books 05 Oct 2005 05:43 am
From Precious Bane by Mary Webb
Prue is a young girl with a hare-lip, long before they understood what caused it, in old Scotland/Ireland (?). She has a sad life in some ways and yet seems to have such an intact, thriving even, apprectiation and observation for the powerful beauty around her, through her. She has sought some respite from the hardness of her life in a quiet, solitudnal place in the attic during this passage:
“The attic was close under the thatch, and there were many nests under the eaves, and a continual twittering of swallows. The attic window was in a big gable, and the roof on one side went right down to the ground, with a tall chimney standing up above the roof tree. Somewhere among the beams of the attic was a wild bees’ nest, and you could hear them making a sleepy soft murmuring, and morning and evening you could watch them going in a line to the mere for water. So it being very still there, with the fair shadows of the apple trees peopling the orchard outside, that was void, as were the near meadows, Gideon being in the far field making hay-cocks, which I also should have been doing, there came to me, I cannot tell whence, a most powerful sweetness that never came to me afore. It was not religious, like the goodness of a text heard at preaching. It was beyond that. It was as if some creature made all of light had come on a sudden from a great way off, and nestled in my bosom. On all things there came a fair, lovely look, as if a different air stood over them. It is a look that seems ready to come sometimes on those gloomy mornings after rain….”
Great book. Compelling protagonist. I can’t wait to see what becomes of her.
