The Confounding of Camelia

by Anne Douglas Sedgwick

“Oh, blinded man!”

“The faults of a child, then,” he assented.

When he had left her, for he was to spend the day in London, there was a lull after the stress of change. Camelia found herself in a solitude wherein she might sit and meditate. Every one seemed to fall away from her, and when she was left alone she was sorry for it, though it was she who had withdrawn, not they. Lady Henge had talked to her for half-an-hour, her arm affectionately, but heavily lying about her shoulders, seeming in the massive embrace to claim her with a kindness that knew itself as wiser than mere maternal emotionalism. The low tones of her voice were impressive, and Camelia would have submitted to the newly assumed manner of guardianship, of confidential admonition, with a very ill grace, had not Lady Henge been now so truly indifferent to her.

Mary had been very tiresome, following her at a distance, wanting to kiss her and cry. Mrs. Fox-Darriel’s silent complacency was unendurable. Camelia knew that in the new epoch her friend saw only a tightly-closed fist, and this symbol affected her own imagination until she could have shaken Mrs. Fox-Darriel for having suggested it.

Then her mother had fallen upon her breast and wept. Camelia was ashamed of herself for seeing in the great lovingness a Scriptural exaggeration; and being ashamed of herself she was only the more anxious to get rid of the maternal clinging. She ended by locking herself in her own room, only to find that she had locked herself in with a melancholy that had been stepping silently beside her since the morning. She would not look this companion in the face, however. She was alone with it at last; but she feverishly avoided its fixed eyes, and eagerly busied herself with trivialities, a dramatic sense of courage animating all her actions. She emptied and rearranged her wardrobes and boxes, folded ribbons with intensest exactitude, introduced a new plan in the bestowal of her gloves and handkerchiefs, and even found herself unpicking a summer hat with a fictitious eagerness that implied an imperative want of that particular hat in a new trimming. When the hat was quite demolished she put it away, and polished her finger-nails, and, lastly, spent a fatiguing half-hour before the looking-glass in essays at new ways of hair-dressing. None were satisfactory, and with arms aching from their long uplifting, she at last swept the shining tresses into their accustomed lines, unlocked the door, and emerged deliberately, but with a sense of flight.

Every one had gone. The guests to golf at the Havershams; Mary, Lady Paton, and Lady Henge for a long drive. They had all respected the sensitive requirements of her new position. She was to be left alone, and as Camelia walked from room to room, the big house was desolate.

She nourished a sense of resentment, of injury, for it seemed to thrust away the chilly stupor of fear, fear of that new presence walking with her, waiting for her recognition. The loneliness, the melancholy, to which she could only feign blindness, were almost unendurable. The tears rose to her eyes more than once, and her thoughts circled nearer and nearer to Perior’s great unkindness. It was when the melancholy seemed suddenly to lay an imperative hand upon her that she flew to the writing-table and wrote the note. She looked at the clock as she heard the groom departing on horseback. Perior might easily arrive at six, and at the thought her spirits rose with a great soaring bound, and laughed down at the cold enemy. When he arrived she would see what would happen. She reined back her imagination from any plan.

According to his manner, she would tell immediately, or delay telling until a favorable moment. Perhaps when he knew he would say that his heart was completely broken, but the thought of his unhappiness only seemed to send her spirits into a higher ecstasy of joyousness. She felt them bubble-like, floating in illusion, but the relief of the unthinking hour—she seemed to live in it only, to breathe only its expectancy—buoyed her above the clouds. In the long drawing-room, where the firelight made the autumnal landscape outside, its distant hills purpling with chilly evening, a mere picture, framed for the contrast in her rosy mood, she danced, trying over new steps. She had always loved her dancing, loved to feel herself so lovely, her loveliness set to such musical motion, the words of the song. She hummed the sad, dead beauty of a pavane, pacing it with stately pleasure; the gracious pathos of an old gavotte; and, feeling herself a brook, her steps slid into the flowing ripple of the courante. Perior had always loved these exquisite old dances. She would dance for him, of course. That thought had been growing, and the gavotte, the courante, the pavane becoming rehearsals. Yes, she would dance for him—at first. Flushed, panting a little from the long preparation, she ran upstairs to put on a white dress, a new one made for dancing, with sleeves looped over bare arms, flowing sash, and skirt like a flower-bell. She lingered on each detail. She must be beautiful for Alceste; dear Alceste, poor, poor Alceste; how unhappy he would be—when he knew. And suppose he should not come. The thought went through her like a dagger as she held a row of pearls against her throat. Over them she looked with terror-stricken eyes at the whiteness of her beauty—useless beauty? Ah, she could not believe it, and she clasped the pearls on a breast that heaved with the great sigh of her negation. She could not believe it. He must come. And when she reentered the drawing-room the sound of a horse’s hoofs outside set the time to the full throb of an ecstasied affirmation.

A delicious flood of contentment went through her. She stood smiling in the dark yet luminous room, where only the firelight shone along the polished oak of floor and wainscoting, half unconsciously emphasizing her sense of the moment’s drama by pressing her hands on her heart. Of course he had come. How could he not come if she really wanted him? Dear Alceste. In a moment he had entered. The firelight, as she stood before him, seemed to shine through her pearly glimmering. She looked sprite-like, a transparent fairy. Her dress, her attitude, her eyes, the hovering expectancy. Perior, too, was immediately conscious of drama, and felt as immediately an impulse to flight; but he came forward, a quick look of calm arming his sturdy opposition to the atmosphere of exaggerated meanings.

“Well, here I am,” he said, in a manner intended by its commonplace to rebuff the significance, whatever it might be, of eyes, dress, and attitude. Camelia took his hand, joyously entering once more into the dear, enchanted fairy-land—the old sense of a game, only a more delightful, a more exciting game than ever. She could almost have whirled him into the circle—a mad dancing whirl round and round the room. How astonished he would have been! Solemn, staid old Alceste!