"O mighty love, O passion and desire,
That bound the cord."
--_The Heptameron._
Janet's mother had died when Janet was a toddling child. It is
observable in the natural history of heroines that their mothers almost
invariably do die when the heroines to whom they have given birth are
toddling children. Had Di Vernon a mother, or Evelina, or Jane Eyre, or
Diana of the Crossways, or Aurora Leigh? Dear Elizabeth Bennett
certainly had one whom we shall not quickly forget--but Elizabeth is an
exception. She only proves the rule for the majority of heroines.
Fathers they have sometimes, generally of a feeble or callous
temperament, never of any use in extricating their daughters from the
entanglements that early beset them. And occasionally they have
chivalrous or disreputable brothers.
So it is with a modest confidence in the equipment of my heroine that I
now present her to the reader denuded of both parents, and domiciled
under the roof of a brother who was not only disreputable in the
imagination of Mrs Trefusis, but, as I hate half measures, was so in
reality.
If Janet had been an introspective person, if she had ever asked herself
whence she came and whither she was going, if the cruelty of life and
nature had ever forced themselves upon her notice, if the apparent
incompleteness of this pretty world had ever daunted her, I think she
must have been a very unhappy woman. Her surroundings were vulgar,
coarse, without a redeeming gleam of culture, even in its crudest
forms, without a spark of refined affection. Nevertheless her life grew
up white and clean in it, as a hyacinth will build its fragrant bell
tower in the window of a tavern, in a stale atmosphere of smoke and beer
and alcohol. Janet was self-contained as a hyacinth. She unfolded from
within. She asked no questions of life. That she had had a happy,
contented existence was obvious; an existence spent much in the open
air, in which tranquil, practical duties well within her reach had been
all that had been required of her. Her brother Fred, several years older
than herself, had one redeeming point. He was fond of her and proud of
her. He did not understand her, but she was what he called "a good
sort."
Janet was one of those blessed women--whose number seems to diminish,
while that of her highly-strung sisters painfully increases--who make no
large demand on life, or on their fellow-creatures. She took both as
they came. Her uprightness and integrity were her own, as was the
simple religion which she followed blindfold. She expected little of
others, and exacted nothing. She had, of course, had lovers in plenty.
She wished to be married and to have children--many children. In her
quiet ruminating mind she had names ready for a family of ten. But until
George came she had always said "No." When pressed by her brother as to
why some particularly eligible _parti_--such as Mr Gorst, the successful
trainer--had been refused, she could never put forward any adequate
reason, and would say at last that she was very happy as she was.
Then George came, a different kind of man from any she had
known, at least different from any in his class who had offered
marriage. He represented to her all that was absent from her own
surroundings--refinement, culture. I don't know what Janet can have
meant by culture, but years later, when she had picked up words like
"culture" and "development," and scattered them across her conversation,
she told me he had represented all these glories to her. And he was a
little straighter than the business men she associated with, a good deal
straighter than her brother. Perhaps, after all, that was the first
attraction he had for her. Janet was straight herself. She fell in love
with George.
"L'amour est une source naïve." It was a very naïve spring in Janet's
heart, though it welled up from a considerable depth; a spring not even
to be poisoned by her brother's outrageous delight at the engagement, or
his congratulations on the wisdom of her previous steadfast refusal of
the eligible Mr Gorst.
"This beats all," he said; "I never thought you would pull it off,
Janet. I thought he was too big a fish to land. And to think you will
queen it at Easthope Park."
Janet was not in the least perturbed by her brother's remarks. She was
accustomed to them. He always talked like that. She vaguely supposed she
should some day "queen it" at Easthope. The expression did not offend
her. The reflection in her mind was: "George must love me very much to
have chosen me, when all the most splendid ladies in the land would be
glad to have him."
And now, as she walked on this Sunday afternoon in the long, quiet
gardens of Easthope, she felt her cup was full. She looked at her
affianced George with shy adoration from under the brim of her violent
new hat, and made soft answers to him when he spoke.
George was not a great talker. He trusted mainly to an occasional
ejaculation, his meaning aided by pointing with a stick.
A covey of partridges ran with one consent across the smooth lawn at a
little distance.
"Jolly little beggars," said George, with explanatory stick.
She liked the flowers best, but he did not, so he took her down to the
pool below the rose garden, where the eager brook ran through a grating,
making a little water prison in which solemn, portly personages might be
seen moving.
"See 'em?" said George, pointing as usual.
"Yes," said Janet.
"That's a three-pounder."
"Yes."
That was all the stream said to them.
She lingered once more in the rose-garden when he would have drawn her
onwards towards the ferrets, and George, willing to humour her, got out
his knife and chose a rose for her. Has any woman really lived who has
not stood once in silence in the June sunshine with her lover, and
watched him pick for her a red rose which is not as other roses, a rose
which understands? Amid all the world of roses, did the raiment of God
touch just that one, as He walked in His garden in the cool of the
evening? And did the Divine love imprisoned in it reach forth towards
the human love of the two lovers, and blend them for a moment with
itself?
"You are my rose," said George, and he put his arm round her, and drew
her to him with a rough tenderness.
"Yes," said Janet, not knowing to what she said "yes," but vaguely
assenting to him in everything. And they leaned together by the
sun-dial, soft cheek against tanned cheek, soft hand in hard hand.
Could anything in life be more commonplace than two lovers and a rose?
Have we not seen such groups portrayed on lozenge-boxes, and on the
wrappers of French plums?
And yet, what remains commonplace if Love but touch it as he passes?
Let Memory open her worn picture-book, where it opens of itself, and
make answer.
* * * * *
Anne saw the lovers, but they did not see her, as she ran down the steps
cut in the turf to the little bridge across the trout stream. She had
left Mrs Trefusis composed into a resigned nap, and she felt at liberty
to carry her aching spirit to seek comfort and patience by the brook.
Anne, the restrained, disciplined, dignified woman of the world, threw
herself down on her face in the short, sun-warm grass.
Is the heart ever really tamed? As the years pass we learn to keep it
behind bolts and bars. We marshal it forth on set occasions, to work
manacled under our eyes, and then goad it back to its cell again. But is
it ever anything but a caged Arab of the desert, a wild fierce prisoner
in chains, a captive Samson with shorn locks which grow again, who may
one day snap his fetters, and pull down the house over our heads.
Anne set her teeth. Her passionate heart beat hard against the kind
bosom of the earth. How we return to her, our Mother Earth, when life is
too difficult or too beautiful for us! How we fling ourselves upon her
breast, upon her solitude, finding courage to encounter joy, insight to
bear sorrow. First faint foreshadowing of the time when we, "short-lived
as fire, and fading as the dew," shall go back to her entirely.
Anne lay very still. She did not cry. She knew better than that. Tears
are for the young. She hid her convulsed face in her hands, and
shuddered violently from time to time.
How long was she to bear it? How long was she to drag herself by sheer
force through the days, endless hour by hour? How long was she to hate
the dawn? How long was she to endure this intermittent agony, which
released her only to return? Was there to be no reprieve from the
invasion of this one thought? Was there no escape from this man? Was not
her old friend the robin on his side? The meadowsweet feathered the
hedgerow. The white clover was in the grass, together with the little
purple orchid. Were they not all his confederates? Had he bribed the
robin to sing of him, and the scent in the white clover against her
cheek to goad her back to acute remembrance of him, and the pine-trees
to speak continually of him?
"He is rich enough," said poor Anne to herself, with something between a
laugh and a sob.
But he had not bribed the brook. Tormented spirits ere now have walked
in dry places, seeking rest and finding none. But has any outcast from
happiness sought rest by running water, and found it not?