She read a few stories, then put the book back in its place with a resentful shove. Being wholly without the knowledge for which Eve pined, the stories were stupid and meaningless to her. She took down a thick volume bound in ragged calf. On the back was one large word, “Byron.” The leaves of this book were spotted too, but on the leaves were poems, and she loved poetry. Even when it was uninteresting she enjoyed the rhythm. She returned to the window-seat, and child-like, looked at the pictures first. The portrait of Byron she fell in love with immediately, and knocking her composite off its pedestal, lifted that proud passionate face to the station of honour.
There was an immense-eyed picture of the Bride of Abydos which she thought looked like Rosita, and one of the Corsair dashing in upon his segregated love:—
“My own Medora, sure thy song is sad!”
Francesca and Paola gazed at each other across a table:—
“That day no further leaf we did uncover.”
A castle which looked older than the book loomed massively from the page:—
“Lake Leman lies by Chillon’s walls.”
Never having heard of Byron, she was unable to enlarge her knowledge at once with his most celebrated creations; but she liked the looks of Conrad and Medora, and plunged into their fortunes. She read every line of the poem, and when she had finished she read it over again. Then she stared at the breakers booming to the rocks on the opposite horn of the crescent, her eyes expanded and filled with a wholly new light. She might be unlettered in woman’s wisdom, but the transcendent passion, the pounding vitality of the poet, carried straight to intuition. The insidious elixir drifted into the crystal stream. That incomparable objectivity sang the song of songs as distinctly into her brain as had it gathered the sounds of life for twenty years. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes were bright. She felt as if she were a musical instrument upon which some divine unknown music were vibrating; and as she was wont to feel in the tower—but with a substratum of something quite different. She was filled with a soft tumult which she did not in the least comprehend, and happy. She looked almost beautiful.
After a time she read “The Bride of Abydos,” and dreamed over that until she discovered that she was hungry. She had forgotten to order dinner, and went to the kitchen to beg a crust.
Lola, large, unwhaleboned, vibrating porcinely with every motion, her brown coarsely moulded face beaming with good nature, her little black eyes full of temper and kindness, her black hair in a neat small knot, an unspotted brown and yellow calico garment secluding her person, stood at a sink in a kitchen as brilliantly clean as a varnished boot. Even the corners shone like glass, Patience often observed with a sigh. The two tables were scrubbed daily. The stove was black, the windows white. Not a pan nor a dish save those in the sink was in sight.