Jonathan Annas

“ Flora ran down the walk with a glad cry of “Annas!” and then she stood up, and I saw Annas Keith.
A princess! was my first thought. I saw a tall, slight figure, a slender white throat, a pure pale face, dark grey eyes with black lashes, and a soul in them. Some people have no souls in their eyes, Annas Keith has.
Yet I could not have said then, and I cannot say now, when I try to recall her picture in my mind’s eye, whether Annas Keith is beautiful. It does not seem the right word to describe her: and yet “ugly” would be much further off. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ For Jesus!”
With the same quiet pleasure, Annas remarked indifferently:
“If you will not deal, go away. We shall find some one whose work is cheaper.”
And like old-clothes men who throw useless rags from hand to hand in the dirty market-place, and shout, and swear and abuse each other, so they embarked on a rabid and fiery bargaining. Intoxicated with a strange rapture, running and turning about, and shouting, Judas ticked off on his fingers the merits of Him whom he was selling. ”

“ On the whole, Anna, it is a happier, more comfortable thing, for the relations even of this life, to be a Christian; not a half-way disciple, but a whole-heart-and-soul believer, who keeps no reserves to sting conscience with. He will not feel a thousand things that sting others ”

“ 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. ”

“ Every word, every allusion, every note of his agreeably-modulated voice, gave Anna a glimpse of a society at once freer and finer, which observed the traditional forms but had discarded the underlying prejudices; whereas the world she knew had discarded many of the forms and kept almost all the prejudices.
In such an atmosphere as his an eager young woman, curious as to all the manifestations of life, yet instinctively desiring that they should come to her in terms of beauty and fine feeling, must surely find the largest scope for self- expression. ”

“ It occurred to me now for the first time (which shows how stupid I am) that Harriet had already heard the story of Anna Williams. And it had gained so much bulk and robustity in travelling, as such stories do in the country, that I have no doubt the poor child seemed a sort of devastating monster of iniquity. How the country scourges those who do not walk the beaten path! In the, careless city such a one may escape to unfamiliar streets and consort with unfamiliar people, and still find a way of life, but here in the country the eye of Society never sleeps! ”

“ 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. ”

“ I love you and I want you. Apart from loving you I like you too much to leave you to such a fate, as I like you too much to force you to anything. I like you!"
"And I like you," Anna confessed. "I like your self-confidence in imagining yourself a match for Aeneas. You protested nothing when I vilified you, but I understood you never meant to use your hundred guards against him in Magar gorge. You expected them to stand and look on. You fancied yourself capable of overcoming him with no more help from them or your armor-bearer than he would have had from Achates. ”

“ Your shape is natural. You don't wear a girdle. And now I'll be going."
He had scarcely turned before he felt it again. He swung back quickly, saw that the girl was hanging on the sofa. He lost his balance, went staggering toward her, flung out his arms, and the next thing he knew she was pressing against him, standing on her toes, and her lips were brushing his cheek, and they were moist and warm and soft. ”

“ And all the time John and Anna are quite unaware of the pain and tragedy they are the cause of: they are far removed from the commonplace, petty world about them. They walk and discuss, read and argue about the wonders of life, the needs of humanity, the beauty of the ideal. They have both been famished so long: John for spiritual communion, Anna for warmth of home that she had known so little before, and which in her simplicity she has accepted at the hand of Mother Vockerat and Kitty, oblivious of the fact that nothing is so enslaving as hospitality prompted by a sense of duty. ”

“ This job she had tackled only from a sense of duty and in a [125] real martyr sperit become the greatest comfort and pleasure of her life. For pretty soon Love, the great high priest, come in and sanctified her offerings of comfort and ease, and made her way glorious. How she did love Anna, and how Anna did love her. Of course clouds sometimes dimmed the horizon, shadders from Tamer’s personality and influence dimmed the clear sky that she wanted always to shine down onto her darling, also some lighter shadders from Hamen’s onwisdom. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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! ”

“ But with the morning, the glorious unstained morning the passion of living would stir even the blood of a clod. It comes over the mountains, Anna, pink darkening into orange red, everywhere a wonderful cloud sea, scintillating with colour. It is enough to make a man throw away canvas and brushes into the bottomless precipices, enough to make one weep with despair at his utter and absolute impotence. Nature is God, Anna, and the greatest artist of us all a pigmy. ”

“ Those who feel the narrow, stifling atmosphere must either die or leave. Anna Mahr is not made for the valley. She must live on the heights. But John Vockerat, harassed and whipped on by those who love him most, is unmanned, broken and crushed. He clings to Anna Mahr as one condemned to death. ”

“ If anything had been wanting to complete Anna’s loathing and horror of her husband, this story would have accomplished it. That he was a demon in human form, as well as a madman, she had no doubt, and there gradually crept into her heart a fear lest she, too, like Agatha of Normandy, would die in that dreary house. Still youth is hopeful, and Anna was young and cheered by the courage of Madame Verwest, who was to her more like a mother than a servant, she found herself constantly forming plans for escape from the chateau. ”

“ She was ashamed of her own weakness, and determined henceforth to keep her hands from trembling, to remain more alert and to make her machine produce more.
Soon after she went back to work a man came and handed her two ribbons. She stared unbelievingly, murmured, "Al," and then it seemed that the floor came up to meet her.
She awoke in her own bed in the dormitory and remained there. The dorm mother came to talk, told her she must rest for another day. ”

“ In the well-regulated well-fed Summers world the unusual was regarded as either immoral or ill-bred, and people with emotions were not visited. Sometimes, with a sense of groping in a topsy-turvy universe, Anna had wondered why everybody about her seemed to ignore all the passions and sensations which formed the stuff of great poetry and memorable action. In a community composed entirely of people like her parents and her parents’ friends she did not see how the magnificent things one read about could ever have happened. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On each side of the river the woods grew down to the shore, and now and then the wide branches of overhanging trees stretched for some distance over the stream. A blue heron rose from the river, making its loud call that drowned Anna’s voice as she cried: “Father! Father!” Even had Mr. Weston been near at hand he could hardly have distinguished Anna’s voice. But Anna was now too far downstream for any call to reach her father or Rebby and Paul, who were all anxiously searching for her. ”

“ 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. ”

“ She could hear him now saying to Anna, as her moan fell on his ear, "What was that Anna? Are we not alone? I wish to speak my farewell words in private."
"Yes, all alone," Anna replied, "unless—" and stepping to Adah's door she called twice for Rose Markham.
But Adah, though she tried to do so, could neither move nor speak, and Anna failed to see the figure crouching in the darkness, poor, crushed, wretched Adah, who could not dispute her when returning to her brother she said, "There is no one there; Rose has gone to the post office. I heard her as she went out. We are all alone. ”

“ I suffered ten thousand deaths a day while their felicity endured. I did not kill them, I did not kill myself, I shall not now. Dido should not have killed herself. She would have outworn her agony in time. So shall I. I believe not in making the worst of anything, but in making the best of everything."
"Now you talk more like yourself," said Iarbas. "I have not known you since I came here this time. I thought you too staid for such vehemence, too gentle for such feelings, too contained to show it if you felt any such."
"That has always been the way since I was a baby," Anna protested. ”

“ 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. ”

“ So it was her usual smiling, rather impudent face that finally greeted Askett when he opened the door to her.
"So you didn't forget, after all? Made sure you would," he observed. "People who forget their own names can forget anything."
"I didn't forget my own name," said Anna, truthfully, a remark of which he naturally missed the point.
They did not talk at all for the first hour or so, and Anna began to feel distinctly bored. Being a model was not half so much fun as she had expected to find it, and it made her extremely sleepy. ”