So the friendship was started between them. The friendship between the clever, intense woman, with her feminine strength and softness, and her rather beautiful, lavish maturity, her goddess-ship: and Anna, the pale, slight girl with her quiet gravity, and her masculine quality of detachment, her wild, uncaptured, virgin aloofness, that turned so easily to hardness and frigidity.
Anna was a little shy at first, a little doubtful. Her innate scepticism made her stand off from the proffered affection. She was somewhat suspicious, seeing the big white arms of Rachel wide open to receive her: as though it were some sort of a trap. But she had suffered fear and humiliation at the hands of the world; the world had brought the creeping nightmare into her life. And Rachel had saved her, Rachel had driven away the nightmare. So she must love Rachel in the end. She had to feel an almost passionate gratitude to this woman who had restored her pride in herself.
It was in the summer that the friendship ripened. In spring-time the flat country that through the long winter had seemed bleak and dreary under the perpetual beating of the rain or the sharp-edged dryness of the frost, became soothed and beautiful. The gentle English spring laid a softening veil over the land. The hedges burned with a long white fire of blackthorn, the fruit trees flowered in a light-hearted way, like girls standing in full-skirted dresses, pink and white, multitudes of small, gay flowers twinkled in the grass, the sky was a pale, pale blue. And over everything the green was stealing, the very delicate, tender first green, like the softest, downy feathers on a bird’s breast.
Anna walked often with Rachel through the bright fields.
‘I’d no idea it could be so beautiful here, so soft and flowery,’ she said.
She had thought of Haddenham as a harsh, cold place, cheerless and dank. Now suddenly, a softness had come over it, a benevolence. And Anna too felt softened and comforted.
Rachel was now the centre of her life. Other people, the other girls who thronged the surface of her everyday life, were dim and vague, phantom-like, inconspicuous, almost invisible. She took no heed of them. Rachel was the only reality. The big, magnificent woman filled her life. They were constantly together. Whenever Rachel could get away from her busy-ness, from the countless preoccupations and duties of her position, she came back to Anna. It was almost as if she got something from her; as if she derived some secret strength or encouragement from the thin, proud, pale-skinned girl.
And Anna was happy. For the first time in her life she could talk openly of the things which interested her and were important to her. She had a great need of speech, of putting her thoughts into words; otherwise her thoughts seemed to escape her, flying about her brain in a wild confusion. It needed the power of words to put them in their places. And Rachel was full of understanding, using her sensitiveness to fan the thoughts of Anna towards coherency.
She gave Anna self-confidence. This was what she wanted to do. For the moment this was her métier, this exaltation of the strange little creature who had come so near to losing the sense of her own value. As a goddess, she wanted to save Anna, to have her as a protégée: and as a woman she wanted her for a friend. With her mysterious feminine will she enveloped Anna most completely. She had the most curious power in the world of making Anna feel confident and strong. She exalted her.
She convinced her of her own intelligence, and of the fact that as an intelligent being she was important. This gave Anna a satisfaction, a feeling of anchorage. She felt that never again could the nightmare come creeping back into her life. She was safe.
But the relations between the two of them were peculiar. On Anna’s side there was always a holding back, almost a trace of resentment. She distrusted that glorification of herself even while it gratified her. She felt that in some way she was being made soft. She was not standing on her own feet. It was the goddess-ship of Rachel that was exalting her for her own ends, almost making her into the victim. She rather resented the goddess aspect of Racheclass="underline" and her actual physical aspect, so lavish in its rich maturity, like a gorgeous, soft fruit. Rachel would touch her, would take her arm, or her small, cool hand, or stroke caressively her sleek, well-shaped head. And immediately she would be made uncomfortably conscious of the full, feminine body under the bright clothes, the soft, white-fleshed limbs, the rich female luxuriousness. It was as if some part of her were repelled, disgusted even, by the proximity of so much ripe, luscious femininity. She didn’t want to be touched.
She sat on the grass with her back to a low brick wall, looking up at the sprays of lilac that hung down almost touching her. Some of the florets were already wide open, like tiny purple butterflies resting there, but others were close-furled in their round buds. The open flowers looked curiously voluptuous with their small, sweet-scented, wide-spread purple petals beside the hard, dark, virginal buds.
‘I am like one of the buds, and Rachel is like a wide-open flower,’ thought Anna; and pulling off a floret, she sucked the sweet drop of honey through the tiny, delicate, silken tube.
‘Are you happy?’ asked Rachel, in her eager, musical voice.
She bent over Anna, looking into her with quick, bright hazel eyes, yearning over her. And her large, well-kept hand rested caressively, possessively, on Anna’s thin shoulder.
Anna felt a little repugnance for her; for the big, clever woman who had altered her life, the goddess-woman who had given her back the pride and beauty of herself to demand them again as a kind of sacrifice. She was determined that she would not allow herself to be made, even so very indefinably, into a victim. She would stand on her own feet. But it was not so easy. She wanted Rachel’s support; and Rachel wanted something from her. They seemed bound together.
CHAPTER 4
ANNA took very little part in the collective life of Haddenham. The sports and team-games, all that elaborate system of struggling and competing and pseudo-manly activity that the other girls found so important, rather disgusted her. It really was rather horrible, all this ridiculous aping of masculinity. Useless and absurd and unpleasant. Why should girls wear themselves out in this feverish, unnatural struggle to imitate the physical pastimes of men! To Anna it simply wasn’t worth a single effort. Let the men go on playing their silly, brutal games, if that was what they wanted. But leave them alone in their stupidities, for heaven’s sake.
She would not take part in the degrading, pointless struggle. She would not compete with men on their ridiculous sports ground. And Rachel, with her profound womanliness, and her dignity, and her deep, intuitive understanding, she really agreed with Anna and was of the same opinion. But she would not openly oppose the system. She knew better than to expose herself uselessly to the brainless malevolence of a mad, man-aping world.
Anna would not join in the games. Only tennis she played, and played rather well, with a quick, erratic vigour of movement. It amused her to dash about the smooth court, swooping noiselessly on her rubber-soled shoes, lifting her arms with a sudden swoop upwards or down, violently, then careering on. She liked the sharp, clean, stinging, singing sound when the ball was well hit, squarely, in the middle of the racquet; and the strong forward drive of the stiffened arm from the shoulder; and the sharp, dry, downward jerks. It was amusing. But only for a little while. She soon tired of the game, and got lazy and bored and wanted to wander off somewhere else.
She was a good player, though, on the whole, and so she was chosen to play in a tournament that was being held in the village. Six girls from the school were to play. It was rather an honour to be chosen.