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Authors: Thomas Hardy
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involuntarily
accompanied by a sudden minute start, and ecstatic pressure of
the listener’s arm, side, or neck, as the position and degree
of intimacy dictated.
When anxiously regarding one who possessed her affections.
She suddenly assumed the last-mentioned bearing in the progress of the present entertainment. Her glance was directed out of the window.
Why the particulars of a young lady’s presence at a very mediocre performance were prevented from dropping into the oblivion which their intrinsic insignificance would naturally have involved — why they were remembered and individualised by herself and others through after years — was simply that she unknowingly stood, as it were, upon the extreme posterior edge of a tract in her life, in which the real meaning of Taking Thought had never been known. It was the last hour of experience she ever enjoyed with a mind entirely free from a knowledge of that labyrinth into which she stepped immediately afterwards — to continue a perplexed course along its mazes for the greater portion of twenty-nine subsequent months.
The Town Hall, in which Cytherea sat, was a building of brown stone, and through one of the windows could be seen from the interior of the room the housetops and chimneys of the adjacent street, and also the upper part of a neighbouring church spire, now in course of completion under the superintendence of Miss Graye’s father, the architect to the work.
That the top of this spire should be visible from her position in the room was a fact which Cytherea’s idling eyes had discovered with some interest, and she was now engaged in watching the scene that was being enacted about its airy summit. Round the conical stonework rose a cage of scaffolding against the blue sky, and upon this stood five men — four in clothes as white as the new erection close beneath their hands, the fifth in the ordinary dark suit of a gentleman.
The four working-men in white were three masons and a mason’s labourer. The fifth man was the architect, Mr. Graye. He had been giving directions as it seemed, and retiring as far as the narrow footway allowed, stood perfectly still.
The picture thus presented to a spectator in the Town Hall was curious and striking. It was an illuminated miniature, framed in by the dark margin of the window, the keen-edged shadiness of which emphasized by contrast the softness of the objects enclosed.
The height of the spire was about one hundred and twenty feet, and the five men engaged thereon seemed entirely removed from the sphere and experiences of ordinary human beings. They appeared little larger than pigeons, and made their tiny movements with a soft, spirit-like silentness. One idea above all others was conveyed to the mind of a person on the ground by their aspect, namely, concentration of purpose: that they were indifferent to — even unconscious of — the distracted world beneath them, and all that moved upon it. They never looked off the scaffolding.
Then one of them turned; it was Mr. Graye. Again he stood motionless, with attention to the operations of the others. He appeared to be lost in reflection, and had directed his face towards a new stone they were lifting.
‘Why does he stand like that?’ the young lady thought at length — up to that moment as listless and careless as one of the ancient Tarentines, who, on such an afternoon as this, watched from the Theatre the entry into their Harbour of a power that overturned the State.
She moved herself uneasily. ‘I wish he would come down,’ she whispered, still gazing at the skybacked picture. ‘It is so dangerous to be absent-minded up there.’
When she had done murmuring the words her father indecisively laid hold of one of the scaffold-poles, as if to test its strength, then let it go and stepped back. In stepping, his foot slipped. An instant of doubling forward and sideways, and he reeled off into the air, immediately disappearing
accompanied by a sudden minute start, and ecstatic pressure of
the listener’s arm, side, or neck, as the position and degree
of intimacy dictated.
When anxiously regarding one who possessed her affections.
She suddenly assumed the last-mentioned bearing in the progress of the present entertainment. Her glance was directed out of the window.
Why the particulars of a young lady’s presence at a very mediocre performance were prevented from dropping into the oblivion which their intrinsic insignificance would naturally have involved — why they were remembered and individualised by herself and others through after years — was simply that she unknowingly stood, as it were, upon the extreme posterior edge of a tract in her life, in which the real meaning of Taking Thought had never been known. It was the last hour of experience she ever enjoyed with a mind entirely free from a knowledge of that labyrinth into which she stepped immediately afterwards — to continue a perplexed course along its mazes for the greater portion of twenty-nine subsequent months.
The Town Hall, in which Cytherea sat, was a building of brown stone, and through one of the windows could be seen from the interior of the room the housetops and chimneys of the adjacent street, and also the upper part of a neighbouring church spire, now in course of completion under the superintendence of Miss Graye’s father, the architect to the work.
That the top of this spire should be visible from her position in the room was a fact which Cytherea’s idling eyes had discovered with some interest, and she was now engaged in watching the scene that was being enacted about its airy summit. Round the conical stonework rose a cage of scaffolding against the blue sky, and upon this stood five men — four in clothes as white as the new erection close beneath their hands, the fifth in the ordinary dark suit of a gentleman.
The four working-men in white were three masons and a mason’s labourer. The fifth man was the architect, Mr. Graye. He had been giving directions as it seemed, and retiring as far as the narrow footway allowed, stood perfectly still.
The picture thus presented to a spectator in the Town Hall was curious and striking. It was an illuminated miniature, framed in by the dark margin of the window, the keen-edged shadiness of which emphasized by contrast the softness of the objects enclosed.
The height of the spire was about one hundred and twenty feet, and the five men engaged thereon seemed entirely removed from the sphere and experiences of ordinary human beings. They appeared little larger than pigeons, and made their tiny movements with a soft, spirit-like silentness. One idea above all others was conveyed to the mind of a person on the ground by their aspect, namely, concentration of purpose: that they were indifferent to — even unconscious of — the distracted world beneath them, and all that moved upon it. They never looked off the scaffolding.
Then one of them turned; it was Mr. Graye. Again he stood motionless, with attention to the operations of the others. He appeared to be lost in reflection, and had directed his face towards a new stone they were lifting.
‘Why does he stand like that?’ the young lady thought at length — up to that moment as listless and careless as one of the ancient Tarentines, who, on such an afternoon as this, watched from the Theatre the entry into their Harbour of a power that overturned the State.
She moved herself uneasily. ‘I wish he would come down,’ she whispered, still gazing at the skybacked picture. ‘It is so dangerous to be absent-minded up there.’
When she had done murmuring the words her father indecisively laid hold of one of the scaffold-poles, as if to test its strength, then let it go and stepped back. In stepping, his foot slipped. An instant of doubling forward and sideways, and he reeled off into the air, immediately disappearing
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