Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ With a rapture of hope and yearning which resumed all her ebbing power, physical and spiritual, she stretched out her arms and clasped them about Milly's neck. "Do you love me again?" she asked. Her voice was like a child's in its ecstasy.
"My darling Christina!—Love you?—Who is there in all the world but you!" Milly cried. No affirmation could be too strong, she felt, no atonement too great.
"Better than you love him?"
Milly did not even hesitate. Lies were like obstacles hardly seen as, in the onrush of her remorse and pity, she leaped them.—"Yes,—Yes. You are everything," she reiterated. ”

“ Christina answered in her dull and gentle voice, "that I ought not to have loved you. That is my crime, is it not?"
"Yes; perhaps that is your crime, if you want to put it so," said Milly. "I don't blame you, you know. You could not help it. But your love has always been a prison. As long as I was contented in the prison you made it a very charming place to live in. But when I wanted to be free, to have other, deeper, realler loves, I knew that I had a gaoler to get past, a gaoler who would not kill me, but whom I would have to kill. ”

“ Milly went on, looking at the sky, "and how one feels them all here. Oh, the cuckoo, Christina, isn't it a sound that makes one think of tears and happiness!"
Of tears only, not of happiness, thought Christina; of regret—regret for something gone; lost for ever. The cuckoo's cry pierced her all day long.
Simplicity and freshness and life; Christina did not recall the words definitely when she saw Dick Quentyn spring up the steps to greet his wife at the threshold of the house; but something unformulated echoed in her mind with a deepened sense of presage. ”

“ Men get over it; but women are always in love."
Perhaps Kitty saw further than he did. Holland was abashed before the helpless revelation of a mysterious and alien sorrow. For women the brooding dream; for men the active dusty world. Yet even here, on the threshold of a secret, absurd, yet perhaps, in its absurdity, lovelier than man's sterner visions, he felt that, for her sake, he must draw her away from the contemplation of it. That was one thing he had learned, for Kitty. She, too, must manage to fly—or fall—out of the nest; she must get, in some way, more dust into her life. ”

“ What have I done that you should change so?"
"You have done nothing, Christina," said Milly in a voice of schooled forbearance. "It is I who have changed, and been cruel, first to Dick and then to you. I am a shallow, feeble creature, but the shallowness was in thinking that I couldn't love my husband—not in loving him now. I don't want the things you and I had together. I only want the stupid, simple things that he could have given me. I want someone to be in love with me. That is it, I think. I am the most usual, common sort of woman, who must have someone in love with her and be in love. ”

“ There was a silence after that for a moment and then Milly said, "It must be wonderful to have such a memory. All I know is that I wish with all my heart I had never married Dick, and I believe with all my heart that one shouldn't marry unless everything is there."
"That is it," said Mrs. Drent, "everything must be there for it to be right;—affinity, and understanding, and devotion. Some women can find enough in the mere fact of a home and a shared life to be satisfied without them; but not a woman like you." ”

“ I can't forgive myself for that piece of stupidity—my only one, I will say, in regard to such recognitions and perceptions. I may be a stupid woman about a great many things, but I'm not stupid about rooms. The horror of Aunt Pickthorne's room dulled my eyes so that in all truth I can say that I never saw that pagoda. And from the moment I've had my idea I've moaned—but literally moaned—over having lost it. Of course it is what the room needs, and all that it needs—the travesty of a soul standing on that mahogany table."
"Yes, the centre-table is the place for it," said Owen. ”

“ Milly stretched out both her hands. "Welcome home, Dick," she said. And she held her cheek to be kissed. There was no restraint or shyness in her eyes. She looked at the bronzed, stalwart, smiling being with as open and happy a gaze as though he had been an oak-tree. The happiness of gaze was new; but then it was only part of Milly's revival; and then, he had been in danger. Christina took comfort, she knew not for what.
"It is good to be at home again," Dick asseverated more than once during the day; and, "I say, how jolly those primroses look," he exclaimed in the long drawing-room. ”

“ Foolish, darling Kitty—you are sure it's me you do love?"
Again she could not speak, but it was her joy that made her silent. She was no more to be disbelieved than an angel appearing in the vault, irradiating the darkness. Flowers sprang beneath her footsteps; her smile was life. And the memory of his own cynical vision of her smote him with a self-reproach that deepened tenderness. She was only subtle, only sinister, when shut away, unloved. She was womanly, meant for love only, and her folly made her the more lovable. Love was all that was left him. One month of love. ”

“ That's your intention?"
"Exactly," said Gwendolen, with eager apprehension; "that is just it—a soulless room. One is sick of souls, just as one is sick of beauty."
"Exactly," Owen echoed her. "But, since you have here a travesty of beauty, what you need to complete your idea is a travesty of soul. You need a centre that draws it all into focus. You need something that, alas! you might have had, and have lost for ever. The white pagoda, Gwendolen, that Mrs. Waterlow found. Your room needs that, and only that, to make it perfect." ”

“ No joy, no triumph, in having snatched Milly from degradation.
At the thought of Milly the fear that drove upon her was so intense that it induced a curious lightness of head. She was uplifted and upheld above her own fear. The unnatural buoyancy became almost a lightness of heart. All was over. If she were a criminal she must profit by her crime and shelter herself from suspicion. They would be happy—of course they would be happy again—she and Milly. "Love begets love. Love begets love." She heard herself muttering the words almost gaily, like an incantation, as she walked down Sloane Street. ”

“ Christina had seen too much, understood too much. She was a blight upon her love, a menace to her tragic memory of it. Under everything, deeper than anything else in her feeling about Christina, was a dim repulsion and dislike.
That Christina had submitted showed in her letters, for Milly, before many days had passed, wrote kindly and mildly, in the tone which, for the future, she intended to use towards Christina. Milly surprised herself with her own calm ruthlessness. She found that the gentle and the cowardly can, when roused, be more cruel than the harsh and fearless. ”

“ In her eyes, her smiles, the empty caressing of her voice, was there not already the most profound indifference? And all the forces of Christina's nature rose in rebellion. She felt the rebellion like the onslaught of angels of light against powers of darkness; it was the ideal doing battle with some primal, instinctive force. She must fight for Milly and for herself. For she, too, had her claim. She measured herself beside Dick Quentyn, her needs beside his. His life was cheerful, contented, complete; hers without Milly would be a warped, a meaningless, a broken life. ”

“ They were to get to Chawlton only a day or two before Dick's arrival.
The gardens, the lawns, the woods, were radiant, and Milly, in the environment of jocund revival, shared the radiance. 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 shining among the young greys and greens. She came in laden with flowers, and the house smiled with their pale gold, their innocent and fragile gaiety. "Isn't the country delicious?" she said to Christina. ”

“ The house was a typically smart, flimsy London house, of the cheaper Mayfair sort—a narrow box set on end and fitted with chintz and gilt and white mouldings; a trap to Allida's imagination—an imagination that no longer shrank from the contemplation of the facts of her life; for they, too, were seen from across that abyss.
In the drawing-room, among shaded lamps, cushions, and swarming bric-à-brac, her mother had flirted and allured—unsuccessfully—for how many years? ”

“ Milly went down to Chawlton. In the country, alone, she could sit and look at her life and at the wreckage she had made in it without feeling that another's eyes were watching her. It pained her, when she could turn her mind from the humiliation of her own misery, to see how completely all love for poor Christina had died from her, to see how the perhaps crude and elemental love had killed the delicate, derivative affection. It was even sadder to realise that under the superficial pain lay a deep indifference. She was very sorry for Christina. ”

“ A FORSAKEN TEMPLE CHAPTER I MILLY
"It is the emptiness, the loneliness, the lack of response and understanding," said Milly. "It is as if I were always looking at a face that never really saw me or spoke to me. Such a mistake as I have made—or as others have made for me—is irretrievable. An unhappy marriage seems to ruin everything in you and about you, and you have to go on living among the ruins. You can't go away and leave them behind you, as you can other calamities in life." ”

“ He raised his head. It was to face the mantelpiece, with its oval, gilt mirror and crystal lustres and gilt-and-marble clock. No, there were not doves and a nest upon it. This was a finer clock than the one with the doves, and the lustres were larger, and the flowers that stood between were mauve orchids. Gwendolen always went astray over her flowers.
"Here is tea," she said, seating herself at a little mahogany table with bowed and decorated legs. "Of course you're bound to feel tired, dear Owen, after your journey. Tea will be the very thing for you." ”

“ Milly felt it as the difference, the vague warmth and radiance.
"How kind of you, dear Dick," she said, and her poor voice groped vainly for firmness. "I am so glad to see you. It was good of you to come. Yes; it has been dreadful. You know;—Christina—our friendship"—But how to confess to Dick her remorse or explain to Dick why she had left Christina? Her pride broke. With this human kindness near her, she could not maintain the decorum of their tangled relations as man and woman; the simple human relation alone became the most real one; the loneliness and the grief of a child overwhelmed her. ”

“ It was shame, unutterable shame, that she felt, mixed with the anguish, and weighing her down to the earth. Shame for what she had done in sacrifice to the love she heard thus abused; shame for the truth, the cruel half-truth, in Milly's words; and shame for Milly that she could find it in her to speak such words to her. Deeper? Realler? Could any love, though tricked out in romantic conventions, be deeper or realler than the love she had for Milly? In the innermost chambers of her heart she knew that, in spite of the cruel half-truth, what Milly said was not the whole. ”

“ At these words Kitty was transfigured. Joy, joy unmistakable, flamed up in her. It mounted to her eyes and lips, revivifying her ravaged face, beaming forth, inundating him, unfaltering, assured, absolute. "Darling—darling—you love me? you do love me?—Oh, you shan't die—I won't let you die. My love will keep you with me. We will forget all these years when we haven't understood—when we've forgotten. We will forget everything—except that we love each other and that that is all there is to live for in the world."
"And—Sir Walter?—" he said, simply and helplessly. ”

“ It was a blissful winter, the happiest, in reality, that Christina had ever known, though she was not aware of this nor aware that it was the first time in her life that she was the recipient of as much devotion as she gave. They read and rode and walked and talked and carried on energetic reforms and charities in the village. Christina was full of ardent enthusiasms which infected Milly. In spite of her physical delicacy, for she had a weak heart, she showed an enterprise and endurance that Milly was not capable of. The winter went by and life was full of significance. ”

“ You are one of the real ones, I saw it at once; you aren't meant to wither out and to become crisp and shallow. Don't cease to believe in the pictures, the jewels, the music. They are there. I see. I hear."
"How—sweet of you!" faltered Milly.
She was startled, she was touched, she, who rarely felt it, felt shyness. She had known that this dark, still woman was observing her, and had known, for all the other's reserve, that the observation was not antagonistic. Something in Mrs. Drent had made her feel that it would be easy, a relief, to talk to her about all one's miseries and desolations. ”

“ Carrington came in quite frequently, and, looking from my canvas to Miss Jones, would pronounce the drawing wonderfully felt.
"Dégas wouldn't be ashamed of the line of the neck," he said. "The turn and lift of her head as she looks sideways in the mirror is really émouvant, life; good idea; in character; centred on herself; not bent on conquest and staring it at you. Manon had not that trait."
Miss Jones on the stand gazed obediently into the mirror, the dim white of an eighteenth century boudoir about her. She was altogether a most posée, well-behaved young person. ”

“ Death was sweet when life was so ugly.
Now she was in the street, the door closed behind her, and no servant had seen her.
It was a foggy afternoon, and the soiled white houses opposite were dim. A thin, stray cat rubbed against the area railings and mewed as Allida stood, pausing for a moment, on the steps.
Which was the nearest pillar-box? At the end of the street, just round the corner. The plaintive, nasal cry of the cat caught her attention. Poor creature! She ought to spare some poison for it. The irony of the idea almost made her smile as she stooped and patted the dingy head. ”

“ And the longing to comfort and console effacing his diffidence and the memory of her long unkindness towards himself, he knelt down beside her and took her into his arms.
Milly then said and did what she could never have believed herself capable of saying and doing. No pride could hold her from it, no dignity, not even common shame. She could not keep herself from dropping her face on his shoulder and sobbing;—"Oh—Dick—try—try to love me again. I am cold and selfish. I have behaved cruelly to everyone who loved me;—but I can't bear it any longer." ”

“ More and more frequently, when they were talking over their tête-à-tête tea, the very dearest hour of the day, Christina saw that Milly did not hear her. After these four years of comprehension and mutual forbearance the apparent indifference or preoccupation could not, at first, seriously disturb her; hurt her it always did. Picking up a book she would read and cease to talk. The mood always passed the sooner for not being recognised, and Milly would come out of the cloud, unaware of it, sunnier, sweeter, more responsive than before. ”

“ She looked in the mirror. Surrounded by the softly falling radiance of her hair, her face was still girlish in tint and outline; but already her eyes had in them the depth of time lived through, her cheeks and lips were differently sweet; and 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.
Dick Quentyn went that winter to Africa, and Milly gave her husband a farewell all kindness and composure, when he came to bid Christina and her good-bye. ”

“ There had been his mistake, his and Kitty's, the mistake that had meant irony and lassitude and corruption. To heap all time into the moment, to make a false eternity of it, was to arrest something, to stop blood from flowing, thought from growing, was to create a nightmare distortion, a monstrous, ballooned travesty of the eternity that, in moving life, could never be more, could never be less, than the ideal life sought unceasingly. ”

“ She sat, her eyes fallen, drawing off her gloves, and she said gently, "I am sorry, Milly, if you hoped that he would come."
"No," said Milly, not moving from her place. "You are not sorry, Christina. You are glad. You are sorry that I care and you are glad that he does not care, because you think that it will keep us together. But that is your mistake. It is all impossible now, and you have made it so. I am going away. I am going back to the country. I want to be alone."
Again Christina was not surprised; this was the fear which she had glanced down at from her haze of uncanny lightness. ”

“ Milly Quentyn, for all the clouds of her background, was a creature of sunshine, of sunshine in a mist, a creature of endearing fluctuations. Indeed, Christina told her afterwards, when they analyzed the beginnings, it had been her childlike radiance, her smiles, her air as of rifts of blue over a rainy landscape— (for everybody knew that Dick and Milly Quentyn didn't hit it off) —it had been these sweet, these doubly pathetic qualities that had first attracted her. "I am not easily attracted," said Christina. ”

“ Holland said to her. "It's for that, I suppose, that a Pierrot is such an uncanny and charming creature;—the future doesn't exist for him at all."
Kitty, who had always been a literal person, and whose literalness had now become so beautifully appropriate,—for what is literalness but a seeing of the fact as standing still?—Kitty tried to smile but begged him not to jest about such things.
"I'm not jesting, darling. I'm only musing on our strange state. It's like a fairy-tale, the life we lead." ”

“ For how was she to live without Milly? How could she live as Milly's formal friend, kept outside the circle of intimate affection, the circle where, till now, she had reigned alone? Ah! she understood Milly's nature too well; she saw that with all its sweetness it was slight. Love, with her, would efface all friendships. Like a delicate, narrow little vase, her heart could hold but one deep feeling. She would come, simply, not to care for Christina at all. ”

“ She was not a vain woman, but she was conscious of these advantages and the consciousness had touched the childlike candour and confidingness with a little artificiality, for long apparent to her husband's kindly but dispassionate eye. To other people Mrs. Holland's manner, the whispering vagueness of her voice, the wistful dwelling of her glance, was felt to be artificial only as the gold embroideries and serrated edges on the robes of a Fra Angelico angel are felt as something added and decorative. Kitty was far too intelligent to try to look like a Fra Angelico angel ”

“ Flower-pieces, dim, flat, old flower-pieces and arid steel-engravings and tall pieces of mahogany furniture with marble vases upon them—no mistakes had been made here, for if the vases were not urns, they were of marble and in their places.
"How do you like it in this phase?" Gwendolen asked him, tactfully turning from the question of his weakness. "I love it myself, I own, though of course Chislebridge thinks I've lost my wits. To tell you the truth, Owen, I was tired of beauty. One may come to that. One may feel," said Gwendolen, pouring out the tea, "that one needs a discipline. ”