II
For several weeks Margaret would lie awake through the early hours of the night. At first she strove to think connectedly, to lay plans and make resolves; but always she would fall to wondering whether her mother, whose girlhood must have been strangely like her own, had made these very decisions, and, when the test came, had failed to give them effect. And by this wonder her mind was carried towards acceptance of the inevitable. There would come blank periods in her thought when, oppressed by what seemed a clear perception of the futility of effort, she would see her own life as a cockleshell adrift upon the seas of Time. She had no recollection of a Departure, no sure hope of a Landfall. God had closed His eyes, was sleeping; and she was alone, unguarded, unperceived.
Unperceived. This thought clung to her through the night on which her father told her that Ordith was coming on the morrow. It made easy the acceptance of ease. She lived in the moment, noticing with unprecedented pleasure certain details of her room’s appearance—the soft roughness of the blankets, the beading on the brass handles of her dressing-table, the pale lights of blue and gold that mingled in the bevel of her mirror. She undressed slowly. Once, with her hands and arms raised above her head and her chin thrown back, she watched the light and shadow move over her bosom and throat as she drew breath.... A sudden weakness overcame her; her arms dropped; she was surprised by the strange, wild expression in her reflected eyes. Her face seemed thinner, her eyes more deeply set; upon her lips pallor had fallen. This would be her appearance when she was older; this, a little accentuated, would be her appearance as she lay dead.... Something she wore brushed and hissed against the eiderdown. She turned quickly and laid her outspread hand upon the bed, so that light billows of satin rose between her white fingers. She touched her arm with a slow caress. With her nail she caused a long, shrill sound to issue from the silk.
Frightened by the unknown spirit that possessed her, she stood in the middle of the room, swaying from her feet, her lips parted, her eyes wide. The intolerable stillness within, the lifeless folds of the flowered curtains, that would hang in just those folds though she slept, though she died, laid some spell upon her, and she strained her ears for the low murmuring of the sea. A board creaked beneath her. There, close to her, in her own room, were evil presences—or was it that a Presence was withdrawn and the room empty, and she alone?
Unperceived.... She crouched beside her bed because as a child she had thus knelt to pray. The scent of linen, the pressure of her finger-tips upon her forehead, the fragrance of her own hair—why did these memories of Childhood’s bedtimes come back to her now with mockery and sadness? Their significance was changed, and their sweetness gone from them.
“O God, make me pray. Take away this insistence of touch and sound and sight. Make me believe the Spirit is powerful still, and can prevail ... and shall prevail; and that life is not just living in the body and the hour. And give me——”
It was as if she had been speaking to one who, unperceived, had gone from the room. She had not been heard. Throughout the prayer she had been thinking how the pile of the carpet was pressed down by her knees.
For long she remained kneeling, her face hidden, her hair dark over her hands. She knew what she would do: she would take Ordith. She might be afraid at first, but soon he would win her, soothe her. Of course she would take him; that had been planned, preordained.
She was almost asleep. Her weight pressed the edge of the bed.... Ordith would teach her, hold her. She would give herself——“God, why am I so hedged round—forsaking what is lovely, though I see its loveliness—like all the young, because I must. Jesus, pull me out of this even now—so late—even now.”
Her lashes moved against her palms. The light came through the pink edges of her fingers.... Was that only hypocrisy? Was she willing, after all? A tremor of excitement ran over her, and she pressed her elbows into the bed and shut her eyes again.... Anyhow, in fifty years it wouldn’t matter.... And Christ would not come again. It was foolish to—to starve for a dream.
The room was cold. Her shoulders were bare, and her feet. This physical consciousness was like the touch of a hand.