Glenway Wescott

“ By the river water, by the pure shame and excitement, an ignorant girl had been made responsible to God—lonesomely so, without an intermediary—for a grown woman's life. She was as jealous of that responsibility as if it were pure love; not even her mother should share it. This was formally the end of childhood. But she believed that she could keep its happiness as long as she kept its purity. Happiness was a duty as well as a miracle.
Meanwhile her mother's melancholy increased, and after her baptism Marianne regarded it with a new, anxious independence. Her mother was as pure as a child. ”

“ Virtue did lead to happiness. . . . In her mother's life, childlike purity had led only to an old woman's despair (for she was already growing old) ; but that life was exceptional and not for her to try to understand. Such an extremity of sadness was a wild thing, dangerous even to see. It was as if God had permitted a heathen disaster to take place, perhaps merely to show His mystery, perhaps to teach His angels a lesson; there was nothing in it for human beings, at least for Marianne, to learn. ”

“ Her mother's utter loneliness suggested the solitude of the soul which only living for others could alleviate. Continually on trial before those whom she knew, her mother was like all men and women before God sitting in judgment. It was easy to conceive a half-divine Spirit, all malice, in the image of her father; and to love so cold and enigmatic a mother confidently was in itself a sort of mysticism. ”

“ As a child of eight Marianne saw that her mother had no friends, clung to her as if to hide the fact that no one else had the courage to love her, and began to receive in consequence all the tenderness of which that supposedly hard heart was capable. ”

“ Her mother believed that she wanted to be with her future husband, and referred to her happiness in every letter with an unhappy woman's skepticism and envy.
But by autumn Marianne had given up hope of every sort of happiness. Her thought was all anger, and it trembled upon her lips in sentences already formed; so she began to have to look forward shamefully to the time when she would be saying things as spiteful as those for which her mother was famous. All her life she had seen what marriage could be at its worst—hers would be as bad ”

“ The people of the congregation, otherwise merely those who detested her mother, drew closer like a crowd of saints—hard, loving faces all scarred with shadows under the willows, in the summer sunshine. She took three steps forward on the spongy bank. Then the first touch of the cold current seemed to burn her bare feet, and the minister's aims hurt her a little as they bent her backward. For a moment she believed that she was drowning, infinitely far be neath the suffocating, bitter, heavy, noisy water, though the Anne River was shallow. ”

“ When the tragic news of Leander's death in Oklahoma came, she said regretfully, "Now he will never know about the marriage. . . ."
Marianne herself was not impatient for it to take place. Having tasted the bitterness of man's passion (its contagious unrest, its deliberate neglect, its suspicion) before the sweet, she was glad to wait until she stopped fearing vaguely that it might be altogether bitter. The passage of time would obliterate the humiliation of her other engagement and hush the gossip about it. ”

“ Therefore, dutifully, Evangeline gave a circumstantial account of the meeting. "You know," she had begun by saying, "you have broken that girl's heart." Because she was a spinster, she had tried to put him in the wrong. She had failed, because he had always been in love, and because of Marianne's engagement to the bishop's son who had a bad reputation, and the suspicions it had aroused.
The slight, strong man had spoken laboriously, like a giant for whom human speech is petty and difficult. He had made up his mind when a little boy to marry Marianne. ”

“ So it was in an atmosphere of anger and idealism that Alwyn's mother grew up, devoutly sheltered from immorality and irreligion, cruelly exposed to still more cruel passions: a lonely little girl singing old hymns and memorizing long rhymed prayers in the shadow of a woman's disaster, watching intently with large, gray-green eyes, but asking no questions. ”

“ So swiftly, so gently, so thoroughly, her happiness had been undone. . . .As a flying seed will debauch a whole meadow with flowers, one kiss, one caress not even wished for, had spoiled her peace of mind, even her good health. For there were rhythms in her body to which she stumbled impatiently when she went out to walk alone. There was fever in her forehead, and an abnormal snowy freshness on her lips and tongue. ”

“ Often she tried to persuade herself of an emotion which even then it was her duty to feel, or tried to believe that she would. love him in time, in due time. On these occasions she realized that she would never marry him, and was bitterly ashamed of herself for not telling him so.
During the summer he found two gaited horses which he could rent, and taught Marianne to ride. On a gray horse, in a broadcloth dress turned into a riding habit, she looked exactly as her mother had looked in the dream two years before, and often thought of the resemblance. ”

“ There was a pause, neither knowing what the other expected of her. "I must go back to Sheboygan in the morning," Evangeline added. "She will be all right. She needed rest."
The proud woman begged her to stay. "Marianne enjoys perfect health—it is one of the few things I am proud of. There is some mystery about this. And I am afraid that she will never tell me what the matter is. She had grounds for believing that I would disapprove of any man she meant to marry. You see, my own marriage, though my husband and I are God-fearing and resigned, is not all that it should be." ”

“ Having prepared himself for the law and then lived in England with his mother's relatives, Paul Fairchild had come back to Wisconsin to rest after an illness. He was idle, romantic, and not quite candid; the sort of young man who seems to be a bachelor as soon as boyhood is over, very likely to be passionately in love, but unlikely to attach much importance to the fact. ”

“ That night she wrote a letter to her mother to announce her engagement definitely, phrasing it in such a way as to put her father in the right without asking what had happened to betray her. The night was as long as a lifetime. In effect, so strong was her imagination, it was a lifetime—that of Paul Fairchild's wife. She was by nature and training too just to think that the future would be uniformly unhappy ”

“ Loneliness had been a child's palace and stronghold, but since it had been broken into by the young farmer, the image of whose briefly passionate face she could not put out, she was afraid to stay in it. So she made friends with Evangeline Gay, a woman ten years older than she who had a small independent income and lived with a brother and his wife; and later accepted the attentions of a suitor named Paul Fairchild, the son of the Episcopalian bishop of Sheboygan. ”

“ Evangeline established herself in the bedroom to watch. Marianne slept and pretended to sleep. Often her face was languid and haughty—the face of a middle-aged woman strong enough to die of an exceptional weakness, without explanations, mutely. Evangeline said to Mrs. Duff: "It is a sickness. I am not a doctor. She has nothing to tell. I had better go back to Sheboygan and ask no questions." ”

“ Then he had spoken soberly of his other suspicion and had asked the question which Evangeline had not dared to answer on her own responsibility. Then he had stood up, turned his back on her, swung round, asked her pardon, and muttered: "Good-by. I must get back to work."
Evangeline, having nothing more to tell, smoothed Marianne's forehead with her finger tips. "You had better stop crying now," she concluded. "God is good. You will be happy.”
The girl leaped out of bed and fell to her knees. Evangeline left her alone. ”

“ She was no longer a young girl over whom a mother may watch, but more a woman than her mother, who had left a part of womanhood behind her when she lost her confidence in others, her readiness to weep, her hope. Marianne had hope, though nothing to hope for ”

“ Do you see the young man sitting with his folks in the first row by the window? They are the Towers, the finest people in the country. I thought a few years back that Marianne had lost her heart to that young Ralph, the one of their sons who is here. Nothing came of it, of course, and anyway I guess the Towers wouldn't care to be connected by marriage with my husband. ”

“ She could make no effort, neither ask for an explanation nor undertake even the humblest tentative of intimacy. This was a woman's weakness; but by protecting her from further humiliation, it counted as strength, and she resented it as strength; for she thought that she would like to pay her humiliation the compliment of illness or even death. ”

“ Evangeline said as she climbed back into the buggy.
"The glory of God is made of our troubles," the older woman answered resolutely.
Late that afternoon Ralph came to see Marianne. He sat by the bed and could say nothing; his dark mouth covered with dust quivered instead. He kissed her hands and hurried away.
There was no courtship. Another man had wooed her for him. God had wooed her with His errors, His intoxicating tenderness, His intrigue. Evangeline, who would never have a chance to speak for herself, had spoken for her; the spirit of God, Marianne thought, in the person of an old maid. . ”

“ That man—I mean Paul Fairchild—he never took, he didn't take—I don't want to know, it's the man you're going to marry. Nothing wrong happened? That's not why you're so miserable, is it? That's not why you're sick—"
"Stop," the girl cried huskily. She had lifted herself in the bed upon her elbows. Her eyes were fixed; her voice was hard, hurt, and full of joy. "I am a good girl. He kissed me once. They, they both—did, once."
Evangeline was ashamed of herself, of Ralph Tower, of men; so she went on with the cruel monologue which had begun as a question. "Men always ask that—good men, Christians. ”

“ At fifteen she prayed every night and morning that he might grow gentle by a sudden disenchantment; but later she imagined that there were pure spirits who may not change, and thereafter pitied him, more or less as the devil has always been pitied by devout women. ”

“ Evangeline said, "whatever is the matter, it has gone on long enough. You're going to give up your school. I'm going to take you home. If you're not strong enough to talk me out of it, you're weak enough to do as I think best."
Marianne obeyed orders in order not to have to talk. Furthermore, she was ill and would not dare to get well in Sheboygan, for Paul Fairchild would be there. at the foot of the bed as soon as she could be seen. He came the next morning, but Evangeline had instructed the people of the house to send him away. At noon they set out together for Marianne's home. ”