Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ At dinner that night old Sir Francis fixed his eye-glass to observe her more than once, and after dinner he joined her in the drawing-room and talked with her till bedtime. It turned out then that he had known her father and actually possessed one of his pictures; had been a great admirer. Next morning he was walking with her on the terrace before breakfast, Mollie in a blue lawn as sprightly as it was demure, her casque of golden hair shining in the sunlight. ”

“ Captain Thornton, I saw at once, as she did,—for she saw most things,—was not stupid; but he was very simple. There was a certain bewilderment on his handsome, sturdy face, wistfulness rather than delight, such as a soul newly arrived in paradise might feel, unable to forget the passes of death and the companions left behind in suffering. ”

“ Percival looks sly over his food, and looks over his wine like the sort of man who is going to tell a story that no one else will find at all amusing. He told Mollie several such stories that night, I inferred, though she was evidently neither shy nor shocked; it was in the quality of her quiet, observant little smile that I read her tolerant endurance.
Milly, Vera's girl, just seventeen and just promoted to late dinner, sat on Mollie's other hand and did not, as far as I observed, address her once during the meal. But, then, Milly never makes efforts unless they are plainly useful. ”

“ Thornton was to remind me of,—and I designed and planted and with my own hands helped to lay out the dream-garden, Vera's special garden. It was she, certainly, who had had the idea, standing on the site of the little, old, abandoned sunken garden in its circle of stone wall and cypresses, and saying, "I see a dream-garden here, Judith; a place where one can come and sit alone and dream dreams." She often has charming ideas. Vera, but she knows nothing about gardening. ”

“ He thinks that we are together in it all, and that she is an angel to me, too," said Mollie. "She always is an angel to me when she sees me."
"All men are rather stupid when it comes to knowing whether their wives are happy," I remarked. "I think your Clive is a great dear; but I like you best because you see things and he does n't. You, for instance, see that Vera is n't an angel, though she may look like one." ”

“ Mollie said.
"Yes, you would. And it 's horribly true that real things can be spoiled and blighted by false things. I 've often seen it happen. You do see the danger, and you must take up the burden, my dear, of being cleverer than your husband, and save him along with yourself. If Vera were what she looks and seems to him, he might be right in feeling that he found in her something he could n't find in you. You must show him that she is n't what she looks and seems, and you must show him that you can be a first-rate paradise, too." ”

“ Thornton got up at once, with her air of vague acquiescence in anything proposed, and I led her up and out and down the lime-tree alley and through the copse, where Vera, in spring, has her wild garden, to the banks of the river, the clear, wandering little stream, bridged and islanded, golden in the afternoon light under its willows and reflecting irises and meadow-sweet.
"Now we can sit down," I said, and on a bench under a willow we did sit, Mrs. Thornton with an involuntary sigh of weariness. "I expect your husband will soon get all right here," I said presently. "It 's such good air. ”

“ It always does show. No, it needs thought and time and computing, too much time, too much thought, to say nothing of too much money for many women, of course; for them it would n't be worth it. There are other things to do than to live in paradise. But for you it is worth it; to show him that you can look like an angel, and to show him that Vera can look like a cat. ”

“ And what I 'd like very much to see now is what she 'd make of it if you could show her that you could look like an angel, too. It 's so much a matter of looks."
"Make of it? But I could n't look like an angel."
"You could look like a rival; that 's another way of doing it. You could look like another woman of her own sort. You could make her see you. She simply does n't see you now. I suspect that if Vera saw you and saw that you were charming, she 'd show her claws. I 'd like Captain Thornton to see her showing her claws."
In silent astonishment, her blue eyes fixed upon me, Mollie gazed. ”

“ I 've never felt so stupid in my life as here. But, oh, it 's deeper!" said Mollie. "I don't belong to it. How they all make me feel it! I 'm an outsider; and why should I pretend not to be?"
"It would n't be pretending anything to dress as you 'd like to dress. No one who sees is an outsider nowadays, if they can contrive to make themselves seen. That 's the whole point. And there 's nothing you don't see. You see far more than Vera does. Don't bother about the roots. Take care of the flowers, and the roots will take care of themselves; that 's another modern maxim for you. ”

“ But women of the Vera type will always, to young men like Captain Thornton, be angels pure and simple. I don't suppose, for one thing, that he 'd ever talked intimately with anyone quite like her. He came, I was to learn, from a remote country rectory where the great ladies of the neighborhood had been unfashionable, matter of fact, and clothed for the most part in tweed and leather, and none of them would have been likely to make much, before the war, of a young soldier. Vera was making much of him, and a fashionable angel is an angel doubly equipped. ”

“ Of course she is getting on now,—she is nearing forty-five,—but she 's still lovely; her smile makes me think of a pearl dropped in wine, and behind the melancholy of her eyes is that well of waiting irony. She looks as soft, as tenderly encompassing, as a summer night; but she is really sharp, sharp, sharp. Thwart or vex her, and out leaps the stiletto; or, rather, it would be more exact to say, out come the claws. ”

“ She is first, everywhere, always, without an effort; and people who are first, if they also look like angels, win hearts as easily as they run and twist their fingers among their ropes of pearls, as Vera was doing now. She always wore her pearls ”

“ Mollie was very large-eyed and rather pale, and I inferred from her demeanor that she had taken a step or made a move of some kind.
"Do come with us, Miss Elliot," said Captain Thornton. "I 'm just taking Mollie along to the dream-garden. She wants to have a little talk, all to herself, with Lady Vera, and Lady Vera told me to wait for her there till these people were gone; so it 's just the thing. And you and I can leave them together, do you see? People never get really to know each other unless they are alone together, do they?" ”

“ But though it is a question of money, some women who have masses of money never learn how to dress. They remain mere dressmakers' formulas; and others, with very little, can't be passed by. They count anywhere. You 've noticed my clothes. I 've hardly any money, yet I 'm perfect. All my clothes mean just what I intend them to; just as Vera's mean what she intends, and Mrs. Travers-Cray's and Lady Dighton's, and Milly's, for Milly already is as clever as possible at knowing her thing. ”

“ Thornton cried, laughing. "That is exactly what I have been doing. And I 've been in a Belgian refugee hostel ever since Clive went, and that is tiring, though it keeps one going, too. Don't you find it difficult just to go on from day to day?" She was leaning forward on her knee now to look up into my face while I knitted. "I mean, when one wakes in the morning, for instance, to think that one has to get up and brush one's teeth and do one's hair and all the rest of it. It seems impossible when what one is feeling is that one wants to be chloroformed till it is all over. ”

“ She took up now one of my lists, and while she scanned it said, smiling with cousinly good-humor:
"Ah, but you can hardly expect me to look upon you as a judge of that, Judith darling—how much a man counts, I mean, and how much he does n't. You are so essentially a woman's woman, are n't you? I suppose it 's just because you are so crisp and clever and unromantic that men don't feel drawn to you, foolish creatures! So that you never get a chance, do you, of finding out anything about them except their way of brushing their hair and the color of their ties. ”

“ She had faced everything, been through everything, she had gone down into the Hades where so many of us were still living, and now she found herself balked and menaced by commonplace daylight. Tragedy is, in some ways, an easy thing to bear. ”

“ If she is wan and strange and wistful, it is n't from dreaming dreams, but from not having enough sleep and doing five times too many things and seeing five times too many people in the day. Vera, too, I may say it here, is n't in the least an ass, though she may, on occasions she finds suitable, talk like one. Occasions are often suitable, so that, as I once told her, she 's in danger of making a habit of it. She looked at me, when I told her this, with the pausing, penetrating, ironic gaze she is so capable of, and finally, with a slight grimace, said, "I 'll be careful, Judith." ”

“ What shall I do, Judith? You saw the way at tea yesterday, when she was talking about pictures, she was really sneering at father's, and when I tried to answer,—because I felt I had to answer about that,—making me seem so rude and sullen. Clive knows nothing about pictures; so he did n't understand. And it 's all the time like that. I have to pretend not to see and be bland and silent; or, if I try to answer, she turns everything against me."
"Be patient. Give her a little more time," I said. "She 'll run to earth if you give her a little more time." ”

“ As if Mollie could be like that to any one who 's been as kind to us as Lady Vera has! But I 'm sure that if they have a few quiet talks it will all come right. Mollie is so undemonstrative; I told her that. It needs time for her to get used to anybody."
Mollie, her arm within her husband's, cast across his unconscious breast a grave, deep glance upon me as he thus quoted his defense of her. What was she to do with Vera, the glance perhaps asked me, too, now that she was to have her? What account of the interview would Vera serve up to Clive? ”

“ It 's not pleasant for anybody to have to own that they 've been blind and made a mistake, and Vera was specially fond of discovering oddity and charm and of claiming and displaying and discussing a discovery. ”

“ She was able to carry out Mollie's ideas perfectly. She has charming ideas, has n't she? She knows so exactly what suits her."
"Carry out her ideas? She has n't an idea in her head. Carry out yours, you mean, you funny creature. I can't conceive why you took the pains to dress up the deadly little dowd." Vera drummed with her fingers on the window-pane. Mrs. Travers-Cray had joined Mollie and Sir Francis, and they sat down in a shady corner of the terrace. Mrs. Travers-Cray, sweet, impassive, honey-colored woman, was one of the few people for whose opinions and tastes Vera had a real regard. ”

“ Thornton on her husband, and he 'll hardly give you an opportunity of finding out whether he 's anything more than an honest young soldier. I have found him,"—and Vera now spoke with a simple candor,—"quite, quite a dear; with a great deal in him—sensitiveness, tact, flavor. So much could have been made of him! I, in my little way, could have taken him up and started him. But what can one do for a man who has a wife who does n't know how to dress without help and who will push herself forward? ”

“ Exceedingly ingenuous when she is n't exceedingly sophisticated; I think one often sees the mixture. The only thing you must be prepared for with the Milly type is that in a week's time she may forget that she ever confided in you and, almost, that she ever knew you. ”

“ But this is my own dream-garden, my very own; for solitude, where I come to be alone. One must be alone sometimes. I get very tired."
We had, of course, all risen, Clive staring, while, still with those weary, averted eyes, Vera softly beat the desecrated cushions and shook them into place. "It 's my fault," Clive stammered. "I mean—I did n't understand. I thought you and Mollie could have a talk here. She wanted to get to know you better, and I suggested this."
Vera had sunk down in her corner, patting her silken knee, so that Chang sprang up upon it and settled down among the pearls. ”

“ It 's worth the sacrifice of generations of younger sons and myriads of marriageable daughters. What could they all do better than to keep it going? I always recalled this when I wondered how Vera could have married Percival Dixon, and felt almost as much satisfaction as she could feel in the fact that two robust little boys, still at their preparatory school, stood reassuringly behind her and Percival, the elder, too, a thorough Compton, with hardly a trail of Dixon apparent on his ingenuous young countenance. ”

“ He will have to give up the army. I am afraid it 's afterward one will begin to feel all the things that one must give up. Just now all that I can think about is that he has come back alive. Have you any one out there?" she asked.
I told her about Jack and how he had got a commission at the beginning of the war and gone out in January.
"It must be even more of a wrench to have them go when they are n't already in the army," said Mrs. Thornton. "A soldier's wife ought not to feel it so much of a wrench. ”

“ It 's evident that he never spoke to a civilized woman in his life till he came here. He does n't show much sign of finding his wife interesting, does he? Poor fellow! It 's pitiful the way men fall into these early marriages with the first curate's daughter they find round the corner. ”

“ They came on a hot June afternoon, very tired both of them, while we were all having tea on the west terrace. The Tommies—there were over a dozen of them, with two Red Cross nurses to take care of them—had their tea in the billiard-room, which is made over to them for their games and meals and almost constant gramophone, and the accurate laughter of Harry Lauder is wafted out to us on various music-hall strains at most hours of the day. ”