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Pale Horse Pale Rider
SHE was a spirited-looking young woman, with dark curly hair cropped and parted on the side, a short oval face with straight eyebrows, and a large curved mouth.
A round white collar rose from the neck of her tightly buttoned black basque, and round white caffs set off lazy hands with dimples in them.
Lying at ease in the folds of her flounced skirt which gathered around to a bustle. She sat thus, forever in the pose of being photographed.
A motionless image in her dark walnut frame with silver oak leaves in the corners, her smiling gray eyes following one about the room.
It was a reckless indifferent smile, rather disturbing to her nieces Maria and Miranda. Quite often they wondered why every older person.
who looked at the picture said, “How lovely”; and why everyone who had known her thought her so beautiful and charming.
There was a kind of faded merriment in the background, with its vase of flowers and draped velvet curtains, the kind of vase and the kind of curtains no one would have anymore.
The clothes were not even romantic looking, but merely most terribly out of fashion, and the whole affair was associated, in the minds of the little girls, with dead things:
The smell of Grandmother’s medicated cigarettes and her furniture that smelled of beeswax, and her old-fashioned perfume, Orange Flower.
The woman in the picture had been Aunt Amy, but she was only a ghost in a frame and a sad, pretty story from old times. She had been beautiful, much loved, unhappy, and she had died young.
Maria and Miranda, aged twelve and eight years, knew they were young, though they felt they had lived a long time.
If Maria and Miranda were very quiet, and touched nothing until it was offered, they might sit by her at these times, or come and go.
There was a tacit understanding that her grief was strictly her own, and must not be noticed or mentioned.
The little girls examined the objects, one by one, and did not find them, in themselves, impressive.
Such dowdy little wreaths and necklaces, some of them made of pearly shells; such motheaten bunches of pink ostrich feathers for the hair; rach clumsy big breast pins and bracelets of gold and colored enamel; such silly-looking combs, standing up on tall teeth capped with seed pearls and French paste.
Miranda, without knowing why, felt melancholy.
It seemed such a pity that these faded things, these yellowed long gloves and misshapen satin slippers, these broad ribbons cracking where they were folded, should have been all those vanished girls had to decorate themselves with.
And where were they now, those girls, and the boys in the odd-looking collars? The young men seemed even more unreal than the girls, with their high-buttoned coats, their puffy neckties, their waxed mustaches, their waving thick hatr combed carefully over their foreheads.
Who could have taken them seriously, looking like that?
There were points of beauty by which one was judged severely.
First, a beauty must be tall; whatever color the eyes, the hair must be dark, the darker the better; the skin must be pale and smooth.
Lightness and swifmess of movement were important points.
A beauty must be a good dancer, superb on horseback, with a serene manner, an amiable gaiety tempered with dignity at all hours.
Beautiful teeth and hands, of course, and over and above all this, some mysterious crown of enchantment that attracted and held the heart. It was all very exciting and discouraging.
Miranda persisted through her childhood in believing, in spite of her smallness, thinness, her little snubby nose saddled with freckles, her speckled gray eyes and habitual tantrums, that by some miracle she would grow into a tall, cream-colored brunette, like cousin Isabel; she decided always to wear a trailing white satin gown.
Maria, bom sensible, had no such illusions. “We are going to take after Mamma’s family,” she said. “It’s no use, we are. We’ll never be beautiful, we’ll always have freckles. And you,” she told Miranda, “haven’t even a good disposition.”
There were points of beauty by which one was judged severely. First, a beauty must be tall; whatever color the eyes, the hair must be dark, the darker the better; the skin must be pale and smooth.
Lightness and swifmess of movement were important points. A beauty must be a good dancer, superb on horseback, with a serene manner, an amiable gaiety tempered with dignity at all hours.
Beautiful teeth and hands, of course, and over and above all this, some mysterious crown of enchantment that attracted and held the heart. It was all very exciting and discouraging.
Miranda persisted through her childhood in believing, in spite of her smallness, thinness, her little snubby nose saddled with freckles, her speckled gray eyes and habitual tantrums, that by some miracle she would grow into a tall, cream-colored brunette, like cousin Isabel; she decided always to wear a trailing white satin gown.
Maria, bom sensible, had no such illusions. “We are going to take after Mamma’s family,” she said.
“It’s no use, we are. We’ll never be beautiful, we’ll always have freckles. And you,” she told Miranda, “haven’t even a good disposition.”
| Author | Katherine Anne Porter |
| Language | English |
| Pages | 272 |
| PDF Size | 22.9 MB |
| Category | Fiction & Novel |
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Pale Horse, Pale Rider Book PDF Free Download