Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“ Body and soul; appearance and reality; the temporal and the eternal consciousness;—the old words chimed in his brain. Then came a swift memory of Antonia and himself dancing the tango in London, and then the memory of the dead face of a little French poilu he had come upon one evening in France, by the roadside, a face sweet and childlike. How many dead faces he had seen since he had danced the tango with Antonia, and how wraith-like, beside the agonies he had since passed through, were the mental disciplines and distractions of his studious youth! ”

“ Why am I not more merely grateful to you for loving any one so useless? I’ll help you in any way I can, Tony. What do you really want to ask me? Perhaps what makes me so odious to you is that I’ve got no help for you.”
Perhaps it was. A shrinking from the issue she put before him had been in him from the first.
And poor Tony did not suspect what he meant; did not, for all her attempt at clearness, see in what way she really wanted him to help her.
“Please, please do,” she said. “Try to be gentle and to understand. I’ll go by what you say. So there it is: Do you believe in immortality, Bevis?” ”

“ And what most came to him next morning, with the sense of shock, was an awareness of hidden things; of hours in which he had no part, when Tony said to him, “I talked to Cicely last night.”
They were, as usual, in the drawing-room, after breakfast, and Antonia had seated herself on the low cane settee before the fire, for the grey day was chilly and she had, to an unbecoming extent, the look of being cold. When Tony looked least beautiful, she looked most childlike, and it was for her childlike self that he felt, always, his deepest tenderness aroused. ”

“ Isn’t it, Cicely? Are you tired? Will you try it? I’m longing for it now. It’s just what we need. It will do us good.”
“I am not tired. But why do you think a game will do us good, Antonia?” Miss Latimer asked.
Antonia looked down at her fondly; but did he not now detect the fever in her eye. “Games are good for dreary people. We are all dreary, aren’t we? I know, at least, that I am. So be kind, both of you, and play with me.”
“Miss Latimer is tired,” said Bevis, looking across at her, feeling reluctance in her colourless replies. ”

“ If he were here, I couldn’t love any one but him.” She stopped for a moment. “Bevis, that is what it comes to. Is he here?”
“Here? How do you mean?” the young man asked.
“Are we immortal? Do we survive death? Does Malcolm, somewhere, still love me?” She kept her face turned from him and he was aware that he felt her questions irrelevant and that this was wrong of him or perhaps came of his being tired. Or perhaps it came from the fact that the soft edges and tips of Antonia’s averted profile, soft yet so clear, shadowed yet so pale, against the sky, were more relevant than any such questions. ”

“ Her gaze, with its new, cold grief, was straight before her.
“Tony; dear Tony,” he said, laying his hand on her shoulder. She did not move or look at him.
“Let’s go away,” he said. “Let’s leave this place. It’s bad for us both. Sell it. Give it to Miss Latimer. Chuck it all, Tony, and start a new life with me. Chuck the whole ghoulish business of Malcolm and his feelings and your own infidelity. It has nothing to do with love and heaven; really it hasn’t. You’ll see it yourself some day. Let’s go away at once, darling, and get married.” ”

“ And it was still Antonia who directed the installation, replying: “Oh, no; that’s not at all necessary. We have never sat in the dark. It was broad daylight, before tea, with Mr. Foster.”
Bevis took his place and they laid hands lightly upon the table.
“And we may go on talking,” Antonia added.
But they did not talk. As if the very spirit of dumbness had emanated from their outspread hands, they sat silent and Bevis felt at once the muffled rhythm of their hearts beating in syncopated measure. ”

“ I have known Malcolm since he was a child. There is nothing he has felt that I have not known. It frightened him, sometimes, to find that I had known everything.—The bond is not broken.”
“No. It is not. But do you see what I am going to tell Antonia to-morrow?” he said, not stirring as, with his folded arms, he looked across at her. “That such a bond as that sets her free. It’s you he comes for; you he misses. Realities take their place after death. Things come out. ”

“ Tony’s enfranchisement, he foresaw, could not come from anything he might say to her. Her fear could never again infect him; but could his intuition free her? He would have only intuition to put before her, and Miss Latimer would be there with her lie that was half a truth. No; it could only be by the infection of his security and ardour that Tony could be won back from the darkness, and it should not fail her. But, until it had won her, he could feel no joy.
His room was at the other end of the corridor from Tony’s, opposite Miss Latimer’s, and he had not closed his door on entering. ”

“ Antonia is not as light as you imagine,” she said. “She loved her husband. She does not find it easy to forget him here, it is true; but I do not think she would find it easy if she left his home with another man.”
“No one asks her to forget him,” said Bevis. She could not drink her tea, but he passed his cup, blessing the bland ritual that made soft, sliding links in an encounter all harsh, had it been unaccompanied, with the embarrassment of their antagonism. ”

“ It came to me, one night, in a sort of inner vision, Tony, after dreadful things had happened—over there, you know. But he is safe and we are safe. We are all held round by love. That’s what I believe, Tony. It’s God that makes the meaning of immortality, not immortality that makes the meaning of life. ”

“ Antonia mused. “Poor little Cicely. Do you know, I don’t think any one has ever really liked her much. Not old Mrs. Wellwood, really, nor even Malcolm. It hurt me to feel, in a moment, that Mrs. Wellwood liked even me, whom she hardly knew, better.”
“I am not surprised,” Captain Saltonhall commented.
“No; but that’s not relevant, Bevis; because one doesn’t expect one’s mother-in-law to like one, however charming one may be. What I felt about it was that Cicely had starved her, just as she starved Cicely. Neither could give the other anything except absolute trust. ”

“ He asked, for he must still try to save himself and Tony; yet he knew that Miss Latimer had indeed done something to him; or that Malcolm had. The wraith of that inscrutability hovered between him and Tony, and in clasping her would he not always clasp its chill? The springs of ardour in his heart were killed. Never had he more loved and never less desired her. Poor, poor Tony. How could she live without him? And wretched he, how was he to win her back from this antagonist?
He had asked his question, but she knew his thoughts.
“He has parted us, Bevis. We are parted. You know it, too.” ”

“ Why should she?”
“Well, caring for him so much and seeing me here in his place.”
“How brave you are, Bevis,” said Antonia after a moment, drawing out her silk. It was the quality in him to which she most often reverted.
“Am I? Why?”
“You are not afraid to remind me.”
“Why should I be afraid? I know your thoughts. But I’m not going to talk about them, or about mine. I want you to explain Miss Latimer.”
“There’s not much to explain. She shows it all, I think. She’s deep and narrow and simple. You don’t like her. I can see that.”
“I can’t imagine how. I’m constantly making myself agreeable.” ”

“ Captain Saltonhall looked out and said nothing.
“I wonder if you see what I mean,” said Antonia.
“No; I don’t. I like it.” The young man spoke gently and with something of a drawl, unimpressed, apparently, by her antipathy and putting up the back of a placid forefinger to stroke along the edge of his moustache.
“One gets the hills, peaceful and silvery; one gets the walled garden and the cedar,” she enumerated.
“The little pond with its fountain is as serene as a happy dream. It’s all like a happy dream. ”

“ She is unaware of the complexity of the problem.”
“You think that Malcolm, too, was so simple?”
“I do. Not so simple as Miss Latimer; but simpler than you, and you know it; and far simpler than I am; and you know that, too, my dear.”
She sought no dispute. Almost with a hard patience she went on. “Wasn’t their definiteness intuition rather than illusion? Isn’t intuition easier for the simple than for the complex?”
“Intuition isn’t definiteness; that’s just what it isn’t. As for it’s being easier; everything is easier, of course, to simple people.” ”

“ And didn’t you begin! How like a woman! What a woman you are! You know that I shan’t get over you. And I assure you that I don’t think less well of Malcolm’s fidelity.”
“But the bitterness, Bevis. Why were you so bitter?” Her voice trembled. “I am never bitter with you.”
“And I’m never bitter with you—though I’m a bitter person, which you aren’t. You know perfectly well that it was Miss Latimer whose neck I wanted to wring.—Beastly little stone-curlew, with her stare and her wailing.”
“It felt like my neck. Was it only Cicely’s, then? Poor little Cicely.” ”

“ Miss Latimer’s simplicities would have more weight with her.
“Something must be definite,” she said. “Immortality means nothing unless it can in some way be defined. It must mean a person, and a person means memory, feeling, will. So, if Malcolm is immortal, he exists now, as he existed here; unchanged; loving me, as he told Cicely he should always love me; and waiting for me, as he told her he would wait.” She had come back to it and Miss Latimer had fixed her in it. ”

“ Why do you go?” he said, almost with terror, as Antonia’s arms released him. She had opened her eyes; but not to him. Their cold, fixed grief gazed above his head. And the faint, deprecatory smile flickered about her mouth as, rising, she said: “I must. Cicely will soon be back. And I must rest again. I must rest for to-morrow, Bevis dear.”
“We are all going away together? You will really rest?”
“All going away. Yes; I will rest.” Still she did not look at him, but around at the room. “I shall never see Wyndwards again.”
“Forget it, Tony, and all it’s meant. That’s what I am going to do. ”

“ It’s the sort of melancholy ordained by Providence to go with tea-time and a wood-fire, as eggs are ordained to go with bacon.”
“No,” said Antonia. “It’s ordained to go with nothing. It makes me think of something that has been forgotten; something that has given up even the hope of being remembered, yet that laments.”
“But the curlew isn’t forgotten. It is probably calling to its mate.”
“Probably. I am not talking of the natural history of the bird. Its cry sounds like the cry of a creature that has been forgotten by its mate.”
“What do you think it sounds like?” he asked Miss Latimer. ”

“ There one lived sanely in the world of the normal consciousness, one’s personality hedged round by activity and convention from the vagrant and disintegrating influences of the subliminal, or the subconscious, whichever it might have been that had infernally played the trick of the other evening. He sat there, poking with his stick at the crevices between the flags, and the song of the chiff-chaff was his only comfort.
Miss Latimer did not return to lunch, and he was in the library waiting for Tony long before the appointed hour. ”

“ Miss Latimer looked round at them as they entered, and then rose. “Isn’t this table a little rickety?” she asked, placing her finger-tips upon it and slightly shaking it.
“It’s the one we always use,” said Antonia. “It’s quite solid. If you wanted to tip it, you couldn’t.”
“I’ve seen larger and firmer tables tipped, by people who wanted to,” said Miss Latimer. “I have, I am sorry to say, often seen people cheat at table-turning.”
“You don’t suspect Bevis, or me, I hope!” laughed Antonia, taking her place.
“Not at all. But people don’t suspect themselves,” said Miss Latimer. She, too, sat down. ”

“ Or is it merely that you are passionately opposed to remarriages?”
She rose as he asked his questions as if the closeness of his pursuit had become too intolerable. “I do not know you. How could I be your enemy? I only dislike you, because you make Antonia unhappy.”
“Would you like me if I made her happy?”
The pale glare was in her eyes as she faced him, her hands on the back of her chair. “You can never make her happy. Never. Never,” she repeated. “You can only mean unhappiness to her. ”

“ Could two creatures have looked more cosy, shut, for the blind-man’s-holiday hour, into the tranquil intimacy of the studious room, with the even glow of its tended fire, the cheer of its humming kettle, the scented promise of its tea-table? She passed him toasted scones from the hot-water-basin and offered home-made jam. He wanted no jam, but he found himself quite hungry, absurdly so, he thought, until he remembered that he had really eaten no lunch. He was coming, now that the opening had been made, and while he ate his scone, to a new decision. ”