The Darts of Cupid: Stories
Edith Templeton
Language: English
Pages: 320
ISBN: 1400032369
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
When Edith Templeton’s stories began appearing in The New Yorker in the late 1950s, she quickly became a favorite of the magazine’s discerning readers. Her finely honed writing, honestly drawn heroines, and distinctive themes secured her reputation.
The Dart’s of Cupid collects seven of Templeton’s stories for the first time and reintroduces one of the truly great writers of the twentieth century. In settings ranging from a decrepit Bohemian castle between the wars to London during World War II to the Italian Riviera in the 1990s, the heroines of these stories often find themselves confronting unfathomable passsions and perplexing actions by others, but they seldom feel regret.
withheld from anyone but the next of kin. I knew my only hope was Sergeant Parsons, and I decided to have another try at gleaning information from him. The next day was my day off, and I spent it tediously, washing, ironing, and going to the hairdresser. On the following morning, as I was riding in the bus toward Oxford Street, I heard as we drove past Marble Arch a whisper going from seat to seat. It was a sibilant sound—"Selfridges, Selfridges." I got out at Selfridges and went round the side
wish. It was breathtakingly pleasurable. I had never been touched like this before, and I could not have guessed that there was voluptuousness in a man's bony-fingered hand. At the same time, I knew that the hand on my flesh was languid with experience, had done this many times before, was absentminded, was barely conscious of what it was doing—did it because it did not know what else to do, and was certainly not realizing it was doing it to me. If the hand was conscious of anything at all, it
umbrella, clasping the crook of the handle with both hands. As I watched, I saw that he was not gazing idly into space. The movements of his head betrayed that he was following the flow of the streetcars, automobiles, and passersby. This calmly alert stance had a balladesque quality, bringing to mind a shepherd on the crest of a hill, leaning on his staff and observing his flock, the distant valley below, and the sky above. As I stepped soundlessly to his side, he said without turning his head,
questions, let alone hope to receive answers. There are people who, let us say, have a conspicuous jagged scar on their forehead, and even on first acquaintance one can ask them freely how they came by this disfigurement, and they will not be offended by this frank curiosity. With others, owing to invisible signals they radiate, one senses that one may never intrude on them with such a question. The Russian belonged to this group. He had taken me up the main road, in the direction of the castle
the table. As though for my pleasure, he had swiftly placed the teapot on its stand and had grouped the jugs and bowl around it like a wreath. In one glance, I took in fluted, bellied curves and embossed garlands of leaves and dog roses. A rage of disappointment flooded over me. Instead of the austere swanlike elegance of the Napoleonic silver I had been visualizing, I was met with the cozy prettiness of some opulent merchant's tea set. There weren't even the engraved initials that would have