Mary Cholmondeley

“ Nevertheless her life grew up white and clean in it, as a hyacinth will build its fragrant bell tower in the window of a tavern, in a stale atmosphere of smoke and beer and alcohol. Janet was self-contained as a hyacinth. She unfolded from within. She asked no questions of life. That she had had a happy, contented existence was obvious; an existence spent much in the open air, in which tranquil, practical duties well within her reach had been all that had been required of her. Her brother Fred, several years older than herself, had one redeeming point. ”

“ Even on his wedding morning she had looked out across the fields, by which she had so often seen him come, which had been so long empty of that familiar figure. She knew he was far away at the house of the bride, but nevertheless she expected that he would come to her, and hold her to his heart, and say: "But, Janet, I could never marry anyone but you. You know such a thing could never be. What other woman could part you and me, who cannot part?" And then the evil dream would fall from her, and she and George would look gravely at each other, and the endless, endless pain would pass away. ”

“ Mrs Lestrange looked round. "Eighteen, twenty, twenty-four. Ah! Here is Lady Mary Carden, late as usual. She is the last. No. There is one more to come. Miss Grey."
"Which Miss Grey?"
"Why, the one Jos Carstairs is to marry. She is coming under my wing. And now she isn't here. What on earth am I to do? We can't wait for ever."
A tall white figure was advancing slowly, as if dragged step by step, through the shadow of the great grey building.
"She does not hurry herself," said Mrs Lestrange indignantly, and she did not welcome Elsa very cordially as she came on board. ”

“ How some of the sentences shone out as if written in fire on black sheets: "Love like ours can never fade." The words faded out at once, as the dying letters gave up the ghost—the ghost of dead love. Janet gazed fascinated. Another letter fell in, opening as it fell, disclosing a photograph. Fred's face looked full at Janet for a moment out of the little greedy flames that licked it up. Janet drew back trembling, suddenly sick unto death.
Fred's face! Fred's writing!
She trembled so violently that she did not notice that the smoke was no longer going up the chimney, but was filling the room. ”

“ Anne set her teeth. Her passionate heart beat hard against the kind bosom of the earth. How we return to her, our Mother Earth, when life is too difficult or too beautiful for us! How we fling ourselves upon her breast, upon her solitude, finding courage to encounter joy, insight to bear sorrow. First faint foreshadowing of the time when we, "short-lived as fire, and fading as the dew," shall go back to her entirely.
Anne lay very still. She did not cry. [Pg 39] She knew better than that. Tears are for the young. ”

“ And Janet had immediately mistaken Anne's tactful kindness to herself for an overture of friendship. Perhaps that is a mistake which many gentle, commonplace souls make, who go through life disillusioned as to the sincerity of certain other attractive, brilliant creatures with whom they have come in momentary contact, to whom they can give nothing, but from whom they have received a generous measure of delicate sympathy and kindness, which they mistook for the prelude of friendship ”

“ Stephen was taken aback. He bit his little finger and frowned at the wonderful roses in front of him.
"I know you speak the truth," he said, "because you have spoken it to me. I should believe what you said—always—under any circumstances."
"You believe in my truthfulness from experience. Do you never believe by intuition?"
"Not often."
"When first I saw Miss Black I perceived that she was a perfectly honest, upright woman. I did not wait till she had given me any proof of it. I saw it."
"I certainly thought the same. To say the truth, I am surprised at her duplicity." ”

“ She lingered once more in the rose-garden when he would have drawn her onwards towards the ferrets, and George, willing to humour her, got out his knife and chose a rose for her. Has any woman really lived who has not stood once in silence in the June sunshine with her lover, and watched him pick for her a red rose which is not as other roses, a rose which understands? ”

“ No, she hoped against hope to the last day, to the morning of his wedding. She did not know she hoped. She supposed she had long since given up all thought of a reconciliation between her and her lover. But when the wedding was over, when he was really gone, then something broke within her—the last string of the lyre over which blind Hope leans.
There are those who tell us that we have not suffered till we have known jealousy. Janet's foot reached that lowest step, and was scorched upon it. ”

“ I suppose she did," said Stephen.
"If you knew her you would know that that is impossible."
Stephen looked incredulous.
"I've known a good many unlikely things happen about money," he said slowly. "I daresay she did it to save her brother."
"She did not do it," said Anne.
"If she didn't, why doesn't she say what she did burn, and why? What's the use of sticking to it that she burned nothing when Brand knows that's a lie? A lie is a deadly stupid thing unless it's uncommonly well done." ”

“ Janet looked like a bewildered, distressed child, who suddenly finds herself in a room full of machinery of which she understands nothing, and whose inadvertent touch, as she tries to creep away, has set great malevolent wheels whirring all round her.
"I daresay she didn't," said Fred fiercely, and he flung out of the room.
He went and stood a long time leaning over the fence into the paddock where his yearlings were.
"It's an awful thing to be a fool," he said to himself. ”

“ Mrs Trefusis was sitting with Anne on this particular afternoon, confiding to her some discomfortable characteristics of her new daughter-in-law, the wife whom she had herself chosen for her son.
"I am an old woman," said Mrs Trefusis, "and of course I don't march with the times, the world is for the young, I know that very well; but I must own, Anne, I had imagined that affection still counted for something in marriage." ”

“ Janet had through life a great difficulty in all that involved delicate manipulation, except a horse's mouth. If a lock resisted, she used force, generally shooting it; if the hinge of a door gave, she jammed it. But in this instance, contrary to her usual experience, the lock did turn at last, and the whole front of the cabinet, dolphins and mermaid and all, came suddenly forwards towards her, disclosing within a double tier of ebony drawers, all exquisitely inlaid with ivory, and each having its tiny, silver-scrolled lock. ”

“ Janet was straight herself. She fell in love with George.
"L'amour est une source naïve." It was a very naïve spring in Janet's heart, though it welled up from a considerable depth; a spring not even to be poisoned by her brother's outrageous delight at the engagement, or his congratulations on the wisdom of her previous steadfast refusal of the eligible Mr Gorst.
"This beats all," he said; "I never thought you would pull it off, Janet. I thought he was too big a fish to land. And to think you will queen it at Easthope Park." ”

“ Lady Mary Carden sat near the open window of her blue and white boudoir looking out intently, fixedly across Park Lane at the shimmer of the trees in Hyde Park. It was June. It was sunny. The false gaiety of the season was all around her; flickering swiftly past her in the crush of carriages below her window; dawdling past her in the walking and riding crowds in the park. ”

“ Jos was coming back to his early allegiance. Perhaps his parents, horrified by his single unaided attempt at matrimony, were tenderly pushing him back. Perhaps, in the entire exhaustion and numbness that had succeeded the shock of Elsa's defection, he hardly realised what others were planning round him. [Pg 306] Perhaps when a man has been heartlessly slighted he turns unconsciously to the woman of whose undoubted love he is vaguely aware.
Jos sat at Mary's feet, not metaphorically but literally, for hours together by the sundial in the rose-garden; hardly speaking, like a man stunned. ”

“ Fred was awed by the visit of Stephen, and by the amazing fact that he had paid Monkey Brand. Fred said repeatedly that it was the action of a perfect gentleman, exactly what he should have done if he had been in Stephen's place. He let George hear of it at the first opportunity. But the information had no effect on George's mind, except that it was vaguely prejudicial to Janet.
Why had she accepted such a large sum from a man of whom she knew next to nothing, whom she had only seen once before for a moment, and that an equivocal one? Women should not accept money from men. ”

“ They are as great a stumbling-block to their weaker brethren, they cause as much pain, they choke the spiritual life as mercilessly, they engender as much scepticism in unreasoning minds, as certain gross vices. If we are unjust, it matters little to our victim what makes us so, or whether we have prayed to see aright, if for long years we have closed our eyes to unpalatable truths.
George's disbelief in Janet's rectitude, which grew out of a deep sense of rectitude, had the same effect on her mind as if he had deliberately seduced and deserted her. ”

“ If Janet had been an introspective person, if she had ever asked herself whence she came and whither she was going, if the cruelty of life and nature had ever forced themselves upon her notice, if the apparent incompleteness of this pretty world had ever daunted her, I think she must have been a very unhappy woman. Her surroundings were vulgar, coarse, without a redeeming [Pg 32] gleam of culture, even in its crudest forms, without a spark of refined affection. ”

“ That was where I was wrong."
[Pg 235]
"One cannot love too much," said Anne, her fingers closing over her wedding ring.
"Perhaps not," said Janet, "but then the other person must love too. George did not love me enough to carry through. When the other person cares, but doesn't care strong enough, I think that's the worst. It's like what the Bible says. The moth and rust corrupting. George did care, but not enough. Men are like that."
"Some one else cares," said Anne diffidently—"poor Mr de Rivaz. He cares enough." ”

“ They do in a way. She is sharp enough for that. She does her duty by him. She is nice to him, but all her interests, and she has interests, seem to lie apart from anything to do with him."
"Does he mind?"
"I never really know what George minds or doesn't mind," said Mrs Trefusis. "It has been the heaviest cross of the many crosses I have had to bear in life, that he never confides in me. George has always been extremely reticent. Thoughtful natures often are. He will sit for hours without saying a word, looking——"
"Glum is the word she wants," said Anne to herself, as Mrs Trefusis hesitated. ”

“ Anne and Janet travelled together to London next day, and on the journey Janet laid before Anne, in all its bearings, the momentous question of her hair. Fred had said she would never look up to date till she cut a fringe. George had opined that her hair looked very nice as it was, while Mrs Smith had asseverated that it was impossible to mix in good society, or find a hat to suit the face, without one. ”

“ Harry was a friend of Mr Vanbrunt's, and I know Harry consulted him as to how to get out of it. Well, directly mother's attention was off Harry, she found out about Mr Vanbrunt; how I don't know, but she did. Poor mother! she has a heart somewhere. It is her sporting instincts which are too strong for her. When she found out, she came into my room and kissed me, and cried, and said love was everything, and what did looks matter, and, for her part, if a man was a good man, she thought it was of no importance if he had not had a father. ”

“ Mrs Trefusis had wormed out all the most damning evidence against Janet, partly from Fred's confidence to George, and partly from Monkey Brand, with whom she had had money dealings, and to whom she applied direct. She showed Anne the money-lender's answer, in its admirable restrained conciseness, with its ordered sequence of inexorable facts. Anne's heart sank as she read it, and she suddenly remembered Janet's words in delirium. "I have burnt them all. Everything. There is nothing left." ”

“ Anne saw the lovers, but they did not see her, as she ran down the steps cut in the turf to the little bridge across the trout stream. She had left Mrs Trefusis composed into a resigned nap, and she felt at liberty to carry her aching spirit to seek comfort and patience by the brook.
Anne, the restrained, disciplined, dignified woman of the world, threw herself [Pg 38] down on her face in the short, sun-warm grass.
Is the heart ever really tamed? As the years pass we learn to keep it behind bolts and bars. ”