Compton MacKenzie

“ Mary repeated to herself on the way upstairs to her room. "Growing old?" she echoed once more when she stood in front of her mirror. The candlelight, apricot-shaded, flattered her reflection. Growing old at forty? What nonsense Jemmie talked! He forgot that he was fifteen years older than she. Now he certainly was growing old. How much he had aged just lately and how much he had improved with age! Dear old Jemmie, he really needed her far more than Geoffrey or Muriel needed her. ”

“ Célestine was the maid who had taken the place of Adèle, dead before her mistress returned to Paris, a move which would have given Adèle so much pleasure. Pierrette did not care for Célestine, who was always lifting her off delightful nests of lace and silk. Célestine, in Pierrette's opinion, had the hands of a butcher rather than of a lady's maid. The thought of Célestine gave her a fisson, and she yawned in disgust.
Mary held Pierrette so that the cat's equilibrium should not be disturbed while she leaned over to ring the bell. It was morbid to sit here in the twilight thinking about youth. ”

“ Yet when Mary tried to give herself what she was able to understand had been given to Muriel, she could only perceive the image and miss the reality it tried to express. The faces of the old women kneeling round the crib appeared as meaningless as a row of pippins on the shelf of a store-room. For the sake of a comfortable bed and plenty of food they would have been every bit as willing to kneel round la planchette.
"Do you believe, dear child, in the possibility of communicating with the dead?" Mary asked her daughter at the first opportunity she was given of talking to her in private. ”

“ At such an hour Manning Crescent looked more dilapidated than on the night before, and the broken slat in the Venetian blinds of the drunken doctor next door gave the last touch of raffish squalor to the row of houses.
No sooner was Edward seated in the doctor's neat consulting-room than he fell into a despair, because he had not seen Elizabeth before he came out. Suppose she were dead when he arrived back? He could hardly stay in the room; the smell of disinfectants here was stifling him with an aroma of death. ”

“ On a January afternoon, the afternoon of her twentieth birthday, Mary Flower stood by the drawing-room windows of a house in King's Gate, staring out across the Knightsbridge road to where in soot and snow the trees of Hyde Park were etched upon a gray expanse of sky. The house was very still, for it was the time when old Lady Flower took her daily nap, to the routine of which she attributed the vitality that enabled her at seventy to sustain the exertion of arranging an advantageous marriage for her granddaughter. ”

“ Mary insisted. "If I hadn't been in love when I was small, I shouldn't be bothering now about being in love with Jemmie Alison. I shouldn't expect anything. As it is, I feel somehow that I want more than he can give me."
"If you'd come back with me to Berkshire and hunt, you'd soon forget all your troubles."
"Should I? I wonder. Not by hunting, Daisy. You would not enjoy hunting so much, if you weren't so proud of yourself for learning to ride so late in life."
"I wish we'd had our place in Berkshire when I was little," said Daisy regretfully. "I should have been a horsewoman then. ”

“ When in 1913, bored with the big empty house, she decided to give up Woodworth Lodge, her imagination had seized upon Paris as the place to live, because she was already beginning to exist only in the past. That meant old age. Youth lives in the future; middle-age stagnates in the present; old age lives again, but alas, in the past, lives with only the ghost of its former life, always in the past. Her first year in Paris had been occupied in furnishing the house and preparing it to be a suitable place in which she might for the rest of her time here sit by the fire and dream of the past. ”

“ Even if I were disposed to give you such a dowry as would enable you to indulge yourself in the luxury of marriage with a poor man, I should not permit myself to do so. For I should be wrong. Few men have the moral strength to live decently upon their wives. I know you will think that this is only the opinion of a cynical old woman, and I should be sorry if at your age you thought differently. But at my age one is no longer shocked by the nakedness of truth; at my age we begin to return to the shamelessness of childhood. How your dear grandfather would have disliked that last remark of mine. ”

“ She looked across to where in the flickering candlelight Muriel knelt praying, her eyes turned heavenward and full of tears. Tears for what? For the mere imagination of the reality of that Divine Infant in the manger of Bethlehem. To Muriel's limpid faith had been granted all that motherhood could confer on woman. To her kneeling there belonged a baby that would never grow up to compass her disillusionment, a baby that promised to all who believed in Him immortal life. ”

“ What fun she and Daisy had always had in the Square when she used to stay with her friend for the holidays! Perhaps it was the bareness of winter that made it seem so small nowadays; or perhaps everything shrank as one grew older.
"Don't you think that a girl ought to love the man she is going to marry?" Mary pressed.
"But what is love? Personally I've never been in love."
"Daisy! You were tremendously in love with Gerald Ashworth. Don't you remember when you bought that lilac notepaper with two hearts stamped in the top corner?" ”

“ Muriel ejaculated.
"Yes, but have you ever thought how easy it is to be disgusted by anything to do with money when one has plenty oneself? I feel that the best that can be said for your Socialist state is that if nobody could have more than a certain amount and everybody had that amount it might end in people's despising money."
"Oh, my dear mother," Muriel burst in impatiently, "must you really trot out the old legend that Socialism means equal money for all? ”

“ Muriel agreed with a smile.
"And old age will have no terrors for you," her mother murmured. "Because I understand so well that for you old age will simply seem a slow and tranquil drawing nearer to God. Happy little girl of mine!"
"Yes, I am happy."
"And that makes me happy, for it helps me to realize that so far as my children are concerned I have not been a complete failure. I wish I could stay here longer, but I've left my little cat in London with only my maid to look after her, and I think I ought to be getting back." ”

“ At the same time, Mary was the youngest pupil in her school, and she regarded her own duties of guardianship more gravely than Lady Flower regarded hers. Whatever might be Mary's life in days to come, Mademoiselle was determined that she should not be denied in childhood an opportunity to prepare the soul for those deep consolations of religious belief that might one day come to her aid in a time of stress. And Mary loved the quiet hours with Mademoiselle, when in her gray boudoir she spoke to her about God. ”

“ It was easy, thought Edward, very easy for that young doctor to talk about childbirth as if it were nothing more than buying a doll in a shop. Doctors soon began to lose their sense of the soul in their familiarity with the body. What did a man like that know about the great mystery of human love? Edward's mind went back to his talk with the Vicar of Barton Flowers on the vigil of his wedding; and now thinking over his brief married life with Elizabeth he apprehended all the truth of what the parson had said. ”

“ You must not blame her. She is convinced that we are not meant for each other. My father and mother were drowned many years ago, because they eloped; she has lost her husband and her eldest son also: she is entirely alone in the world, and she was kind to me when I was a little girl. Forget me, Pierre, and try to forgive me. Do not think that I do not love you. Don't think that, Pierre. I believe that I have loved you ever since I first saw you at Châteaublanc. ”

“ She had been annoyed by her husband's clumsy assumption of Geoffrey's guilt, and she had found no better way to display her annoyance than by that pretense of delicacy.
"One always thinks that one is going to find it easier to be better in a few years' time; but, when the few years roll by, there is always a new trap for one's self-confidence," Mary reflected.
She made up her mind to be patient with Geoffrey, and went down to dinner with the intention of persuading Jemmie to be as patient as she hoped to be herself. But her good intentions were frustrated by Geoffrey's failure to appear. ”

“ Driving along to Wood Green, Mary wondered why they allowed trams on these crowded roads. They made it most dangerous for a car to drive fast; now that she was on her way to heal a breach that had endured ten years, every minute gained seemed of the utmost importance. It would be terrible to find that Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace a month ago for some unknown destination. He must have read in the Morning Post or in The Times the announcement of his father's death, and if he was still in London it was strange that he had not attended the funeral. ”

“ It was strange that a man who throughout his life had allowed himself to be disconcerted by the smallest interference with his minor comforts should be able to endure without a murmur months of fierce pain. There must have been something fundamentally noble about Jemmie, some bedrock of character impervious alike to violent passions and the fretful whims of ordinary existence. Impervious at any rate to the latter. It was verging on the ludicrous to associate violent passions with Jemmie, for surely no man ever lived less subject to the stress of the unattainable. ”

“ No sooner were they seated on two of those green chairs, which in their emptiness speak as eloquently as musical instruments of latent emotions, than Pierre took Mary's hand and said: "Mademoiselle, I have given up Marechal et Cie. Presently I shall find something better to do. But so long as I was their employé I could not tell you that I loved you. At this moment I am poor, but I am free. Mary, I hope you will love me until I can win you in marriage?"
She let her hand remain in his. Citizen and citizeness of cloud-cuckoo-town, they floated far above ordinary life. ”

“ Mary felt sick and dizzy in a sudden thought of how brief his stay might be. If he really were ordered to the front? Was it credible that he should be? Richard in danger, and Richard how many thousand miles away! She had been proud and glad when he chose to be a soldier; but war had been so remote then. It seemed only yesterday that Jemmie bought High Corner, so that the children might always spend their holidays out of London. And now the eldest of those children was liable to be sent abroad to fight for his country. High Corner without children would not be High Corner any longer. ”