DUM SPIRO, SPERO
You know how there are times in our lives when the days hang heavily,
each moment dragging on leaden feet, weighted all the more grievously
because we are ready to protest to our fellow-men, to ourselves
perhaps, that the days are not grey, but each one as full of light as
we would have it be. And if you do not know you are lucky. Or are you
lucky? Are not the heavy clouds, which temporarily hide the golden
sunshine, better than a dull monochrome of a life, in which neither
cloud nor sunshine is existent? For is it not by the very brightness of
the sun which has been, that we recognize the clouds which now obscure
it? It is when the sun has never shone in its fullest splendour for us
that we do not recognize the existence of the clouds, for to say that
any life is passed in one unbroken dream of golden glory is to make
a statement which one will dare to denounce as untrue. If there be
the gold of joy, so there will come the clouds of sorrow, and a life
without clouds is of necessity one without sun, a monochrome of a life,
peaceful perhaps, but lacking in intensity.
The days passed slowly for Anne. They no longer went by with the gay
carelessness of a year, six months, nay, only three months ago. Take an
interest out of your life, however chary you may have been of admitting
the existence of that interest to your secret heart, and then fill
your days with gaiety, friends, books, anything and everything but the
one thing you want, and you will find it a method of subtraction and
addition which is apt to result in a distinctly unsatisfactory sum
total.
It is not to be supposed, however, that Anne wore her heart upon her
sleeve for society daws to peck at. She hid it and its little ache deep
under a charming courtliness which was, if anything, more charming than
usual. And if she smiled a little more frequently, if a _bon mot_ came
more readily to her lips, after all they were but attempts to bury the
heartache a bit deeper, and it was at least the real Anne who once more
walked the earth.
She saw Millicent occasionally, but only occasionally. There was
now between them a civil exchange of courtesies; an assumption, but
merely an assumption, of the old friendly footing. On a certain
afternoon in the White House Millicent had attempted to give a version
of a particular story to Anne. To which Anne had responded that she
already knew it. Millicent, however, had attempted to explain, and in
explaining had told Anne one or two things Anne had not before known,
which things had caused those aforementioned cracks in Millicent
to gape with such ominous wideness that Millicent herself suddenly
perceived them, and, worse still, saw that Anne perceived them.
Anne had quietly announced that she preferred not to talk of the
matter further: the part of it that concerned Millicent was her own
affair, the part of it that concerned herself was hers. And so it had
concluded, outwardly at all events. But it did not require a vast
amount of acumen to perceive that their former friendly relationship
was of necessity a trifle strained.
It is not to be inferred from this, however, that Anne and Millicent
were anywhere near warfare with each other. Anne was far too much
_grande_ _dame_ for such a proceeding. Also her sentiments towards
Millicent were now those of pure indifference. Millicent had never
counted a great deal in her life, she now merely counted less. Of
Millicent one cannot be so sure. She had seen Anne's face on that
historic afternoon; she had seen Peter's face. She had therefrom drawn
her own conclusions--conclusions to which Anne's subsequent refusal to
discuss the matter had given further weight.
Millicent would have liked to think of Peter as pining in quiet grief
for her, leading a kind of _piano_ life of minor passages in which she
stood for the keynote. She had--to be candid--pictured Peter in her
mind as a prematurely grey-haired man, slightly bowed at the shoulders
(from remorse), gazing fervently at a photograph of a Madonna-like
woman with a child in her arms (Millicent's latest by Lafayette),
sorrowfully considering the fact that the child was not his, and
announcing to Heaven that the thought of her should guide him at last
to its Gates. It must be allowed that it was a distinct jar to find
him not at all grey-haired, not at all bowed at the shoulders, but
jaunty, debonair, carrying a ridiculous hat with a peacock feather in
his hand, and talking intimately to one of her own friends, one, too,
who had kept her acquaintanceship with him a dead secret. Millicent's
feelings towards both him and Anne verged on something like hatred,
though this primeval instinct was so hidden beneath a mask of culture
that no one, Anne least of all, perceived it.
Of General Carden Anne now saw a good deal. Having come once to her
house he came again, and came frequently. And every time, by some
subtle method of his own device, he contrived to mention a certain
green-covered book, and also to speak of the author. And, queerly
enough, Anne responded. Perhaps by some feminine intuition she guessed
General Carden's secret, namely, that he had a pretty shrewd inkling of
the identity of the author, and perhaps underneath the courtly worldly
demeanour of the old man she saw the heart which longed for some word,
some sign, from him. And perhaps knowing this, seeing this, the heart
of the now liberated Anne went out to the old General, having in a way
a common cause of unhappiness. And so the two smiled and chatted, and
skimmed the surface of their sorrow, finding in so doing a curious
consolation, so queer and unaccountable is human nature.
And then one day, a few weeks after her conversation with Muriel, she
became conscious of a tiny hope in her heart. She could no more say at
which precise moment it had first been born than one can say at which
precise moment the tiny green leaves of a spring flower first push
above the brown earth. For weeks there is nothing to be seen, and then
one morning we come down to our garden and the tiny shoot is there in
the sunshine, smiling shyly at us.
And so one morning, all unsuspected in its hidden growth, a tiny
green shoot of hope sprang up in Anne's heart, a hope that after all
her pride had not been abased as she had feared, but that somewhere,
somehow, love was lifting it from the earth. It is not easy to put
into exact words precisely what she hoped, but assuredly trust had
been renewed. And with an old priest praying at an altar, and a
woman kneeling to St. Joseph, and somewhere, far away, a man's heart
worshipping and adoring, it is hardly surprising that it was so.