The Well of Loneliness Read Online Free PDF

actually smiled up at Anna—it was rather a stiff little smile. Anna talked kindly and Stephen listened, nodding her head from time to time in acquiescence. But Anna felt awkward, and as though for some reason the child was anxious to reassure her; that smile had meant to be reassuring—it had been such a very unchildish smile. The mother was doing all the talking she found. Stephen would not discuss her affection for Collins; on this point she was firmly, obdurately silent. She neither excused nor upheld her action in throwing a broken flower-pot at the footman.
    ‘She’s trying to keep something back,’ thought Anna, feeling more nonplussed every moment.
    In the end Stephen took her mother’s hand gravely and proceeded to stroke it, as though she were consoling. She said: ‘Don’t feel worried, ‘cause that worries Father—I promise I’ll try not to get into tempers, but you promise that you won’t go on feeling worried.’
    And absurd though it seemed, Anna heard herself saying: ‘Very well then—I do promise, Stephen.’

Chapter Three
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    Stephen never went to her father’s study in order to talk of her grief over Collins. A reticence strange in so young a child, together with a new, stubborn pride, held her tongue-tied, so that she fought out her battle alone, and Sir Philip allowed her to do so. Collins disappeared and with her the footman, and in Collins’ stead came a new second housemaid, a niece of Mrs. Bingham’s, who was even more timid than her predecessor, and who talked not at all. She was ugly, having small, round black eyes like currants—not inquisitive blue eyes like Collins.
    With set lips and tight throat Stephen watched this intruder as she scuttled to and fro doing Collins’ duties. She would sit and scowl at poor Winefred darkly, devising small torments to add to her labours—such as stepping on dustpans and upsetting their contents, or hiding away brooms and brushes and slop-cloths—until Winefred, distracted, would finally unearth them from the most inappropriate places.
    ”Owever did them slop-cloths get in ‘ere!’ she would mutter, discovering them under a nursery cushion. And her face would grow blotchy with anxiety and fear as she glanced towards Mrs. Bingham.
    But at night, when the child lay lonely and wakeful, these acts that had proved a consolation in the morning, having sprung from a desperate kind of loyalty to Collins—these acts would seem trivial and silly and useless, since Collins could neither know of them nor see them, and the tears that had been held in check through the day would well under Stephen’s eyelids. Nor could she, in those lonely watches of the night-time, pluck up courage enough to reproach the Lord Jesus, Who, she felt, could have helped her quite well had He chosen to accord her a housemaid’s knee.
    She would think; ‘He loves neither me nor Collins—He wants all the pain for Himself; He won’t share it!’
    And then she would feel contrite: ‘Oh, I’m sorry, Lord Jesus, ‘cause I do know You love all miserable sinners!’ And the thought that perhaps she had been unjust to Jesus would reduce her to still further tears.
    Very dreadful indeed were those nights spent in weeping, spent in doubting the Lord and His servant Collins. The hours would drag by in intolerable blackness, that in passing seemed to envelop Stephen’s body, making her feel now hot and now cold. The grandfather clock on the stairs ticked so loudly that her head ached to hear its unnatural ticking—when it chimed, which it did at the hours and half-hours, its voice seemed to shake the whole house with terror, until Stephen would creep down under the bed-clothes to hide from she knew not what. But presently, huddled beneath the blankets, the child would be soothed by a warm sense of safety, and her nerves would relax, while her body grew limp with the drowsy softness of bed. Then suddenly a big and comforting yawn, and another, and another, until darkness and