Moths by Ouida — page 242: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

238 MOTHS. \ lighted before it, and the daylight, gray and subdued without, as it is,so often here, was very faint! within. ‘¢ After all, what is the use of my copying it?’ she thought, with a certain bitterness. ‘‘My husband would tell me, if I cared for such an old thing, to send some painter from Munich to do it for me; and perhaps he would beright. Itis the only mission we have. to spend money.” It is a mission that most women think the highest and most blest on earth; but it did not satisfy Vere. She seemed to her- self so useless, so stupidly, vapidly, frivolously useless; and her nature was one to want work, and noble work. She sat still, with her hands resting on her knees, and the color and oils lying on the stone floor beside her untouched. She looked at the dark bent figure of the old peasant near, who had set a little candle before a side-altar and was praying fer- vently. She was a gray-headed, brown, wrinkled creature, dressed in the old Styrian way. She looked rapt and peaceful as she prayed. When she rose, Vere spoke to her, and the old woman answered willingly. Yes, she was very old; yes, she had always dwelt in Aussee; her husband had worked in the salt-mines and been killed in them; her sons had both died, one at Koniggratz, one in a snow-storm upon Dachstein: that was all long ago; she had some grandchildren, they were in the mines and on the timber-rafts; one had broken his leg going = * —=r*,4_ 4% down the Danube with wood; she had gone to him, he was only — a boy; she could not get him home any other way, so she had rowed him back in a little flat-boat, rowed and steered herself; | it was winter, the Traun flood was strong, but they had come home safe; now he was well again, but he had seen the soldiers in Vienna, and a soldier he would be; there was no keeping him any more on the timber-rafts. Vienna was very fine; yes, but herself she thought Aussee was finer; she had lighted that taper for her boy Ulrich; he was going to the army to-morrow; she had begged the saints to watch over him; the saints would let her see them all again one day. Had she much tolive on? No; the young men gave her what they could, and she spun and knitted, and life was cheap at Aussee, and then one could always pray, that was so much, and the saints did answer, not always, of course, because there were so many people speaking to them all at once, but yet often: God was good. Vere took her by the hand, the rough gnarled hand like a bit of old oak bough, that had rowed the boat all the way from Vienna, and, having no money with her, slipped into it some gold porte-bonheurs off her wrist. ‘If I stay I will come and see you. Tell me the way to find your house.” ‘*T shall never see you again,” said the old woman with swim- ming eyes. ‘* One does not see Our Lady twice face to face till one gets up to Heaven.” And she went away wondering, feeling the gold circlets on her arm, and telling her gossips, as they knit- ted in the street, that she had seen either Our Lady or Saint Elizabeth—one of the two it must surely have been. f., When she had gone, leaving her little taper, like a glow-worm, (efelaal cboo S) com ve AS