May Sinclair

“ She judged from the expression of her sister-in-law's face that it did not appeal to her in any way at all.
"Poor dear," said she, "he's still worrying about those blessed bulbs of mine—of yours, I mean."
"Don't, Edie. As if I wanted to take your bulbs away from you. I'm not jealous."
"No more am I," said Edie. "Let's say both our bulbs. I wish he wouldn't garden quite so much, though. It always makes his head ache."
"Why does he do it, then?" asked Anne calmly.
Her calmness irritated Edith.
"Oh, why does Walter do anything? Because he's an angel!" ”

“ The gay question made Anne's eyelids drop like curtains on her tragedy.
"That he means a great many things he doesn't say? Is that it?"
Majendie, becoming restive under the flicker of Edith's cheerful tongue, withdrew the arm she cherished. Edith felt the nervousness of the movement; her glance turned from her brother's face to Anne's, rested there for a tense moment, and then veiled itself.
At that moment they both knew that Edith had abandoned her glad assumption of their happiness. The blessings of them all were upon Nanna as she came in with the tea-tray. ”

“ As usual when he was embarrassed, Majendie laughed.
"It's the very spirit of dyspepsia," he said. "A cold and dangerous thing. Must we eat it?"
"You must," said Edith; "Nanna would weep if you didn't."
"I don't think I can—possibly," said Anne, who was already reaping her sowing to the winds of emotion in a whirlwind of headache.
"Let's all eat it—and die," said Majendie. He hacked, laid a ruin of fragments round the evil thing, scattered crumbs on all their plates, and buried his own piece in a flower-pot. "Do you think," he said, "that Nanna will dig it up again?" ”

“ Majendie's sister lay on her couch by the window, as they had left her, as they would always find her, not like a woman with a hopelessly injured spine, but like a lady of the happy world, resting in luxury, a little while, from the assault of her own brilliant and fatiguing vitality. The flat, dark masses of her hair, laid on the dull red of her cushions, gave to her face an abrupt and lustrous whiteness, whiteness that threw into vivid relief the features of expression, the fine, full mouth, with its temperate sweetness, and the tender eyes, dark as the brows that arched them. ”

“ She remained there a moment, in the place of bliss, the divine place of the self-surrendered soul, where mortal emptiness draws down immortality.
She said to herself, "I have my refuge; no one can take it from me. Nothing matters so long as I can get there."
She rose from her knees more calm and self-contained than ever, barely conscious of her wound.
So calm and so self-contained was she at dinner that Majendie had an agreeable rebound; he supposed that she had recovered from the abominable encounter, and had put Lady Cayley out of her head like a sensible woman. ”

“ Edith had never heard of the Minor Canon. She had drawn a bow at a venture.
"My dear," she said, "why not? It's only the very elect lovers who can say to each other, 'I never loved any one but you.'"
"At any rate," said Anne, "I never loved any one else well enough to marry him."
For, in her fancy, the Minor Canon, being withdrawn in time, had ceased to occupy space; he had become that which he was for her girlhood, a disembodied dream. She could not have explained why she was so ashamed of him. What ground of comparison was there between that blameless one and Lady Cayley? ”

“ She saw that she could not bring him back by playing poor, tender Maggie's part. She could not move him by appearing as the woman she once was, by falling at his feet as she had once fallen. This time, it was he who must fall at hers.
Anne Majendie had held her empire, and had made herself for ever desirable, by six years of systematic torturings and deceptions and denials, by all the infidelities of the saint in love with her own sanctity. The woman who was to bring him back now would have to borrow for a moment a little of Anne Majendie's spiritual splendour. ”

“ Anne and her child lay asleep under the silver crucifix.
Peggy had been taken into Anne's bed, and had curled herself close up against her mother's side. Her arm lay on Anne's breast; one hand clutched the border of Anne's nightgown. The long thick braid of Anne's hair was flung back on the pillow, framing the child's golden head in gold.
His eyes filled with tears as he looked at them. For a moment his heart stood still. Why not he as well as anybody else? His heart told him why.
As he turned he sighed. A sigh of longing and tenderness, and of thankfulness for a great deliverance. ”

“ She saw love as a divine spirit, going down into the courses of the blood and into the chambers of the heart, moving mortal things to immortality. She saw that there is no spirituality worthy of the name that has not been proven in the house of flesh.
She had failed in spirituality. She had fixed the spiritual life away from earth, beyond the ramparts. She saw that the spiritual life is here.
And more than this, she saw that in her husband's nature hidden deep down under the perversities that bewildered and estranged her, there was a sense of these things, of the sanctity of their life. ”

“ Marriage had delivered him from the tyranny of reminiscence. No reminiscence could stand before the force of passion in possession. It purified; it destroyed; it built up in three days its own inviolable memory.
And Anne, with the best will in the world, had had no power to undo its work in him.
In herself, too, below her kindling spiritual consciousness, in the unexplored depth and darkness of her, its work remained.
Majendie was unaware how far he had become another man and she another woman. He was merely alive to the unusual and agreeable excitement of wooing his own wife. ”

“ Gorst—Last year Maggie could not have believed that there could be another after him. For each of these persons she would willingly have died. To each of them her soul leaped up and bowed itself, swept forward like a flame bowed and driven by the wind.
As long as each loved her, the flame burned steadily and still. Maggie's soul was appeased for a season. As each left her, the flame died out in tears, and her pulses beat feebly, and her life languished. Maggie went from flame to flame; for the hours when there was nobody to love simply dropped into the darkness and were forgotten. ”

“ Other people might like to see more pedestal than Anne; she preferred to see more Anne than pedestal. If they didn't know that Anne was dear and sweet, she did. So did Walter.
If they wanted proof of it, why, would any other woman have put up with her and her wretched spine? Weren't they all, Anne's friends, sorry for Anne just because of it, of her? If you came to think of it, if you traced everything back to the beginning, her spine had been the cause of all Anne's troubles.
That was how she had always reasoned it out. No suffering had ever obscured the lucidity of Edith's mind. ”

“ She must create a standard for him by keeping herself for ever high and pure. He loved her still, in his fashion; he must also respect her, and, in respecting her, respect goodness—the highest goodness—in her.
Accustomed to move in a region of spiritual certainty, Anne was untroubled by any misgivings as to the soundness of her attitude. It was open to no criticism except the despicable wisdom of the world.
Her chief difficulty was poor Majendie's imperishable affection. She tried to protect herself from it to-night by feigning drowsiness. She lay still as a stone, stiff with her fear. ”

“ Nobody but Dr. Gardner knew that Mrs. Gardner's intellect had cause to be jealous of her eyes.
"There's one thing," said Mrs. Eliott, suddenly enlightened. "Our not having said anything at the time makes it easier for us to receive him now."
"Aren't we all talking," said Mrs. Gardner, "rather as if Anne had married a monster? After all, have we ever heard anything against him—except Lady Cayley?"
"Oh no, never a word, have we, Johnson dear?"
"Never. He's not half a bad fellow, Majendie." ”

“ Mrs. Dick Ransome did not, at the first blush, inspire confidence. She was a woman with a great deal of blonde hair, and a fresh-coloured, conspicuously unspiritual face; coarse-grained, thick-necked, ruminantly animal, but kind; kind to Mrs. Hannay, kind to Anne, kinder even than Mrs. Hannay who was responsible for all the kindness.
Charlie Gorst hurried away to get Mrs. Majendie some tea, and Lawson's Hannay's large form moved into the gap thus made, blocking Anne's view of the room. He stood looking down upon her with an extraordinary smile of mingled apology and protection. ”

“ Anne drew the deep breath of delight. She took off her hat and gloves, and moved forward a few steps to a spot where the wood opened and the vivid light received her. Majendie hung back to look at her. She turned and stood before him, superb and still, shrined in a crescent of tall beech stems, column by column, with the light descending on the fine gold of her hair. Nothing in Anne even remotely suggested a sylvan and primeval creature; but, as she stood there in her temperate and alien beauty, she seemed to him to have yielded to a brief enchantment. ”

“ He loved the child. It was white, and weak, and sickly, as if it drew a secret bitterness from its mother's breast. It kept Anne awake at night with its crying. Once Majendie got up, and came to her, and took it from her, and it was suddenly pacified, and fell asleep in his arms. He had risen many nights after that to quiet it. It had seemed to him then that something passed between them with the small tender body his arms took from her and gave to her again. But he had abandoned that illusion now. And when he saw her with the child he said to himself, "I see. She has got all she wanted. ”

“ Nothing else had a show beside your goodness, Wallie dear. It was something monstrous. It took Anne's affection from you and concentrated it all on itself. She worshipped it, she clung to it, she saw nothing else but it, and when it went everything went. You went first of all. Well, you must just see that that doesn't happen again."
"You mean that I must lead a life of iniquity?"
"You mustn't lead a life of anything."
"Do you mean I mustn't be good any more?"
Majendie's imagination played hilariously with this fantastic, this preposterous notion of his goodness. ”

“ And Majendie took in all the pitifulness of her sweet, predestined nature. Pretty Maggie could never have been led astray; she had gone out, fervent and swift, dream-drunk, to meet her destiny. She was a creature of ardours, of tenderness, and of some perverse instinct that it would be crude to call depravity. Where her heart led, her flesh, he judged, had followed; that was all. Her brain had been passive in her sad affairs. Maggie had never schemed, or calculated, or deliberated. She had only felt.
"See here," he said. "Charlie can't marry you. He can't marry anybody." ”

“ You made her in love with your goodness. And she was in love with it, not because it was your goodness, but because it was her own. That's why she wanted to marry it. She couldn't be in love with it for any other reason, because she's an egoist."
"No. There you're quite wrong. That's what she isn't."
"Oh, you are in love with her. Of course she's an egoist. All the nicest women are. I'm an egoist myself. Do you love me less for it?"
"I don't love you less for anything."
"Well—unless you can make Anne jealous of me—and you can't—you've got to love me less, now, dear boy. ”

“ Edith was not only angelic, but womanly and full of guile, and she knew with whom she had to do. She had humbled Anne with shrewd shafts that hit her in all her weak places; now she exalted her. Anne had not her likeness in a thousand. She was a woman magnificently planned, of stature not to be diminished by the highest pedestal. A figure fit for a throne, a niche, a shrine. Edith could see the dear little downy feathers sprouting on Anne's shoulder-blades, and the infant aureole playing in her hair. ”