The
lilacs were all blooming in the yards, and the smell of them after the
rain, of the new leaves and the blossoms together, blew into my face with
a sort of bitter sweetness. I tramped through the puddles and under the
showery trees, mourning for Marguerite Gauthier as if she had died only
yesterday, sighing with the spirit of 1840, which had sighed so much, and
which had reached me only that night, across long years and several
languages, through the person of an infirm old actress. The idea is one
that no circumstances can frustrate. Wherever and whenever that piece is
put on, it is April.
IV
HOW well I remember the stiff little parlor where I used to wait for Lena:
the hard horsehair furniture, bought at some auction sale, the long
mirror, the fashion-plates on the wall. If I sat down even for a moment I
was sure to find threads and bits of colored silk clinging to my clothes
after I went away. Lena's success puzzled me. She was so easy-going; had
none of the push and self-assertiveness that get people ahead in business.
She had come to Lincoln, a country girl, with no introductions except to
some cousins of Mrs. Thomas who lived there, and she was already making
clothes for the women of "the young married set." She evidently had great
natural aptitude for her work. She knew, as she said, "what people looked
well in." She never tired of poring over fashion books.
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