Donna Anna

“ Anna lent her services to the poor sick ones. Fra Mansueto died. Anna felt much grief at this. In the year 1866, at the recurrence of the festival, she wished to take leave and return to her native place forever, because she saw in her sleep every night Saint Thomas who commanded her to depart. So she took the turtle, her clothes and her savings, weeping she kissed the hand of Donna Cristina, and departed upon a cart, together with two begging nuns.
At Ortona she dwelt in the house of her paralytic uncle. She slept upon a straw pallet and [277] ate nothing but bread and vegetables. ”

“ Should they go?
XIII
During the last days of May, Anna, having had permission from Donna Cristina, made her preparations. She felt anxious about the turtle. Ought she to leave it or carry it with her? She remained a long time in doubt but at length decided to carry it for security. She put it in a basket with her clothes and the boxes of confection which Donna Cristina was sending to Donna Veronica Monteferrante, Abbess of the [268] monastery of Santa Caterina. At dawn Anna and Fra Mansueto set out. Anna had from the first a nimble step and a gay aspect ”

“ A great bowl of scarlet carnations gleamed from a dark corner, set against the background of a deep brown wall. A jar of pink roses upon a tiny table seemed to gain an extra delicacy of colour from the sombre curtains behind. Anna, who had thrown aside her sealskin coat, wore a tight-fitting walking dress of some dark shade. He leaned back in a low chair, and watched her graceful movements, the play of her white hands as she bent over some wonderful machine. A woman indeed this to love and be loved, beautiful, graceful, gay. ”

“ Instinctively our gaze reverts to Donna, for the day's work is finished, she had proved her cash and is about to go home to the Hat Ranch.
She is a woman now, a glorious, healthy, athletic creature, with wavy hair, very fine and thick and black, and glossy as polished ebony. Her face is tanned and glowing, and the halo of brilliant black hair only serves to accentuate the glow and to remind us of an exquisite cameo set in jet. She is taller by three inches than the average woman, broad-shouldered, full-breasted, slim-waisted, a figure to haunt a sculptor's memory. ”

“ Anna thought to herself: 'Is this love-making?' It could not be, she decided; but she infinitely preferred it so. She was content. She wished for nothing better than this apparently frivolous and irresponsible dalliance. She felt that if Mynors were to be tender, sentimental, and serious, she would become wretchedly self-conscious.
They re-embarked, and, skirting the shore, gradually came round to the beach. Up above them, on the cliffs, they could discern the industrious figure of Beatrice, with easel and sketching-umbrella, and all the panoply of the earnest amateur. ”

“ She was the recipient of confidences from waitresses engaged in the innocent pastime of across-the-counter flirtations with conductors and brakemen. She was the joy of the men and the envy of the women. In fact, Donna was an exemplified copy of that distinctive personality with which we unconsciously invest any young woman upon whose capable shoulders must fall such multifarious duties as those already described ”

“ Because I am never in love, or because I have no sense of humour?"
"Oh, you've got a sense of humour right enough," she said, and went on singing softly to herself. Askett put down his pipe half-smoked.
"What is the other Anna like when she is in love?" he asked, and smiled at his wish to know.
"I only know she's very difficult to live with," replied his model, ruefully. "She's very happy or very sad all the time, and she gets impatient with me, as though I could help it. So absurd, isn't it? Poor Anna! You see, she has never been in love before, and she can't make it out. ”

“ Mynors works. And father has swept the kitchen chimney. And, oh Anna! I asked him to-day if I'd kept house well, and he said "Pretty well," and he gave me a penny. Look! It's the first money I've ever had, you know. I wanted you at nights, Anna—and all the time, too. I've been frightfully busy. I cleaned silvers all afternoon. Anna, I have tried—— And I've got some tea for you. I'll go down and make it. Now you mustn't come into the kitchen. I'll bring it to you in the parlour.'
'I had my tea at Crewe,' Anna was about to say, but refrained, in due course drinking the cup prepared by Agnes. ”

“ A dark, interminable sea, a moon road, a sigh of rolling water and a ship throbbing in the night.
"Dear Anna, I love you." And she would smile, her white face and eyes that were constant as the stars. Constant, eternal. Love that was no mystery but a caress of sea nights. Forgive him. And her sorrow would heal under his fingers. It would end all right. The two years—the halloo of strange sterile things—buried under the smile of her eyes ... deep, sorrowful, beautiful. Words to be. "Anna we will grow old together, holding to each other and smiling; lovers whom the years make always younger." ”

“ Sometimes I tremble, Anna, to think how near I came to passing through life without a single glimpse, a moment’s revelation of this greatest and most awful of mysteries, the mystery of primaeval nature. It is a true saying that in the mountains there is peace. One’s sense of proportion, battered out of all shape in the daily life of cities, reasserts itself. I love you still, Anna, but life holds other things than the love of man for woman. Some day I shall come back, and I will show you on canvas the things which have come to me up here amongst the eternal silence. ”

“ It hardly does her justice, for no artist can ever give a correct idea of what that face was when lighted up with life, and health, and love. I have never seen a face one half as beautiful as Anna’s. She knew that she was beautiful, but it did not make her vain, for she knew that God had given her the dangerous gift of beauty, and she tried to keep His gift unsullied, just as she tried to keep her heart pure in His sight. ”

“ The scales were turned in the right direction by her passionate love for her mother and an intense desire to lift some of the burden of financial worry from her shoulders, as she saw Mrs. Dickinson, with tireless industry, struggle to make ends meet, and to feed, clothe, and educate her fatherless children. Her one determination was to have them grow up into noble men and women, but in Anna's early life it seemed as if the tumultuous nature would never be brought to any degree of poise and self-control. ”

“ 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.” ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She understands him, for has she not dreamed such thoughts as his, associated with men and women who, for the sake of the ideal, sacrificed their lives, went to Siberia, and suffered in the underground dungeons? How then could she fail a Vockerat? It is quite natural that John should find in Anna what his own little world could not give him,—understanding, comradeship, deep spiritual kinship.
The Anna Mahrs give the same to any one, be it man, woman or child. For theirs is not a feeling of sex, of the personal; it is the selfless, the human, the all-embracing fellowship. ”

“ I believe you are a solitary instance of a woman who can endure the charms of another woman without feeling jealous."
"Perhaps it is only the charms of the other Anna," she said, carelessly. "What do you want to know about her?"
"Oh, anything, everything. What does she do, for instance? said Askett, vaguely. His temporary interest in a woman, who was not there with the express purpose of distracting him, was already vanishing as he began to grow interested in his work.
"Do? Has she got to do anything? You surely don't suppose she is a model, or anything like that, do you? ”

“ Anna has been very tiresome sometimes; and, as you know, her daughter, to whom I was really attached, and whom I regarded more or less as Rose’s foster-sister, made that unfortunate marriage to a worthless London tradesman. That’s the black spot in Anna’s life—I don’t mind telling you that it’s been a blacker spot in mine than I’ve ever cared to admit, even to myself. The man’s always getting into scrapes, and having to be got out of them! Why, you once helped me about him, didn’t you? and since then James Hayley actually had to go to the police about the man. ”

“ Askett stood up and smiled thoughtfully.
"How absurd!" he said with a half-laugh. "Go and tell your Anna that some one is in love with her, because he has heard that she is a woman with a sense of humour and a heart; and see if it doesn't cure her depression!" ”

“ 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.” ”

“ He filled the water-pail from the bucket for her, which she took up and was about to go when he found courage to say:
"Won't you stay a minute, Anna, I want to talk to you.
"Anna, have you any relatives?"
"Not now."
"But have you no friends who knew you and loved you before you came to us?"
"I want nothing of my friends, Mr. David, but their good will."
"Anna, why will you persist in cutting yourself off from the rest of the world like this? You are too good, too womanly a girl, to lead this colorless kind of an existence forever." ”

“ The boat seemed to stand still, but the willows on the bank glided slowly onwards.
"Anna," said Otto, in a clear voice, "you must love me!" And his eyes seemed on fire.
The girl was silent.
"Anna, you shall love me!" he repeated.
"Why not?" answered the girl. "You have done me no harm. But I should hardly have thought you would have ventured to use must and shall to the 'noble maiden of the forest,' as you call me."
"Anna, do not laugh at me; I will not stand it; I am a man!"
"I shall believe that when you have grown a head taller." ”

“ Dear old Anna had never acquired the British love of fresh air. “I’m waiting for the papers,” she said. “I can’t think why the man doesn’t begin with us, instead of going all round the other way first! But I’m going to catch him this morning.”
And Anna, grumbling, went back into the house again. [Page 111]
All at once Rose heard the sound of quick footsteps to her right, on the path outside. She moved back into the paved court in front of the Trellis House, and stood, a charming vision of youth and freshness, in her pale mauve cotton frock, by a huge stone jar filled with pink geraniums. ”

“ Poor Anna—she was very young—only eighteen—and to change at once from a poor girl, who was every morning awakened by the shoe-shop whistle, to a life she hated, to step into wealth and elegance must have benumbed and bewildered her so that she did not realize what she was doing, when at last she said good-by to the home of her childhood, and went away alone with a man she had scarcely known two months—a man whom she did not love, and who, even while caressing her, made her feel 20the immense condescension it had been on his part to make her his wife. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Cunningly and carefully for the next half hour she talked, telling Anna that she was not to be thrust upon the notice of any one,—that she herself had no patience with those intriguing mammas who push their bold daughters forward, but that as a good marriage was the ultima thule of a woman’s hopes, it was but natural that she, as Anna’s aunt, should wish to see her well settled in life, and settled, too, near herself, where they could see each other every day. ”

“ Anna comes to London. She is poor, and she will take nothing from my husband, the man she had deceived for my sake, and he, on his part, gravely disapproves of her as ‘Alcide.’ She tries every way of earning a living and fails. Then she goes to a dramatic agent. Curiously enough nothing will persuade him that she is not ‘Alcide.’ He believes that she denies it simply because owing to my marriage with Sir John, whom they call the ‘Puritan Knight,’ she wants to keep her identity secret. He forces an engagement upon her. She never calls herself ‘Alcide.’ It is the Press who find her out. ”