the pen of any novelist, no matter how celebrated. ”Lindsay's Luck,” ”A Quiet Life,” ”The Tide on the Moaning Bar” and ”Jarl's Daughter” are all worthy members of the same collection of Mrs. Burnett's earlier, most original, best and freshest romances. Everybody should read these exceptionally bright, clever and fascinating novelettes, for they occupy a niche by themselves in the world's literature and are decidedly the most agreeable, charming and interesting books that can be found anywhere._
”THEO.”
CHAPTER I.
PREPARING FOR A JOURNEY.
A heavy curtain of yellow fog rolled and drifted over the waste of beach, and rolled and drifted over the sea, and beneath the curtain the tide was coming in at Downport, and two pair of eyes were watching it.
Both pair of eyes watched it from the same place, namely, from the shabby sitting-room of the shabby residence of David North, Esq., lawyer, and both watched it without any motive, it seemed, unless that the dull gray waves and their dull moaning were not out of accord with the watchers' feelings. One pair of eyes--a youthful, discontented black pair--watched it steadily, never turning away, as their owner stood in the deep, old-fas.h.i.+oned window, with both elbows resting upon the broad sill; but the other pair only glanced up now and then, almost furtively, from the piece of work Miss Pamela North, spinster, held in her slender, needle-worn fingers.
There had been a long silence in the shabby sitting-room for some time--and there was not often silence there. Three rampant, strong-lunged boys, and as many talkative school-girls, made the house of David North, Esq., rather a questionable paradise. But to-day, being half-holiday, the boys were out on the beach digging miraculous sand-caves, and getting up miraculous piratical battles and excursions with the bare-legged urchins so numerous in the fishermen's huts; and Joanna and Elinor had been absent all day, so the room left to Theo and her elder sister was quiet for once.
It was Miss Pamela herself who broke the stillness. ”Theo,” she said, with some elder-sister-like asperity, ”it appears to me that you might find something better to do than to stand with your arms folded, as you have been doing for the last half hour. There is a whole basketful of the boys' socks that need mending and--”
”Pam!” interrupted Theo, desperately, turning over her shoulder a face more like the face of some young Spanish gipsy than that of a poor English solicitor's daughter. ”Pam, I should really like to know if life is ever worth having, if everybody's life is like ours, or if there are really such people as we read of in books.”
”You have been reading some ridiculous novel again,” said Pamela, sententiously. ”If you would be a little more sensible, and less romantic, Theodora, it would be a great deal better for all of us. What have you been reading?”
The capable gipsy face turned to the window again half-impatiently.
”I have been reading nothing to-day,” was the answer. ”I should think you knew that--on Sat.u.r.day, with everything to do, and the shopping to attend to, and mamma scolding every one because the butcher's bill can't be paid. I was reading Jane Eyre, though, last night. Did you ever read Jane Eyre, Pamela?”
”I always have too much to do in attending to my duty,” said Pamela, ”without wasting my time in that manner. I should never find time to read Jane Eyre in twenty years. I wish I could.”
”I wish you could, too,” said Theo, meditatively. ”I wish there was no such thing as duty. Duty always appears to me to be the very thing we don't want to do.”
”Just at present, it is your duty to attend to those socks of Ralph and Arthur's,” put in Pamela, dryly. ”Perhaps you had better see to it at once, as tea will be ready soon, and you will have to cut bread for the children.”
The girl turned away from the window with a sigh. Her discussions on subjects of this kind always ended in the same unsatisfactory manner; and really her young life was far from being a pleasant one. As the next in age to Pamela, though so many years lay between them, a hundred petty cares fell on her girlish shoulders, and tried her patience greatly with their weight, sometimes. And in the hard family struggle for everyday necessities there was too much of commonplace reality to admit of much poetry. The wearisome battling with life's needs had left the mother, as it leaves thousands of women, haggard, careworn, and not too smooth in disposition. There was no romance about her. She had fairly forgotten her girlhood, it seemed to lie so far behind; and even the unconquerable mother-love, that gave rise to her anxieties, had a touch of hardness about it. And Pamela had caught something of the sharp, hara.s.sed spirit too. But Theo had an odd secret sympathy for Pamela, though her sister never suspected it. Pamela had a love-story, and in Theo's eyes this one touch of forlorn romance was the silver lining to many clouds. Ten years ago, when Pamela had been a pretty girl, she had had a lover--poor Arthur Brunwalde--Theo always mentally designated him; and only a week before her wedding-day, death had ended her love-story forever. Poor Pamela! was Theo's thought: to have loved like Jane Eyre, and Agnes Wickfield, and Lord Bacon, and to have been so near release from the bread-and-b.u.t.ter cutting, and squabbling, and then to have lost all.
Poor Pamela, indeed! So the lovely, impulsive, romance-loving younger sister cherished an odd interest in Pamela's thin, sharp face, and unsympathizing voice, and in picturing the sad romance of her youth, was always secretly regardful of the past in her trials of the present.
As she turned over the socks in the basket, she glanced up now and then at Pamela's face, which was bent over her work. It had been a pretty face, but now there were faint lines upon it here and there; the features once delicate were sharpened, the blue eyes were faded, and the blonde hair faded also. It was a face whose youth had been its beauty, and its youth had fled with Pamela North's happiness. Her life had ended in its prime; nay, not ended, for the completion had never come--it was to be a work unfinished till its close. Poor Arthur Brunwalde!
A few more silent st.i.tches, and then the work slipped from Theo's fingers into her lap, and she lifted her big, inconsistent eyes again.
”Pam,” she said, ”were you ever at Lady Throckmorton's?”