Moth and Rust | Page 8

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 sundial,
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?
Chapter 4
"I have not slimed against the God of Love."
--EDMUND GOSSE
When Anne returned to the house an hour or two later she heard an
alien voice and strident laugh through the open door of the
drawing-room as she crossed the hall, and she crept noiselessly upstairs
towards her own room. She felt as if she were quite unable to bear so
soon again the strain of that small family party. But halfway up the
stairs her conscience pricked her. Was all well in the drawing-room?
She sighed, and went slowly downstairs again.
All was not well there.
Mrs. Trefusis was sitting frozen upright in