David Garnett

“ In the middle years of life we live too much in the affairs of the day, and a child troubles the mind of its mother. So many burdens to be borne, so many duties to be fulfilled.... We were too occupied to look into each other’s hearts, and old age, the sweetest portion of life if it be filled with harmony, and the happiness of memories shared in common, old age is reserved for me only; a lonely and miserable old age. Now that I have lost Mavis, intimacy is impossible with anyone else, and I feel myself growing far away from everyone, and farthest of all from Anne. ”

“ Long past sunset an old blind woman sat on a campstool with her back to the stone wall of the Union of London and Smith's Bank, clasping a brown mongrel tight in her arms and singing out loud, not for coppers, no, from the depths of her gay wild heart—her sinful tanned heart, for the child who fetches her is the fruit of sin, and should have been in bed, curtained, asleep, instead of hearing in the lamplight her mother's wild song, where she sits against the Bank, singing not for coppers, with the dog against her breast. ”

“ Tebrick was alone he rejoiced exceedingly in his solitary life. He understood, or so he fancied, what it was to be happy, and that he had found complete happiness now, living from day to day, careless of the future, surrounded every morning by playful and affectionate little creatures whom he loved tenderly, and sitting beside their mother, whose simple happiness was the source of his own.
"True happiness," he said to himself, "is to be found in bestowing love; there is no such happiness as that of the mother for her babe, unless I have attained it in mine for my vixen and her children." ”

“ Mankind want to catch anything beautiful and shut it up, and then come in thousands to watch it die by inches. That’s why one hides what one is and lives behind a mask in secret.”
“I hate you, John, and all your ideas. I love my fellow creatures—or most of them—and I can’t help it if you are a tiger and not a human being. I’m not mad; I can trust people with every feeling I have got, and I shall never have any feelings that I shouldn’t like to share with everybody. ”

“ Anne liked the way men whistled, and their deep voices as they spoke to the cart-horses drinking at the pond, voices so full of restraint and kindliness. There was no way for her to speak to these young men who looked so cheerful as they went by to work in their rough clothes, though sometimes, when she was out on a long walk and was far from home, she had tried to get into conversation with a young farmer leaning over a gate, or with a gamekeeper idling along the edge of a wood, his black and white spaniel at his heels. ”

“ But in the middle of the night he woke up with his head very clear, and said to himself in wonder, "Am I not a madman? I torment myself foolishly with fantastic notions. Can a man have his honour sullied by a beast? I am a man, I am immeasurably superior to the animals. Can my dignity allow of my being jealous of a beast? A thousand times no. Were I to lust after a vixen, I were a criminal indeed. I can be happy in seeing my vixen, for I love her, but she does right to be happy according to the laws of her being." ”

“ Mr. Cromartie cried out in surprise and pain, and the Caracal drew in his claws instantly, and by purring and many affectionate rubbings of his body against his friend, sought to make amends for his misdeed. Mr. Cromartie was bleeding from ten dagger wounds on his scalp, but after the first moment he spoke gently to the cat and forgave him fully. All this was, however, nothing when weighed against the happiness he had in having a companion to be with him in his captivity, and a companion who was so much the happier for having him. ”

“ Outside, the sunlight poured into the grilling street; an electric tram passed by, its passage announced by the swishing of overhead wires and followed by the crackling of electric sparks. Wrapped in the weakness of love, Anne and Grandison lay at each other’s mercy; each tiny movement was agony to them.
[221] “Keep still! Keep still!” A cry broke from their lips, and then, in the solitude of perfect unity, they fell asleep. The overhead wires swished, an electric tram lurched past the hotel on grinding wheels, above which the soft crackle of electricity came like the sound of a silk skirt. ”

“ The first morning Mrs. Cork made her a new jacket, cutting down the sleeves of a blue silk one of Mrs. Tebrick's and trimming it with swan's down, and directly she had altered it, put it on her mistress, and fetching a mirror would have her admire the fit of it. All the time she waited on Mrs. Tebrick the old woman talked to her as though she were a baby, and treated her as such, never thinking perhaps that she was either the one thing or the other, that is either a lady to whom she owed respect and who had rational powers exceeding her own, or else a wild creature on whom words were wasted. ”

“ It is not honest to say first that you love me, and then that you are a Christian and love everybody equally.”
“Nonsense,” said the girl, “you know that is nonsense. It is not Christianity, it is because I love several people very much.”
“You do not love several people very much,” said Cromartie, interrupting her. “You cannot possibly love people like your aunts. Nobody could. No, you do not really love anybody. You imagine that you do because you have not got the courage to stand alone.”
“I know whom I love, and whom I do not,” said Josephine. ”

“ All my emotion is nonsense. To me everything seems changed, but it is only a joke to the carters; they will laugh about it over a pint of beer to-day, but in a week’s time they will have forgotten it; the fact that some dog has killed a rat will seem more important. My life is not changed: to-morrow the mason will come to lay the doorstep in its old place, and I shall say: ‘It’s a fine day,’ when I go to the grocer’s shop, and: ‘Very seasonable weather,’ when I take the loaves from the baker. ”

“ For by now he had come to hate his fellow men and was embittered against all human decencies and decorum. For strange to tell he never once in these months regretted his dear wife whom he had so much loved. No, all that he grieved for now was his departed vixen. He was haunted all this time not by the memory of a sweet and gentle woman, but by the recollection of an animal; a beast it is true that could sit at table and play piquet when it would, but for all that nothing really but a wild beast. His one hope now was the recovery of this beast, and of this he dreamed continually. ”

“ Cromartie. Nobody can vote who does not give up his secret, that is called the secrecy of the ballot—but it is out of the question for you to vote, anyhow ... you bear the Mark of the Beast.”
And Mr. Cromartie looked at his hand and felt his forehead and saw that he did indeed bear the Mark of the Beast where it had bitten him, and he knew that he was an outcast. That was what everybody had whispered. He would not give up his secret so he was rejected by mankind and hated by them, for he frightened them. ”

“ Anne found the confession of her cowardice was difficult; Sotheby was staring at her as if he were surprised by her words.
“I think that would be behaving very heartlessly,” he said when she had done. He filled the lid of the kettle with tea, blew on it and added: “It would be a great shock to him, and it seems to me so unnecessary. Children have parents so much at their mercy; their one duty to them, surely, is to avoid shattering their illusions. I’m not a good son; my father is excessively irritating; quite as irritating as yours. I don’t love him, and that makes me feel ashamed.... ”

“ Tebrick's happiness at this time. Indeed he lived now for nothing but his foxes, his love for his vixen had extended itself insensibly to include her cubs, and these were now his daily playmates so that he knew them as well as if they had been his own children. With Selwyn and Angelica indeed he was always happy; and they never so much as when they were with him. He was not stiff in his behaviour either, but had learnt by this time as much from his foxes as they had from him. Indeed never was there a more curious alliance than this or one with stranger effects upon both of the parties. ”

“ I love the seasons, the beauty of the village, the clouds, and the tall groves of elms standing round the green. I love our orchard with its old apple trees, and the pears; I dream in the winter of what the crop will be in the following autumn, fearing that the bullfinches will take the buds, or the blossom be cut down by a late frost, yet time is flying—and while my blood runs fast as it does now I must walk demurely like the old woman that I shall so soon become. Yes, I shall be old before I am free to live as I should like. Shall I ever go to the opera? ”

“ I think you are a character who will always torture the people you love. I cannot bear pain well; that alone makes us unsuited to each other. It is the principal reason why I never wish to see you again.
You are mistaken when you say that you have something of the first importance to tell me. Unless it is something to do with the arrangements which the Zoo authorities make with regard to the Ape-house, it cannot be of importance to me.{67}
Please believe that I bear you no resentment for the past; indeed I still love you, but I mean what I say.
Yours ever,
John Cromartie. ”

“ Yockney was a trifle vulgar, while his unpleasantness to me has at all events the merit of being sincere and well-bred.” And Anne told herself that the only explanation must be that she was as much a burden to her father as he was to her. “But only I realize it,” she burst out. “For I am young enough to recognize the truth, and to welcome it; he does not understand himself or other people; all his life he has hidden his head in the sand like an ostrich, and after all what else can one expect of a clergyman?” ”

“ Very soon she led her cubs into the earth, the dog-fox had vanished and Mr. Tebrick was again alone. He did not wait longer but went home.
Now was his peace of mind all gone, the happiness which he had flattered himself the night before he knew so well how to enjoy, seemed now but a fool's paradise in which he had been living. A hundred times this poor gentleman bit his lip, drew down his torvous brows, and stamped his foot, and cursed himself bitterly, or called his lady bitch. ”

“ He threw a piece which was lost in the snow. “A wedding-cake! How strange it is to reflect that Anne is older now than her mother when I married her! Yes, the world is become a wedding-cake. Something very strange has happened, and who knows what will be the end of it? for it has begun to snow again, and the rare flakes drift slowly to the ground like feathers from the angels’ wings. Are they moulting up there? Or has Satan got among them like a black cat which has climbed through the wire netting into the dove loft?” ”

“ Oh Silvia, Silvia, would you had never done this! Would I had never tempted you in a fatal hour! Does not this butchery and eating of raw meat and rabbit's fur disgust you? Are you a monster in your soul as well as in your body? Have you forgotten what it is to be a woman? ”

“ Anne wondered what their life had been in Paris, and slowly a picture of Miss Grandison formed itself clearly in her mind—a fair woman she must be, with a white skin like the flesh of a hazel nut, with fair almost colourless hair and [95] light blue eyes, a thick, slightly aquiline nose.... That certainly was Miss Grandison, and at the opera she wore diamonds and was wrapped in white fur. On summer evenings her habit must be to drive with Sotheby out of Paris in her limousine to have supper in the open air, of lobsters and cream, raspberries and iced champagne.... ”