Bernard Capes

“ If we have got—somehow—into the wrong world, the best thing is to leave it. I have thought, that our vice, perhaps, Ellen's and mine, might be no vice, elsewhere—the thing, the normal thing, in some other place—not eccentric, not beastly, fitting into the order and a part with it—only wrong here. And we don't mean it—we don't mean it at all. We try to adapt ourselves; but our nature comes from somewhere else—we have strayed—we don't remember. They say one man's food is another man's poison. Why not one's world—our world's—Ellen's and mine? ”

“ Feminine wit is like a pin in the waist of decorum, a trap and a warning to the adventurous. Once pricked by, it is twice shy. Or the remissness may have been due to something deeper—an instinctive recoiling of subconsciousness from subconsciousness in the face of a discovered secret, unguessed at on the surface of things, where all appeared so seductive and so fair.
I cannot tell how that may be; only, it seemed, men admired and would not be committed. Perhaps Ellen minded, and perhaps she did not. ”

“ At the sound, Sultan, the monstrous black Persian, who was lying asleep on the hearth-rug, raised a lazy head, and, regarding his mistress a moment with narrowed eyes, got suddenly to his feet, and, running to her, fawned and rolled himself beside, inviting her caresses. With her fingers buried in his thick fur, Ellen spoke on dreamily:
"Poor little man! Does it take so little to make the world rosy to you?" ”

“ From that night Ellen was herself again; and more, the fits of depression were succeeded by an even exaggerated recurrence of those earlier moods of emotion and excitement. Vosper observed, and was not yet satisfied. A haunting sense as of something unnatural in his neighbourhood kept him at a perpetual tension of uneasiness. Things were not as they should be; and still his mind harped on the only solution of the riddle comprehensible to it. One morning, at breakfast, looking across at the sideboard, a thing struck him. ”

“ He expanded; he enjoyed; he relished, the last thing at night, his pipe and his toddy. It was only abroad, in the thick of his fellow-men, that he felt nervously isolated.
Trusted Ellen was his housekeeper. She jingled the keys and cheapened the mutton. He never asked an account of her; his implicit faith would have shrunk from such an innuendo. Nor had he ever the least reason to question it. They did very well on a small income, and a household strictly limited to themselves and one general servant. Ellen was as thrifty in her management as she was priceless in herself. ”

“ He went back to the drawing-room, gulped down a final glass of spirit, and, for safety's sake, carried the decanter with him to his bedroom, where, the racing of his heart presently subsiding, he fell into an exhausted sleep.
V Ellen came down to breakfast late. She felt very languid and inert. Her lips were dry; her eyes had blue rims round them and little thready red veins in their corners. There was something very wistful about her appearance. Sickness, headache, even a cold, borrow a certain pathos for themselves from youthful prettiness. ”

“ They can awaken a sympathy in the male observer which no adult domestic ailment is able to reach. He finds somehow in them a tender appeal to his pity, his emotions; his instinct leans caressingly, maybe, towards the fever which is at once a danger and an opportunity. Perhaps that is it, or perhaps it is that personable youth can idealise the disfigurements which make such unattractive prose of its elders. Not presence, or dignity, but only sweet immaturity may achieve poetry in a sneeze or a snuffle.
Ellen had Sultan, the great Persian, in her arms when the lady-help came in with her coffee. ”

“ If it helped you to regain your strength of will, your self-respect—the obligation would all be mine—it would indeed; it would make me so glad and happy. Will you come? Will you give yourself that chance? I am sure, for my sake, you would not betray the trust I put in you."
"For your sake!" The woman looked stupidly on the ground. Her face worked, then suddenly unlovely tears were rolling down her cheeks.
"There are plenty of lady-helps in these days," said Ellen. ”

“ Ellen's was a peculiar mind; mature beyond its years, perspicacious, original, self-reliant. The girl, after her first fright, was not shocked in her near neighbourhood to this fulsome sinner so startlingly imposed upon her. Rather she found her case attractive, in a way no man could understand. The woman had nothing but her vice to recommend her, and it was the one thing that did. ”

“ It must end, I say."
"It shall end," she answered. She had risen to her feet; her eyes were bright, her face a little flushed. "I can't answer for myself, papa; but I do know what you mean, and it is hard on you. It shan't happen any more. There, I am good again."
There was a wink of moisture on her lashes, as she ran out of the room; but all was sparkle and merriment when she returned presently with the tray of grog and tumblers, to mix her father his nightcap. Seeing her so transformed, his anger and agitation were assuaged in a moment. ”

“ Vosper, pulling bright-eyed at his pipe, smiled luminously.
"From childhood we like what is kind to us," he said. "An aunt of mine, the ugliest that boy ever had, I thought beautiful. That was because she gave me pleasure, like nasty grog."
"Does it give you pleasure? What does it feel like?"
"It feels like, after a day of depression, getting a big cheque."
Ellen laughed. ”

“ The sound of the world outside is like the far-off murmur in a shell. You lie lapped in a half-waking dream, that is always palpitating on the verge of some delirious discovery; the anxieties, the heart- breaking struggles of existence, its nervous horrors and cruel rebuffs—they have all passed away and become as nothing. ”

“ Ellen did not like this trait in the Almighty, though she would not have said so; but she was always ready to rebuke it by example.
Women are called illogical; yet, for all their professed religionism, their instinct, more than man's, revolts in practice against such divine irrationalism. That is why their sympathies can embrace the unloveliness which to the masculine perception is simply repulsive; why, in moments even of unconscious ecstatic mutiny against the bullying of Providence, they can suck the poison from the wounds inflicted by it. ”

“ Dogmatic in the few beliefs he could comprehend, he was persuaded, and had always been persuaded, that no redemption was possible in the case of congenital drunkards. The psychology of such minds betrays invariably a strong self-cosseting instinct, and their creeds will always be found to embrace the least worry or agitation for themselves. Vosper could not sleep, or eat, or enjoy life adequately under the perpetual sense of impending disaster which haunted him. ”

“ The depression—and then the glow, the heavenly moment—that was it—and, after all, damnation. It may be in anyone's, I say. A thousand million times better not to invite the risk." She was putting evident restraint upon herself to speak quietly, though the agitation of her nerves still showed in her voice. Her accent and intonation, Ellen could not but help noticing through all her perturbation, were those of an educated woman. ”

“ He refilled his pipe as he spoke. "You had better bathe it, hadn't you?" he said. "Ring up Annie for some warm water. By the by, when does she go? The sooner the better. You haven't heard of another yet, I suppose?"
Ellen sat on the floor, binding her handkerchief about her arm. The flush had gone from her face, leaving it unusually pale. But she could laugh again, upbraiding her assailant.
"No, don't bother: it's only a scratch. O, you naughty vicious fellow! Nobody shall love you any more. Did I pinch him? Well, it was an accident. Annie goes on Tuesday, papa." ”

“ Must I always be the one to find cheerfulness and sympathy, as well as food and clothes, for my family? To come home night after night from the killing wear and tear of business, and find this more killing atmosphere waiting to receive me! ”

“ In our temperate climate any reasonable accession of warmth is always—whatever the complaints over the preceding cold and wet—speedily resented as an affliction, especially by women. The lovely ardour of an April sunshine produces amongst them more complaint than gratitude. Ellen was a true child of her climate ”

“ There frequently was in these cases. Ellen knew of none. She did not favour the bottle, for instance, he asked. Ellen had no reason to suppose so.
The guileless unsophisticated child! Before he went up to the drawing-room, Vosper most carefully measured the quantity of liquor in the decanter, making an exact mental note of the point in the cut-glass to which it reached. Later, when the girl brought up his grog, he looked to verify his calculation. The whisky stood lower by a couple of finger breadths than he had left it an hour ago. ”

“ In person he was a spare nervous man, with a habit of stiffness, which was only, like the simulation of death in certain insects, the instinctive self-protective attitude of a shy nature. In all his days he had never got really accustomed to life, or ceased to apprehend from it some shocking discovery. ”

“ Leave the bottle there. I shall follow you presently."
She cried out, as her daughter turned from her.
"Your mother, Ellen!"
The girl paused a moment.
"Yes," she said—"I hear. But why are you? We shall know—both of us—by and by. It is he I am thinking of. I could never understand why it was—I wanted so to be good—and it would end by driving him mad. There is no other way in all the world. It is not the first time I have thought it; and now I am sure."
Not once the word on her lips—no response, no solace to that mute agony. The mother held out her arms, and closed them on eternal vacancy ”

“ You need not allude to me, speak to me, recognise my existence, if you will. A very little custom will make it all quite easy. I have no friends; I go under an assumed name; there is not the least chance of anybody discovering the truth. ”

“ The father, in his new mood of tremulous reassurance, thought that he detected in this recovery a probable explanation of the state which had preceded it. The girl was of an age when the natural fondness in her was beginning to crave a more liberal outlet than the monotony and solitariness of her life could supply. ”

“ We have heard of and shuddered at such acts; but in their spiritual essence they are of regular occurrence. Women are not nauseated, as men are, by the visible tokens of misery and disease. The cruel illogic of such human sores appeals to them above their foulness. ”

“ Sweet and comely paragons are not to be found a'begging, as a rule, in a world of amorous susceptibilities. Her verbal readiness, that little smart accent on perfection, may possibly have accounted for philandering youth's remissness. ”