Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ The contemplation of ruins for the last five years had made these eyes steady holders of a pensive resignation; they showed no tearful repinings, no fretful restlessness. They were clear eyes, large and luminous, and in looking at them, and at the wan, lovely little face where they bloomed like melancholy flowers, Mrs. Drent's face, on the other side of the tea-table, grew yet more somber and more intent in its brooding sympathy.
"Why did you," she began—"why did you—love him?" This was a more penetrating question than to ask Mrs. Quentyn why she had married him. ”

“ The thought of Dick was like the blue sky, like the free wind, like the grass and wild flowers; to think of Christina—even apart from recent black associations—was to think of a hothouse atmosphere, where one was exquisite—and imprisoned. It had been real, it had been normal—for Christina; for her, with her far less idealistic nature, her nature so puny, for all its big cravings (Milly was very severe with herself) , it had been a long, gradual exhaustion. She could not live in a hothouse, nor on heights either; she could not live in any rarefied atmosphere. ”

“ How could love and truest sympathy, truest understanding—how could they fail? "Love begets love. Love begets love," she whispered under her breath, not knowing that she spoke, and, in this hour of shipwreck, clinging unconsciously to such spars and fragments of childish, unreasoning trust as her memory tossed her. No other friendship threatened hers; she was first as friend—she knew it—irrevocably. First as friend did not mean to Milly, could never mean, the deep-burning attachment that it meant to her; but such friendship could not die without some cause other than mere weariness of sameness. ”

“ All winter she battled with the unseen terror, able still to tell herself that she was a fool. Of two things she was sure: there was no one else, and Milly herself did not know there was a barrier, did not recognize her own remoteness. It was her unconsciousness of any change that was Christina's only comfort—a bleak, shivering comfort. Strange, strange, that in the heart of her great love should be this fear. What was it in Milly that made her feel that to cry out all her doubts, her follies, perhaps her unhappiness, would only be to make more permanent that remoteness? ”

“ Certain defects in each they came to recognize and to take into account; tolerant, loving comprehension, the ripest stage of affection, seeming achieved.
Milly was capricious, had moods of gloom and disconsolateness when nothing seemed to interest her,—neither books, nor music, nor people, not even Christina,—and when, sunken in a deep arm-chair in the drawing-room, she would listlessly tap her fingers on the chair-arms, her eyes empty of all but a monotonous melancholy. ”

“ Dick happened to have stepped into it, and it was fastening around him. How dignify by the sacred name of love thus sentiment—all made of her weakness, her impressionability, her emotionalism—that swayed her toward her husband?
Passionate rejection of the degradation for Milly swept through the stricken friend and mingled with the throes of her anguish for herself. For how could she live without Milly? How could she live as Milly's formal friend, kept outside the circle of deepest affection, the circle where, till now, she had reigned alone? Ah! she understood Milly's nature too well ”

“ For every woman thinks that she has pictures and jewels and music, and longs—oh, longs!—to show them to the one—the one person who will love to see and to hear. And when she finds that the one can't see, can't hear, does n't even know that there is anything to look for, to listen for, then the music dies, and the pictures fade, and the jewels grow dim, and at last everything magical vanishes from life, and she sees herself, not as an enchanted castle, but as a first-class house in Mayfair—with all the modern improvements ”

“ Milly does not love you—could never love you. She does not even care for you. I must tell you all the truth—as she told it to me—last night,"—she was rapidly drawing her gloves through her hands while she spoke; now she twisted them around her knuckles, clenched her fingers upon them,—"she hates you. You are repulsive to her. She cannot conquer the repulsion. It will kill her if she tries to conquer it. She is strong for martyrdom, but, you have just seen it, not strong enough to go through it, always, unflinching. ”

“ Milly flushed, though the mildness of her husband's tone, one of a purely impersonal interest, suggested no conscious laying of a coal of fire upon her head. It was what she had meant. That Dick should like Christina, Christina Dick, was wholly-delightful; but that Dick should seem to like what she liked, should seem to like it for the same reasons, irked her a little. It was rather as if he had expressed enthusiasms about some favorite Brahms ballade of hers. She rather wanted to show him that any idea he might entertain of a community of tastes was illusory. ”

“ Christina often said to Milly, and Milly, smiling, had owned that he was indeed. His attitude, Christina fancied, had begun to impress his wife at its proper value. She was certainly far nicer to him than she used to be. The new effectiveness and happiness of her own life made niceness less of an effort. From her illumined temple she smiled at him—a smile that kept its sweetness and more and more lost its chill. She handed on to him a little of the radiance. ”

“ A sudden pity confused her, and with a little artificiality of manner, that masked the confusion, she went on: "One could never be unhappy without her knowing it and then one would be glad she did know, for she can sympathize without hurting you with sympathy. She feels everything that is beautiful or rare, everything that is sad or tragic; she feels everything, sees everything, but she sees and feels in order to act, to give, to help. Is it all this you like in her?" Milly finished very gently.
Mr. Quentyn still looked mildly at his wife. ”

“ All barriers seemed gone, were it not that Christina, full of strange presages, felt the very radiance to make one.
Milly gathered primroses in the woods, hatless, her white dress and fair head glimmering and shining among the young grays and greens. She came in laden with flowers, and the house smiled with their pale gold, their innocent and fragile gaiety.
"Is n't the country delicious?" she said to Christina. "Much, much nicer than dreary Greece and tiresome ruins, is n't it?" ”

“ THE end had come; not of Christina's love, not of her absorption, her need, but of Milly's. At first her mind refused to face the full realization; groped among the omens of the past; refused, even now, to fix on Dick as the cause of all. She could trace the gradual, the dreadful severance; Milly's slow loss of interest in her—in their life together. ”

“ Milly would remain fond of herself as she had been fond of little Joan Ashby—a fondness all sweet demonstration, all emptiness. Yes; she saw it, felt it, luridly: the greater Milly's need of her had been, the less it would be now. She would mean much less to her for having meant so much. She would be the quaffed cordial that had sustained Milly over the desert of quite illusory disillusion, to be cast aside when the desert was passed and her uses gone. ”

“ She must be very careful to like no Joans too much in the future. Christina passionately protested that she must talk to Joan, love Joan, any number of Joans, old or young, male or female, as much as before, more indeed, since now her folly was dissipated by confession; but Milly, in her heart, knew better than to believe her. She filled Christina's life completely, to the exclusion of any other deep affection, and Christina could never be happy unless her friend's life were as undivided. ”

“ Dick Quentyn, with an unmysterious, undifficult wife, could have been a very gracefully affectionate husband,—his manners were as charming as his mind was blundering,—but with this chill young nymph any attempts at marital pettings and caressings seemed clumsy, grotesque. With Milly—he soon saw it—the barrier between their minds was inevitably to constitute a barrier shutting him from even those manifestations of affection: he was not at all dull in feeling that; not at all dull in his quick and delicate withdrawal before her passive distaste ”

“ And that he should know the other reason for her unhappiness! that he should know that not Christina's death alone had crushed her to the earth—that he should know that she loved him! Suddenly she seemed not to care that he should know. Her womanly pride broke. With this human kindness, so warm, so true, near her, she forgot their tangled relations as man and woman; the simple human one only remained, and the loneliness, the grief of a child overwhelmed her. She sank, sobbing helplessly, into her chair.
"They stood in the firelight, holding each other's hands"
"Oh, Milly!" ”

“ And the truth, no longer to be evaded, leaped upon her: Milly was falling in love with Dick. Whether the weariness was the cause of her love, or whether the latent love had been the cause of her long weariness, Christina could not tell, nor, as she acutely guessed, could Milly. But now, this abnormal interest in a man so utterly alien to her, this gentle eagerness, this frank comradeship—above all, this indifference to herself—could only mean one thing: Milly was falling in love ”

“ Why, then, should Christina, like a foolish school-girl, show unmistakably—her efforts to hide it only making her look dim-eyed, white-lipped—a somber misery if Milly allowed any one to come too near her? This really piteous infirmity was latent in Christina; she did not show it during the first years of their companionship; it grew with her growing absorption in Milly. Milly discovered it when she asked little Joan Ashby to go to Italy with them. Christina, at the proposal, was all glad, frank acquiescence, she was so fond of Joan. ”

“ The walk next morning was as meaningless as Christina had intended it should be. She felt herself a frail barrier between two surging impatiences. She could not long divide them unless she armed herself with some towering strength.
But even her reckless dexterity was not to prevent a meeting. Next morning, at an hour she thought thoroughly safe,—indeed, she had heard Dick speak of an engagement for that morning,—she went out to make the last preparations for the Grecian trip. She and Milly were still to go to Greece, and they were to go alone—so Christina saw the future. ”

“ Milly left her, kissing her good-by with more sincere affection than she had shown for months.
"I have been very horrid, but you have understood," she whispered hurriedly as they stood together in the hall, the carriage waiting outside. "Learn to live without me; I am not nearly fine enough, generous enough, true enough for you. Go to Greece, Christina; take some nice woman and go to Greece." ”

“ An unhappy marriage makes ruins all about one; one must dwell in the midst of ruins thenceforth; one can't go away and leave them behind one, as one can other calamities in life."
Milly Quentyn and Mrs. Drent were alone this afternoon in the big country house where they had come really to know each other, and Milly, acting hostess for her absent cousin, had poured out Mrs. Brent's tea and then her own, leaving it untouched, however, while she spoke, her hands falling, clasped together, in her lap, her eyes fixed on vacancy. ”

“ But as for tragedy, suffering, one can't associate such perturbing things with imperturbable Dick. I have n't to reproach myself with having hurt his life seriously, and Heaven knows I don't reproach his simplicity and harmlessness for having broken mine. Marriage and a wife were incidents—incidents only—to him, and if they have failed to be satisfactory incidents, he has other far more absorbing interests in his life to take his mind off the breakdown of his domestic happiness. Indeed, domesticity, when he cares to avail himself of it, is always there in its superficial forms and ceremonies. ”

“ More and more frequently, when she talked to her over their tête-à-tête tea, the very dearest hour of the day, Christina saw that Milly did not hear her. After these five years of comprehension and forbearance this apparent indifference could not, at first, seriously disturb her; hurt her it always did. Picking up a book, with a smile of loving humor for Milly's absorption, she would read and cease to talk. The mood always passed the sooner for not being recognized ”

“ She was accustomed to think of herself as a much-admired woman, as a beautiful woman; this evening, as the realization of time's swift passage stole upon her, a vague, strong protest filled her, a sense of deep, irremediable disappointment with life.
Mr. Quentyn that winter went to Africa, and Milly gave her husband a farewell all kindness, all composure, when he came to bid Christina and her good-by. ”

“ Because he meant everything to you: my husband means nothing to me. Because you needed him: nothing in me needs Dick. Because he interested, charmed you: my husband bores me to intensest desperation. Because he understood what there was most individual, most real in you,"—Milly was drawing largely upon her imagination in this effective picture of Mrs. Drent's married happiness,—"and responded to it. I don't claim at all any remarkable individuality; but what I have Dick does n't understand at all, does n't even see. ”