ᐸ?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?ᐳ
ᐸsamples n="ENG19201"ᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19201158"ᐳ"No, it's a little more subtle than that, Shelmerdene, although as a fact I do see a water rat not a yard from you on the bank.... I merely wanted to know how it was that, since you had a perfectly good father alive in England, you were allowed to go gadding about in France with a guardian, soi-disant——"ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201159"ᐳ"We will ignore your soi-disant, young man. But I'll allow your interruption, for it may seem a bit complicated.... It was like this: as the fortunes of our family had run rather to seed through generations of fast women and slow horses, my father who was utterly a pet, succumbed to politics for an honest living, or, if you pull a face like that about it, for a dishonest living. For up to that time, in spite of having exactly the figure for it, he had always refused to enter Parliament, because his idea was that the House was just a club, and one already belonged to so many better clubs. But once there nothing could stop him, and when he entered for the Cabinet stakes he simply romped home with a soft job and a fat income.... But all that is really beside the point, for between politics and guineas father and I had had a slight disagreement about a certain young man whom I was inclined to marry offhand, being only sixteen, you know, and liking the young man—and, of course, my father did the correct thing, as he always did, gave the young man a glass of port and told him not to be an ass, and shipped me off to Paris to his very old friend. You see, he knew about that old Marquis, and how I'd be quite safe in his care, for any young man who as much as looked at me would have a pair of gimlet eyes asking him who the devil he might be and why he chose to desecrate a young lady's virginal beauty by his so fatuous gaze.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201160"ᐳ"I've been saying a lot of nice things about that old man to you, but I didn't feel quite like that about him at the time. I liked him, of course, because he was a man; but all that French business about the sanctity of a young maid's innocence got badly on my nerves, for innocence was never my long suit even from childhood, having ears to hear and eyes to see; and I soon began to get very bored with life as my old Frenchman saw it. So it wasn't surprising that I broke out now and again just to shock him, he was so rigid, but I was always sorry for it afterwards because he just looked at me and said not a word for a minute or so, and then went on talking as though I hadn't hurt him—but I had, Dikran! I had hurt him so much that for the rest of the day he often couldn't bear to see me.... But though I was ashamed of myself for hurting him, I couldn't stop; life with him was interesting enough in a way, of course, but it left out so much, you see; it entirely left out the stupendous fact that I was almost a woman, and a very feminine one at that, who liked an odd young man about now and again just to play about with. But I wasn't allowed any young men, except a twenty-five-year-old over-manicured Vicomte who was so unbearably worldly and useless that I wanted to hit him on the head with my guardian's sword-stick, which he always carried about with him, as a sort of mental solace, I think. No, there weren't any young men, nor any restaurants, for the old man simply ignored them; my dear, there wasn't anything at all in my young life except a few old dukes and dowagers, and the aforesaid young Vicomte, who had manicured himself out of existence and was considered harmless. And so Paris was a dead city to me who lived in the heart of it, and all the more dead for the faded old people who moved about in my life, and tried to change my heart into a Louis-Quinze drawing-room hung with just enough beautiful and musty tapestries to keep out the bourgeois sunshine and carelessness, which I so longed for.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG1920118"ᐳSo much then, for Shelmerdene; for if to cap it all, I should go on to say that she was beautiful I would be held to have been an infatuated fool. Which, perhaps, I carelessly was, since I can't even now exactly fix upon the colour of her hair, doubting now in memory as I must have done actually in those past days with her, whether it was brown or black or, as sometimes on a sofa under a Liberty-shaded lamp, a silver-tinted blue, so wonderfully deep.... Perhaps destined, in that future when Shelmerdene is at last tired of playing at life, to be the "blue silver" of the besotted madman to whom she, at the weary end, with but a look back at the long-passed procession of ci-devants, will thankfully give herself. Dies iræ, dies illa....ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1920119"/ᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1920120"ᐳWE sat on chairs in the sun, and after we had been silent a long while, she began to do what women will never cease doing, so wise men say, as long as men say they love them, to define what the love of a man meant to a woman, and to explain the love of a man. She said that that man was wise who had said that love was like religion, and must be done well or not at all, but that she had never yet found in any man sincere love and delicacy, for there was always something coarse, some little note which jarred, some movement of the mind and body maladroit, in a man who is shown a woman's love. "When men love and are not loved," she said, "often they kept their grace and pride, and women are proud to be loved by such men—even faithfully for more than ten years; but when men are loved and are confident, then they seem to lose delicacy, to think that love breaks down all barriers between man and woman; that love is a vase of iron, unbreakable, and not, as it is, a vase of the most delicate and brittle pottery, to be broken to pieces by the least touch of a careless hand. They seem to think that the state of love stands at the end of a great striving; they do not realise that it is only the beginning, and that the striving must never cease, for without striving there is no love, but only content. But they do not see that; they insist on spoiling love, breaking the vase with stupid, unconscious hands; and when it breaks they are surprised, and they say that love is a fickle thing and will stand no tests, and that women are the very devil. Always they spoil love; it comes and finds them helpless, puzzling whether to clothe themselves entirely in reserve or whether to be entirely naked in brutality; and generally they compromise, and, physically and mentally, walk about in their shirts."ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19201179"ᐳ"On that day, towards evening, he and I had managed to steal out walking for an hour. Agreeable enough as he was, he would have bored me if I had let him. But I wanted him, I intended to keep him in my mind; I wanted him as an assertion of my independence from the old man. As we went back up the drive to the château I carefully became as animated and smiling as I could, for I knew that he would be watching us from the drawing-room windows, and I wanted to irritate him as much as his incessant care was irritating me, though that would have been impossible, for that evening I was absurdly, fiercely angry with him. Life seemed made up of the interferences of old men. I didn't want old men in my life. I wanted young men, and sunshine, and fun. And so, as Raoul and I went up the steps to the massive door, and as I turned to him just below the drawing-room window and gave him my most trustful smile, I was feeling reckless, unrestrained, fiercely independent.... Oh, Dikran! what idiocies we do for the fancied sake of independence!ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201180"ᐳ"It was time to dress for dinner, so I left Raoul and went straight to my room. A minute later came a knock on the door, and as I turned sharply from the mirror, it opened and Raoul stood there, rather shy, smiling. I wasn't old enough to know the proper way of dealing with young men in one's bedroom, even if I had overpoweringly wanted to.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201181"ᐳ"'I had an impulse,' he said, but he still stood in the doorway, a little question somewhere about him. I didn't answer it; just watched him, rather interested in his methods.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201182"ᐳ"'Because,' he went on, 'I used to sleep in this room once, and remember it as a dreary little place, and I wanted to see what it looked like with you in it.' Poor silly fool, I thought, but rather loved him. I have found since then, though, that his fatuous speech was quite the proper one to make, for the established way of entering a woman's room is by expressing an interest in the furniture, thus making the lady self-conscious and not so sure about her dignity; seductions are successful through women fearing to look fools if they refuse to be seduced.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201183"ᐳ"But this time, as he spoke, he closed the door behind him and came into the room towards me. 'This isn't playing fair, Raoul,' I only said; 'you will get me into a row.'ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG19201185"ᐳ"'Child!' the pain in that one word, the lack of anger in it, an utter, absolute pain accusing me, did not soothe. Accuse me? By what right?ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201186"ᐳ"The scene was dreadful, Dikran. I can't tell you what we said, what I said, for I did most of the scene-making. He just forbade me to talk again alone with Raoul or to go out with him; said he would take me away to-morrow if it weren't that explanations would then be necessary to our hostess, who was in feeble health and might be killed by such a disgrace as this in her own house. As for Monsieur le Vicomte, he himself would arrange that I did not see him for longer time than could be helped. That's all he said, but my white heat took little notice of his commands. I said I don't know what—it must all have been terrible, for it ended on a terrible note. Dikran, how could I have done it? I pointed at the door and asked him how he could think he had more right in my room than Raoul, for though he was my guardian our relations had been changed by a certain proposal, which perhaps he remembered.... A look at me, in which was the first and last contempt that's ever been given me, and the door closed on the wonderful old man.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201187"ᐳ"Dinner that night passed off quite well considering the unsettled climatic conditions aforesaid. Myself didn't contribute much, but my guardian and Raoul talked smoothly away about anything that came, while Madame, our hostess, smiled sweetly at us all, on brooding me in particular.... Quite early I made for bed; the old man and I hadn't exchanged a word all evening, and his 'good night' was a little bow, and mine cold. As I passed Raoul he cleverly put a small piece of paper into my hand. Upstairs in my room, that piece of paper said that he would be going away in a day or two, and would I ride with him to-morrow morning before breakfast, at seven o'clock. Of course I would.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG19201188"ᐳ"It was all a silly business, Dikran. If I had ever been in love with Raoul, I certainly wasn't that morning when we rode away from the gloomy, silent château, a little frightened by our own bravado; for that is all it was. But later, as we reached the sands, I forgot that, I forgot Raoul, though of course he always talked; I was enjoying the horse under me, the summer morning, the high sea wind dashing its salt air against my cheeks; I was enjoying every one of those things more than the company of the young man, but, tragically, my guardian could not know that.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳ
ᐸsampleᐳᐸp n="ENG1920115"ᐳLater I telephoned to Shelmerdene to ask her to lunch with me instead of dine, as the day was so beautiful; but she said that she had already promised to lunch with some one, a man who had loved her faithfully for more than ten years, and as all he wanted from her was her company over lunch on this particular day of the week, she could not play him false, even though the day was so beautiful. But I told her that I would not be loving her faithfully for ten years, and that she must take the best of me while she could, and that on such a day as this it would be a shame to lunch with an inarticulate lover; for a man who had loved her faithfully for more than ten years, and wanted only her company over lunch once a week, must be inarticulate, or perhaps a knave whose subtle cunning her innocence had failed to unveil. So in the end we lunched together in Knightsbridge, and then walked slowly through the Park.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1920116"ᐳThe first covering of spring lay on every thing. The trees, so ashamed—or was it coyness?—were they of their bareness in face of all the greenness around them, were doing their best to hurry out that clothing of leaves which, in a few weeks' time, would baffle the rays of the sun which had helped their birth; and there was such a greenness and clearness in the air and on the grass, and about the flowers which seemed surprised at the new warmth of the world, hesitating as yet to show their full beauty for they were afraid that the dark winter was playing them a trick and would suddenly lurch clumsily upon them again, that the Park has never seemed to me so beautiful as on that spring afternoon when a careless happiness lay about everything.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸp n="ENG1920117"ᐳSo far I have not said a word about Shelmerdene, except that she had found a man—or, rather, he had tiresomely found her—to love her faithfully for ten years, and she had so affected him that he thought a weekly lunch or dinner was the limit of his destiny with her. And yet, had he searched himself and raked out the least bit of gumption, he would have found he was tremendously wrong about her—for there were pinnacles to be reached with Shelmerdene unattainable within the material limits of a mere lunch or dinner. She was just such a delightful adventuress as only a well-bred mixture of American and English can sometimes make; such a subtle negation of the morals of Boston or Kensington that she would, in the searching light of the one or the other, have been acclaimed the shining light of their William Morris drawing-rooms. She drew men with a tentative, all-powerful little finger, and mocked them a little, but never so cruelly that they weren't, from the inarticulate beginning to the inevitable end, deliriously happy to be miserable about her. She was a Princess Casassimma without anarchical affectations; and like her she was almost too good to be true.ᐸ/pᐳ
ᐸ/sampleᐳᐸ/samplesᐳ