Phyllis Bottome

“ The things that matter most are always behind what anybody sees. Even all this beauty isn't half as beautiful as what's behind it—the spirit of the life that creates it, and brings it back again."
"And the ugliness," asked Julian, steadily, "the ugliness we've just been talking about over there, that long line of it cutting through France like a mortal wound, drawing the life-blood of Europe,—what's behind that?"
"Don't you see?" she cried, leaning toward him eagerly. "Exactly the same thing—life! All this quietness that reproduces what it takes away, only always more beautifully. ”

“ For the first time Julian saw what loving Stella would be like; he would never be able to get to the end of it. Marriage would be only the beginning. She had given him her heart without an effort, and he found that she was as inaccessible as ever. His soul leaped toward this new, unconquerable citadel. He held himself in hand with a great effort.
"What you don't realize," he said, "is that our knowledge of life is not equal. If I take you at your word, you will make discoveries which it will be too late for you to act upon. You cannot wish me to do what is not fair to you." ”

“ Stella guessed that it was one of the things Marian wanted, and she did not think that Julian could get out of giving it to her by laughter.
"Marian's life hasn't got divisions in it like mine," she explained. "She's just a beautiful human creature. She is equable and strong and delightful and absolutely honest. She's as honest as crystal; but she hasn't had to bother about choosing."
"Ah," said Lady Verny, "you think that, do you? But, my dear Miss Waring, sooner or later we all have to bother about choosing. Beauty and strength don't save us. ”

“ There is an unwritten law that mothers should not touch upon vital matters with their sons. Lady Verny believed that Julian was a victim of passion. She did not think he had understood Marian's nature, and she knew that when passion burns itself out, one of two things is left, comradeship or resentment. She had lived with resentment for twenty years, and she knew that it was not an easy thing to live with, and that it would have been worth while had she known more about it earlier, to have found out if there was comradeship under the passion before the flames of it had burned her boats. ”

“ After she had gone, Stella opened the window, and leaned out into the garden. She could see nothing but the soft darkness, sometimes massed in the thickness of the yew-hedges, and sometimes tenuous and spread out over the empty spaces of the lawns.
The air blew fresh upon her face, full of sweetness and the promise of life. Stella told herself bitterly that nature was cruel; it let strong young things die, and if that didn't matter (and she sometimes thought dying didn't) , nature did worse: it maimed and held youth down. But nothing in her responded to the thought that nature was cruel. ”

“ It's worth breaking laws for; I think it's worth being broken for."
Julian answered her. He spoke carefully and a little stiffly.
"I don't think I agree with you," he said. "Nothing is worth being broken for."
Stella bowed her head. She was aware of an absolute and appalling sense of exhaustion and of an inner failure more terrible than any physical collapse.
It was as if Julian had pushed aside her soul.
"Still, I think you must admit, Julian," Lady Verny said quietly, "that 'The Ode to the West Wind' is an admirable poem. I'm afraid, my dear, you have tired yourself in saying it for us. ”

“ Stella sat upon a wooden float; it made a luxurious seat for her opposite the drifting swans. She felt as if all her thoughts at last were free. There was no one in sight; old and dignified houses leaned toward the water-front: but for all the life that inhabited them, they might have been the ghosts of houses. Nothing stirred, but sometimes up the river a sea-gull, on level wings, with wary eyes, wandered above the watery highway, challenging the unaccustomed small spaces of the sky.
Stella wished for the first time that Julian were dead. ”

“ Julian laughed.
"She knew I'd follow her," he said; "but I'll have my tea first, please."
"She has always been followed, I imagine," said Lady Verny, giving him his tea, "and she has always known it."
Julian looked pleased; this was the kind of wife he wanted, a woman used to admiration, and who never made the fatal mistake of seeking it. He had not much knowledge of women, but he had very strong opinions about them, unshaken by any personal reckoning. One opinion was that nothing too much can be done for a good woman. She must be protected, cared for, and served under every ordeal in life. ”

“ Marian was already at Amberley for a week-end, and knowing that Julian was expected, she had left Lady Verny sitting by the tea-table under the yew hedge and gone up toward the downs.
Julian would like this; he would not wish his bride to meet him half-way. He would delight in Marian's aloofness; her deliberate and delicate coldness would seem to him like the bloom upon a grape. But the coldness of a future daughter-in-law is not the quality which most endears her to a mother. ”

“ This unique and quiet people, in their enmity with form, had chosen of all forms the most resilient. They had made in the heart of London a picture, and a place of peace for death.
There was no sense of desolation in the silent field; only the sunshine, the old walls, and the green emptiness. It might have been the grass-grown citadel of Tusculum spread out at Stella's feet, it was a spot so acquainted with the air, with solitude, and with a nameless history. ”

“ He did well, he assured himself, to be angry; everything in life had failed him. Stella had failed him. But at this point his prevailing sanity shook him into laughter. He could still laugh at the idea of Stella's having failed him.
You do not fail people because you refuse to release them from acting up to the standard you had expected of them; you fail them when you expect less of them than they can give you. When Julian had faced this fact squarely he ceased to beat about the bush of his vanity. He confessed to himself that he was a coward not to have had it out with Stella. ”

“ Without speaking again, she went back to the garden and did a little more digging before lunch. The earth was more malleable than Julian; digging altered it.
If you have never been able to buy any clothes except those which you could afford, none of them having any direct relation to the other, but merely replacing garments incapable of further use, to be dressed exactly as you should be is to obtain a new consciousness. It was not really Stella who looked with curious eyes at herself in a long mirror beneath the skilful hands of Girton. ”

“ You don't owe your dinner to the dinner-bell; it's simply an arrangement for bringing you to the table. Marriage always seems to me just like that. I should have married Julian in a second if I'd been you; but I should have made him understand that I wasn't a sack of potatoes, if I'd had to box his ears regularly every few minutes for twenty-four hours at a stretch."
"Surely marriage is sacred," said Marian, gravely. Stella's point of view was so odd that Marian thought it rather coarse. ”

“ The traffic surged down Hamilton Place and along Piccadilly as close packed as migratory birds. The tower of Westminster Cathedral dropped its alien height into an Italian blue sky; across the vista of the green park and all down Piccadilly the clubs flashed past her, vast, silver spaces of comfort reserved for men, full of men. Stella did not know very much about men who lived in clubs. Cicely said they were very wicked and danced the tango and didn't want women to have votes; but Stella thought they looked as if they had attractions which rivaled these disabilities. ”

“ There might have been a fugitive gleam of laughter at the back of her eyes, but there were shadows under them that made her look too tired for laughter.
"You, of course," he cried. "How are we ever to get through with our work if you won't eat? It's so silly! It's so tiresome! It's so uncalled for! Why are you doing these wretched lists now?"
"Because," said Stella—and now the laughter ran out at him unexpectedly and tripped him up—"the town clerk has a meeting at five o'clock at which these statistics must be at hand to justify him in having his own way!" ”

“ Stella took unhappiness more easily; in her heart, even now, she believed in it. She believed that the balance of life is against joy, that destiny and fate prey upon it, overcloud it, and sometimes destroy it; and she believed that human beings can readjust this balance. She believed in a success which is independent of life, an invisible and permanent success. ”

“ Travers and the cat?"
"No," said Stella, with a startled look; "anything else in the world, Julian, but not Mr. Travers and the cat."
"Ostrog and I are frightfully jealous by nature," Julian pleaded. "He wouldn't be at all nice to that cat if he met it without knowing its history."
"He can't be unkind to the poor cat," said Stella; "it's dead."
"And is Mr. Travers dead, too?" asked Julian. ”

“ I can do exactly as I like all day. Nobody's plans conflict with any one else's. That's partly being rich and partly being sensible; it's quite wonderful how easy life is if you're both. There's a special room given to me, with a piano and books; and if I want Lady Verny, I can find her in the garden.
I can see her out of my window now; she's wearing a garment that's a cross between a bathing-dress and a dressing-gown, enormous gauntlets, and one of Sir Julian's old caps. ”

“ I can't agree with dear Eurydice about the drawback of Julian's being rich. We are told that money is the root of all evil, but there is no doubt that it is more peaceful and refreshing to have it, as it were, growing under one's hand; and, after all, evil is only seeming. I think I'll just go up-stairs and take off these constricting clothes, unless, dear, you'd like me to help you in any way. You'll remember, won't you, that sensation is but the petal of a flower?"
Stella said that she thought, if she had the step-ladder, she would be all right. ”

“ Stella had pleurisy before she came here; and you know what girls who do that kind of work eat—ghastly little messes, slopped on to marble tables, and tasting like last week's wash."
"Well, why the devil doesn't she look for another job?" Julian asked irritably. "She has brains enough for twenty. That's what I dislike about women: they get stuck anywhere. No dash in 'em, no initiative, no judgment." It was not what he disliked about women.
"She has tried," said Lady Verny. "The man she hoped to get a job from wouldn't have her. ”

“ I hope nothing is wrong with Stella?"
"Everything is wrong with her," flashed Eurydice, ignoring his outstretched hand; "but she doesn't know I've come to talk to you about it. She'd never forgive me if she did. So if I say anything you don't like, you can revenge yourself on me by telling her. I haven't come to be kind, as you call it. I care far too much for the truth."
"Still, you may as well sit down," said Julian, drawing a chair toward her with his free hand. "The truth is quite compatible with a wicker arm-chair. You needn't lean back in it if you're afraid of relaxing your moral fiber. ”

“ But do you intend to tell Miss Young? She may not like the Arctic Ocean or she may expect you to fight. She will also, no doubt, look for some communication from you; and, as you very rightly assert, there can be no communication whatever with anybody until you return."
Julian hunched up his shoulders and whistled.
"She's the pick of women," he said softly. "Leave her to me."
"It's all going to be left to you," said Burton, gravely. "If you live, you'll get no apparent acknowledgment; if you die, no one will ever know how. ”

“ She would be for Julian the Stella of Amberley, but she would not cease to be the Stella of the town hall.
She would not part with her experiences; poverty, drudgery, the endless petty readjustments to the ways of others should belong to her as much as joy. Privilege should neither hold nor enchain her, and she would never let anything go. ”

“ There is seldom any disastrous situation in which there is not something that can be saved. Stella saw in a flash what she might still save out of it. She could save Mr. Travers's pride at the cost of hers. She was a very proud and a very reticent woman; she would take the deepest thing in her heart and show it to Mr. Travers that he might not feel ashamed at having shown her his own. ”

“ He had done his best to make her realize the future, but there are certain situations in life when doing one's best to make a person aware of a fact is equivalent to throwing dust in his eyes. And Stella herself might by a species of divine fooling, have outwitted both himself and her. She might be marrying Julian for pity under the mask of love. ”

“ Stella knew nothing at all about this probation. She only knew all about the office boy's mother, and where the girl typists spent their holidays, and when, if all went well, Mr. Belk would be able to marry his young lady. Mistakes and panic, telegrams and telephones, slipped into her hands, and were unraveled with the rapidity with which silk yields to expert fingers. She always made the stupidest clerk feel that mistakes, like the bites of a mosquito, might happen to any one even while she was making him see how to avoid them in future. ”

“ They were as ignorant of young men as if they had been brought up in a convent. Neither Professor nor Mrs. Waring had ever supposed that parents ought to provide occupations or social resources for their children, and the children themselves had been too busy contributing to the family welfare to manage any other life. Cicely had read statistics and mastered physiological facts at fifteen. She was under the impression that she knew everything and disliked everything except work. Her feeling for men was singularly like that of a medieval and devout monk toward women. ”

“ The result is that the man thinks he's pleasing them, and a man who thinks that he has succeeded in pleasing an agreeable woman is not unaware of her."
"But I'm so afraid of him," pleaded Stella. "I don't believe you know how frightening he is."
"Yes," said Lady Verny; "he has lost his inner security. That makes a person very frightening, I know. He has become aggressive because he feels that something he has always counted on as a weapon has been withdrawn from him. It's like living on your wits; people who do that are always hard. ”

“ For a moment it seemed to Stella that some inner citadel of security within her had collapsed. She knew so little about men; she had nothing but her instincts to guide her, and the memory of Eugénie Matisse's evil, laughing eyes. She covered her face with her hands and shut out every thought but Julian. ”

“ Idiots! Idiots! Don't they see that we've been listening to the defeat of the soul?"
"No, no," whispered Stella half to herself; "we've been listening to how it can't be defeated, how nothing touches it, not even death, not even despair, not even flames. The end of something that has never given in is victory."
They passed behind Marian outside the opera house, but Stella did not speak to her. She heard Sir Julian saying in a determined, resonant voice: "Well, of course I'm glad you liked it. Chaliapine is a good workman, but personally I don't think much of Russian music. ”