Sadness
“A large, dun-coloured house, enclosed by a walled-in garden” of “several acres in extent” stood on Campden Hill. “On the April morning” of which that passage was written, the whole place “wore a dejected and dismantled appearance;” while “in the windows and on the outer wall of the garden” were “fixed black and white posters, announcing a sale of effects to take place on that day week.” “The air of desolation which hung about the house” had communicated itself “in some vague manner to the garden,” where “the trees were bright with blossom”, or “misty with tender green of young leaves.” This imagery produces “the effect of sadness.”
Tender beauty
The young woman “paused at last in her walk,” and “stood a moment in a listening attitude, her face uplifted to the sky.” Gertrude Lorimer was “not a beautiful woman,” and “such good looks as she possessed varied from day to day, almost from hour to hour.” However, “a certain air of character and distinction clung to her” through all her “varying moods, and redeemed her form a possible charge of plainness.” She had “an arching, unfashionable forehead, like those of Leonardo da Vinci’s women,” “short-sighted eyes,” “an expressive mouth and chin.” Her face was pale and “worn with recent sorrow,” thus she looked “perhaps, older than her twenty-three years.” This imagery evokes interest, for Gertrude is the main character and this is the first time readers meet her. It is also supposed to convey her sorrow, for a stroll she takes in that garden could be her last one, for they are selling both the house and the garden.
The life after
“Lunch was set out on the great table” in the dining-room. “Old Kettle, the butler” waited on them “as usual,” and “there was nothing in the nature of the viands to bring home to them the fact of their alerted circumstances.”It was “a dismal meal, crowned with sorrow’s crown of sorrow, the remembrance of happier things.” They all seemed to see “the dead father” in the vacant place. He used to be so “charming, gay, debonair,” that man was “the life of the party.” Their father was a man “as brilliant as he had been unsatisfactory, as little able to cope with the hard facts of existence as he had been reckless in attacking them.” This imagery shows how much the women miss their father. They haven’t become accustomed to the fact that he is no longer among them.
