Classic Works from Women Writers

by Editors of Canterbury Classics

  She set them all thinking vaguely of the things they wanted. Mrs. Elliot knew exactly what she wanted; she wanted a child; and the usual little pucker deepened on her brow.

  “We’re such lucky people,” she said, looking at her husband. “We really have no wants.” She was apt to say this, partly in order to convince herself, and partly in order to convince other people. But she was prevented from wondering how far she carried conviction by the entrance of Mr. and Mrs. Flushing, who came through the hall and stopped by the chess-board. Mrs. Flushing looked wilder than ever. A great strand of black hair looped down across her brow, her cheeks were whipped a dark blood red, and drops of rain made wet marks upon them.

  Mr. Flushing explained that they had been on the roof watching the storm.

  “It was a wonderful sight,” he said. “The lightning went right out over the sea, and lit up the waves and the ships far away. You can’t think how wonderful the mountains looked too, with the lights on them, and the great masses of shadow. It’s all over now.”

  He slid down into a chair, becoming interested in the final struggle of the game.

  “And you go back tomorrow?” said Mrs. Thornbury, looking at Mrs. Flushing.

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “And indeed one is not sorry to go back,” said Mrs. Elliot, assuming an air of mournful anxiety, “after all this illness.”

  “Are you afraid of dyin’?” Mrs. Flushing demanded scornfully.

  “I think we are all afraid of that,” said Mrs. Elliot with dignity.

  “I suppose we’re all cowards when it comes to the point,” said Mrs. Flushing, rubbing her cheek against the back of the chair. “I’m sure I am.”

  “Not a bit of it!” said Mr. Flushing, turning round, for Mr. Pepper took a very long time to consider his move. “It’s not cowardly to wish to live, Alice. It’s the very reverse of cowardly. Personally, I’d like to go on for a hundred years—granted, of course, that I had the full use of my faculties. Think of all the things that are bound to happen!”

  “That is what I feel,” Mrs. Thornbury rejoined. “The changes, the improvements, the inventions—and beauty. D’you know I feel sometimes that I couldn’t bear to die and cease to see beautiful things about me?”

  “It would certainly be very dull to die before they have discovered whether there is life in Mars,” Miss Allan added.

  “Do you really believe there’s life in Mars?” asked Mrs. Flushing, turning to her for the first time with keen interest. “Who tells you that? Someone who knows? D’you know a man called—?”

  Here Mrs. Thornbury laid down her knitting, and a look of extreme solicitude came into her eyes.

  “There is Mr. Hirst,” she said quietly.

  St. John had just come through the swing door. He was rather blown about by the wind, and his cheeks looked terribly pale, unshorn, and cavernous. After taking off his coat he was going to pass straight through the hall and up to his room, but he could not ignore the presence of so many people he knew, especially as Mrs. Thornbury rose and went up to him, holding out her hand. But the shock of the warm lamp-lit room, together with the sight of so many cheerful human beings sitting together at their ease, after the dark walk in the rain, and the long days of strain and horror, overcame him completely. He looked at Mrs. Thornbury and could not speak.

  Every one was silent. Mr. Pepper’s hand stayed upon his Knight. Mrs. Thornbury somehow moved him to a chair, sat herself beside him, and with tears in her own eyes said gently, “You have done everything for your friend.”

  Her action set them all talking again as if they had never stopped, and Mr. Pepper finished the move with his Knight.

  “There was nothing to be done,” said St. John. He spoke very slowly. “It seems impossible—”

  He drew his hand across his eyes as if some dream came between him and the others and prevented him from seeing where he was.

  “And that poor fellow,” said Mrs. Thornbury, the tears falling again down her cheeks.

  “Impossible,” St. John repeated.

  “Did he have the consolation of knowing—?” Mrs. Thornbury began very tentatively.

  But St. John made no reply. He lay back in his chair, half-seeing the others, half-hearing what they said. He was terribly tired, and the light and warmth, the movements of the hands, and the soft communicative voices soothed him; they gave him a strange sense of quiet and relief. As he sat there, motionless, this feeling of relief became a feeling of profound happiness. Without any sense of disloyalty to Terence and Rachel he ceased to think about either of them. The movements and the voices seemed to draw together from different parts of the room, and to combine themselves into a pattern before his eyes; he was content to sit silently watching the pattern build itself up, looking at what he hardly saw.

  The game was really a good one, and Mr. Pepper and Mr. Elliot were becoming more and more set upon the struggle. Mrs. Thornbury, seeing that St. John did not wish to talk, resumed her knitting.

  “Lightning again!” Mrs. Flushing suddenly exclaimed. A yellow light flashed across the blue window, and for a second they saw the green trees outside. She strode to the door, pushed it open, and stood half out in the open air.

  But the light was only the reflection of the storm which was over. The rain had ceased, the heavy clouds were blown away, and the air was thin and clear, although vapourish mists were being driven swiftly across the moon. The sky was once more a deep and solemn blue, and the shape of the earth was visible at the bottom of the air, enormous, dark, and solid, rising into the tapering mass of the mountain, and pricked here and there on the slopes by the tiny lights of villas. The driving air, the drone of the trees, and the flashing light which now and again spread a broad illumination over the earth filled Mrs. Flushing with exultation. Her breasts rose and fell.

  “Splendid! Splendid!” she muttered to herself. Then she turned back into the hall and exclaimed in a peremptory voice, “Come outside and see, Wilfrid; it’s wonderful.”

  Some half-stirred; some rose; some dropped their balls of wool and began to stoop to look for them.

  “To bed—to bed,” said Miss Allan.

  “It was the move with your Queen that gave it away, Pepper,” exclaimed Mr. Elliot triumphantly, sweeping the pieces together and standing up. He had won the game.

  “What? Pepper beaten at last? I congratulate you!” said Arthur Venning, who was wheeling old Mrs. Paley to bed.

  All these voices sounded gratefully in St. John’s ears as he lay half-asleep, and yet vividly conscious of everything around him. Across his eyes passed a procession of objects, black and indistinct, the figures of people picking up their books, their cards, their balls of wool, their work-baskets, and passing him one after another on their way to bed.

  RENASCENCE

  Edna St. Vincent Millay

  All I could see from where I stood

  Was three long mountains and a wood;

  I turned and looked another way,

  And saw three islands in a bay.

  So with my eyes I traced the line

  Of the horizon, thin and fine,

  Straight around till I was come

  Back to where I’d started from;

  And all I saw from where I stood

  Was three long mountains and a wood.

  Over these things I could not see;

  These were the things that bounded me;

  And I could touch them with my hand,

  Almost, I thought, from where I stand.

  And all at once things seemed so small

  My breath came short, and scarce at all.

  But, sure, the sky is big, I said;

  Miles and miles above my head;

  So here upon my back I’ll lie

  And look my fill into the sky.

  And so I looked, and, after all,

  The sky was not so very tall.

  The sky, I said, must somewhere stop,

  And—sure enough!—I see the top!

 
; The sky, I thought, is not so grand;

  I ’most could touch it with my hand!

  And reaching up my hand to try,

  I screamed to feel it touch the sky.

  I screamed, and—lo!—Infinity

  Came down and settled over me;

  Forced back my scream into my chest,

  Bent back my arm upon my breast,

  And, pressing of the Undefined

  The definition on my mind,

  Held up before my eyes a glass

  Through which my shrinking sight did pass

  Until it seemed I must behold

  Immensity made manifold;

  Whispered to me a word whose sound

  Deafened the air for worlds around,

  And brought unmuffled to my ears

  The gossiping of friendly spheres,

  The creaking of the tented sky,

  The ticking of Eternity.

  I saw and heard, and knew at last

  The How and Why of all things, past,

  And present, and forevermore.

  The Universe, cleft to the core,

  Lay open to my probing sense

  That, sick’ning, I would fain pluck thence

  But could not,—nay! But needs must suck

  At the great wound, and could not pluck

  My lips away till I had drawn

  All venom out.—Ah, fearful pawn!

  For my omniscience paid I toll

  In infinite remorse of soul.

  All sin was of my sinning, all

  Atoning mine, and mine the gall

  Of all regret. Mine was the weight

  Of every brooded wrong, the hate

  That stood behind each envious thrust,

  Mine every greed, mine every lust.

  And all the while for every grief,

  Each suffering, I craved relief

  With individual desire,—

  Craved all in vain! And felt fierce fire

  About a thousand people crawl;

  Perished with each,—then mourned for all!

  A man was starving in Capri;

  He moved his eyes and looked at me;

  I felt his gaze, I heard his moan,

  And knew his hunger as my own.

  I saw at sea a great fog bank

  Between two ships that struck and sank;

  A thousand screams the heavens smote;

  And every scream tore through my throat.

  No hurt I did not feel, no death

  That was not mine; mine each last breath

  That, crying, met an answering cry

  From the compassion that was I.

  All suffering mine, and mine its rod;

  Mine, pity like the pity of God.

  Ah, awful weight! Infinity

  Pressed down upon the finite Me!

  My anguished spirit, like a bird,

  Beating against my lips I heard;

  Yet lay the weight so close about

  There was no room for it without.

  And so beneath the weight lay I

  And suffered death, but could not die.

  Long had I lain thus, craving death,

  When quietly the earth beneath

  Gave way, and inch by inch, so great

  At last had grown the crushing weight,

  Into the earth I sank till I

  Full six feet under ground did lie,

  And sank no more,—there is no weight

  Can follow here, however great.

  From off my breast I felt it roll,

  And as it went my tortured soul

  Burst forth and fled in such a gust

  That all about me swirled the dust.

  Deep in the earth I rested now;

  Cool is its hand upon the brow

  And soft its breast beneath the head

  Of one who is so gladly dead.

  And all at once, and over all

  The pitying rain began to fall;

  I lay and heard each pattering hoof

  Upon my lowly, thatched roof,

  And seemed to love the sound far more

  Than ever I had done before.

  For rain it hath a friendly sound

  To one who’s six feet underground;

  And scarce the friendly voice or face:

  A grave is such a quiet place.

  The rain, I said, is kind to come

  And speak to me in my new home.

  I would I were alive again

  To kiss the fingers of the rain,

  To drink into my eyes the shine

  Of every slanting silver line,

  To catch the freshened, fragrant breeze

  From drenched and dripping apple-trees.

  For soon the shower will be done,

  And then the broad face of the sun

  Will laugh above the rain-soaked earth

  Until the world with answering mirth

  Shakes joyously, and each round drop

  Rolls, twinkling, from its grass-blade top.

  How can I bear it; buried here,

  While overhead the sky grows clear

  And blue again after the storm?

  O, multi-colored, multiform,

  Beloved beauty over me,

  That I shall never, never see

  Again! Spring-silver, autumn-gold,

  That I shall never more behold!

  Sleeping your myriad magics through,

  Close-sepulchred away from you!

  O God, I cried, give me new birth,

  And put me back upon the earth!

  Upset each cloud’s gigantic gourd

  And let the heavy rain, down-poured

  In one big torrent, set me free,

  Washing my grave away from me!

  I ceased; and through the breathless hush

  That answered me, the far-off rush

  Of herald wings came whispering

  Like music down the vibrant string

  Of my ascending prayer, and—crash!

  Before the wild wind’s whistling lash

  The startled storm-clouds reared on high

  And plunged in terror down the sky,

  And the big rain in one black wave

  Fell from the sky and struck my grave.

  I know not how such things can be;

  I only know there came to me

  A fragrance such as never clings

  To aught save happy living things;

  A sound as of some joyous elf

  Singing sweet songs to please himself,

  And, through and over everything,

  A sense of glad awakening.

  The grass, a-tiptoe at my ear,

  Whispering to me I could hear;

  I felt the rain’s cool finger-tips

  Brushed tenderly across my lips,

  Laid gently on my sealed sight,

  And all at once the heavy night

  Fell from my eyes and I could see,—

  A drenched and dripping apple-tree,

  A last long line of silver rain,

  A sky grown clear and blue again.

  And as I looked a quickening gust

  Of wind blew up to me and thrust

  Into my face a miracle

  Of orchard-breath, and with the smell,—

  I know not how such things can be!—

  I breathed my soul back into me.

  Ah! Up then from the ground sprang I

  And hailed the earth with such a cry

  As is not heard save from a man

  Who has been dead, and lives again.

  About the trees my arms I wound;

  Like one gone mad I hugged the ground;

  I raised my quivering arms on high;

  I laughed and laughed into the sky,

  Till at my throat a strangling sob

  Caught fiercely, and a great heart-throb

  Sent instant tears into my eyes;

  O God, I cried, no dark disguise

  Can e’er hereafter hide from me

  T
hy radiant identity!

  Thou canst not move across the grass

  But my quick eyes will see Thee pass,

  Nor speak, however silently,

  But my hushed voice will answer Thee.

  I know the path that tells Thy way

  Through the cool eve of every day;

  God, I can push the grass apart

  And lay my finger on Thy heart!

  The world stands out on either side

  No wider than the heart is wide;

  Above the world is stretched the sky,—

  No higher than the soul is high.

  The heart can push the sea and land

  Farther away on either hand;

  The soul can split the sky in two,

  And let the face of God shine through.

  But East and West will pinch the heart

  That can not keep them pushed apart;

  And he whose soul is flat—the sky

  Will cave in on him by and by.

  XINGU

  Edith Wharton

  CHAPTER I

  Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet alone. To this end she had founded the Lunch Club, an association composed of herself and several other indomitable huntresses of erudition. The Lunch Club, after three or four winters of lunching and debate, had acquired such local distinction that the entertainment of distinguished strangers became one of its accepted functions; in recognition of which it duly extended to the celebrated “Osric Dane,” on the day of her arrival in Hillbridge, an invitation to be present at the next meeting.

  The club was to meet at Mrs. Ballinger’s. The other members, behind her back, were of one voice in deploring her unwillingness to cede her rights in favor of Mrs. Plinth, whose house made a more impressive setting for the entertainment of celebrities; while, as Mrs. Leveret observed, there was always the picture-gallery to fall back on.

  Mrs. Plinth made no secret of sharing this view. She had always regarded it as one of her obligations to entertain the Lunch Club’s distinguished guests. Mrs. Plinth was almost as proud of her obligations as she was of her picture-gallery; she was in fact fond of implying that the one possession implied the other, and that only a woman of her wealth could afford to live up to a standard as high as that which she had set herself. An all-round sense of duty, roughly adaptable to various ends, was, in her opinion, all that Providence exacted of the more humbly stationed; but the power which had predestined Mrs. Plinth to keep a footman clearly intended her to maintain an equally specialized staff of responsibilities. It was the more to be regretted that Mrs. Ballinger, whose obligations to society were bounded by the narrow scope of two parlour-maids, should have been so tenacious of the right to entertain Osric Dane.