Esther Louise Forbes

“ That night neither Lanice nor Pauline could sleep. Wide awake one thought of working on a magazine for a great publisher, the other of women—women working in the South for the slaves, for temperance in evil-smelling bar-rooms, for a right to control the destiny of their children—women in hoops and laced with whalebone and buckram—who some time, God help us, should be as free as the envied males. ”

“ What am I building old age upon? I do not want it. That's what people mean by the necessity of children. But I feel no need. Will I when it is too late? When I sit as I sit to-day with no one to talk to and the whole world grey? And I grey and lonely as the gulls that follow us mewing like cats. I must have loved Anthony, for my face has changed in six months, grown sadder, I think. Oh, Anthony, Anthony, why couldn't you have loved me as I could have loved you? Or at least let me love you as I might have done. My dear Anthony...English people...Lady Maude does wear the ugliest clothes. ”

“ Years whirling out of the onrushing space would involve and in the end destroy. She breathed upon her palm to feel the body's heat, and thought how it is the gift of many generations of dead men. And she would be cold some day and the teeth she tapped with her pencil and the hair she sleeked with her hand would be the last things to be left of her, except the skeleton waiting within. It did not matter what happened to the soul; perhaps like Mohammedan women she had none. Perhaps she lost it during the hours so bright, always, with firelight and sunshine, spent with Anthony Jones. ”

“ Then he found Lanice, white and heavy-eyed, huddled in her furs as an owl huddles in his feathers, holding the black cat in her lap. The great moon on the snow made a new and colder day. The shadow of trees lay like black lace. Mr. Jones drove with his left hand; with his right arm he clasped the long, delicate body of the sleeping girl. He hoped she would not be too hard to forget; he hoped he could some time forgive himself for his treatment of her. Nothing hurts for long, thank God. ”

“ Lanice thanked the girl and listlessly sat upon the edge of the bed and stared at the round dent in the pillow his head had made.
To her feverish hands it seemed that some of his bodily warmth still lingered in the tumbled linen of his bed. She shut her eyes and rocked her narrow body, opened them and looked again upon the pillow marked by the shape of his head. She stared, striving vainly to conjure up the true and living memory of his face. ”

“ Think, Lanice, how many have lain among the spring flowers and wondered about death and immortality, and life and love—just as you do now. Then they have gotten up and gone home and quite forgotten—just as you will. It is like a great wind blowing by,' he said, 'first you feel it blowing upon you—and in a moment it is gone, or rather you are gone. The wind of human experience keeps on blowing. It is Godhood. It gives us in passing something of its own immutability. ”

“ Nor could you put into the story that one terrible moment in Miss Bigley's house when Anthony Jones had held her and hurt her very much, and for some diabolical reason the whole little room had flamed up with emotion ruddier than the firelight on the walls, and she, at once degraded and magnified, fled the room.
In stories you never put in what you really think of men. How once on a country road you had let an ox-team boy fold a blanket on one of his team and seat you on it, nor how he held your hand in his big red mitten and pressed his forehead a minute against your thigh. ”

“ At last when they reached a heavenly spot Lanice suggested they rest upon the grass, and Roger ordered the berlina to stop. While the driver refreshed himself at a near-by inn and the three thick grey horses pulled eagerly at the flourishing grass, the two exiles wandered under cypress and ilex trees towards the banks of the swelling river. It was spring, and the valley of the Arno was carpeted with the sweet lily-of-the-valley. A great multitude of tiny flowers looking up eagerly from the lush grass, the poplars twinkling in the rustle of the wind. ”

“ Lanice in her turn studied him slyly. The sunlight gilded Mr. Jones, and she noticed how it coarsened the skin of his face and showed every pore on his nose. It gilded his hair, too, which was like dark, half-pulled molasses. The two inches of beard before either ear was rough and metallic in comparison. Towards the eyes beyond the sweep of the razor was a delicate fruit-like down, almost white. This carnal discovery shocked her, and she blushed at her own powers of observation. Surely no woman before had ever examined a man with such morbid care. ”

“ This hurt. Lanice sprang to her feet, staring blankly at her cousin and looking surprisingly like a child's stiff doll in her voluminous green gown and tumbled black silk curls. 'Sometimes,' she said, her voice shaking with anger, 'you are horrid, Pauline. You can be horrider than any one else I have ever known. You can't love me or you wouldn't talk to me like that. I think you really hate me, and my dear Mamma.'
Wrangle, wrangle. Her nerves trembled with the confusion and bickering.
At eleven o'clock she crossed the Common, still wearing the uncultured, fascinating green costume. ”

“ Lanice put her slender arms over her head and laced her long fingers back of her neck. She answered this gibe seriously.
'And men—I don't know why it is that I really love men—and trust them...They have never shown any real reason why I should. Some people might think that I had been treated badly by them—but the way I feel towards them is deeper than experience.'
'I know what it is,' blazed Pauline, 'at heart you are a slave-woman—you are the true product of generations of women whom men ruled with a whip! ”

“ They walked the park all Friday afternoon in the melting sweetness of a premature spring day. He told her how spring, to him, always was personified by a dainty lady with ruffled skirts, silk mits, and flowered bonnet. Instantly before Lanice's eyes came the picture of a gay hoyden with bare, muddy feet, draggled petticoats, tousled hair, roguish eyes, beguiling but slightly vulgar voice. She tried to tell Augustus of this muddy primavera, but the idea vaguely hurt him and he began to protest that none of her own qualities more greatly engaged him than her exquisite tidiness. ”

“ His ideals and his body were at war, and for the moment it was his body that had the ascendancy. His temper was up and his language grew coarse.
'No, no!' she cried out, as once she had cried to Mr. Jones. His sweating face and raging strength frightened her.
'You are not too fine to lie with a notorious rake, ma'am. Are you so delicate as to refuse me a kiss?'
'I am much too delicate,' she replied in a high, angry voice.
'You sneer at me when I propose marriage, as I weakly did a few moments ago. Come! Women, as all the world knows, are either good or bad. ”

“ She looked baleful and evil, like a witch cat, and Lanice, thinking of the women hanged upon the hill, could imagine this bitter lady in a halter.
'Open it,' she commanded. 'No one has seen it for forty years, not since Sister Poggy deserted Salem to go with that worthless husband to Boston.'
Lanice found herself face to face with a beautiful Indian or Persian miniature painted upon ivory. The girl she faced had long jet eyes, black silk hair, pale shapely face, and locked red mouth. She was heavy with jewels, ear-rings, nose stud, bracelets, and necklaces. ”

“ Fox, as he and Lanice, with their faces pressed against the panes, watched the whitening of the graveyard and the obliteration of the stones. Miss Bigley hurried in shaking the drifts out of her vast dolman and off her bonnet.
'I assure you, Miss Bardeen, the other ladies that serve as ushers are already gathered at my house to put on their costumes. Dear Mr. Jones, tired as he is, is assisting. Such brocades and gauzes and jewels were never before seen in this city.'
It had fallen upon Miss Bigley to select five girls of social eminence and sufficient beauty to usher at Mr. Jones's lecture. ”

“ She called to Sears Ripley and groping like a blind man he came to join her. They sat on one overturned giant and still in whispers speculated upon the vanished races. They felt like hunters who have stalked their prey and only after the most prodigious cunning out-manœuvred their victims. Both were glad of the fog. How comparatively prosaic it would have been if they had seen the stone circles for miles and walked straight into them! Lanice tried to describe to him how that first great stone had cut through the fog like the bow of a ship. ”

“ I could never speak so to you, my angel. Come. Let me protect you in the future from the lusts common to my own sex, protect you from a certain weakness one might expect from your mother's child. Lanice, I will care for you. No temptation or need ever will come near you. We will carry this to God together, on our knees, strength for us both.'
'No.'
'Tell me who it was you loved; I demand it.'
'You can't demand, Augustus. But it was...' her quickened breathing choked her words, but her lips formed the name of Anthony Jones. ”

“ Lanice broke it by saying, 'I think I had best drink my tea now, and then why couldn't we walk over the town?...' She hid the quiver of her lip against the edge of the teacup. 'The town, they say, is most worth while.'
'What would you like to see?' he asked humbly.
He knew that she did not care to see anything really, but admired the brave face she showed the world. Poor child! Most women would have been wistful—overcome with grief—prostrated, offended. ”

“ There was a pause and Lanice, although by no means bored, feared that perhaps her companion was, and quickly suggested that they return to the house called Paradise.
'No, no—I beg of you. We will never be in so strange a place again—never so far removed from all the world. And I may never again have a live pixie for a companion.'
He settled himself rather obstinately on his stone. The conversation drifted to the tin mines of Cornwall and the Phoenicians and how they taught the Cornishmen the exquisite arts of clotted cream and saffron cake. ”

“ Lanice began to blush slowly, furiously, until tears of mortification stood in her downcast eyes. She was suddenly, overwhelmingly conscious of Mr. Jones's physical presence. The back of his hand touched her wrist.
'Lovely hands,' he said quietly, 'and neck and face. I've never seen another face that could...at odd moments...move me more. How can the rest be only whalebone and buckram? Lanice, you could be a...beauty, and love as women loved a thousand years ago. You prefer to be a dressmaker's dummy and a lady editoress. ”

“ She could not control herself, and casting her body down beside him and clasping his thin hands she cried out, 'Roger, are you really sick? I mean, very sick?'
'Yes, Lanice,' he smiled, 'very, very.'
She could not bear the thought, shuddered, and covered her face with her hands. He remarked quite casually: 'It is all right, Lanice, about dying. You think now that it isn't. But it is something quite natural to the human race. All our ancestors have always done it—successfully. It is quite part of living. ”

“ Thoreau had said, 'and put all America behind you.' The idea of a walking trip upon the Cape with a female companion seemed to the philosophical recluse an idle venture. Much better, he thought, make the trip alone, and then return to Boston and matrimony. Why marry first and drag a woman over the dunes? But it was on this latter course Ripley decided. He had seen his Lanice on Bodmin and knew that its solitary strangeness would delight her.
'I never knew a woman yet,' said Thoreau, 'who would eat a bad breakfast and get sand in her shoes merely for a sight of the grandeurs of nature. ”

“ She the centre of it all, and so soon to be but one more name cut in slate for the lazy to ponder over. 'Lanice Ripley.'
What clothes she had had as a girl, and lovers enough—perhaps too many! She shut her eyes and saw herself in brown velvet that looked like a Spanish portrait, and coral earrings to her shoulders. Could see herself wipe her mouth like a greedy child, shake her earrings, and fall asleep, deep in the furs of the Russian sleigh. ”

“ Fogs lay in counterpanes over the wild land and hid from view the village of Liskeard, and its tall trees and square church tower. The vicar's wife would not let Miss Bardeen walk, even as far as the Fountain of Saint Cleer, without forcing upon her her own stout walking-boots and excessively ugly tweed walking-gown. It was so short Lanice blushed to see that her ankles would have been displayed to public view were it not for the masculine boots. She wore over her head a light-weight black wool shawl in the manner of a country woman. ”

“ Lanice...you once let me call you that...tell me this, will you be satisfied to go on, always looking back towards a love—I suppose you'd call it—that's gone, never expecting anything from the future?'
She cast down her eyes, partly because she was afraid that he might read there the fact that what he supposed she called love was indeed gone. It hurt her because the pain of the memory was now almost a pleasure. She sat calm and collected close beside Sears Ripley and could hardly remember how such proximity to Mr. Jones had made her heart race within her breast. ”