The Time of the Angels Read Online Free PDF

laughed and sang. She was fond of the other members of the household, especially of Elizabeth and accepted them naturally as the properties of her master. She attended to the children and obeyed Clara. But what built the house and made it topless as the towers of Ilion, what constructed the hollow golden universe all ringing with joy, was Carel’s sweet affection, his quick touch upon her arm as he spoke to her, his finger tracing out the bones of her neck, his tug at her hair, his clap to her behind, his strong grip sometimes upon her wrist, his playful flick at her cheek. Pattie felt she could have been happy so forever. And then one day, with the same beautiful naturalness, Carel took her to bed.
     
    How this event was straightway known to the household Pattie never found out. But it was at once sombrely apprehended as if the whole place had been dyed with a dye as dark and indelible as the pigment in Pattie’s skin. The children knew it in their own way and withdrew into a merciless childish silence. Clara knew it and changed oh so scarcely perceptibly and yet entirely in her treatment of Pattie. Nothing was said, but the condemnation was absolute. Pattie scuttled from place to place, seeking a reassurance, an explanation, even a direct glance, but found none. Henceforth she was to be alone in the world with Carel.
     
    Pattie was so intensely surprised at what had happened and so confused by her new experience and so frightened of its consequences that it took her some time to become aware that Carel was really in love with her. When she realized this a dreadful happiness took possession of her, a dark exotic happiness, not like the innocence of her joy, but very strong. A darkness entered into her like a swarm of bees. Pattie strengthened and hardened. She lifted her crest and faced the household, henceforth prepared to be their foe. She felt some guilt, but she wore it boldly as the badge of her calling.
     
    Whether Clara ever fully called her husband to account Pattie never knew for certain. Pattie would never have dared to question Carel, whose silence about everything to do with his family was authoritative and bland. But Carel managed his affair with a kind of confident grace which persuaded Pattie that as he so evidently did not feel, so he had never been made to enact, a guilty person. Also everyone in the house was a little afraid of Carel, and now that their relations were no longer innocent Pattie soon began to be afraid of him too.
     
    Clara became ill. Arriving with the tea-tray, the dinner-tray, Pattie was silently reproached by eyes which became very more large and luminously sad. Pattie responded with the black hard look which she turned now upon everything that was not Carel. Carel sat upon his wife’s bed, stroking her hand and smiling at Pattie over the top of her head. The head sank lower on the pillow, the doctors talked in low voices with Carel in the hall. Carel told Pattie that he would soon be a widower and that when he was free he would make her his wife.
     
    Pattie did not grieve for Clara. She did not grieve for the children who came weeping out of the room where Clara grew daily thinner. Pattie held her head high and with a ferocity of will stared past the horror of the present into the all-justifying all-reconciling future when she would be Mrs Carel Fisher. Her destiny bore her stiffly up, a stronger force than sentiment or guilt. She was the elect, the Crown Princess. She would become what she had been born for, and let a million women die and a million children wring their hands.
     
    Clara died. Carel changed his mind. Why he changed it Pattie never knew. She must have made some mistake. What could it have been? This brooding upon the awful “only because” was to be Pattie’s daily bread in the years that followed. She had smiled at Clara’s funeral. Could it be that? Or was it after all her colour, which Carel could tolerate in a concubine but not a spouse? Or was it her lack