The Magnificent Spinster by May Sarton

Author:May Sarton
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781497685482
Publisher: Open Road Media

Part IV

Waging Peace

It was spring before Jane’s dream of going to Germany with the Unitarian Service Committee began to seem a real possibility, but by then her sister Alix was seriously ill. Jane stayed at Muff’s, went to the hospital every day, and studied German with a tutor three times a week.

At that time I had lunch with her more than once. I sensed that she felt rather at a loss, suffering from self-doubt about Germany, and perhaps about her life in general. The roots that had been so deeply planted in the Warren School were still dangling.

“They are awfully high-powered people,” she told me, “the group Frances is working with.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing,” she smiled across at me, “only I wonder whether I should go if I am asked—and I haven’t been asked yet,” she added.

“Alix?” I ventured.

“Oh, I won’t leave her … but the talk is for August, and …” She didn’t finish the sentence, but I gathered that Alix would probably not live that long. “Frances is over there now for one of the seminars. When she comes back, she told me, she’ll have a better idea of what is hatching and where I might be fitted in.”

It seemed preposterous that Jane should be so humble about this, and I didn’t like it. After all, she was who she was and they had better remember that.

“What is wrong with Alix?” I asked.

“She had pneumonia and a spot on the lung doesn’t heal,” Jane said. “But that’s not it,” she added, giving me a quick glance as though deciding what she could say. “She has lost the will to live. Even the doctors have come to that conclusion.” Jane’s eyes had filled with tears. “I feel so helpless, Cam. I go and sit with her but it is as though she wasn’t there, as though she had closed herself off. She and I were the little ones, you know, set apart because we were a few years younger than our sisters. So Alix and I had a life of our own within the family. It seems so strange, so hard, not to be in touch with her now … to watch her moving so far away.”

“She took Fredson’s death very hard, you told me.”

“Yes … her children are married, and Alix is first of all a family person like Muff. I think when Fredson died she felt abandoned, though she never talks about it. She is such a reserved person, Cam. I feel I have failed her, that I should have been more aware.” Then she gave a quick sigh and looked up at me. “That’s enough about miseries, isn’t it?”

She wanted to hear all about Ruth and how my work was going while she ate chocolate mousse, small spoonful by spoonful “to make it last longer.”

Even when what we talked about was depressing, I could not be with Jane for an hour without feeling more alive, in some indefinable way understood and blest.

But we were not through

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.