Neith Boyce

“ All the laboriousness of life, the grey aspect of duty, the necessity for infinite, incessant exertion of the will, for self-control, for self-sacrifice—all the puritan conception of the world and the human soul—surged over her like a cold muddy sea. Was this, then, what one must live in? And to what end? To pass the endless struggle on to someone else?
For the first time, it seemed to her, in the long hours of that night, she saw the world as it really was. She saw it as a long combat, and she saw that no relation could escape this law of struggle and change, certainly not hers and Basil's. ”

“ Teresa said in her far-away voice. "Life seemed to have been taken out of me for the time. I could not be anything else, do anything but go on from day to day. ..."
"I know, I'm not reproaching you—and you don't understand me, either. All these months you only have been in my thoughts—you have been my only real interest, though I tried to be interested in my work. I've wanted only to take care of you—if you remember, you know that's true."
"Yes, you have tried. I have been a great burden."
"Never to me have you been anything but the dearest part of myself, the dearest thing on earth. ”

“ Teresa thought: He is dying, though perhaps he does not know it. He is thinking of her because she was the great emotion of his life, and he feels that he is going to find her again. Perhaps he will find her. But then what will become of poor Agatha, who has cooked for him these many years—and what will she do when she gets to heaven and looks for him? He is her husband, too. But he's forgotten her, and her children, and even Basil—and he remembers only the woman with the copper hair that he loved thirty years ago—and has loved ever since. ”

“ And Teresa, as usual, was half-pleased by his enjoyment, and half-amused by its triviality. He seemed to her like a child that had been given a piece of cake; but so did Gerald when he was given anything to drink; so did Basil given a different sort of pleasure. They were all children, she thought all greedy, all absurdly anxious to enjoy themselves. But of the three the Major's pleasure seemed to her the most trivial. How could a man have a passion for food? How could a woman love a man who loved new peas and lobster? ”

“ Basil said that he liked her friendship with Fairfax; it was in line with all his ideas. He said once: "It's more exciting to drive a restive team than a quiet one; only you must look out they don't get away." His own interest in his wife seemed to increase. It had lost the quiet of the first year; it was more like the perpetual unrest of courtship. Her successes, her gaiety, intensified the appeal of her beauty to him. He seemed, too, to be less sure of her, and this pleased Teresa, and added to the light excitement of their life. ”

“ Under the shadow of the black hat her eyes looked back at her with a strange melancholy and uneasiness. After a moment her face looked to her like that of a stranger, some woman oppressed and sad, and this impression frightened her. She turned away abruptly, and began with a little tool to model the faun's thick neck and shaggy shoulder. He seemed a trivial creature, as she handled him; Basil's cartoon, reflected in the mirror, appeared to her meaningless and absurd. The air of the studio, of the building, of the whole city, seemed stale and oppressive. ”

“ Teresa thought that the poet must certainly have heard some of these remarks, but he seemed absorbed in explaining to Alice and to Mr. Kerr, a gentleman of uncertain age and inexpressive countenance, something which required a great many gestures of unmanicured hands. She saw that Basil was having a good time with Mary Addams; he was laughing a good deal, drinking a good deal of excellent Burgundy; his eyes had the attentive and warm look called out by any woman he liked. There was more life and vigour in his handsome head than in all the others combined. ”

“ Why shouldn't we have the amusement of contemplating the world and people as they really are? It's the most instructive spectacle possible. I can never be thankful enough that I married a man who isn't afraid of reality, for me any more than for himself. You would shut your wife up in a toy paradise, with everything upholstered in rose-colour."
"There are a whole lot of things I know that my wife would never know, you may depend on that," Fairfax responded with emphasis. "What nonsense, imagining that a man's view of life and a woman's can ever be the same!" ”

“ You mustn't offend Nina."
Edith looked sullen, and after a pause cried passionately:
"Shall I ever again be able to do anything I choose—or shall I be somebody's slave all my life? Oh, what a fool, what a fool I have been—to let people get me into their power this way!"
And she began to weep again with rage and nervous misery, crumpling up the St. Augustine under her feverish, flabby body.
Teresa felt a shudder of pitying repulsion. How was it possible that anyone could so utterly go to pieces morally, could so sink to be, as Edith herself had said, the slave of other people? ”

“ One lives and learns—unfortunately. ... Something is changed in me, Basil—this day has made a difference in our lives. I don't quite know what it is yet—I haven't got adjusted to it. It came on me so suddenly—like a physical blow."
"I don't know what you're talking about," said Basil violently. "But I know I've had as much as I can stand. Life hasn't been any too pleasant of late, and this caps the climax. I think it is better you should go away. Then, perhaps, I can feel like a free man again, and not like an infernal miserable slave!"
"Yes—poor Basil," said Teresa softly, mockingly. ”

“ Teresa looked about the room as though in a dream. The close air, the smell of beer, the throng of brutal faces, the drunken, lascivious eyes, the rough words caught here and there, made up an impression of naked sordidness so complete as to pass reality. The movements of the one waiter fascinated her. He was a young man, slim and powerfully built, with a face almost handsome, which had the same absolute hardness and immobility that marked the prize-fighter's. He moved quickly amongst the crowd, with a business-like, lordly air, his eyes everywhere at once. ”

“ Youth is the feeling of the infinite beyond the horizon of our own infinite possibilities the feeling that we may do anything, get anything we want. ..."
"Yes, it is that. But, then?"
"Then we explore our possibilities and find their limits, and the world shrinks, and we see the stone wall instead of the horizon. And we do not beat our brains out against it. We acquiesce."
"And you think it's inevitable? You think it must always be that? We must be shut in by the stone wall? I would never submit to it—I don't believe in it!"
"Ah, you haven't begun to be middle-aged," said Crayven quietly. ”

“ There's nothing beautiful about a need—unless one happens to have the response to it. It's absurd to be hungry, at my time of life. Don't you find me very absurd?"
"I find you very—appealing."
"Oh," he murmured. "It's hard to be absurd twice over."
"Oh, it's life that's absurd. There's such horrid waste in it," said Teresa, almost angrily. "I don't see why one shouldn't love where one likes."
"Because love's like hunger. When it's satisfied you're not hungry any more, that's all. ”

“ Teresa looked at him, fascinated. He set a new world about her. The strange possibilities of life—the fact that all one's life—might have been different—might even be different—rushed upon her in a dizzying flood. Her world seemed suddenly to become unreal, pale—she lost her grasp upon it, in the feeling that another choice had been possible. And something deep in her answered to Crayven's emotion—a deep correspondence of temperament, some sort of inevitable affinity. ”

“ Now there is Nina, she bullies me out of my life. The worst of that is, one seeks to be consoled elsewhere. Eh?"
He cast a keen glance at Teresa, and she felt the colour rising to her cheeks. She shook her head.
"Not to be drawn that way," she said. "Besides, I don't really bully him—I nag him."
"And what is the difference, please? To be nagged is to be bullied—it's the worst kind of torment. No man can resist it—no man! He will sell his soul to get rid of the sound of that voice, forever going on, forever——"
Ernesto switched off the tops of a clump of fern with his stick. ”

“ To call another human being into this world by our own will, perhaps to suffer——"
Teresa looked at Alice's pretty, empty face and large, inquisitive, stupid eyes.
"Perhaps it isn't by our own will—perhaps it's something bigger," she said, as though to herself.
"Oh, Teresa, you are not religious——!"
"No, but—the world is vast and—mysterious. It has been going on such a long time, think, and always in the same way! Who is any one of us, after all, to set herself against the current of things? ”

“ Kerr or to Mary Addams, whom he seemed to find attractive, or listening, which he seemed to prefer, he suggested somehow a world different from this. Teresa's imagination was stirred by the few facts she had heard about him. A simpler, a less nervous life, more primitive and harsher externals, more space and freedom, might be his proper setting. She fancied she saw in his face, in spite of its gentleness, the habit of command. His grey-brown colour and the lines about his eyes made her think of the glare of sun on the desert. ”

“ Why do you want to take all the freedom and joy out of life? You enjoy your life—why do you deny the good of it? You're ungrateful."
"No—I'm not ungrateful. I take the pleasures of the day, and the work of the day, for what they are—that's all. I don't ask much of life."
"Why not? Why don't you? Because you haven't imagination enough—or because you asked too much—and didn't get what you wanted?"
Teresa's questions were impetuous, almost angry. They had never before been so personal in their talk, but often Crayven's attitude had irritated her into protest. ”

“ It dissolved all things into dream. One seemed to feel the world swinging through space, wild, primeval, obedient only to a single law which crushed the individual will to dust. Danger! Danger to one's small individuality, to one's little world, opposing this vast, impersonal, indifferent force!
The blood came to Teresa's face. At the touch of Crayven's lips on her hand she did not move, but the sound of his voice—he murmured her name—sent her to her feet with a leap. ”

“ The complete story of her friendship with Fairfax made it clear to Basil that he was only an element in Teresa's enjoyment. Teresa tenderly admitted that her winter had been frivolous, and that she had neglected Basil; Basil protested that she had been quite right to have as good a time as she could. Then came peace between them, and a return of their old gaiety together. Teresa once more became accustomed to hearing how much more charming, how much more beautiful she was than other women. She took the other women as nameless abstractions, and smiled at the praise. ”

“ Sex ought to be divorced from emotion. They don't belong together. We've sentimentalised the thing till we don't know where we stand. It's all the fault of feminism. Women naturally sentimentalise it, and we've let them set the tone for our whole society, till we can't call our souls or bodies our own. It's weakness, and gets paid out as weakness always does. We belong to you now, you own us, and you make us feel it."
"Poor slaves!" mocked Teresa. "Why don't you rise and assert your rights? Put us back in the harem, and then go on with your great work of civilising the world in peace. ”

“ He was a beaten man, but in many moods his sadness was more congenial to Teresa than Basil's buoyant optimism. Deep within her was a conviction that life, if it must be taken seriously, was a desperate business. Gerald seemed to her to fail not ignobly, for he at least had vision. He was one of the few people whom she could imagine existing after death. The world had obviously no use for him, but if there could conceivably be a better world, she thought Gerald suited to inhabit it. ”

“ After lunch they found a warm nook by the side of a rock in an old apple orchard. Before them were only silent fields and woods and the smooth blue Sound. The apple trees were in bloom, a mist of pink spread over the hillside, and white petals drifted down on the grass with every soft breath of wind. Teresa sat on the ground, leaning against the rock. Basil lay with his head in her lap, and his grey hat over his eyes. ”

“ If you, being what you are, should have a lover, you'd have to pay for that—pay in injury to your pride, in a thousand ways. A woman that gives herself to a man who doesn't deeply love her—a woman who has anything to lose—is a fool. The reaction takes him away from her, as sure as fate, and even a man who isn't a brute can't help making her feel it. You've nothing to gain in that game, Teresa, and everything to lose. ”

“ You adore Basil."
"Of course I adore him. His altars smoke with sacrifice. But all the same I think I shall raise one to the Unknown God."
"On which no one will be allowed to sacrifice but yourself, eh?" said Erhart. "You want a monopoly."
"Oh, there's no god sufficiently unknown for that!" Teresa laughed. "There's such a superfluity of adoration in this world. No wonder our deities are overfed. I think I shall put Basil on a meagre diet."
"Don't do anything to Basil, he's good enough. He's the most married man I know." ”

“ In all these efforts to fill the essential void of her life, Basil lent what aid he could. Her real suffering touched him, though her passionate expression of it often irritated and repelled him. There was no deep sympathy in him for people, like Isabel, ill-adjusted to life, with inordinate claims, with demands that seemed to him essentially unreasonable. The quality in himself which had attracted Isabel, his ability to be essentially content, what she called his happiness, was exactly what limited his sympathy, and his real liking for her. ”

“ Basil's tired face, showing deep lines of nervous and physical strain, changed, too, as he looked at the picture of Teresa and the baby—her profile, with the long braid across the cheek, her ivory-white gleaming shoulders and breast, her dark lashes drooping as she gazed at the child with a quizzical smile in which emotion stirred—physical pleasure and perhaps a spiritual tenderness.
"You don't know how beautiful you are," said Basil, in a low, rapt tone. ”