Anna

“ By no means, mon amour, I am travelling with the most bewitching creature!—my lover. Oh, Anna, he is the handsomest man I ever laid my eyes upon; the most delightful! and he paints so divinely that the Empress Catharine has appointed him her court painter. I love him beyond all expression; I adore him! You need not smile, Anna, que voulez-vous? Le coeur toujours vierge pour un second amour. ”

“ Anna, in the loss of that virtue, sees herself shut out from that very world that points her to the yawning chasm of her future; she feels how like a slave in the hands of one whose heart is as cold as his smiles are false, she is. Maria owes the world no hate, nor are her thougnts disturbed by such contemplations. Anna, with embittered and remorseful feelings-with dark and terrible passions agitating her bosom, looks back over her eventful life, to a period when even her own history is shut to her, only to find the tortures of her soul heightened. ”

“ THE APPLE.
Little Anna bent over a quiet brook, and smiled with pleasure at what she saw there. A beautiful living picture was reflected from the clear water. There, bright clouds seemed to sail slowly along, through the clear blue sky, and the leaves of the trees seemed to flutter in the soft summer air. In the midst of these pleasant appearances stood the image of a beautiful little girl, with laughing blue eyes and brown curled hair, which hung down over her white frock, as she stooped forward, as if to look back upon Anna, with a good-natured smile. ”

“ Lady Anna was away with her friends as the Countess sat brooding over the new hopes that had been opened to her. At first, she could not tear her mind away from the position which she herself would occupy as soon as her daughter should have been married and taken away from her. The young Earl would not want his mother-in-law,—a mother-in-law who had spent the best years of her life in the society of a tailor. And the daughter, who would still be young enough to begin a new life in a new sphere, would no longer want her mother to help her. ”

“ I might, indeed, go into the character of Anna and the whys and wherefores of her story; but there is curiously little that is strange or unusual about it. It was just Life. A few days with us worked miraculous changes in the girl; like some stray kitten brought in crying from the cold, she curled herself up comfortably there in our home, purring her contentment. She was not in the least a tragic figure: though down deep under the curves and dimples of youth there was something finally resistant, or obstinate, or defiant—which kept its counsel regarding the past. ”

“ And the baroness smiled, smiled, smiled, always smiled, showing her rather protruding teeth, having always a mysterious attraction and charm.
Anna realized how different her own life might have been, how different her own living. Her soul stirred, she became as another person. Her intimacy with her husband passed away, the curious enveloping Brangwen intimacy, so warm, so close, so stifling, when one seemed always to be in contact with the other person, like a blood-relation, was annulled. ”

“ I think I have never heard anything more beautiful than this story of Anna, who with all the delicacy of her nature, her pure, sweet womanhood, her love of the refined that always marked her, and her keen sensitiveness to the niceties of life, laid all, as a sacrifice to her Lord, in the background, and had at the same board with herself and her mother, that miserable man, thus helping him to fight the enemy of his soul and body. ”

“ If I were writing fiction I might go on almost indefinitely with the story of Anna; but in real life stories have a curious way of coming to quick fruition, and withering away after having cast the seeds of their immortality.
"Did you see the baby?" Harriet had asked. She said no word about Anna: a BABY had come into the world. Already the present was beginning to draw the charitable curtains of its forgetfulness across this simple drama; already Harriet and Anna and all the rest of us were beginning to look to the "finest baby we ever saw in all our lives." ”

“ Alone with that black-shawled figure in the silent church, Anna did not pray. Resting there on her knees, she experienced only the sore sensation of revolt. Why had Fate flung this feeling into her heart, lighted up her life suddenly, if God refused her its enjoyment? Some of the mountain pinks remained clinging to her belt, and the scent of them, crushed against her, warred with the faint odour of age and incense. ”

“ Oh, Anna, Anna, where are your eyes, that you cannot see through this shallow, selfish pretender--a cad at heart, if ever there was one--who cares no more for you than for the flower in his buttonhole, who seeks you only for your money, and who would break your heart when once he had made you his wife, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning! ”

“ Anna felt that her words had become charged with a fuller and more subtle meaning than any which she had intended to impart. “The truth!” It was a moment of awkwardness between the two sisters—a moment, too, charged with its own psychological interest, for there were secrets between them which for many months had made their intercourse a constrained and difficult thing. It was Annabel who spoke.
“How crude you are, Anna!” she exclaimed with a little sigh. “Sir John is not at all that sort. He is the kind of man who would much prefer a little dust in his eyes. ”

“ Anna said. “I will believe you. Remember that he’s not at all a bad sort, and to speak frankly, he’s your salvation. Try and let him never regret it. There’s plenty to be got out of life in a decent sort of way. Be a good wife to him. You can if you will.”
“I promise,” Annabel declared. “He is very kind, Anna, really, and not half such a prig as he seems.”
Anna moved towards the door, but her sister detained her.
“Won’t you tell me why you have come to England?” she said. “It was such a surprise to see you. I thought that you loved Paris and your work so much.” ”

“ And as they stood there together, Rose suddenly became aware that Anna, at the kitchen window, was looking out at them both with a rather peculiar expression on her emotional German face.
A feeling of annoyance swept over the girl; she knew that to her old nurse every young man who ever came to the Trellis House was a potential lover. But even Anna might have left Jervis Blake out of the category. There was nothing silly or—or sentimental, in the real, deep friendship they two felt for one another. ”

“ Anna took her best clothes, recovered her best high-school manner, and arrived with her husband. Will Brangwen, ruddy, bright, with long limbs and a small head, like some uncouth bird, was not changed in the least. The little Baroness was smiling, showing her teeth. She had a real charm, a kind of joyous coldness, laughing, delighted, like some weasel. Anna at once respected her, and was on her guard before her, instinctively attracted by the strange, childlike surety of the Baroness, yet mistrusting it, fascinated. ”

“ Would Lady Anna consent to become the Countess Lovel, all animosities might be buried, and everything be made pleasant, prosperous, noble, and triumphant!
It is easy to fill with air a half-inflated bladder. It is already so buoyant with its own lightness, that it yields itself with ease to receive the generous air. The imagination of the woman flew higher than ever it had flown when the proposition came home to her in all its bearings. Of course it had been in her mind that her daughter should marry well;—but there had been natural fears. ”

“ His eyes were bright in his big swarthy face, and roved about the court gazing at the huddled crowd of servitors and menials under the side-colonnades, at the dying glow of the sinking pyre, at Anna and her attendants above. He waved his hand backward with a single imperious gesture and strode across the court. Anna heard his tread on the tesselated floor of the gallery and looked around at him, half sitting up, but still limply leaning upon the balustrade, her head against the pillar. She said nothing. ”

“ As for Anna, to see her in the sick-room was to suppose her the nearest and tenderest relative of the baroness; and yet the passion that possessed her was not love, but only an endless, unfathomable pity. "If she gets well, she shall never be unhappy again," vowed Anna in those days when she thought she could hear Death's footsteps on the stairs. "Here or somewhere else—anywhere she likes—she shall live and be happy. ”

“ As a boy he had ever been at the cottage of the Countess, and he had sworn to Lady Anna a thousand times that he would do and die in her service. Now he was a strong man, and was more devoted to her than ever. It was the great romance of his life. How could it be brought to pass that the acknowledged daughter of an Earl, dowered with enormous wealth, should become the wife of a tailor? ”

“ A dazzling vision passes before my eyes, and with heaven’s purest beams outshines the brightness of the day! The voices of heroes strike upon my ear. Anna’s joyous band, in glory clad, bear up eternity beyond the starry orbs, and Truth with her golden pen traces her glorious deeds in that book which is not reached by corruption. ”

“ Connaught--that you would be sure to marry into one of the good county families," murmured Anna.
"Did they? I hope the disappointment won't be too much for them. I shall marry you, Anna, and none other."
"But what would your family say? Your father--your sister?"
"Just what they pleased. Anna, pardon me, I am only teasing you. Believe me, they will only be too glad to hear of it; glad that the wild, unsteady (as Mary Anne is pleased to call me on occasion) Isaac Thornycroft should make himself into a respectable man. Anna! can you not trust me?" ”

“ Anna smiled. "That is the German idea of female bliss—always to be led round by the nose by some husband."
"Not some husband, my dear—one's own husband. You may call it leading by the nose if you like. I can only say that I enjoyed being led by mine, and have missed it grievously ever since."
"But you had found the right man."
"It is not very difficult to find the right man."
"Yes it is—very difficult indeed."
"I think not," said the princess. "He is never far off. Sometimes, even, he is next door." And she gazed over Anna's head at the ceiling with elaborate unconsciousness. ”

“ To Anna, the baby was a complete bliss and fulfilment. Her desires sank into abeyance, her soul was in bliss over the baby. It was rather a delicate child, she had trouble to rear it. She never for a moment thought it would die. It was a delicate infant, therefore it behoved her to make it strong. She threw herself into the labour, the child was everything. Her imagination was all occupied here. She was a mother. It was enough to handle the new little limbs, the new little body, hear the new little voice crying in the stillness. ”

“ Anna stood at the sink, and washed the dishes. Her hands floated through the warm, soapy water like lazy fish, curled around plates, swam out of pots; while her thoughts, drowsy, sunny in her head, passed, like her hands, from what was hardly seen to what was hardly felt.
"Look after the milk, Anna," said her mother, "while I go for some kindlings." She went out, thin, stooped, her long, lean fingers fumbling with her apron; and she came back more bent than before. She put the wood down with a sigh. "A body's never done," she said. ”

“ If ever I could bring myself to ask you any favour, I would ask you to forget even as I have forgotten.”
“Why in Heaven’s name should I forget?” he cried. “I love you, Anna, and I want you for my wife. There is nothing but your pride which stands between us.”
“There is great deal more,” she answered coldly. “For one thing I am going to marry David Courtlaw.” ”

“ And, indeed, she seemed to feel no desire for ostentatious display or admiration, but rather delighted in the quiet of domestic life, and the unceremonious intercourse of confiding friendship. I will not tell you whose son I am, but I was not deemed an unsuitable companion for the royally-descended Lady Anna. My sister was the friend and confident of the princess, and I was a privileged visiter at her palace-home, and much in the society of her daughter from her childhood. I am an old man now, but then I was a boy, and had a young, ardent heart. I cannot tell when I first loved the Lady Anna. ”

“ One, with a white face, curses, one implores,
"Anna, for God's sake, let me in again,
Anna, belov'd, I cannot bear the pain."
Like hoovey sheep bleating outside a fold
"Anna, belov'd, I'm in the wind and cold."
I want no men. I'm weary to the soul
Of men like moths about a candle flame,
Of men like flies about a sugar bowl,
Acting alike, and all wanting the same,
My dreamed-of swirl of passion never came,
No man has given me the love I dreamed,
But in the best of each one something gleamed.
If my dear darling were alive, but he... ”

“ Anna was not eager to define it. She had an extraordinary sensitiveness to the impalpable elements of happiness, and as she walked at Darrow’s side her imagination flew back and forth, spinning luminous webs of feeling between herself and the scene about her. Every heightening of emotion produced for her a new effusion of beauty in visible things, and with it the sense that such moments should be lingered over and absorbed like some unrenewable miracle. She understood Darrow’s impatience to see their plans take shape. ”