Sara Jeannette Duncan

“ Finally the days of Laura Filbert's sojourn under the Livingstones' roof followed each other into the past that is not much pondered. Alicia at one time valued the impression that life in Calcutta disappeared entirely into this kind of history, that one's memory there was a rubbish heap of which one naturally did not trouble to stir up the dust. It gave a soothing wistulness to discontent to think this, which a discerning glance might often have seen about her lips and eyebrows as she lay back among her carriage cushions under the flattery of the south wind in the course of her evening drive. ”

“ In her symmetry and strength and the warm cloud of her hair and the soul that sat behind the shadows of her eyes Vedder might have drawn her as a tragic symbol for the poet who sang in the King's garden of wine and death and roses.
"I would go further," she said, and looked as if some other thing charged with sweetness had come before her.
"And even if one gained, one would never trust one's success," Alicia faltered.
"Ah, if one gained one would hold," Hilda said; and while she smiled on her pupil in the arts of life, the tenderness grew in her eyes and came upon her lips. ”

“ Arnold and Hilda came behind. He had an errand to the Sister Superior—he would go all the way. It was late in May and late in the afternoon; all the tree-tops on the Maidan were bent under the sweep of the south wind, blowing a caressing coolness from the sea. It spread fragrances about and shook down blossoms from the gold-mohur trees. One could see nothing anywhere so red and yellow as they were except the long coat of a Government messenger, a point of scarlet moving in the perspective of a dusty road. The spreading acres of turf were baked to every earth colour. ”

“ Alicia asked. "Don't they make you sit the wrong way on a chair, in tights?"
Hilda threw her head back and laughed almost, Alicia noted, like a man. She certainly did not hide her mouth with her hands or her handkerchief, as woman often do in bursts of hilarity; she laughed freely, and as much as she wanted to, and it was as clear as possible that tights presented themselves quite preposterously to any discussion of her profession. They were things to be taken for granted, like the curtain and the wings; they had no relation to clothing in the world. ”

“ But she went on as if she were conscious of a stimulus.
"Wherever the morning sky bends or the stars cluster is sanctuary enough," she said: "a slum at noonday is as holy for us as daisied fields; the Name of the Lord walks with us. The Army is His Army. He is Lord of our hosts."
"A kind of chant," murmured Hilda, and Miss Livingstone became aware that she might if she liked play with the beginnings of magnetism. Then that impression was carried away, as it were, on a puff of air, and it is hardly likely that she thought of it again.
"I suppose all the élite go to the Cathedral," Laura said. ”

“ The primitive things she saw helped her to a fulness of life; the south wind brought her profound sweet presciences. A coolie woman, carrying a basket on her head, stopped and looked at her with full, glistening eyes; they smiled at each other and passed on. She found herself upon a narrow path, worn smooth by other barefooted coolie-folk; it made in its devious way toward the rich mists where the sun had gone down and Hilda followed it, breasting the glow and the colour and wide, flat expanse, as if in the India of it there breathed something exquisitely sensuous and satisfying. ”

“ The staircase took a lazy curve and went up: under it, through an open window, the sun glistened upon the shifting white and green leaves of a pipal tree and a crow sat on the sill and thrust his grey head in with caws of indignant expostulation. A Government peon in scarlet and gold ascended the stair at his own pace, bearing a packet with an official seal. The place, with its ink-smeared walls and high ceilings, spoke between dusty yawns of the langour and the leisure which might attend the manipulation of the business of life, and Hilda paused for an instant to perceive what it said. ”

“ The colour found a wistful echo in the eyes that regarded Miss Howe, who was accustomed to the look and met it with impenetrable commonplace, being made impatient by nothing in this world so much as by futility, however charming.
"Just now," Alicia said, "the shadows under your eyes are brushed too deep."
"I don't believe I sleep well in a dormitory."
"Horrible! All the little privacies of life—don't you miss them?"
"I never had them, my dear—I never had them. Life has never given me the luxury of curtains—I don't miss them. ”

“ It is much to Miss Hilda Howe's credit that amid the overwhelming distractions of her most successful London season she never quite abandons these two to the social joys that circle round the Ochterlony Monument and the arid scenic consolations of the Maidan. Her own experience there is one of the things, I fancy, that make her fond of saying that the stage is the merest cardboard presentation, and that one day she means to leave it, to coax back to her bosom the life which is her heritage in the wider, simpler ways of the world. ”

“ Then as if Hilda's going on were precisely the thing she could not quite endure, she said quickly, "The Coromandel is telegraphed from Colombo to-day."
"Ah!", said Hilda.
"He leaves for Madras to-morrow. The thing is to take place there, you know."
"Then nothing but shipwreck can save him."
"Nothing but—what a horrible idea! Don't you think they may be happy? I really think they may."
"There is not one of the elements that give people, when they commit the paramount stupidity of marrying, reason to hope that they may not be miserable. Not one. If he were a strong man I should pity him less. ”

“ Why do you not come hastening, running? Are you too wise? But when did the wisdom of this world satisfy you about the next? Are you too much occupied? But in the day of judgment what will you do?"—
"When you come to Jordan's flood,
How will you do? How will you do?"
It was the voice and tambourine of Ensign Sand, quick upon her opportunity. Laura gave her no glance of surprise—perhaps she was disciplined to interruptions—but caught up her own tambourine, singing, and instantly the chorus was general, the big drum thumping out the measure, all the tambourines shaking together. ”

“ Lindsay smiled at her across the gulf he saw fixed. "How simple life is to you!" he said. "But any way, I couldn't act."
"Oh, no, you couldn't, you couldn't! You are too intensely absorbent, you are too rigidly individual. The flame in you would never consent, even for an instant, to be the flame in anybody else—any of those people who, for the purpose of the stage, are called imaginary. Never!"
It seemed a punishment, but all Lindsay said was: "I wish you would go on. You can't think how gratifying it is—after the tennis." ”

“ Contempt accumulated in Miss Howe's voice and sat in her eyes. To mark her climax, she kicked her slipper over the end of the bed.
"It is idiotic—it's disgusting," she said.
Alicia caught a flash from her. "My attitude!" she cried. "What in the world do you mean? Do you always think in poses? I take no attitude. I care for him, and in that proportion I intend that he shall have what he wants—so far as I can help him to it. You have never cared for anybody—what do you know about it?"
Hilda took a calm, unprejudiced view of the ceiling. "I assure you I'm not an angel," she cried. ”

“ But we met as kindred, if I may vaunt myself so much. A mere theory of life will go a long way, you know, toward establishing a claim of that sort. And, at all events, she is good enough to treat me as if she admitted it."
"What is her theory of life?" Alicia demanded, quickly. "I should be glad of a new one."
Lindsay's communicativeness seemed to contract a little, as at the touch of a finger light but cold.
"I don't think she has ever told me," he said. "No, I am sure she has not." His reflection was, "It is her garment—and how could it fit another woman?" ”

“ Hilda's production of Mrs. Halliday was so perfect that it failed absolutely to touch him, almost to interest him. He had no means of measuring or of valuing that kind of woman, the restless brilliant type that lives upon its emotions and tilts at the problems of its sex with a curious comfort in the joust. He was too far from the circle of her modern influence to consider her with anything but impatience if he had met her original person, and her reflection, her reproduction, seemed to him frivolous and meaningless. ”

“ Alicia seemed to weigh it. "I think I like theories better than illustrations," she said in defence.
"One can look at theories as one looks at the sky, but an illustration wants a careful point of view. For this one perhaps you are a little near."
"Perhaps," Alicia assented, "I am a little near." She glanced quickly down as she spoke, but when she raised her eyes they were dry and clear.
"I can see it better," Hilda went on, with immense audacity, "much better."
"Isn't it safer to feel?"
"Jamais de la vie! The nerves lie always." ”

“ Hilda smiled. Her smile acquiesced in the world she had found, acquiesced with the gladness of an explorer in Laura Filbert as a feature of it.
"Don't be too sure," she cried; "I am very happy. It is such a pleasure to see you."
Her gaze embraced Miss Filbert as a person and Miss Filbert as a pictorial fact; but that was because she could not help it. Her eyes were really engaged only with the latter Miss Filbert.
"Much happier than you are," Laura repeated, slowly moving her head from side to side, as if to negative contradiction in advance. She smiled too ”

“ Hilda had the sensation of coming unexpectedly, through the lightest loam, upon a hard surface. She looked attentively at the red heart of her cigarette, crisped over with grey, in its blackened calyx.
"Most impressionable," she went on, as if Alicia had not spoken. "As to the rest of the people—bah, you can't rouse Calcutta. It is sunk in its torpid liver, and imagines itself superior. It's really funny, you know, the way pancreatic influences can be idealised—made to serve ennobling ends. But Mr. Lindsay is—different." ”

“ The coolie-track had led them into the widest part of the Maidan, where it slopes to the south, and the huts of Bowanipore. There was nothing about them but a spreading mellowness and the baked turf under-foot. The cloudy yellow twilight disclosed that a man little way off was a man and not a horse but did hardly more. "I'm tired," Hilda said suddenly, "let us sit down," and sank comfortably on the fragrant grass. Lindsay dropped beside her and they sat for a moment in silence. A cricket chirped noisily a few inches from them. Hilda put out her hand in that direction and it ceased. ”

“ Hilda deliberately sought its solace for her feet, letting their pressure linger. All day long the sun had been drawing the sweetness and the life out of it, and now the air had a sweet, warm, and grateful scent, like that of harvests. The crickets had been at it since five o'clock, and though the city rose not half a mile across the grass, it was the crickets she heard and listened to. In making private statements of things, the crickets offered a chorus of agreement and they never interrupted. ”

“ She was living for the moment which should exhale itself somewhere about midnight, after the lights had gone out on her last appearance, living for it as a Carmelite might live for the climax of her veil and her vows if it were conceivable that beyond the cell and the grating she saw the movement and the colour and the passion of a wider life. All Hilda's splendid vitality went into her intention, of which she was altogether mistress, riding it and reining it in a straight course through the encumbered hours. ”

“ In Alicia's smile there was a satisfaction rather subtle and in a manner superior; she knew of things.
The life of the market, the bazaar, was all awake and moving. They rolled up though a crowd of inferior vehicles, empty for the moment and abandoned, where the leisurely crowd, with calculation under its turbans, swayed about the market-house, and the pots of a palm-dealer ran out of bounds and made a little grove before the stall of the man who sold pith helmets. The warm air held the smell of all sorts of commodities ”

“ Hilda was agreeable; she would talk about Gissing, or about anything, tipped on the edge of her bed—Alicia had surmounted that degree of intimacy at a bound by the declaration that she could no longer endure the blue umbrellas—and clasping one knee, with an uncertain tenure of a chipped bronze slipper deprived of its heel. Wonderful tusser silk draperies fell about her, with ink-spots on the sleeves; her hair was magnificent.
"It's so curious to me," she was saying of the novel, "that any one should learn all that life as you do, at a distance, in a book. ”

“ Presently Alicia made a great effort. She laid hands on Hilda's previous references as a tangibility that remained with her.
"Do you ever go to the Cathedral?" she said.
The faintest shade of dogmatism crossed Captain Filbert's features, as when, on a day of cloud fleeces, the sun withdraws for an instant from a flower. Since her sect is proclaimed beyond the boundaries of dogma it may have been some other obscurity, but my appraisement fails.
"No, I never go there. We raise our own Ebenezer; we are a tabernacle to ourselves." ”

“ It's of the least consequence." He spoke with a curious, governed impulse coming from beneath his shaded eyes. "It's seeing another ideal pulled down, gone under, something that held, as best it could, a ray from the source. It's another glimpse of the strength of the tide—terrible. It's a cruel hint that one lives above it in the heaven of one's own hopes, by some mere blind accident. To have set one's feeble hand to the spiritualising of the world, and to feel the possibility of that——"
"I see," said Hilda, and perhaps she did. ”