Doña Angela

“ They were joined by a new member, for Nora and her husband came over, bringing their ten-weeks-old baby boy, and Marjorie, Dona, and Joan felt suddenly quite grown-up in their new capacity of "Auntie". Dona in especial was delighted with her wee nephew.
"I've found out what I'm going to do when I leave school," she told Marjorie rather shyly. "I shall go to help at a crèche. When Winifrede was reading out that 'News of Old Girls' I felt utterly miserable, because I knew I could never do any of those things; a hospital makes me sick, and I'd be scared to death to drive a motor ambulance. ”

“ Nature seems predominant, and one can almost spy nymphs among the trees. Below them the sea rippled calm and shining, merging at the horizon into the tender blue of the sky. Gulls and puffins wheeled and screamed over the rocks. Eric looked round with a far-away expression on his quaint little face, and gravely accepted the flowers that Dona picked for him.
"It's enchanted ground!" he said in his oldfashioned way. "Every flower hides the heart of a tiny fairy. I know, because I've been here in my dreams. I have funny dreams sometimes. They're more real than being awake. ”

“ There are two post-cards she may like, and this lovely long stave from Dona. Lorna, dear! I've told you about my cousin Dona Anderson? She's at Brackenfield College. She's older than I am, but somehow we've always been such friends. I like her far and away the best out of that family. She doesn't find time to write very often, because she's in the Sixth and a prefect, and it keeps her busy, and besides she never has been much of a scribbler. ”

“ Nora, and they've turned up their hair. It's a fact. You needn't stare."
"You'll go all in good time, poor old Baba," said Dona. "You wouldn't like to be in a form all by yourself, without any other little girls, and there's no room for a preparatory unless they build, and that's not possible in war-time. You must peg on for a while with Miss Hazelwood, and then perhaps Mother'll send you to a day school. After all, you know, it's something to be the youngest in the family. You score over that."
Both Marjorie and Dona were looking forward to the summer term. ”

“ The girls went back to school with less reluctance than their mother had expected. It was, of course, a wrench to leave home, and for Dona, at any rate, the atmosphere was at first a little damp, but once installed in their old quarters at Brackenfield they were caught in the train of bustling young life, and cheered up. It is not easy to sit on your bed and weep when your room-mates are telling you their holiday adventures, singing comic songs, and passing round jokes. ”

“ A recent stormy day had flung up great masses of seaweed and hundreds of star-fish. Dona, whose tastes had just begun to awaken in the direction of natural history, poked about with great enjoyment collecting specimens. There were shells to be had on the sand, and mermaids' purses, and bunches of whelks' eggs, and lovely little stones that looked capable of being polished on the lapidary wheel which Miss Jones had set up in the carpentering-room. For lack of a basket Dona filled her own handkerchief and commandeered Marjorie's for the same purpose. ”

“ It seemed a strange place for such a lovely flower as Eric to be growing. Lizzie went first to [274] show the way. She stopped with her hand on the latch of the door.
"His ma's had to go and serve in the bar," she explained, "but his aunt's just come and is sitting with him."
Dona and Marjorie entered a small low bedroom, clean enough, though rather faded and shabby. In a cot bed by the window lay Eric, white as his pillow, a frail ethereal being all dark eyes and shining golden curls. He stretched out two feeble little arms in welcome.
"Oh, my fairy ladies! Have you really come?" ”

“ Leonard's suit-case was lying open on the floor, and she packed in it what she wanted, not without tremors lest Elaine should come in suddenly from the bedroom and catch her. She could hear nurse and invalid laughing together. Bag in hand, she hurried downstairs and out into the garden. Down by the gate a woman was already hanging about waiting. It would be the work of a moment to give it to her. But Marjorie had not calculated upon Dona. That placid young person usually accepted whatever her [271] elder sister thought fit to do. ”

“ It was enough to startle any timid person, sobbed out as the words were. 'Gently, Angel, gently,' said Cherry, and Robina was prepared to unfasten her like a wild creature, but Sister Constance, tenderly kissing the hot forehead, said, 'Softly, my poor child, we will see about it.'
'Don't see about it!' cried Angela, in the childish phrase of impatience. 'It is my only refuge! I'm not fit to be in the world.'
'Let go, Angela,' said Robina, 'you don't know what you are doing!'
'Promise! promise!' repeated Angela, only the more passionately. ”

“ Gordon tried not even to think of Aunt Angela oftener than he could help.
Poor, dear, good, kind, depressing Aunt Angela! Poor, shrivelled, parchment-yellow, skin-and-bone Aunt Angela! There in her miserable little semi-detached house in Highgate—Briarbrae, its name was—there in her palace in the northern mountains, there dwelleth she, Angela the Ever-virgin, of whom no man either living or among the shades can say truly that upon her lips he hath pressed the dear caresses of a lover. ”

“ When one looks about and sees the women of the world—the fashion-plates and simpering dolls of society—then turns to the pure white lives of those like Sister Angela, one can not fail to echo Douglas Darrow's words: "To visit the fatherless and the widow [Pg 167] in their affliction, and to keep ourselves unspotted from the world." This was Sister Angela.
But with all her prudence and forethought, Sister Angela had forgotten to mention to the young physician the fact of Beatrix's marriage. ”

“ During the last ten days the Duchess had tried to win, if not Angela's confidence, then some measure of liking, but, do what she might, she could make no way with her. Indeed it was plain that the girl regarded her hostess as belonging to her aunt's faction. Not that Angela allowed herself to say a word against Miss Patterdale. To the surprise of the Duchess, she "maided" her devotedly. The old lady, though by now really ill, refused with angry obstinacy all thought of a nurse, and was remorselessly selfish in making her niece dance attendance on her. ”

“ With the solemn conviction of the maiden who, until past the meridian, had never loved, she looked on Angela as far too young and immature to think of marrying, yet too shallow, vain and frivolous, too corrupted, in fact, by that pernicious society school—not to shrink from flirtations that might mean nothing to the man but would be damnation to the girl. ”

“ In truth her mother was not beautiful, but sweet enough to drag a man's soul through the gates of death with her, and not leave go her hold upon him till he followed.
So Angela lay upon her bed quite happy. "Father's comrade," that was what she would be. She fell asleep to dream of it, and then awoke with a start, as though something had happened. What had she heard? She did not know; only something had awakened her—some noise. She jumped from her bed, cast a wrapper about her. There were confused voices in the nurse's room—the old nurse and the fellow-servant talking excitedly together. ”

“ And yet, in nearly a mile's walk, he hardly thought of Mary once.
He was surveying, as if from a new peak, the unhappy situation of Home-Makers with their Homes yet to seek: the considerable army of the involuntary spinsters of leisure. And more than ever now, perhaps, he saw these sisters as a Type, pathetically marked: the innocent creatures, the helpless victims, of a dying ideal of themselves.
Here was poor little Angela, his Novel's case in point. She was born a human being, she was born a being with sex. ”

“ Though Angela always thought the Mother blest
Must love the time of her own hawthorn best,
Each evening through the year, with equal, care,
She placed her flowers; then kneeling down in prayer,
As their faint perfume rose before the shrine,
So rose her thoughts, as pure and as divine.
She knelt until the shades grew dim without,
Till one by one the altar lights shone out,
Till one by one the Nuns, like shadows dim,
Gathered around to chant their vesper hymn;
Her voice then led the music’s wingèd flight,
And “Ave, Maris Stella” filled the night. ”

“ Saw all the sisters kneeling round a bed,
Where Angela lay dying; every breath
Struggling beneath the heavy hand of death.
But suddenly a flush lit up her cheek,
She raised her wan right hand, and strove to speak.
In sorrowing love they listened; not a sound
Or sigh disturbed the utter silence round.
The very tapers’ flames were scarcely stirred,
In such hushed awe the sisters knelt and heard.
And through that silence Angela told her life:
Her sin, her flight; the sorrow and the strife,
And the return; and then clear, low and calm,
“Praise God for me, my sisters;” ”

“ It was precisely the point on which the silent young man did not agree with her. To him, as to her, all the sharp force of this tidings was, indeed, in Mary's new overthrow. And yet for the moment there seemed to be room in him for nothing else but comments on the vast void in Mary's so different cousin.
Angela was wanting in the responsible qualities of a full-grown human being. Her fatal lack was in human worth. It was the sum of all he had thought about her since the day he had called upon her poor father. It was the cap and climax of all he meant to say about her in his New Novel. ”

“ The two Franks acted reasonably when they adopted the principles that produced such a woman. Angela never speaks to her husband in defiance and bad temper. If clouds gather in the matrimonial heaven, she dissipates them with the breath of love. ”

“ But the door opened, and a girl in a white night dress, with her hair undone, and death in her face, rushed up to old Vertua, raised him, took him in her arms, and cried, 'Oh, father, I have heard it all--I know it all! Have you lost everything?--everything? You have still your Angela. What would be the use of money if you had not Angela to take care of you. Oh, father! don't humiliate yourself more before this despicable, inhuman creature. It is not we, it is he who is poor and miserable in all his despicable riches, for he stands there in the most gruesome, comfortless loneliness. ”

“ That is what she went there for—to talk the whole situation over with Angela."
But Charles, who had always thought of Angela as "soft" and Mary as "hard," seemed somehow quite certain that that talk had accomplished nothing. With brief speech, he moved toward the door. Doubtless struck with the fixed gravity of his look, Mary's mother, who had been an old-fashioned girl herself once, said with an effort, and yet firmly too:—
"It is life itself that is hard. Marriage means—readjustment. That is the only comment to make." ”

“ Is the sacrifice of a wish wanted? Angela makes it. Is her pure feeling offended by Richard's faults? She kisses them away and raises him to her level. My wife--is she not just the opposite in every thing? Is she not quick-tempered, bitter, loveless, extravagant, and stiff-necked? Has she a look--I will not say of love--but even of respect for me? Do not all her thoughts and acts look to the pleasures of the toilette, the opera, balls, and concerts? O my poor children! who grow up without a mother, in the hands of domestics. ”

“ For one hour we spoke of Angela, and I expressed my determination never to see her again, as I had every proof that she did not care for me. "She loves you," said the artless Marton; "I know she does, but if you do not mean to marry her, you will do well to give up all intercourse with her, for she is quite determined not to grant you even a kiss as long as you are not her acknowledged suitor. You must therefore either give up the acquaintance altogether, or make up your mind that she will refuse you everything." ”

“ I hope that you will be happy with your Angela. When I see your marriage in the paper, I shall send her this tiara as a wedding present. I shall never wear it again. Go, dear; go quick.”
He turned to leave, not trusting himself to speak, for the big tears stood in his eyes, and his throat was choked. When he had reached the steps, she called him back.
“Kiss me once before you go, and I see your dear face no more. I used to be a proud woman, and to think that I can stoop to rob a kiss from Angela. Thank you; you are very kind. And now one word; you know a woman always loves a last word. ”

“ Angela sat with shining eyes. She would not have been a woman, she would not have been human but a plaster saint on a pedestal, if her natural happiness had not had the added poignancy of a triumph among her sisters. Just how far Mr. Manford considered himself interested in Miss Carson, she had never yet been able to determine exactly; but that beautiful damsel's position in the scheme of things she, of course, understood perfectly. If her own intuitions had lacked, there were the plain hints Cousin Mary had given her only the other day. ”

“ Her fine religious feeling is offended at many words, gestures, and dances which a pious Christian woman should not hear and see. Yet she goes to the opera because Richard wishes it. Her husband will at last observe this heroism of love, and sacrifice the opera to it. What Angela cannot obtain by prayers and representations, she gains by the all-conquering weapons of love. In like manner and for a like object yield to your wife. She is, at least, not a firebrand. Love must overcome her stubbornness. ”