The Helpmate | Page 3

even before their God.
Now she precipitated herself with clutching hands thrown out before
her; with hot eyes that drank the tears of their own passion; with the
shamed back and panting mouth of a Magdalen; with memories that
scattered the veiled procession of the Prayers. They fled before her, the
Prayers, in a gleaming tumult, a rout of heavenly wings that obscured
her heaven. When they had vanished a sudden vagueness came upon
her.
And then it seemed that the storm that had gone over her had rolled her
mind out before her, like a sheet of white-hot iron. There was a record
on it, newly traced, of things that passion makes indiscernible under its
consuming and aspiring flame. Now, at the falling of the flame, the
faint characters flashed into sight upon the blank, running in waves, as
when hot iron changes from white to sullen red. Anne felt that her
union with Majendie had made her one with that other woman, that she
shared her memory and her shame. For Majendie's sake she loathed her
womanhood that was yesterday as sacred to her as her soul. Through
him she had conceived a thing hitherto unknown to her, a passionate
consciousness and hatred of her body. She hated the hands that had
held him, the feet that had gone with him, the lips that had touched him,
the eyes that had looked at him to love him. Him she detested, not so
much on his own account, as because he had made her detestable to
herself.
Her eyes wandered round the room. Its alien aspect was becoming
transformed for her, like a scene on a tragic stage. The light had
established itself in the windows and pier-glasses. The wall-paper was
flushing in its own pink dawn. And the roses bloomed again on the
grey ground of the bed-curtains. These things had become familiar,
even dear, through their three days' association with her happy bridals.

Now the room and everything in it seemed to have been created for all
time to be the accomplices and ministers of her degradation. They were
well acquainted with her and it; they held foreknowledge of her, as the
pier-glass held her dishonoured and dishevelled image.
She thought of her dead father's house, the ivy-coated Deanery in the
south, and of the small white bedroom, a girl's bedroom that had once
known her and would never know her again. She thought of her father
and mother, and was glad that they were dead. Once she wondered why
their death had been God's will. Now she saw very clearly why. But
why she herself should have been sent upon this road, of all roads of
suffering, was more than Anne could see.
She, whose nature revolted against the despotically human, had
schooled herself into submission to the divine. Her sense of being
supremely guided and protected had, before now, enabled her to act
with decision in turbulent and uncertain situations of another sort.
Where other people writhed or vacillated, Anne had held on her course,
uplifted, unimpassioned, and resigned. Now she was driven hither and
thither, she sank to the very dust and turned in it, she saw no way
before her, neither her own way nor God's way.
Widowhood would not have left her so abject and so helpless. If her
husband's body had lain dead before her there, she could have stood
beside it, and declared herself consoled by the immortal presence of his
spirit. But to attend this deathbed of her belief and of her love, love that
had already given itself over, too weak to struggle against dissolution,
it was as if she had seen some horrible reversal of the law of death,
spirit returning to earth, the incorruptible putting on corruption.
Not only was her house of life made desolate; it was defiled. Dumb and
ashamed, she abandoned herself like a child to the arms of God, too
agonised to pray.
An hour passed.
Then slowly, as she knelt, the religious instinct regained possession of
her. It was as if her soul had been flung adrift, had gone out with the

ebb of the spiritual sea, and now rocked, poised, waiting for the turn of
the immortal tide.
Her lips parted, almost mechanically, in the utterance of the divine
name. Aware of that first motion of her soul, she gathered herself
together, and concentrated her will upon some familiar prayer for
guidance. For a little while she prayed thus, grasping at old shadowy
forms of petition as they went by her, lifting her sunken mind by main
force from stupefaction; and then, it was as if the urging, steadying will
withdrew, and her soul, at some heavenly signal, moved on alone into
the place of peace.
CHAPTER II
It was broad daylight