Victorian Short Stories

Victorian Short Stories

The Project Gutenberg eBook, Victorian Short Stories, by Various
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Title: Victorian Short Stories
Author: Various
Release Date: March 16, 2005 [eBook #15381]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK VICTORIAN
SHORT STORIES***
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VICTORIAN SHORT STORIES
Stories of Courtship

CONTENTS
ANGELA, An Inverted Love Story, by William Schwenk Gilbert
THE PARSON'S DAUGHTER OF OXNEY COLNE, by Anthony
Trollope
ANTHONY GARSTIN'S COURTSHIP, by Hubert Crackanthorpe
A LITTLE GREY GLOVE, by George Egerton (Mary Chavelita
[Dunne] Bright)
THE WOMAN BEATER, by Israel Zangwill

ANGELA

An Inverted Love Story
By William Schwenk Gilbert
(_The Century Magazine_, September 1890)
I am a poor paralysed fellow who, for many years past, has been
confined to a bed or a sofa. For the last six years I have occupied a
small room, giving on to one of the side canals of Venice, and having
no one about me but a deaf old woman, who makes my bed and attends
to my food; and there I eke out a poor income of about thirty pounds a
year by making water-colour drawings of flowers and fruit (they are the
cheapest models in Venice), and these I send to a friend in London,
who sells them to a dealer for small sums. But, on the whole, I am
happy and content.
It is necessary that I should describe the position of my room rather
minutely. Its only window is about five feet above the water of the
canal, and above it the house projects some six feet, and overhangs the
water, the projecting portion being supported by stout piles driven into
the bed of the canal. This arrangement has the disadvantage (among
others) of so limiting my upward view that I am unable to see more
than about ten feet of the height of the house immediately opposite to
me, although, by reaching as far out of the window as my infirmity will
permit, I can see for a considerable distance up and down the canal,
which does not exceed fifteen feet in width. But, although I can see but
little of the material house opposite, I can see its reflection upside down
in the canal, and I take a good deal of inverted interest in such of its
inhabitants as show themselves from time to time (always upside down)
on its balconies and at its windows.
When I first occupied my room, about six years ago, my attention was
directed to the reflection of a little girl of thirteen or so (as nearly as I
could judge), who passed every day on a balcony just above the upward
range of my limited field of view. She had a glass of flowers and a
crucifix on a little table by her side; and as she sat there, in fine weather,
from early morning until dark, working assiduously all the time, I
concluded that she earned her living by needle-work. She was certainly
an industrious little girl, and, as far as I could judge by her
upside-down reflection, neat in her dress and pretty. She had an old
mother, an invalid, who, on warm days, would sit on the balcony with
her, and it interested me to see the little maid wrap the old lady in

shawls, and bring pillows for her chair, and a stool for her feet, and
every now and again lay down her work and kiss and fondle the old
lady for half a minute, and then take up her work again.
Time went by, and as the little maid grew up, her reflection grew down,
and at last she was quite a little woman of, I suppose, sixteen or
seventeen. I can only work for a couple of hours or so in the brightest
part of the day, so I had plenty of time on my hands in which to watch
her movements, and sufficient imagination to weave a little romance
about her, and to endow her with a beauty which, to a great extent, I
had to take for granted. I saw--or fancied that I could see--that she
began to take an interest in my reflection (which, of course, she could
see as I could see hers); and one day, when it appeared to me that she
was looking right at it--that is to say when her reflection appeared to be
looking right at me--I tried the desperate experiment of nodding to her,
and to