!njilIliiiJIII;li|{l<nlHi
 
 VANITAS
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 HORTUS VIT^ 
 
 THE ENCHANTED WOODS 
 
 THE SPIRIT OF ROME 
 
 HAUNTINGS : FANTASTIC STORIES 
 
 THE SENTIMENTAL TRAVELLER 
 
 POPE JACYNTH AND OTHER FAN- 
 TASTIC TALES 
 
 GENIUS LOCI; NOTES ON PLACES 
 
 LIMBO AND OTHER ESSAYS, to 
 ■WHICH IS NOW ADDED ARIADNE IN 
 
 MANTUA 
 
 RENAISSANCE FANCIES AND 
 STUDIES 
 
 THE COUNTESS OF ALBANY. Illds- 
 
 TRATED 
 
 LAURUS NOBILIS : CHAPTERS ON 
 ART AND LIFE 
 
 ALTHEA: DIALOGUES ON ASPIRA- 
 TIONS AND DUTIES
 
 1^0 
 
 VANITAS 
 
 POLITE STORIES 
 
 INCLUDING THE HITHERTO UN- 
 PUBLISHED STORY ENTITLED 
 A FRIVOLOUS CONVERSION 
 
 VERNON LEE 
 
 LONDON: JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD 
 NEW YORK: JOHN LANE COMPANY. MCMXI
 
 SECOND EDITION 
 
 Turnbull &^ Sfears, Printers, Edinburgh
 
 PUBLISHER'S NOTE 
 
 In the present edition there has been added 
 the hitherto unpublished story, "A Frivolous 
 Conversion," which did not appear in the 
 original issue of "Vanitas."
 
 ALLA BARONESSA E. FRENCH-CINI 
 
 PISTOIA PER IGNO 
 
 My Dear Elena, 
 
 We had a conversation once, walking on your terrace, 
 with the wind-rippled olives above and the quietly nodding 
 cypress tufts below — about such writings as you chose to 
 compare with carved cherry-stones. We disagreed, for it 
 seemed to me that the world needed cherry-stone necklaces 
 as much as anything else ; and that the only pity was that 
 most of its inhabitants could not afford such toys, and the 
 rest despised them because they were made of such very 
 cheap material. Still, lest you should wonder at my send- 
 ing such things to you, I write to declare that my three 
 little tales, whatever they be, are not carved cherry-stones. 
 
 For round these sketches of frivolous women, there 
 have gathered some of the least frivolous thoughts, heaven 
 knows, that have ever come into my head ; or rather, 
 such thoughts have condensed and taken body in these 
 stories. Indeed, how can one look from outside on the 
 great waste of precious things, delicate discernment, quick 
 feeling and sometimes stoical fortitude, involved in frivolous 
 life, without a sense of sadness and indignation ? Or what 
 satisfaction coiild its portrayal afEord, save for the chance 
 that such pictures might mirror some astonished and 
 abashed creature ; or show to men and women who toil 
 and think that idleness, and callousness, and much that 
 must seem to them sheer wickedness, is less a fault than a 
 misfortune? For surely it is a misfortune not merely to 
 waste the nobler qualities one has, but to have little inkling
 
 viii Vanitas 
 
 of the sense of brotherhood and duty which changes one, 
 from a blind dweller in caves, to an inmate of the real 
 world of storms and sunshine and serene night and exhila- 
 rating morning. And, if miracles were still wrought 
 nowadays, as in those times when great sinners (as in 
 Calderon's play) were warned by plucking the hood off 
 their own dead face, there would have been no waste of 
 the supernatural in teaching my Madame Krasinska that 
 poor crazy paupers and herself were after all exchangeable 
 quantities. 
 
 Of my three frivolous women, another performed the 
 miracle herself, and abandoned freely the service of the 
 great Goddess Vanitas. While the third . . . and there 
 is the utter pity of the thing, that frivolous living means 
 not merely waste, but in many cases martyrdom. 
 
 That fact, though it had come more than once before 
 my eyes, would perhaps never have been clear to my 
 mind, but for our long talks together about what people 
 are and might be. A certain indignation verging on 
 hatred might have made these stories of mine utterly 
 false and useless, but for the love of all creatures who 
 may suffer with which you lit up the subject. And for 
 this reason the proof sheets of my little book must go first 
 to that old bishop's villa on the lowest Apennine spur, 
 where the chestnuts are dropping, with a sound of rustling 
 silk, on to the sere leaves below, and the autumn rain 
 storms are rushing by, veiling the plain with inky crape, 
 blotting out that distant white shimmer, which, in the 
 simlight, was Florence a moment ago. 
 
 VERNON LEE. 
 
 Chelsea, October, 1891.
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 FAGB 
 
 A Frivolous Conversion .... 1 
 
 Lady Tal 59 
 
 A Worldly Woman 145 
 
 The Legend of Madame Krasinska . .221
 
 A FRIVOLOUS CONVERSION 
 
 A MORALITY
 
 A FRIVOLOUS CONVERSION 
 
 BUT why were they going to send you to prison ? " 
 asked the ladies on the terrace of the Engadiner 
 Hof. They thought it must have been about that 
 famous duel of his, mysteriously connected, it was 
 known, with the silver bangle which KoUonitz hid under 
 his cufE. 
 
 " Oh, it was only about a cat and a dog, and a man I 
 knocked flat on his back without intending — did I never 
 tell it you ? It was so ridiculous ! I'll tell you how it 
 happened. You know Punch, my bull-dog ? Well, 
 one day he caught a cat in the street and was going to 
 kiU it. Of course, I wouldn't have let him kill it really. 
 But at that moment, up comes a fellow and says, 
 * Monsieur, why don't you stop your dog doing that ? ' 
 ' Monsieur,' I answer, ' does the cat belong to you ? If 
 not, mind your own business,' Then he mutters some- 
 thing about being a brute. So, bang, I gave him a box 
 on the ear. And the extraordinary thing is, that he fell 
 flat on his back, and had to be picked up ! Parole 
 dlionneur, the fellow had to be picked up ! Then they 
 wanted to put me in prison, but of course I wouldn't 
 let them." 
 
 The story was less of a success than young Count 
 Kollonitz's stories usually were ; for, it must be said, 
 that the people of the Engadiner Hof were very easily
 
 4 Vanitas 
 
 pleased where he was concerned, largely because of his 
 father's great position, but also, no doubt, because of his 
 own good nature and simplicity. 
 
 " Poor little Pussie ! What a bad, bad dog ! " 
 exclaimed the Milanese duke's daughter in exaggerated 
 Enghsh, stooping to tie her tennis shoe. But Mrs 
 Weston Smith began scanning some figures on the 
 opposite mountain through her opera-glass, only sticking 
 out her handsome under hp to express her poor opinion 
 of foreigners, however well turned out, an opinion in 
 which the man in the second, whose face was much 
 darker than his hair from Alpine climbing, concurred 
 with equal economy of expression. The Baroness 
 Porto Venere took up a ball of worsted, and murmured, 
 with her beautiful sultana's languor, " How horrid all 
 you men of the North are "—at which speech Monsieur 
 Barral, the famous Anglomaniac, remarked or rather 
 grunted out, " I don't know why anyone should take 
 Count KoUonitz as a type of a man of the North." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " blazed out KoUonitz. 
 
 " Oh, merely that Vienna can scarcely be considered 
 as a very northern latitude," and Barral knocked the 
 ash off his big cigar. 
 
 KoUonitz merely bit his moustache. " Well, that's 
 how I got to learn how strong I am, mesdames," he 
 said, setthng himself astride on his iron chair, and 
 speaking particularly to the beautiful Sicihan. " So, 
 if any of you should ever be in want of somebody 
 who can give a thoroughly well-aimed box on the 
 ear, I trust you will remember your very humble 
 servant." 
 
 With his childish facihty for regaining good spirits, 
 KoUonitz was now quite happy ; besides, he felt as if he
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 5 
 
 had made that brute Barral shut up for once. He 
 oSered to unwind some worsted for the beautiful 
 SiciHan, and held it on his outstretched hands, astride in 
 front of her deck chair, his boyish figure in its striped 
 flannels standing out with funny incongruity against the 
 church-window splendours of the landscape, the lapis- 
 lazuh lake, the root-of-emerald meadows and woods, and 
 the snow-peaks outlined in rosy fire against the dazzling 
 turquoise sky. 
 
 " I think your dog was such a cruel dog," harped 
 on the vapid Milanese girl. " Why, I thought there 
 was always a society for the protection of animals 
 everywhere." 
 
 " To be sure. It might have protected the gentleman 
 who tried to interfere with me, since he was an ass," 
 answered KoUonitz, who liked his own rather ponderous 
 jokes. 
 
 The Baroness Porto Venere laughed languidly over her 
 crochet, and, having seen her laugh, the charming Httle 
 South American, whose husband they called the Slave 
 Dealer, ventured to laugh also. 
 
 " Poor thing, why should he have been an ass ? " 
 remarked, in shghtly Russian French, a woman's voice 
 from one of the hooded terrace chairs. It was a deep, 
 very fuU, and sweet-toned voice, giving the idea of regal 
 ampleness of person ; and the words were spoken with a 
 certain weightiness which made them different from other 
 folks', as if their meaning stranded them, while the words 
 of others were carried ofi hke dust or straws. " After 
 all, he was only doing what Count KoUonitz or any of the 
 rest of us would have done, if we had seen the dog 
 kiUing the cat. His being an ass seems to have con- 
 sisted merely in expecting that the dog's master would
 
 6 Vanitas 
 
 help him to save the cat, instead of knocking him down. 
 I think he may have fallen on his back like that partly 
 from surprise." 
 
 Kollonitz tried to laugh ; but he thought her un- 
 accountably stupid. 
 
 " Very hkely," he said, " but I think, madame, that 
 you have not quite followed my little story, which, for 
 the rest, does not deserve that honour. The cat did not 
 belong to the man." 
 
 " I know. The cat didn't belong to the man, but the 
 dog belonged to you ; and the dog had interfered with 
 the cat before the man interfered with you, my dear 
 Count." 
 
 The manner of the lady, which made her words pass 
 out of the region where offence is given and taken, would 
 have charmed Kollonitz had himself not been in 
 question. As it was, he was violently irritated by this 
 criticism, and by the obstinacy with which the lady 
 refused to see that he had been in the right. It was such 
 bad form on the part of a woman, with whom of course a 
 man must keep his temper. He had let the worsted go 
 in his astonishment, and now began hunting for the ball 
 in order to screen the unseemly excitement in his 
 face. When he had replaced the bag with a bow in the 
 Baroness's basket, he made an effort and lit a cigarette, 
 answering in the driest tone he could muster — " I 
 perfectly admit that my dog had done wrong in inter- 
 fering with the cat ; that was the cat's business, and I 
 am not acquainted with the etiquette between cats and 
 dogs on such occasions. But I do know, that when one 
 man interferes with another man, and criticizes his 
 behaviour, there is only one thing to do, which is the 
 one I did."
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 7 
 
 By the end of this speech, KoUonitz felt very dignified 
 and at the same time rather witty : the people on the 
 terrace approved and laughed gently. But the lady 
 in the hooded chair laughed also, and rephed with 
 infinite good humour — 
 
 " Well, now, what a pity that is. There we have a 
 poor cat killed, an unfortunate man knocked fiat on his 
 back, and another unfortunate man led o& by the pohce, 
 merely because we human beings must needs invent a 
 code of good behaviour." 
 
 Mrs Weston Smith looked at the guardsman, the 
 Milanese duke looked at his daughter, the beautiful 
 SiciHan looked at the pretty South American, and Barral 
 stared triumphantly at Kollonitz — in short all the people 
 of the Engadiner Hof understood, as a fine tennis-player 
 understands a superlative stroke, or pretended to under- 
 stand, as a duffer pretends to understand without know- 
 ing what has happened, what a consummately skilful 
 player of the social game this Russian lady was. Kollo- 
 nitz understood, grew crimson with rage. He took out 
 his watch, made a gesture of despair, and kissing the 
 beautiful Sicihan's hand and bowing to the company, 
 exclaimed that he had missed the first game of golf. 
 But as he hurried by the Russian lady's chair with a 
 specially pohte and icy bow, she stretched out her hand 
 and said, " We must finish that discussion some other 
 time, my dear Count," and she seemed to take in all 
 Kollonitz's soul as she smiled that slow, distant, yet, in a 
 way, enveloping smile. He felt he could as soon have 
 been impertinent to his own mother, who was dead.
 
 II 
 
 THIS little colony from the great world, the real 
 world, which requires Engadine cold in summer 
 and Monte Carlo heat in winter, had taken Mme 
 Nitzenko for granted. An instinctive aversion to being 
 bored, that is to say to doing anything because it might 
 be useful, teaches these delicately organized persons 
 to avoid such psychological study or even such gossip 
 as might lead to an effort of admiration. Hence, while 
 invariably giving a toss or a cut, hke an idle child with 
 a stone or a plant, to each other's reputation and char- 
 acter, they just admitted the fact of Mme Nitzenko 
 being " an admirable woman," a " golden heart," " an 
 intelhgence of a truly superior order " — a " perfect 
 Christian in the world," as they might have admitted 
 the height of the surrounding Alps or any other natural 
 phenomenon which was boring to contemplate and in so 
 far to dispute. Nay, although they were wont to suspect 
 any visitor they did not already know of being a card- 
 sharper or a demi-rep — for had they not indulged in 
 doubts whether Kollonitz was a genuine Kollonitz until 
 the Bavarian baron had testified to his really being the 
 ex-ambassador's son and the young man who had 
 already been sold up two years before ? — these suspicious 
 people above all suspicion had never even questioned 
 the antecendents or identity of this particular lady — 
 partly perhaps because she laid claim to no antecedents 
 or identity, and seemed satisfied, without being anybody's
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 9 
 
 aunt, sister-in-law, or friend, to be merely herself ; partly 
 also because she treated the question of aunts, sisters-in- 
 law, and friends, of social antecedents and identity, 
 as if everybody had received an equal share of such gifts 
 of Fate. For that was one of Mme Nitzenko's pecuh- 
 arities, that she always treated people as if they were 
 equals, equally capable of being good and intelhgent, 
 equally capable of doing a kindness, equally requiring 
 to receive one, and equally fitted to teU and hear the 
 truth ; each other's equals and her own equals, although 
 most of them, oddly enough, felt during the moment of 
 contact a vague superiority towards other folk, and a 
 vague inferiority towards her. 
 
 Be the reason what it might, Mme Nitzenko was taken 
 for granted, save for the fact, which was perpetually 
 mentioned with new surprise, that she was after all such 
 a woman of the world. So, although not a mountain 
 could be cUmbed, nor a waltz danced, nor a game of 
 tennis or ecarte lost or won, nor in fact any daily act 
 performed without a proportion of the three hundred 
 inmates of the Engadiner Hof and of the thousand 
 inmates of the hotels down the hill mentioning the fact 
 of its performance, not a creature mentioned the fact 
 that Mme Nitzenko had called young KoUonitz to 
 the side of her arm-chair as he was crossing the dra'w^ng- 
 room with the intention of cutting her. Nor, of course, 
 did anyone do otherwise than take for granted the 
 remarkable friendship which had sprung up between 
 these two persons, and sprung up, moreover, within four 
 and twenty hours of the lady having intimated to the 
 young man that he ought to be ashamed of his cat-and- 
 dog story. 
 
 " But you forget," KoUonitz exclaimed, delighted to
 
 I o Vanitas 
 
 have hit upon an argument against re-arranging the 
 world on principles of gentleness and forbearance, which 
 seemed to exclude the chivalry of war and duels to which 
 he was devoted — " you forget, chore madam, what 
 modern science has taught us. Perhaps you have never 
 gone in for science — religious persons rarely do, although, 
 of course, I am religious, in a way too. Darwin, Hacckel, 
 Nietzsche — that sort of thing ? I used to read a lot of it 
 when I had more leisure. You see all is founded on 
 brute strength : the strong animal eats the food of the 
 weak animal, and sometimes the weak animal itself — 
 well, then, as I said, if we were not allowed to put strong 
 animals in their place, if we always had to behave gently 
 as you want us to " 
 
 " But I don't see how the weak animal is to put the 
 strong one in his place," answered Mme Nitzenko, 
 laughing, as she twisted some yellow tissue paper into a 
 cap for next week's cotillion. 
 
 They were sitting in a corner of the immense hotel 
 dra\ving-room, while the waiters were clearing a space 
 for the after-dinner dance, and the pianist and fiddlers 
 were bringing their books. 
 
 " Why, that is exactly where aristocracies come in ! " 
 cried Kollonitz triumphantly. He always felt bound in 
 honour to argue about everything, partly because less 
 privileged people ought to argue about nothing — " it is 
 a man's business to see to people not being insolent and 
 not hurting each other. Tell me, is your httle English 
 friend very ill — is she doing a cure ? " he interrupted 
 with his usual facility of moving from one subject to 
 another. 
 
 " No, not seriously — she has got a degree of melan- 
 choUa, the result of over- work — so I brought her out here
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 1 1 
 
 — she is a schoolmistress, poor little thing — Well, 
 what were we saying — oh yes, about people being 
 prevented from hurting each other. Do you really 
 think they want to do that ? " 
 
 " Want to hurt each other ? Why, they want to do 
 nothing else — that, and be insolent — only think of 
 Barral ! " 
 
 " I daresay they do hurt each other and then they 
 are insolent, but are you sure it's often on purpose — ? 
 Yes, let me explain ; do you know Caran d' Ache's 
 ' Caricatures of Classical Races ' ? " 
 
 " Caran d'Ache ? " burst out the young man, with a 
 rather endearing desire for universality — " of course — 
 I saw his things at the Chat Noir, and there is also 
 Cheret and Grevin — and — and " 
 
 " Well," went on the lady, pushing back that heavy 
 mass of dark hair, just beginning to grow grey on the 
 forehead, "do you remember the cabs and omnibuses and 
 broughams, and victorias, all drawn by centaurs ? I 
 often think we are all like that, bad coachmen who are 
 united hke centaurs with badly broken horses, some 
 utterly fagged and some bursting with oats, and nearly 
 always the wrong coachman made into a centaur with 
 the wrong horse — and all hauhng and whipping the other 
 half, or rearing and jibbing against it — and all in a very 
 crowded street which each imagines to be his own 
 private road. There we all are, running into each other, 
 hooking each other's wheels, tearing off each other's 
 splashboards, upsetting in all directions, and each think- 
 ing the other is doing it on purpose." 
 
 " So they are, most of them." 
 
 " I don't think so. I think we are mostly merely 
 so anxious to get to our destination that we forget that
 
 1 2 Vanitas 
 
 there are other people, other centaur cabs, and cen- 
 taur broughams and laundaus, all trying to get to their 
 destination also. It would be far too troublesome to 
 go out of one's way for the sake of a collision ! In this 
 world, my dear Count, what we poor people want is to 
 enjoy life a little, not to prevent others ; and when we 
 are prevented from so doing by others, ten to one it is 
 as much the result of our thoughtlessness, of our getting 
 into the way, as of theirs." 
 
 " But, surely," cried KoUonitz, " you do not think 
 that — well — that to enjoy oneself is a noble aim, one we 
 ought to respect in others ? " 
 
 " I don't see that it's ignoble — particularly if we do 
 respect it in others. Do you never dance. Count ? " 
 
 " I'm not allowed ! not that, of course, at my age, I 
 should want to dance — it's rather silly for a man, you 
 know. But it isn't allowed. The doctors won't let me, 
 because of that bullet, you know. I mayn't ride, nor 
 dance, nor cHmb, nor do anything for six months, except 
 play tennis, just because it's the one thing that brute 
 Barral ever does here, so that I may have the perpetual 
 joy of his charming presence. Ah, Barral ! There's a type 
 for you ! always hiding away his wife while spending 
 her money. There's a product of our beautiful demo- 
 cratic progress for you ! a fellow — and, I believe, the 
 fellow is of good birth enough — who marries petroleum 
 or canned pork in order to be able to say that he hunts 
 in the same place as our Empress ! " 
 
 " But you — wouldn't you marry petroleum or canned 
 pork, or rather let us call it more prettily an American 
 heiress, if you were in want of money ? " 
 
 Kollonitz hesitated for a moment, playing with one of 
 the paper caps. The fact was that whenever his
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 13 
 
 creditors were so ill-bred as to bother him, and his father 
 refused to set him on his legs again, as he expressed it, 
 he would plunge cheerfully into those debts just because 
 he knew that he could have an American heiress any 
 moment for the asking. 
 
 " I ? — marry an American ? Well," he added truth- 
 fully, " but, then, if I did it, it would be difierent. For 
 the rest, I don't intend to marry just at present. It's 
 absurd for a young man to marry, don't you think ? A 
 man ought to go through every experience — drink life 
 if necessary to the dregs, realize an ideal. You remember 
 what Goethe said ? or was it Byron ? That was a 
 man ! he had birth, youth, beauty, love, he lived, and he 
 was a great poet, and died young ! It's a pity he 
 encanaille 'd himself with revolutions and things like that. 
 But you were sajang, madame, that one mustn't think 
 that people want to injure us. Now, how can a woman 
 of so much intelligence as you beheve in human nature ? 
 I don't. I'm a pessimist. I have been even since I was 
 seventeen. It is the fault of a woman I met then. 
 Since that I have learned to beheve no one, man, 
 woman, or child ! " and Kollonitz's eyes began to follow 
 a couple of dancers, who, with the first notes of the 
 piano and violin, had glided through the big half-lit 
 room : two American girls, almost children, whose short 
 hght skirts and crimped blonde hair shimmered and 
 hovered through the dim emptiness. Presently, as the 
 electric light suddenly blazed out, other couples 
 followed, an absurd man and woman, whirling excitedly 
 out of time, with tremendous effort of elbows ; then two 
 Eton boys, with solemn, strained faces, whom their girl 
 partners were vainly pushing up and down like great 
 wooden doUs ; an old gentleman with a tiny girl next ,
 
 1 4 Vanitas 
 
 then more children, girls and boys, almost a dozen — 
 and revolving slowly round, reversing hghtly up and 
 down, the original couple, the two American girls, Uke 
 shining thistledown, with their deUcate shimmering 
 frocks and pale halo of crimped hair. 
 
 " Have you any daughters ? " he asked, his mind 
 idly following the hum of the waltz. Then, with the 
 second theme, he suddenly felt a brute for having asked : 
 something, much clearer than a mere thought could ever 
 be to him, had told him that all the things which this 
 woman had ever cared or wished for had been taken from 
 her one by one ; that the world held nothing that was 
 hers, nothing for which she felt anything save pity and 
 loving kindness. 
 
 " No my daughter died ten years ago. I have grand- 
 children, but they are in America, and I rarely see them. 
 How nice these girls are ! " she added, raising her eye- 
 glass quickly. " There is something delightful and rather 
 pathetic in the moment when young people would rather 
 dance with chairs and tables rather than not dance at 
 all. Did you ever do it. Count ? " 
 
 " No — I fear I didn't — I was a big boy when my 
 sisters were still httle," answered Kollonitz, implying 
 that he had less desirable partners than chairs — " yes, 
 you are right, this is the exquisite age. When I marry 
 it shall be a girl who has not yet been dans le monde — 
 no, no, they are spoilt by their first ball, before their first 
 ball. She shall not even guess that there are such things 
 as money, or passion, or vanity, or any of the things 
 which dirty the soul. Of course," he added, suddenly 
 blushing beneath Mme Nitzenko's glance, " of course, 
 I never meant that I do not beheve in some women. In 
 fact, perhaps, I beheve in all women, except those who
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 15 
 
 have come across my path. Women ! Why, of course, 
 I beheve in women ! My mother was a saint. My 
 married sister is a perfect angel — I must show you her 
 photograph. I think that women are far better than 
 men ; I think women ought to be a kind of angels — and 
 when they are not, why . . . You know how they used 
 to treat vampires in my country — people who were 
 corpses reanimated by devils and who sucked people's 
 blood ? " 
 
 The notion, its something grumious and poetical, 
 excited Kollonitz, whom his friends used to chaff for 
 reading Byron and Musset in his lost moments ; and 
 he thought of the punishment of vampires with the 
 same beaming look as if it had been a boar hunt or a 
 battue of pheasants. 
 
 " I have no doubt they were disgusting to the vam- 
 pires, who were probably no worse vampires than them- 
 selves," answered Mme Nitzenko. " Or, if they were, 
 it was probably because they were badly treated while 
 aHve." 
 
 " You mean that it is the fault of men ? That is not the 
 case. It is well known that it's always women who 
 make or mar men — men worth anything at least," 
 answered Kollonitz sadly, for, at that moment he liked 
 to think of himself as rather marred ; it was more 
 picturesque, like having loved only vampires. 
 
 " For that matter, my dear Count, we are all of us 
 making or marring somebody or something, let alone 
 ourselves. We do it while eating, drinking, walking, 
 silent, or speaking, by every act and very abstention 
 from acting. As regards women, don't you think it's 
 rather hard on them to divide them into angels and 
 vampires only ? It would be very unfair to divide all
 
 I 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 men into devils and curates. Why shouldn't a man 
 expect from a woman just the same amount of strength 
 or of weakness as from himself ? " 
 
 Kollonitz was sincerely shocked. " Good Heavens," 
 he cried, " my dear lady, you talk Uke Ibsen ! But you 
 are jesting. A good woman like you cannot hold such 
 opinions. Don't you see that you are destroying the 
 ideal — and without the ideal in some form or shape — 
 God, woman, beauty, chivalry — why, the world would be 
 a pit of darkness." 
 
 Mme Nitzenko smiled sadly. 
 
 " Would it ? " she answered. " Well — is it much else, 
 with its population of female vampires of which you tell 
 me, and its ideahzing young men, beUeving that women 
 ought to be angels, and dividing their time between 
 — such angels — and the female vampires in question ? " 
 
 Kollonitz merely laughed. He felt immensely re- 
 lieved. He had got to Hke Mme Nitzenko so much that 
 the notion of her entertaining subversive and indeli- 
 cate ideas of an Ibsenian stamp had positively dis- 
 tressed him. But now he saw it was all right. Only the 
 old story. It was absurd, of course, on her part, but 
 nice women usually were absurd on that point ; his 
 mother had been, and his sisters would be, no doubt, if 
 he or his brothers-in-law were so fooUsh as to allow them 
 an opportunity. 
 
 " Ah, I know, I know," he answered, kissing the lady's 
 hand. " Women, even the wisest, cannot understand 
 hfe ; and it is a providential arrangement that they 
 should not. We require ideals, illusions even, in this 
 miserable, ignoble world ; and where should we get them, 
 if women did not keep them ahve for our benefit ? " 
 Kollonitz paused on the terrace and philosophized over
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 1 7 
 
 remnants of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, as he smoked 
 a cigar. Then having failed to extract any amusement 
 from the French comic papers under the big green-shaded 
 lamps, he had an American drink at the bar, together 
 with a rather excited discussion about the French word 
 for blue roan, after which he proceeded to present himself 
 at Mrs Weston Smith's private salon, where a small 
 number of distinguished persons, who had previously met 
 one another at tennis, out walking, at lunch, at bezique 
 after lunch, at more tennis and more walking, at dinner 
 and after dinner, with the various changes of costume 
 necessitated by these various occupations, eventually 
 ended their evening, in appropriate evening apparel, 
 over roulette or carte.
 
 Ill 
 
 IN that anomalous Alpine valley, where the cows come 
 tinkUng from pasture between Venetian bric-a-brac 
 shops and Parisian glovers, and time-browned barns and 
 cottages are blazed upon by quivering globes of electric 
 light, this anomalous friendship flourished. There were 
 material reasons, chief among them that while every 
 one else in the huge hotel climbed or pretended to climb, 
 Mme Nitzenko and Kollonitz never got further than 
 the lower benches of the wood promenade, whence you 
 look down on a lake of unearthly blue through the pale 
 green fringe of the larch boughs. And the material 
 reason turned into a moral one, for Kollonitz was very 
 much moved when he discovered that this stately-looking 
 woman was terribly lame from the hip downwards ; 
 while Mme Nitzenko felt awfully sorry for this poor 
 young man, who might not ride nor dance, who ought not 
 to have played tennis even, and who was imprisoned in 
 the valley, when young and old were bent upon chmbing ; 
 and even diaphanous ladies, their faces swathed in 
 veils, started at cock crow to lunch on some peak or 
 glacier, having hired a mountaineer to carry up the 
 chaud-froid. . . . 
 
 So, left behind by the others, and meeting continually 
 in the narrow hmits to which both were imprisoned, they 
 became accustomed, and in a way necessary, to one 
 another. At least Mme Nitzenko became necessary 
 to KoUonitz, for who can tell whether any human being, 
 
 18
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 19 
 
 anything in this world, was still necessary to Mme 
 Nitzenko ? or, whether, beneath that universal kindly 
 friendliness of manner, which made every one feel that 
 she was their particular friend and adviser, there was not 
 utter sohtude of heart ? On this point Kollonitz did not 
 trouble himself. His social position and lavish ex- 
 penditure, but even more his perfect simphcity and good 
 nature, had saved him from the snubs which usually teach 
 worldlings to sit light upon their fellows ; and it had never 
 occurred to him that anyone could have employments 
 which should prevent their listening to his outpourings 
 of autobiography, social appreciations, philosophic 
 views, and stable lore. All of these, therefore, he brought 
 quite regularly to his Russian friend, appearing in 
 faultless flannels before her hooded chair on the terrace, 
 or in equally faultless smoking- jackets by her Ottoman 
 in the big salon, but always with the same beaming smile. 
 Apart from the fact of being always at hand, which is 
 a great attraction to a man who is boring himself to 
 death, and has no outlet for his energies save talk, 
 Mme Nitzenko had a very distinct attraction for 
 Kollonitz. He Uked the fact of her being a woman, 
 an old woman, and an invahd ; above all, of her being a 
 good woman. She satisfied one of the strongest wants 
 of his odd, old-fashioned Slavonic nature, the desire for 
 ideahty. For KoUonitz, although he considered himself 
 satisfactorily fin de siicle, did not conceal that he was an 
 idealist. In the outpourings of information concerning 
 his father, mother, brothers and sisters, his dogs and 
 horses and favourite servants (all accompanied with heaps 
 of photographs for better demonstration), he would 
 often revert to an uncle of his father, a Pole, who was one 
 of his earliest recollections. Every now and then, at
 
 2 Vanitas 
 
 Vienna and at the castle, but more particularly at the 
 castle, this uncle would unexpectedly turn up, from Paris, 
 Baden, Homburg, any place where people lost their 
 money, for he had invariably lost all his. He was 
 unkempt, unshaven, incredibly shabby, and frequently 
 a little drunk ; but he always carried with him a manu- 
 script volume of poetic extracts ; and when he made 
 love to the house-maids, which was his habit, it was 
 always with the finest Quixotic chivalry, and informing 
 his hostess that she possessed under her roof a sister of 
 Goethe's Gretchen, what he called, with a particular 
 shutting of his eyes, une belle dme. Also, he took a 
 passionate interest in philosophy and all elevated topics, 
 and presented his nephew with Cousin's celebrated 
 treatise on the True, the Good, and the Beautiful. 
 Times had changed since the youth of that particular 
 uncle : Enghsh stable slang had become more essential 
 to good breeding than French philosophical phrases. 
 Musset had been ousted by Gyp, and as to finding 
 Gretchen in a housemaid, or ever having heard of 
 Gretchen ! . . . Still, the very first time that KoUonitz 
 described his uncle (and he repeated his descriptions and 
 everything else with very little encouragement), Mme 
 Nitzenko recognized that he would have fitted better into 
 the circle of that obsolete sentimentaUst than into that 
 of the gilded youth of to-day. He was not merely 
 constitutionally incapable of their disrespectful attitude 
 and blighting words towards things in general ; he was 
 constitutionally in want of something to be enthusiastic 
 about, something to make into an ideal. It did not 
 much matter what the ideal might be ; indeed KoUonitz 
 had a confused notion that as there were various sorts of 
 human beings, there ought to be various sorts of ideals,
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 2 1 
 
 which might quite well exclude each other, yet each be 
 right in its own place. He had a very great liking for 
 certain ideals, which ought to be held by the lower classes 
 and by women, ideals of industry, obedience and thrift, 
 ideals of purity, gentleness and unworldUness, all of 
 which he expounded with great enthusiasm, but pre- 
 mising the while that they were not the ideals which 
 suited him. Now it seemed to him that, of all the people 
 he had ever met, Mme Nitzenko had put before her- 
 self the most truly Christian ideal, the more so that she 
 never talked of any particular creed, and even left one 
 in the dark as to whether she had any. It was the 
 recognition in her words of this Christian ideal which 
 had made him not merely forgive, but absolutely enjoy, 
 once it was over, that onslaught about his cat and dog 
 story with which their acquaintance had been begun. 
 And the more he saw of Mme Nitzenko, the more 
 pleased he was to have met such a very good woman. 
 He never had much patience in hstening to anyone, for 
 he had never conceived that there was anything in the 
 world which he need ever listen to. But, although 
 he was always interrupting and diverting the conversa- 
 tion with a sort of childish restlessness and incapacity 
 of continuing on one subject, unless that subject was 
 himself, he would constantly revert to the lady's notions 
 of right and wrong, and make her expound, over and 
 over again, her views about the necessity of every man 
 working, about purity of Hfe and love of one's neighbour, 
 interrupting her Tolstoian Christianity with questions 
 about St Petersburg clubs and races, recapitulation of 
 his views on men and women, and quite irrelevant 
 anecdotes and jests. 
 As to himself, of course such duties and ideals were not
 
 2 2 Vanitas 
 
 for him : he had his own. For, although Kollonitz 
 entirely overlooked any possible apphcation of such 
 Christian standards to himself, he would have been 
 miserable without the certainty that he was a very 
 dutiful and noble-minded young man, living for some- 
 thing immeasurably higher than the snobs and cynical 
 cads with whom, in this democratic age of money 
 grabbing and materialism, he was obUged to rub 
 shoulders. 
 
 He had been speaking the truth, as he always did, save 
 on very rare occasions (for instance, to women), when he 
 had imphed that he would readily die for the sake of his 
 duty. Indeed, part of his constant moral restlessness 
 was due to the lack of opportunities if not of dying in the 
 accomplishment of duty, at all events of actively accom- 
 plishing it. For Kollonitz had inherited from his 
 ancestors, and fostered by childish readings, a tendency 
 to associate duty with excitement, danger, and par- 
 ticularly with the free and thorough chastisement of 
 others. And this was not so easy nowadays. Not that 
 he suffered from any doubts as to the desirability of 
 smiting caitiffs, nor as to the nature of the caitiffs to 
 smite : no ancestor of his, historical or mythical, could 
 have felt more certain about pagans, Turks and dragons 
 than Kollonitz about Jews, Socialists, and the various 
 categories summed up as cads. Without exactly seeking 
 enlightenment, for he never felt the need of it, he had 
 found in sundry review articles and paper bound books 
 the confirmation of his reasons for wishing to destroy 
 these nefarious varieties of mankind ; he had explained 
 to the beautiful Lady Portia Pose, the founder of the 
 girls' Utopian debating society, that capitalists ought 
 to be expropriated and socialists sent to the galleys,
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 23 
 
 because wealth should exist exclusively in the hands 
 of a beneficent class of landed proprietors ; and he had 
 reconciled the hope that his peasants might massacre 
 all the Jews on his property, with his previous pro- 
 fession of behef only in Schopenhauer and Evil Fate, by 
 explaining to the Comtesse de Lepanto, the friend of M. 
 Kenan and Mgr. Dupanloup, that the Christian ideal was 
 necessary for the labouring classes. But, although he 
 knew perfectly well whom it was his duty to exterminate, 
 the mistaken protection which governments afforded 
 to capitahsts, sociahsts, Jews and journahsts, prevented 
 Kollonitz from fulfilUng his duty in this important 
 matter ; for did not the Principle of Order, which it was 
 also his duty to maintain, require acquiescence in all 
 government measures however mistaken ? War, on the 
 other hand, there was none ; and Kollonitz always 
 expressed contempt for the triumphs and also for the 
 routine of military life in time of peace. There remained 
 therefore only the minor offices of chivalry, such as the 
 admonishing of foohsh and insolent persons, and the 
 protection of the fair sex, both of which duties had 
 afforded Kollonitz various spirited actions in places 
 avowable and unavowable ; and, in his latest duel, that 
 bullet which the surgeons had failed to extract, and 
 which had reduced him to a kind of invalid. And, there 
 remained also the duty of encouraging all manly and 
 noble amusements, such as shooting, hunting, racing, 
 and the higher forms of dog fancying ; as well as of 
 setting an example of refined and expensive Uving, so 
 necessary to the welfare of the people, which, but for 
 employment as valets, lacqueys, grooms, gillies, keepers, 
 cooks and waiters at clubs and restaurants, would, as 
 every one knows, be lacking daily bread,
 
 24 Vanitas 
 
 It is true that at the moment of fulfilling these various 
 duties, KoUonitz was not acutely conscious of their 
 existence as such, so natural was right doing to a man 
 like himself. Except since that confounded bullet had 
 begun to impede his movement, he was busy all year 
 round, going from one place where he had to he to another 
 place where he also had to he, hunting, shooting, racing, 
 yachting, and doing a variety of other things which had 
 each their appointed season, locahty, costume, and 
 which demanded all his energy, and a great deal more than 
 all his money. It was sometimes vexatious that lack of 
 money should get in the way of one's duty ; but it never 
 did for long, since when he had got through his mother's 
 fortune he found it quite easy to borrow on his paternal 
 expectations ; and of course, if his paternal expectations 
 should thus become reduced to impossibihty of reahza- 
 tion, he need only marry an heiress to set everything all 
 right. To this routine of things which had to be done, 
 KoUonitz of course added sundry occasional acts of 
 dutiful supererogation. Thus, he more than once gave 
 a distressed lady friend a fancy price for stones she had 
 commissioned him to sell for her ; and on one occasion, 
 when he was himself approaching the state which his 
 Enghsh friends called heing broke, he raised a ruinous 
 loan in order to pay off another man's gambhng debt. 
 GambUng, by the way, was one of Kollonitz's works of 
 supererogation ; it did not amuse him, but he did it 
 because every one else did, and because it was right to 
 set the example of losing large sums with a smiHng face, 
 and of gaining large sums merely to offer to lose them 
 back the next minute. The same thing apphed to 
 riding, for Kollonitz's rather shambhng figure and wool- 
 gathering habit of mind made him successful only in
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 25 
 
 risking unnecessary danger and enduring unnecessary 
 accidents. It was a wonder that any portion of him 
 remained unbroken ; but he strove after the ideal in 
 bearing all manner of cuttings open and sewings up 
 with the utmost show of cheerfulness, and by asking 
 " who won ? " and smoking a cigarette on recovering 
 consciousness after he had broken his thigh in a steeple 
 chase. 
 
 Striving after the ideal ! That was what Kollonitz 
 would have enjoyed ; for, oddly enough, the various 
 daily duties enumerated above did not give him much 
 pleasure, and he would have equally enjoyed living off 
 porridge, digging in a field, and carting manure, if that 
 had been consonant with his position. At least, so he 
 assured Mme Nitzenko, to prove how perfectly right 
 it was that other men should be satisfied with such food 
 and such occupations. And it was this restless hanker- 
 ing after an ideal which made him like to hear her talk 
 about the hfe of the poor, the practices of religious 
 persons, and the eccentricities of Tolstoy and his fol- 
 lowers, with whose notions he quarrelled merely on the 
 score of their not being suitable to men of good birth 
 and breeding. And it was in the course of one of these 
 perpetual discussions of the various ideals of hfe, that 
 there happened the most extraordinary thing in all 
 Kollonitz's life, the entry into his mind of a suspicion 
 that he might possibly -be mistaken in some of his ideals. 
 The way it happened was simple. One morning, as they 
 were seated on the bench beneath the larches, there 
 appeared on the path a youngish woman in the dress of 
 an EngHsh nursing sisterhood, and a stout mountaineer 
 dragging a bath chair. In the bath chair was an elderly 
 gentleman with a spotty face and blear eyes.
 
 26 Vanitas 
 
 " Did you notice him ? " whispered Kollonitz to his 
 companion as soon as the procession had got out of 
 ear-shot — " that is Prince Pultawa." 
 
 " That man," went on Kollonitz, in an excited under- 
 tone, and accompanying his words with so many 
 flourishes of his stick in the sand, " that man is one of the 
 most marvellous men in Europe. At eighteen he had 
 had two duels and got through an immense fortune ; 
 at twenty-two he had won the Derby ; at twenty-four 
 he had broken the bank at Baden. For ten years he was 
 followed all over Europe by two of the most exquisite 
 women that have ever existed : Lady St Leger and his 
 own wife, who died of a broken heart. That man has 
 been the finest horseman of his day, the greatest racing- 
 man on record ; he has played le plus gros jeu that has 
 ever been heard of ; and he has, almost without excep- 
 tion, been the lover of all the most beautiful women of 
 the sixties and seventies. There's a man who has 
 amused himself ! " Madame Nitzenko looked deep into 
 the excited face of her companion, as he raised his head 
 from the patterns in the sand, symbolical of Prince 
 Pultawa's greatness. 
 
 " When we were children," she said, " we used to play 
 at wild beasts ; the wild beasts were rugs, and cushions, 
 and footstools, which were made to roar and grunt, and 
 each of us made up a story for his or her wild beast. 
 One day the boy from next door came to see us. ' I've 
 got a much finer wild beast at home than any of yours,' 
 he said. ' He has dug up half the garden with his tusks, 
 and drunk up all the milk in the dairy, and tossed the 
 kitchen maid so that the doctor had to be called, and 
 eaten all the rabbits and one of the grooms, and strangled 
 his own father and mother ! There's a wild beast
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 27 
 
 for you.' When we asked to see the wild beast, he 
 showed us an old threshing-machine which had been 
 thrown aside as lumber." 
 
 Kollonitz did not laugh. His eyebrows contracted 
 nervously, and his mouth suddenly looked vague. After 
 a minute he looked up blankly in her face. 
 
 " What do you mean with your little story ? " he 
 asked hesitatingly. " I don't quite follow." 
 
 " Only, my dear friend, that we are stupid children 
 who invent an ideal of uselessness and mischief, and then 
 admire the detestable thing we have invented "
 
 IV 
 
 BESIDES the conversation of Mme Nitzenko, 
 Kollonitz had two other resources during his stay, 
 his exile as he termed it, in the Engadine, without 
 counting the minor ones of tennis, smoking and cards. 
 
 If one of these could not perhaps be described as love, 
 the other, which he cultivated quite as assiduously, was 
 most undeniably hatred. Its object was that Baron 
 Barral, the famous anglomaniac, upon whose marriage 
 with an heiress of canned pork and general odiousness, 
 our young friend enlarged in his very first conversation 
 with the Russian lady. Why Kollonitz should have 
 hated Barral it is difficult to say, for although he might 
 not have pleased the persons who would not have cared 
 for Kollonitz, he did happen to please the very people 
 whose opinion Kollonitz considered the only one worth 
 having. To please is the only expression I can find, but 
 it by no means expresses what I wish to express ; for 
 the sort of grunted approval and half-articulate acquies- 
 cence of the men and women in faultless clothes who 
 admitted, with apparent reluctance, that certain persons 
 besides themselves, to wit Barral, were fine horsemen, 
 good gamblers, good shots, good fellows, and generally 
 the right thing, did not suggest the receiving much 
 pleasure ; nor did Barral's manner and words suggest 
 any desire of giving it. 
 
 The peculiarity, the charm, if it might be called charm, 
 of this Anglo-French desirable individual, consisted in 
 
 28
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 29 
 
 his having become very English in all such matters 
 (among which the Enghsh tongue was not included) as 
 could matter, for he hunted in the shires, shot grouse in 
 Scotland, yachted at Cowes, and got his clothes in London, 
 while remaining, in other items, in his square, short 
 build, his black bristliness and a certain Latin scowling- 
 ness of manner, a very fine specimen of a certain French 
 variety ; Mrs Weston Smith, who, for the rest had the 
 greatest possible esteem for him, had summed up the 
 impression by saying that he looked like a sergent de 
 ville turned out by a Bond Street tailor. 
 
 Now, although they happened to please the same people 
 (and indeed what other people were there to please ?), 
 this mode of pleasing of Barral's was not at all the mode 
 of pleasing of Kollonitz. For although KoUonitz was also 
 an anglomaniac, and hunted and shot and yachted, and 
 did the right things, and wore the right clothes, it is 
 certain that these, however indispensable, advantages, 
 were not the real reason of his pleasing ; and that what 
 the right sort of people hked in this long, loosely built, 
 garrulous, excitable feudal person, were rather the 
 qualities which were not usually observed in the right 
 sort of people, namely simphcity, kindliness, and an 
 enthusiastic disposition. So there was no reason of 
 jealousy at the bottom of Kollonitz's hatred of Barral ; 
 the more particularly as nobody could conceal the fact 
 that, correct and admirable as Barral was, they all liked 
 Kollonitz a hundred times better. 
 
 But, for whatever reason, Barral had never pleased 
 Kollonitz ; and Kollonitz had nursed this lack of 
 appreciation into a positive loathing. Nursed it ; for, if 
 a person does not happen to please you, you can avoid 
 him, at least to a certain extent, even at the Engadiner
 
 30 Vanitas 
 
 Hof, particularly if he shows no sort of desire to meet 
 you. It would have been quite possible not to sit on the 
 terrace when Barral was sitting there, not to play tennis 
 at his hours, not to enter the smoking-room when you saw 
 him in it, not to go to Mrs Weston Smith's, Baroness 
 Porto Venere, or Mme de Lepanto's, the particular 
 evenings that he was going. But Kollonitz's detestation 
 of Barral took the form of a morbid desire to see, as he 
 said, what the brute would do, or say next, although 
 Barral never did do or say anything ; and a consequent 
 instinct to meet him everywhere, and, if possible, to 
 do everything in his company. This hatred afforded 
 Kollonitz a great deal of occupation. 
 
 I have implied that Kollonitz's other resource could 
 perhaps not be quite accurately described as love. It 
 consisted rather in inducing, or attempting to induce, 
 that passion in the other person ; and in a partial 
 sharing thereof as a consequence. Kollonitz, perhaps 
 as a part of his old-fashioned idealism, was a devotee 
 of the Eternal Feminine. Despite his boasted disbelief 
 in the sex, and the somewhat unfavourable experience 
 he had had of it, he really felt perfectly at ease only in 
 the company of women ; women of any age or any class, 
 not because they were women, but (to reverse Christina 
 of Sweden's remark) because they were not men, for 
 without understanding why, this young man was vaguely 
 repelled by the deliberateness, the sort of stolid taking 
 and holding of one's place, the laconic reluctance to 
 " give oneself away," perhaps even by the superior good 
 sense and cut-and-dried justice which distinguishes the 
 male sex. Besides, what could one do for a man, and 
 how in the world could one please him ? Now, Kollonitz 
 liked to do things for people, and he liked pleasing. He
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 3 i 
 
 was one of those rare youths who love to carry armfuls 
 of shawls and cushions for old ladies, to shower bonbons 
 and bouquets on young ones, to twirl round little girls 
 in waltzes (alas, if only he might have danced !), and 
 make them feel grown up by sending telegrams on their 
 birthdays. He had adored his mother, he adored his 
 grandmother and sisters ; he adored women in general. 
 But it had been borne in upon him at an early age, and 
 the knowledge had been certified by every novel he read 
 and every conversation he hstened to, that adoration is 
 not the proper and natural, at all events not the only 
 attitude which a man should hold towards a woman. 
 Men and women stood to one another in a terrible 
 relation (as was explained particularly in the novels of 
 Monsieur Bourget), of hunter and hunted, of falcon and 
 quarry, a mysterious, fearful, but entrancing relation 
 of hatred taking the guise of love. The hatred part of 
 the business Kollonitz did not quite succeed in realizing, 
 for he had a silly tendency rather to like any woman he 
 happened to be in love with ; but he contrived to realize 
 the hunter and hunted sentiment and practice. And just 
 at present, after a little hesitation between the languish- 
 ing, lazy Sicilian sultana, and the finely cut, hard and stiff 
 Mrs Weston Smith, with her skin so beautifully tight on 
 her face, and her forelock so beautifully stiff across her 
 forehead, he had settled upon a momentary object for 
 his love — love correctly compounded according to 
 Monsieur Bourget's recipe. 
 
 The lady was that pretty Peruvian, the wife of the man 
 they called the Slave Dealer. She was uncommonly 
 pretty, though not to compare with either the Baroness 
 Porto Venere, or Mrs Weston Smith, for she had not a 
 scrap either of the southern opulent charm of the one,
 
 32 Vanitas 
 
 nor of the perfect northern crdnerie of the other. She 
 was, moreover, rather stupid. But she possessed the 
 distinction of being not merely entirely virtuous, but 
 also of having evidently never conceived the possibility 
 of anything else : quite pleased with a dull life among 
 rather second-rate rich people, quite satisfied with a dull, 
 jocular husband, and three dull, dumpy babies. No one 
 had ever tried, or at least ever succeeded, in awaking 
 one spark of romance in her placid little bosom ; and 
 therefore, little by little, KoUonitz had set himself to 
 awaken it.
 
 No, you are not going to Klosters to-morrow," 
 said Mme Nitzenko, suddenly, as the carriage 
 span along, with jingling bells, down the wide Alpine 
 valley, along the swift, smooth glacier stream, between 
 the wide green meadows whence the smell of cut grass 
 arose in the bright cool air. Kollonitz was taking her 
 for a drive after several days of imprisonment indoors, 
 owing to the illness of her invalid girl ; days during which 
 they had seen other each but rarely and in the presence, 
 during the concert or the ball, of other persons. And 
 Kollonitz had just told her, with a manner more casual 
 than was quite natural, that he was starting the next 
 day on a driving tour with some friends ; a fact of which 
 she was already aware, for the whole Engadiner Hof, 
 or at least what passed for the whole thereof, had been 
 busy commenting upon this incident in Kollonitz's 
 romance with the pretty South American. 
 
 " I am very much flattered by your wishing to keep 
 me," he answered, laughing, but with a Uttle obstinate 
 look, and a ceremonious tone which reminded her of his 
 defence of the part he had played in the cat and dog 
 story. 
 
 " That driving tour is not good for your health," she 
 answered, very quietly, " and it is mere idleness that 
 makes you undertake it. That is why I want you to 
 stay." 
 
 " I am not so much of an invahd as to be the worse for 
 a very pleasant week in very pleasant company." He 
 
 c 33
 
 34 Vanitas 
 
 smiled, but fixed a hard look on Mme Nitzenko : 
 it meant, in the poHtest way, " you are presuming too 
 much on the frankness with which I have treated you." 
 
 Mme Nitzenko's face did not alter beneath that hard, 
 proud, bad look of his. 
 
 " My dear friend," she answered, gently, " you know 
 perfectly well that you do not even care for that lady. 
 If you did care for her, I should still say, ' do not go ' ; 
 but, I should say it with a good deal of sorrow for the 
 suffering which such a decision would cost you, and for 
 the suffering that must have preceded all this. But, as 
 it happens, you are not in the least in love." 
 
 KoUonitz laughed. " Since you are so well ac- 
 quainted with my feeUngs, you ought to recognize that 
 I am running no great danger in setting out for a week's 
 tour with a lady I am not in love with, of her husband and 
 two other persons." 
 
 " I was not thinking of your danger, mon cher 
 KoUonitz, when I said, what I repeat, that under the 
 circumstances this tour is exceedingly undesirable." 
 
 " Well, really ! " cried the young man, testily, " seeing 
 that, as you say, / am not in love with the lady, it would 
 be rather ridiculous to be thinking of her danger ! She 
 is a married woman with three children ; surely she can 
 take care of herself. At all events, it would be very 
 poor taste for me to take care of her. Je ne suis pas si 
 fat, my dear lady." 
 
 " Would you go if she were not of the party ? " 
 
 " They say that tour by the Valtellina is quite mag- 
 nificent. Perhaps, therefore, I should ; perhaps, also, I 
 should not." KoUonitz half shut his eyes as he ht a 
 cigarette, and looked at Mme Nitzenko disagreeably. 
 
 " Of course you would not. Look, my dear KoUonitz,
 
 A Frivolous Conversion ^^ 
 
 it is absurd trying to be hard and proud with me ; we 
 are far too good friends for such nonsense. I think you 
 are acting wrongly, but, of course, you don't see it ; 
 young men don't see things in this light. That is why 
 old women must occasionally tell them things. Look. 
 You have been boring yourself atrociously since you 
 came here ; and out of idleness you have been paying 
 court to this lady. It began with being mere play ; 
 now it has become a regular pursuit, and this driving 
 tour is part of the pursuit." 
 
 " Do you know," he replied, taking out another 
 cigarette as the first had gone out — according to his 
 theory that " matches were dear in the Engadine — 
 do you know that you are suspecting me of being a 
 cad ? Of abusing of this lady's friendship and of that 
 of her husband ? Of having a plan . . . Good God, 
 it is really too laughable ! One would think you were 
 speaking to Don Juan, organizing that boring old ball 
 of his for the destruction of the village girls. La ci 
 darem la ynano, etc." 
 
 And he laughed again, a laugh of contempt and 
 indignation. But something in the laugh sounded 
 unsatisfactory, and this irritated him. 
 
 " I don't think you have a flan. But, while knowing 
 the possibilities of the situation, your own feelings and 
 the lady's, you are dehberately putting yourself in the 
 way of them. You are bringing your sledge to the brink 
 of the toboggan run without any deliberate intention of 
 sliding down." 
 
 " Well, and what if I did shde ? " 
 
 " Only that you would be dirty when you picked your- 
 self up, and that you would find a wretched little heap of 
 broken womanhood underneath you when you did so."
 
 ^6 Vanitas 
 
 " Oh, really, you are too dramatic ! What a frightful 
 picture ! And why don't you add the corpse of the 
 excellent husband — a very solid corpse to fall over — 
 and that of the three babies, just to make things com- 
 plete ! Really, I had no notion what imaginations good 
 women possess ! Oh, look ! There's the Rajah — and his 
 wives in the carriage behind ! You should have seen them 
 the other night at the concert, all huddled up Uke 
 pillows, no trace of front or back, all arranged behind 
 a screen : and Mme de Lepanto talking theology to 
 them ! — No, dear Mme Nitzenko, my driving tour is 
 really not worthy of your attention," and for a moment 
 KoUonitz, who was rather a feminine man, spoke with 
 the laconic decision which he dishked in his own sex. 
 
 They clattered through one of the many small towns 
 which lie along that road, groups of old fashioned houses, 
 daintily white-washed, with overhanging deUcate grey 
 roofs and splendid huge carnations at their wrought- 
 iron window gratings. At the log-troughs the women 
 were filling their pails, while here and there a few big 
 cows straggled in with janghng bells, or a reaper in the 
 blue deep of the Valtellina passed with a load of long, 
 fresh grass. Carriagefuls of Englishwomen in short skirts 
 and straw-hats, with their knickerbockered husbands 
 and brothers, and Frenchified women in deUcate summer 
 frocks, with their rather over-waistcoated and necktied 
 mankind, rattled to and fro, passing, utterly discon- 
 nected, hke magic lantern figures, through this austere 
 peacefulness of the Past. In one of these villages, as 
 they jingled by, Kollonitz read out loud the inscription 
 over the door of the church : a delicate white church, 
 with bulb-shaped steeple that rose against a background 
 of green slopes and distant snows.
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 37 
 
 " A Dieus sulet gloria et honor — to God alone glory and 
 honour. I suppose it means that ? " 
 
 " It cannot mean anything else." 
 
 Kollonitz was feehng frightfully annoyed. He would 
 never have dreamed that Mme Nitzenko, who had 
 always seemed such a woman of the world, could have 
 proved so utterly lacking in tact. Of course, being a 
 woman so much his elder, she had a right to make what 
 remarks she chose, but how could she have gone on ? 
 People — people in the world — never go on about anything. 
 And the worst of it was that this inconceivable want of 
 savoir vivre on her part, this astonishing insistence about 
 things that should not be insisted on, had actually 
 caused him to forget all the rules of good behaviour : 
 she had made him forget himself to the extent of for- 
 getting that she was a woman and old enough to be his 
 mother. Kollonitz flushed angrily ; he did not know 
 when he had felt as much annoyed before. 
 
 " A Dieus sulet gloria et honor,'''' he repeated idly, half 
 out loud, looking back upon the bulb-shaped steeple 
 left farther and farther behind, rising, with its shining 
 zinc cap above the roofs of the village, against the wide 
 green slopes and far-ofi glaciers. What had those old 
 people meant when they wrote those words ? To God 
 alone honour and glory. KoUonitz, who had been 
 brought up by a pious mother and who upheld all 
 estabhshed religions as a means of morahzing the lower 
 classes, suddenly found himself face to face with an idea 
 which seemed extraordinarily unfamihar. Of course, 
 glory and honour to God alone, everybody would sub- 
 scribe to that. But what did it mean ? Where was 
 the God to whom alone glory and honour should be given? 
 And what sort of honour and glory did anyone ever give
 
 38 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 Him ? Perhaps Mme Nitzenko did ? But why the 
 deuce hadn't she put him, Kollonitz, in his place as soon 
 as he began to lose his temper ? Wasn't it the business 
 of a woman to see that a young man never lost his 
 temper towards her ? And there she was by his side 
 looking as serene and gentle as ever. It shocked him. 
 
 He supposed, after a moment, that after all these 
 Christian people, even when they were people of the 
 world. . . . He stole a glance at his companion : she 
 was looking at the view, and her face was quite beauti- 
 fully kind. It was very hard lines on a man ; people had 
 no right to live in the world and infringe all notions of 
 what can and cannot be done. Then that extraordinary 
 insistence of hers — Kollonitz felt horribly bored at the 
 mere thought. And that wasn't all, she had somehow 
 cornered him. He hadn't answered quite straight. It 
 was a bore. He had said, " what if I do sUde," after 
 having pooh-poohed all possibihty of shding. And then 
 he had rather buUied her about accusing him of being 
 a cad. She shouldn't have allowed that. But she had 
 accused him unwarrantably, and the bother was that 
 lie had had those intentions. Well, had he ? Why, hadn't 
 all young men such intentions every now and then ? It 
 wasn't the first time. Such nonsense aU that tragedy 
 about it, and poor taste, very poor taste. But then, 
 why had he begun to bluster about being accused of 
 caddishness ? That also was her fault ; women make 
 a man bluster ; it's one of their ways. And he who 
 always had such a sense of fitness of what he owed to 
 himself. She was a good woman, doubtless, and he Uked 
 her. Perhaps it was because she took the words on that 
 church too hteraUy. She had been trying to convert him. 
 But she shouldn't have tried. It wasn't good form.
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 
 
 39 
 
 Kollonitz was vaguely ruffled, and found it difficult to 
 pump up conversation during the rest of the drive. 
 
 In the narrowest part of that httle gorge, where the 
 green mossy hillocks slope down so sheer as to leave room 
 only for the brawhng httle glacier brook, they found a 
 number of einspdnners and a few family landaus, with 
 coachmen lolhng about ; and a httle farther, the green- 
 ness of moss and overhanging larches was dotted with 
 bright colour ; people were having coffee at the chalet, 
 and children playing about near the stream. 
 
 Kollonitz was just on the point of helping Mme 
 Nitzenko out of the victoria when his eye fell on some 
 children toddhng about in long white frocks and immense 
 white hats ; and from them rapidly sought among the 
 groups of grown-up folk sitting and standing beneath the 
 trees. 
 
 " No, no, it will merely tire you to get out," he ex- 
 claimed. I will bring you something here. What will 
 you have ? coSee or chocolate ?— or milk ? and they 
 have rather a good sort of Uttle cake here." 
 
 But instead of going to the chalet, he hailed the 
 waitress, with extraordinary patience, for the waitress 
 paid no attention to his signalHng ; and he remained 
 standing by the carriage, where one after another a 
 variety of people came up to talk to Mme Nitzenko. 
 At last the waitress arrived, bearing her tray. But the 
 sun had meanwhile dipped behind the mountain side, and 
 people had got up quickly and hurried to their vehicles. 
 
 " Take care you don't catch a chill," cried IVIrs 
 Weston Smith, suddenly passing in an einspdnner with 
 Mme Barral. The gorge had become wonderfully 
 green, full of a dim green atmosphere which the great 
 moss-bearded larch boughs seemed to prevent from
 
 ^o Vanitas 
 
 rising. There was a sudden scent as of young ferns and 
 hidden violet leaves ; and the glacier stream rushed along, 
 as it seemed, with a louder roar. At the tables in front 
 of the chalet only one group remained : a nurse and three 
 little white dressed children, a lumbering man with an 
 immense checked back and grey hair under a grey 
 wide-awake, a typical French youth in a jacket too short 
 and a straw-hat too large, and a dark young woman in a 
 pink frock. The big man called the waitress loudly ; 
 he of the wrong sort of straw-hat helped the lady on with 
 a light fawn coloured coat ; she gesticulated to the nurse, 
 evidently about wrapping up the children, and, kneehng 
 on the ground before one of them, began to button it into 
 a long white garment. The big man pocketted his 
 change and raised his hat ifo the waitress ; the nurse 
 dragged off the bigger child by the hand ; the French 
 youth offered to carry the smallest ; and the lady, having 
 buttoned up the middle one, gave it a kiss under the brim 
 of its immense white hat. Two one-horse traps jingled 
 up for the party. 
 
 " If you will allow me, I will just say a word to those 
 people," said KoUonitz. 
 
 He met them half-way to the einspdnners, and walked 
 a few steps with the lady. Then they stopped and 
 talked a moment. The big man made a gesture of sur- 
 prise. KoUonitz spread the rug over the lady's knees. 
 The two vehicles jingled off, with the babies standing on 
 the seat of one of them, waving kisses to KoUonitz. He 
 raised his hat and swung it high as the carriages dis- 
 appeared. The last jingling was soon lost in the brawl 
 of the stream. 
 
 KoUonitz did not return at once to Mme Nitzenko, 
 but entered the chalet to pay and teU the waitress to
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 41 
 
 fetch the tray ; then he went down to some larches by 
 the stream, and picked some big pieces of grey and pale 
 sulphur-coloured moss off their branches. Then he 
 began looking about in the grass for wild pinks. When he 
 had found two or three, he returned to the carriage, and 
 deposited the whole on Mme Nitzenko's knees. 
 
 " You will give the moss to your friend," he said, 
 " and tell her I couldn't find any more pinks. But they 
 smell dehcious — smell them ; and now, shall we be going 
 home ? " 
 
 The stars were beginning to pierce through the pale 
 greenish sky, and the glacier was growing dim against it, 
 as they rattled through the little white towns, appar- 
 ently asleep already round their church steeples, in their 
 meadows whence rose the first darkness. And when 
 they got back to the top of the hill, the square was white 
 with electric hght, in which rose the hotel hke a mad 
 sort of castle, its weather vanes and flags streaming in a 
 sky which, by contrast with that white incandescence, 
 seemed of unearthly French blue. 
 
 Kollonitz helped the lame woman slowly up the stairs. 
 " I hope you will not be too tired after our long drive 
 and — our long talk," he said very gently, as he parted 
 from her at her door. " I shall come and inquire for 
 your invaUd to-morrow, for I have decided not to take 
 that driving tour. I told them so at the chalet." 
 
 " I knew you would," answered Mme Nitzenko, 
 pressing his hand, and looking, with that serene smile, 
 into his eyes. He felt they must be looking oddly 
 excited ; so he bent his head and kissed her hand. And 
 as he did so he murmured, " A Dieus sulet gloria et honor 
 — is that the inscription over the church door ? I think 
 I am beginning to miderstand a httle what it means."
 
 VI 
 
 HAD any of Kollonitz's mailed and vizored 
 ancestors, or ancestors in plumes and buff, 
 been suddenly converted by some marvellous preach- 
 ing monk, or by the sight of a dead beloved, 
 and left off soldiering and cattle-hfting for a hfe 
 of asceticism and good works ? KoUonitz actually 
 asked himself this question more than once, and 
 answered, from the mere evidence of his own feehngs, 
 in the affirmative. He had at last found that something 
 he had so long — for he was twenty-six — and so vaguely 
 and wearily craved for, the something he had thought to 
 reaUze in worldly vanities and unhallowed loves — a 
 state of mind raised not merely above the possibihties of 
 his fellows, but also above his own experience, a some- 
 thing intense, permeating, but steadily exciting. He 
 understood why this modern world of prose had always 
 left him unsatisfied, restless ; and, he seemed to remember, 
 with an odd sense of disgust. The sense of disgust was 
 indeed a sort of illusion of moral perspective, for he had 
 formerly felt quite cheerful and proud in the circum- 
 stances and states of emotion which he now thought of 
 as having been loathsome at the time. Be this as it may, 
 he miderstood how utterly he must have been in his 
 wrong element by the extraordinary magical rapidity 
 with which he had got into his right one. It seemed to 
 him that that revelation of the possibihty of hving for 
 something which was not the world and its vanities, of 
 
 42
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 43 
 
 living for God, had come in a flash : that he had been, as 
 it were, disenchanted, turned into his real seK, by one 
 magic word. 
 
 This he was constantly teUing Mme Nitzenko, 
 with the garruhty, but also the naive charm, of a neo- 
 phyte. It was an immense pleasure telling it to her, 
 nay, tehing it over and over again to himself. He was 
 so completely dehghted that he did not even remark 
 that his friend was not in the same excited delight as 
 himself. Mme Nitzenko, at first, viewed the matter 
 very coldly, although her coldness was concealed by the 
 extraordinary fulhiess of sympathy, which always made 
 people think that she thought their own particular joys 
 and griefs the most important thing in the world. But 
 under it all, Mme Nitzenko was as sceptical as she 
 might have been of some child's dehght at being given a 
 tool-chest and its firm resolution to practise carpentry 
 for all its fife, while participating fully in that child's 
 delight at being given the tools. For Mme Nitzenko 
 had that peculiar priestly nature which, despite most 
 exquisite sympathy with all conditions of the soul, is fuU 
 — even apart from experience — of instinctive scepticism 
 of aU excess of zeal. She herself had never required 
 converting ; the few persons she had really loved had 
 required it still less ; and, in her innermost nature, 
 conversion of any sort seemed rather an inexphcable 
 and doubtful phenomenon. But, with another priestly 
 instinct, she cast no doubts into the mind of the convert, 
 and she determined that, come what might, KoUonitz 
 should be if possible the better for this momentary 
 change ; at least that Kollonitz, however completely 
 he might revert to his former state of feeUngs, should 
 remain attached to her, and to all she represented, by a
 
 44 Vanitas 
 
 bond indissoluble although never so slender. How 
 many good women have thus maintained ahve a spark 
 of something better in men not notorious for their 
 goodness — a tiny spark, but all that could ever Ughten 
 that darkness ; strange cases, striking one almost as 
 mysterious, which we have all come across, when some- 
 thing — misfortune, or death of one or of the other — has 
 suddenly revealed, in some pathetic word, the love of a 
 saint for a sinner, the love of a sinner for a saint. KoUo- 
 nitz, as a matter of fact, was not in the least a sinner, 
 however often, in obedience to the world's real notions 
 of right and wrong, he may have committed what is 
 accounted sin according to the world's ostensible, dead 
 letter principles on the subject ; and the kindhness and 
 dutiful spirit which Mme Nitzenko had recognized in 
 him from the first, now showed itself in charming and 
 touching forms. It was almost laughable how good the 
 young man was. He was perpetually racking his brains 
 for some new act of devotion and kindness. He had a 
 grand day of looking over accounts and paying bills, 
 when, to his immense surprise, Mme Nitzenko told 
 him that it was not really honest or amiable to keep 
 tradespeople waiting for their money, and that the 
 chastisement of duns by deliberate refusal to pay 
 formed no part of a gentleman's duties. He also made 
 a most beautiful piece of work of his cheque-book, with 
 elaborate and tidily written entries, with a pleasure like 
 that of the converted Florentine mashers in building up 
 a faultless arrangement of faggots for burning their 
 vanities at the bidding of Savonarola. It was also a 
 great pleasure, almost a little game in itself, to count into 
 his purse just the modest sum devoted to the day's and 
 night's gambhng ; to find the opportunity when, having
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 45 
 
 given the proper number of revanches, one could get up 
 from the ecarte or baccarat table, and retire with pro- 
 priety and virtue. It was delightful to ruminate as to 
 what might be done for his tenants, to carry ofi from the 
 reading-room innumerable reviews with articles on 
 agriculture, pohtical economy, rural schools, condition of 
 the lower classes, and to receive by every post — having 
 telegraphed for them as he would formerly have tele- 
 graphed for the latest novel or collection of scandalous 
 causes ct'llhres — a volume or two on some similar subject ; 
 and then, to make plans for returning home as soon as he 
 was well, setthng on his mother's estates, talking with 
 the peasants, interviewing the baihffs, riding to cattle- 
 fairs and turnip shows. ... In short, it was dehghtful to 
 find that there was a whole world of interests and activities 
 besides the worn-out world which centred in himself. 
 And the more things he now took an interest in, the more 
 interest, oddly enough, he could now give. He gave an 
 immense amomit to everybody who seemed ill or lonely ; 
 he wondered whether anything could be done to please 
 this one, or to benefit that one, often without knowing in 
 the least what ailed any. The girl with melancholia, 
 Mme Nitzenko's little charge, was a constant object 
 of excitement. Kollonitz took it into his head that if 
 only one tried one could cheer her up, and, cheering her 
 up, one could cure her. So he invented every day some 
 elaborate novelty which was to cheer her up : a drive, 
 a ride, a picnic, and, when these got exhausted, a present. 
 He became a perfect nuisance with his presents ; the poor 
 little girl had at last to refrain from ever alluding to any 
 buyable object, from sheer fright lest Kollonitz should 
 telegraph for it. The bunches of carnations succeeded 
 each other so rapidly that it became a question how to
 
 46 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 dispose of them ; every jug and glass in those ladies' 
 rooms was crammed with them. Then it was an EngHsh 
 stick on which she could sit during her walks ; a fur bag 
 for her feet during their drives ; a large-sized Kodak, 
 bought ostensibly for himself and lent her in perpetuity, 
 with fifty reserve plates ; finally, a Persian kitten which 
 arrived from Paris because she must want company on 
 rainy days. Such was the new Ufe for KoUonitz, and 
 it was entrancing. But the new life by no means 
 excluded the old one : that was the odd thing, or per- 
 haps the thing which prevented his reaUzing the oddness 
 of the whole state of affairs. Kollonitz had indeed 
 decided never to make debts, never to make love to 
 married women, and never to gamble beyond a certain 
 amount ; for these things he recognized as being very, 
 very wrong. But he did not seem to recognize that 
 there was anything wrong in the whole hfe of which 
 they were only acute instances ; or to feel that this life, 
 which he had always led, was incompatible with the one 
 he was now going to lead, or indeed was now actually 
 leading. Mme Nitzenko recognized at a glance that 
 the poor young man had no experience, no habit of any 
 world besides that of clubs and race-courses, of smart 
 men and women, of idleness and amusement. The new 
 ideal was going to be grafted on the old, the only, reality ; 
 he was going to be philanthropic, while continuing to play 
 ecarte, and follow the racing news ; to be a practical 
 Christian — wearing clothes from Hill, smoking cigarettes 
 at sixteen francs the hundred, and eating dinners at 
 twenty francs ahead. Nay, very much as persons 
 intending to commit suicide are said to arrange engage- 
 ments for the morrow, Kollonitz, from sheer force of 
 habit, went on contemplating visits to Newmarket, runs
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 47 
 
 to Paris, and shooting parties in Scotland, while pro- 
 jecting sohtary stays on his estates and immense 
 agricultural improvements which must not merely be 
 paid out of the same money, but be undertaken at the 
 very same moment. . . . For, how was it possible to 
 conceive that all this old Hfe of his might vanish into 
 thin air, and have a new, soHd hfe instead ? And which 
 of the two, the old habit, or the new ideal, should be 
 KoUonitz's reahty ? 
 
 This question, which Mme Nitzenko often asked 
 herself with that resigned scepticism which underlay 
 her desire and effort after better things, was answered 
 much sooner than anyone would have expected, and in a 
 way which only those who knew nothing of KoUonitz's 
 conversion could have foretold or even imagined.
 
 VII 
 
 AMONG the habits which he had retained, un- 
 questioned, from his unregenerate days, was the 
 habit of hating Barral, including the habit of seeking his 
 company just because he hated it, and of talking about 
 him because his very name was odious. It had become 
 an inveterate bad habit, like drinking bitters, a necessary 
 fillip in the course of the day. Now, although he rarely 
 mentioned Barral to Mme Nitzenko, perhaps from a vague 
 suspicion that she would disapprove, he never lost an 
 opportunity of letting the whole Engadine know, and of 
 bringing home to Barral himself, how heartily he abomi- 
 nated him. But Barral took no notice ; and, as it 
 happened, no one thought any the worse of him — for the 
 saints at the Engadiner Hof could only have thought the 
 worse — for his extraordinary long suiferingness. For 
 Barral was surrounded by a reputation for courage and 
 for swordsmanship so extraordinarily well established, 
 that he might have extended one cheek after the other for 
 every passerby to box, without losing cast by so doing ; 
 •and his majestic indifference to Kollonitz's provocations, 
 his grunting willingness to play ecarte, or tennis, to 
 smoke or drink at the bar with the man who was always 
 trying to get a rise out of him, was rightly interpreted as 
 a mere fine piece of swagger by the connoisseur, male 
 and female, of points of honour, to whom this spectacle 
 of hatred afforded a welcome alternative to climbing, 
 card-playing and yawning.
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 49 
 
 " My wife has still twenty, fifteen, ten, six — as the 
 case might be — baths to take before j&nishing her cure," 
 Barral would remark, on the rare occasions when he 
 mentioned Kollonitz to anyone, " and I want to go up 
 Pitz Julius, the Alp Grub, and the Pitz Languard. 
 Besides, I make it a point never to leave the Engadine 
 till after the first snow. It is so beastly hot on those 
 Italian lakes," and somehow, this little speech satisfied 
 every one ; so chary was Barral of explanations, and so 
 very generous had he always shown himself of deeds. 
 
 Now the first snow had fallen and melted in those high 
 valleys ; and every day the square before the post office 
 was crowded with carriages full of travellers and carts 
 piled with luggage ; every evening the same square waa 
 full of similar vehicles dusty and empty. The doucheuse 
 and masseuse down at the Bath had departed to Meran ; 
 the mountain guides were one by one returning, some- 
 where in Lombardy, to their winter profession of pastry- 
 cooks. Only a very few persons remained at the Enga- 
 diner Hof. To these, assembled as usual in Mrs Weston 
 Smith's private salon, Barral imparted one evening the 
 news that his wife was leaving the next morning for 
 Promontogno with the children, and that he would join 
 her in four or five days at Caddenabbia. He had waited 
 to say so, apparently purposely, till Kollonitz, having 
 lost his appointed sum, had retired as was his new 
 custom. Barral fixed his slow, business-like look on his 
 cards and added, in the peaceable, grunting voice im- 
 peded by his big moustache. " Perhaps Kollonitz had 
 better be told." 
 
 Kollonitz's eye sparkled when this laconic speech was 
 duly reported to him by the Baroness Porto Venere. 
 " Ah ! " he ejaculated, " how like him, the bully ! I sup-
 
 50 Vanitas 
 
 pose, lie means to insinuate that it's for his own con- 
 venience that he has given me rope, as the English say. 
 But," he added, turning with a smile to Mme Nitzenko, 
 who sat at the piano, prepared to act as tapeur now 
 that the band had departed, " I fear I don't care 
 enough for Monsieur Barral to afford him the pleasure 
 of putting his sword through me, now that he has had 
 his trunks packed and has secured his rooms on the 
 other side of the frontier." 
 
 Mme Nitzenko answered with a smile of infinite 
 gentle meaning, as she struck the first notes of a waltz. 
 Kollonitz, his long, boyish person loosely inserted in a 
 faultless shirt and smoking jacket, and those loose 
 trousers, which it was his pride to display, with a fold of 
 perennial freshness, struck her for the first time as being 
 charmingly handsome.
 
 VIII 
 
 THE tennis court of the Engadiner Hof occupies 
 a flattening of the hillside meadows above 
 the lake, and is dominated, as every one remembers, 
 by the great terrace facing the glaciers. A few 
 persons — for few remained — Mme Nitzenko and 
 her invalid friend, the beautiful old Dowager- 
 Duchess who was interested in spiritualism, and the 
 famous professor of mathematics who was staying 
 with the Milanese Prince, were seated about in deck 
 chairs. The polite abbe, in spotless broadcloth, 
 who ministered during summer to the spiritual wants 
 of orthodox bathers and climbers, was walking up and 
 down, his white hands behind his back, listening with 
 pious indifference, to the excited dialectics of the 
 nervous man from Genoa, who knew Verdi and 
 always stopped playing the piano as soon as anyone 
 entered the public drawing-room. 
 
 The autumn sun was sparkling on the freshly-fallen 
 snow high up ; and among the higher woods beyond the 
 lake, there were still white streaks remaining from last 
 week's storm. In the tennis court below Mrs Weston 
 Smith, her forelock smoothly curled across her forehead, 
 her statuesque bosom heaving under a breastplate of 
 stiff-starched, stripy shirt, was contemplating the tips 
 of her tennis shoes emerging from under her serge frock, 
 and imparting a few laconic judgments on men and 
 things to Lady Portia Pose, seated by her side on the 
 
 &i
 
 5 2 Vanitas 
 
 bench, in that sage green-purfled gown which had caused 
 her to be mistaken, one evening that she went to lecture 
 to the shirtmaking girls at Taynber Hall, for one of the 
 intenser shirt-makers herself. KoUonitz was smoking 
 vehemently, and every now and then pulling his watch 
 out of his sky-blue sash. The game had been appointed 
 to begin at five, it still wanted one minute to the hour ; 
 but of course that brute would be unpunctual. 
 
 The clock in the big hall above was striking five when 
 Barral appeared on the steps leading to the tennis court. 
 He was inexpressibly correct in his flannels, and of course 
 the slow deliberateness with which he advanced, and the 
 pipe he was smoking, were so much English chic of his. 
 KoUonitz could not deny it ; but he made a mental 
 note that the pipe was beastly and that its owner, with 
 his thick-set torso modelled under a blazer, looked an 
 awful cad. Barral saluted the ladies in his usual per- 
 functory fashion, and looked slowly round the court. 
 " The bother is," he said in his slow, grunting voice, in 
 French, which somehow had lost all its courtly phrases, 
 and, while preserving its grammar, had taken the char- 
 acters of stable English, " that the balls aren't here. 
 I had them taken up into my room," and he blew a whiff 
 from his pipe. 
 
 " Into your room," repeated KoUonitz, his eye lighting 
 up, but checking himself. 
 
 " Then why didn't you bring them down ? " asked 
 Mrs Weston Smith, in the tone which matched Barral's 
 own, and with a perfect French accent which masked 
 a false gender and a wrong verb. 
 
 " That's just the bother," answered Barral, slowly, 
 " my valet has the key of my room because he's packing 
 my things, and he's gone down to the Dorf on an errand."
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 53 
 
 Mrs Weston Smith made a wry face, " What on earth 
 made you take the balls into your room ? " she asked, 
 not without reason. 
 
 " Je sais pas," replied Barral, " it's as good a place 
 as another." 
 
 " I don't agree with you at all," answered the lady 
 with some irritation, " and pray how long is Monsieur 
 your valet likely to be out ? " 
 
 " Oh, je sais pas," answered Barral, leaving out the 
 Madame, which would not be consonant with the English 
 chic, " it's a bore." 
 
 "It is a bore particularly for these ladies, who had 
 made the engagement to play at five," blazed out 
 Kollonitz. 
 
 " Ma foi, I don't say no. But without balls one can't 
 play." 
 
 " You brute, don't you see it's your fault ? " was on 
 the tip of Kollonitz's tongue. But he restrained him- 
 self and merely remarked to Mrs Weston Smith. 
 
 " Perhaps Monsieur Barral's servant may be back — 
 I'll just go and see." 
 
 And in two minutes Kollonitz was back, followed by 
 the hotel buttons carrying the balls. " The key was at 
 the porter's, all the time," he said dryly, taking no notice 
 of the other man. 
 
 Barral returned the second ball low over the net and 
 as fast as a rifle bullet ; " you should have taken that," 
 he cried to Mrs Weston Smith, who, in her stockbroker 
 way, had just made him bet eighty francs against fifty on 
 the game, for she was a methodical gambler, and found 
 tennis dull without this added interest. " Love thirty ! 
 it's another to us. You'll see you won't make a 
 single point."
 
 54 Vanitas 
 
 " Look at Barral— isn't he like a windmill when he 
 plays," remarked Kollonitz, who could not resist saying 
 something disagreeable. 
 
 " The windmill the lady's bonnets fly over then," 
 answered Barral gruffly ; he rarely made jokes, but when 
 he did, he tried to outrage the convenances. 
 
 " Ah," cried Kollonitz, " the true French wit ! But 
 it is lost on us poor foreigners." 
 
 Barral took no notice. 
 
 " I can't talk English," he said to Lady Portia, who 
 was silent with horror at finding that Mrs Weston Smith 
 was playing for money, " but you see I can play tennis 
 in English — I can say all-right and play up and well 
 missed. I go every winter to hunt in England — to 
 Nort-hamp-tonshire. Do you know it ? The Pytchley 
 country ? " 
 
 He knew very well she did not, for she came of a noble 
 family which practised virtue and culture to the ex- 
 clusion of any of the exercises which attracted to England 
 persons like Barral. She found that gentleman very 
 offensive, but could not muster up a French sentence 
 which should express, in a way at once veiled and clear, 
 that there were other things in England besides the 
 Pytchley. But Kollonitz came to her rescue. 
 
 " Oh, the Pytchley comitry," he exclaimed, serving 
 to Barral. " I know it well. My cousins used to go 
 there with the Empress. But they ' went straight,' so 
 of course, I don't suppose they ever had seen you." 
 
 " Oh, well," answered Barral, stolidly, screwing the 
 ball back. " I don't always concern myself, exclusively 
 with hounds — with dogs of any kind. I always neglect 
 them for pretty women, when there are any," and he 
 smiled sulkily at Lady Portia.
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 
 
 55 
 
 " Voyons, don't talk so much when you're playing, all 
 of you," cried Mrs Weston Smith, testily. " I don't want 
 to lose another fifty francs because you choose to jabber," 
 and so saying, she served two balls into the net and lost 
 another point. 
 
 " I am perfectly willing to be silent — Fifteen, Thirty," 
 said Barral, again making a masterly stroke — " but 
 I think next time we'll play handicap to give Kollonitz 
 a chance." For at this moment Kollonitz's ball had 
 gone out of court. 
 
 Kollonitz flushed crimson at the notion of being handi- 
 capped. As a result, he played his best and he and Mrs 
 Weston Smith won the next rally. This put that lady 
 into better temper and she even gave the example — 
 though she rarely laughed — of laughing at Barral's next 
 joke. 
 
 The cries and laughter rose from the tennis court to 
 the terrace, where Madame Nitzenko still sat in her 
 hooded chair. The sun had set behind the mountains 
 opposite, outlining their peaks in luminous silver 
 against the pale evening sky, where a star suddenly 
 broke through with a pure, greenish ray. The lake was 
 filmed over with mist ; the hotels in the valley were 
 pricked out in orange pin-holes of hght upon the lilac 
 vagueness ; and the people leaning on the railing, the 
 men in knickerbockers or tennis clothes, the women in 
 tight fitting coats and dark skirts, looked flat, spectral 
 and inexplicably Japanese. A sound of bells, a smell of 
 grass and dairy, announced the cattle, who were finding 
 their way into their underground stables of the village 
 High Street. Far ofi, mixed with the rustling of the 
 larches, came the notes of an accordion playing a 
 waltz.
 
 56 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 Kollonitz, when the other players had dispersed, 
 remained seated on the bench finishing his cigarette. 
 Then he took his racket, and went into the house. He 
 knew Mme Nitzenko must still be on the terrace, and 
 thought he would like to see her before dressing for 
 dinner. He felt very pleased with himself, and had an 
 instinct that she would feel pleased with him too. Yes ; 
 it has cost him a great deal not to give Barral a piece of 
 his mind. It seemed to him that in all his life he had 
 never made such an effort before. And, as a result, he 
 felt extraordinarily serene, in a way far off ; and 
 wondered how on earth Barral could ever have had the 
 power to perturb him. 
 
 He ran up the wide stairs two steps at a time. Sud- 
 denly the electric light blazed out in the gloom. By 
 some incomprehensible association of ideas, he thought 
 he would just go and have an American drink before 
 going to Mme Nitzenko ; he had not had one for ever 
 so long. The great hall, where the bar was, with its 
 columns and pompeian paintings, looked, with the light 
 half turned on, like the tomb in Aida. He was walking 
 across it to the bar, when, at one of the little tables in a 
 corner, he saw Barral before an empty little glass, his 
 short pipe still in his mouth. He looked awfully self- 
 complacent. Suddenly, heaven knows why, Kollonitz 
 turned aside, went up straight to the little table and 
 said, with a slight bow. 
 
 " Monsieur Barral, I shall give orders to the hall 
 porter to go into your room to-morrow morning before 
 you are out and fetch those tennis balls, in case you 
 should have the fancy to take them away again." 
 
 " To-morrow morning, unless you are a sneak, which 
 wouldn't surprise me in the least, you will be so good as
 
 A Frivolous Conversion 57 
 
 to give me satisfaction for the words you have just 
 spoken," answered Barral, rising, his sallow face suddenly 
 flushed, but speaking in his usual grunting, indifferent 
 tone — " and as to to-morrow afternoon's game, I shall 
 probably be at Caddenabbia, and you, perhaps . . . 
 well, chez le bon Dieu.'" 
 
 " I am at your service. Monsieur. One of my friends 
 will have the honour of caUing on you this evening." 
 And, as the gong sounded, Kollonitz went upstairs to 
 dress for dinner. 
 
 Mme Nitzenko did not see Kollonitz that evening. 
 He spent it at Mrs Weston Smith's, and lost a great deal 
 of money. Neither did he turn up, as was his wont, on 
 the terrace next morning. Only about eleven o'clock 
 a knock came at her salon door, and there entered Don 
 Emanuele Monza, an old Milanese officer whom she 
 knew very sUghtly. His iron grey, military composed 
 face looked a little less composed than usual, as he sat 
 down opposite her, and looked round to assure himself 
 that the invahd girl was not in the room. 
 
 " I have to bring you a sad piece of news, madame," 
 he said. " Our poor young friend Kollonitz had an 
 encounter with swords this morning with Baron Barral 
 near the small lake. And ..." A very slight tremble 
 passed across Mme Nitzenko's mouth — 
 
 " And," she said, very quietly, " and he has been 
 killed." 
 
 The old officer merely bowed and raised the lady's 
 hand to his lips. " And," he added, huskily, " he sent 
 word, through my son, who was one of his seconds, that 
 he would like you to keep his bull-dog. He said you 
 would understand why."
 
 LADY TAL
 
 LADY TAL 
 
 THE church of the Salute, with its cupolas and 
 volutes, stared in at the long windows, white, lumi- 
 nous, spectral. A white carpet of moonlight stretched 
 to where they were sitting, with only one lamp lit, for 
 fear of mosquitoes. All the remoter parts of the vast 
 drawing-room were deep in gloom ; you were somehow 
 conscious of the paintings and stuccos of the walls and 
 vaulted ceihngs without seeing them. From the canal 
 rose plash of oar, gondoUer's cry, and distant guitar 
 twang and quaver of song ; and from the balconies 
 came a murmur of voices and women's laughter. The 
 heavy scent of some flower, vague, white, southern, 
 mingled with the cigarette smoke in that hot evening 
 air, which seemed, by contrast to the Venetian day, 
 almost cool. 
 
 As Jervase Marion lolled back (that lolling of his 
 always struck one as out of keeping with his well- 
 adjusted speech, his precise mind, the something con- 
 ventional about him) on the ottoman in the shadow, 
 he was conscious of a queer feehng, as if, instead of 
 having arrived from London only two hours ago, he 
 had never ceased to be here at Venice, and under Miss 
 Vanderwerf's hospitable stuccoed roof. All those years 
 of work, of success, of experience (or was it not rather 
 of study ?) of others, bringing with them a certain 
 
 61
 
 6 2 Vanitas 
 
 heaviness, baldness, and scepticism, had become ahnost 
 a dream, and this present moment and the similar 
 moment twelve years ago remaining as the only reality. 
 Except his hostess, whose round, unchangeable face, 
 the face of a world-wise, kind but somewhat frivolous 
 baby, was lit up faintly by the regular puffs of her 
 cigarette, all the people in the room were strangers to 
 Marion : yet he knew them so well, he had known them 
 so long. 
 
 There was the old peeress, her head tied up in a white 
 pocket-handkerchief, and loUing from side to side with 
 narcoticised benevolence, who, as it was getting on 
 towards other people's bedtime, was gradually beginning 
 to wake up from the day's slumber, and to murmur 
 eighteenth-century witticisms and Blessingtonian anec- 
 dotes. There was the American Senator, seated with 
 postage-stamp profile and the attitude of a bronze 
 statesman, against the moonlight, one hand in his waist- 
 coat, the other incessantly raised to his ear as in a 
 stately " Beg pardon ? " There was the depressed 
 Venetian naval officer who always made the little joke 
 about not being ill when offered tea ; the Roumanian 
 Princess who cultivated the reputation of saying spiteful 
 things cleverly, and wore all her pearls for fear of their 
 tarnishing ; the English cosmopolitan who was one 
 day on the Bosphorus and the next in Bond Street, and 
 was wise about singing and acting ; the well turned out, 
 subdued, Parisian- American aesthete talking with an 
 EngKsh accent about modern pictures and ladies' dresses ; 
 and the awkward, enthusiastic Enghsh aesthete, who 
 considered Ruskin a ranter and creaked over the marble 
 floors with dusty, seven-mile boots. There was a 
 solitary spinster fresh from higher efforts of some sort,
 
 Lady Tal 63 
 
 unconscious that no one in Venice appreciated her classic 
 profile, and that every one in Venice stared at her medi- 
 aeval dress and collar of coins from the British Museum. 
 There was the usual bevy of tight-waisted Anglo-Italian 
 girls ready to play the guitar and sing, and the usual 
 supply of shy, young artists from the three-franc pensions, 
 wandering round the room, candle in hand, with the 
 niece of the house, looking with shy intentness at every 
 picture and sketch and bronze statuette and china bowl 
 and lacquer box. 
 
 The smoke of the cigarettes mingled with the heavy 
 scent of the flowers ; the plash of oar and snatch of song 
 rose from the canal ; the murmur and laughter entered 
 from the balcony. The old peeress lolled out her 
 Blessingtonian anecdotes ; the Senator raised his hand 
 to his ear and said " Beg pardon ? " the Roumanian 
 Princess laughed shrilly at her own malignant sayings ; 
 the hostess's face was periodically illumined by her 
 cigarette and the hostess's voice periodically burst into 
 a childlike : " Why, you don't mean it ! " The young 
 men and women flirted in undertones about Symonds, 
 Whistler, Tolstoy, and the way of rowing gondolas, with 
 an occasional chord struck on the piano, an occasional 
 string twanged on the guitar. The Salute, with its 
 cupolas and volutes, loomed spectral in at the windows ; 
 the moonlight spread in a soft, shining carpet to their 
 feet. 
 
 Jervase Marion knew it all so well, so well, this half- 
 fashionable, half-artistic Anglo-American idleness of 
 Venice, with its poetic setting and its prosaic reality. He 
 would have known it, he felt, intimately, even if he had 
 never seen it before ; known it so as to be able to make 
 each of these people say in print what they did really say.
 
 64 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 There is something in being a psychological novelist, 
 and something in being a cosmopolitan American, 
 something in being an inmate of the world of Henry 
 James and a kind of Henry James, of a lesser magnitude, 
 yourself : one has the pleasure of understanding so much, 
 one loses the pleasure of misunderstanding so much 
 more. 
 
 A singing boat came under the windows of Palazzo 
 Bragadin, and as much of the company as could squeezed 
 on to the cushioned gothic balconies, much to the annoy- 
 ance of such as were flirting outside, and to the satis- 
 faction of such as were flirting within. Marion — who, 
 much to poor Miss Vanderwerf 's disgust, had asked to be 
 introduced to no one as yet, but to be allowed to realise 
 that evening, as he daintily put it, that Venice was the 
 same and he a good bit changed — Marion leaned upon 
 the parapet of a comparatively empty balcony and looked 
 down at the canal. The moonbeams were weaving a 
 strange, intricate pattern, like some old Persian tissue, 
 in the dark water ; further off the yellow and red 
 lanterns of the singing boat were surrounded by black 
 gondolas, each with its crimson, unsteady prow-light ; 
 and beyond, mysterious in the moonlight, rose the tower 
 and cupola of St George, the rigging of ships, and 
 stretched a shimmering band of lagoon. 
 
 He had come to give himself a complete holiday 
 here, after the grind of furnishing a three-volume novel 
 for Blackwood (Why did he write so much ? he asked 
 himself ; he had enough of his own, and to spare, for a 
 dainty but frugal bachelor) ; and already vague notions 
 of new stories began to arrive in his mind. He deter- 
 mined to make a note of them and dismiss them for the 
 time. He had determined to be idle ; and he was a very
 
 Lady Tal 65 
 
 methodical man, valuing above everything (even above 
 his consciousness of being a man of the world) his steady 
 health, steady, slightly depressed spirits, and steady, 
 monotonous, but not unmanly nor unenjoyable routine 
 of existence. 
 
 Jervase Marion was thinking of this, and the necessity 
 of giving himself a complete rest, not letting himself 
 be dragged ofE into new studies of mankind and woman- 
 kind ; and listening, at the same time, half-unconsciously 
 to the scraps of conversation which came from the other 
 little balconies, where a lot of heads were grouped, dark 
 in the moonlight. 
 
 " I do hope it will turn out well — at least not too 
 utterly awful," said the languid voice of a young Enghsh 
 manufacturer's heir, reported to live exclusively off 
 bread and butter and sardines, and to have no further 
 desires in the world save those of the amiable people 
 who condescended to shoot on his moors, yacht in his 
 yachts, and generally devour his millions, " it's ever so 
 long since I've been wanting a sideboard. It's rather 
 hard lines for a poor fellow to be unable to find a side- 
 board ready made, isn't it ? And I have my doubts 
 about it even now." 
 
 There was a faint sarcastic tinge in the languid voice ; 
 the eater of bread and butter occasionally felt vague 
 amusement at his own ineptness. 
 
 " Nonsense, my dear boy," answered the cosmo- 
 politan, who knew all about acting and singing ; " it's 
 sure to be beautiful. Only you must not let them put 
 on that rococo cornice, quite out of character, my dear 
 boy." 
 
 " A real rococo cornice is a precious lot better, I guess, 
 than a beastly imitation Renaissance frieze cut mth an 
 
 E
 
 66 Vanitas 
 
 oyster knife," put in a gruff New York voice. " That's 
 my view, leastways." 
 
 " I think Mr Clarence had best have it made in slices, 
 and each of you gentlemen design him a slice — that's 
 what's called original nowadays — c^est notre fagon 
 d' entendre Vart aujourd'hui,^^ said the Roumanian 
 Princess. 
 
 A little feeble laugh proceeded from Mr Clarence. 
 " Oh," he said, " I shouldn't mind that at all. I'm 
 not afraid of my friends. I'm afraid of myself, of my 
 fickleness and weak-mindedness. At this rate I shall 
 never have a sideboard at all, I fear." 
 
 " There's a very good one, with three drawers and 
 knobs, and a ticket ' garantito vero noce a lire 45,' in 
 a joiner's shop at San Vio, which I pass every morning. 
 You'd much better have that, Mr Clarence. And it 
 would be a new departure in art and taste, you know." 
 
 The voice was a woman's ; a little masculine, and 
 the more so for a certain falsetto pitch. It struck 
 Marion by its resolution, a sort of highbred bullying 
 and a little hardness about it. 
 
 " Come, don't be cruel to poor Clarence, Tal darling," 
 cried Miss Vanderwerf , with her kind, infantine laugh. 
 
 " Why, what have I been saying, my dear thing ? " 
 asked the voice, with mock humility ; "I only want to 
 help the poor man in his difficulties." 
 
 " By the way, Lady Tal, will you allow me to take 
 you to Rietti's one day ? " added an aesthetic young 
 American, with a shadowy Boston accent ; " he has 
 some things you ought really to see, some quite good 
 tapestries, a capital Gubbio vase. And he has a carved 
 nigger really by Brustolon, which you ought to get for 
 your red room at Rome. He'd look superb. The
 
 Lady Tal 67 
 
 head's restored and one of the legs, so Rietti'd let him 
 go for very little. He really is an awfully jolly bit of 
 carving — and in that red room of yours " 
 
 " Thanks, Julian. I don't think I seem to care much 
 about him. The fact is, I have to see such a lot of ugly 
 white men in my drawing-room, I feel I really couldn't 
 stand an ugly black one into the bargain." 
 
 Here Miss Vanderwerf, despite her solemn promise, 
 insisted on introducing Jervase Marion to a lady of high 
 literary tastes, who proceeded forthwith to congratulate 
 him as the author of a novel by Randolph Tomkins, 
 whom he abominated most of all living wiiters. 
 
 Presently there was a stir in the company, those of 
 the balcony came trooping into the drawing-room, 
 four or five young men and girls, surrounding a tall 
 woman in a black walking-dress ; people dropped in 
 to these open evenings of Miss Vanderwerf's from their 
 row on the lagoon or stroll at St Mark's. 
 
 Miss Vanderwerf jumped up. 
 
 " You aren't surely going yet, dearest ? " she cried, 
 effusively. " My darling child, it isn't half-past ten 
 yet." 
 
 " I must go ; poor Gerty's in bed with a cold, and I 
 must go and look after her." 
 
 " Bother Gerty ! " ejaculated one of the well turned 
 out aesthetic young men. 
 
 The tall young woman gave him what Marion noted 
 as a shutting-up look. 
 
 " Learn to respect my belongings," she answered, 
 " I must really go back to my cousin." 
 
 Jervase Marion had immediately identified her as 
 the owner of that rather masculine voice with the 
 falsetto tone ; and apart from the voice, he would have
 
 68 Vanitas 
 
 identified her as tlie lady who had bullied the poor 
 yoiing man in distress about his sideboard. She was 
 very tall, straight, and strongly built, the sort of woman 
 whom you instinctively think of as dazzlingly fine in a 
 ball frock ; but at the same time active and stalwart, 
 suggestive of long rides and drives and walks. She had 
 handsome aquiline features, just a trifle wooden in their 
 statuesque fineness, abundant fair hair, and a com- 
 plexion, pure pink and white, which told of superb 
 health. Marion Imew the type well. It was one which, 
 despite all the years he had lived in England, made him 
 feel American, impressing him as something almost 
 exotic. This great strength, size, cleanness of outline 
 and complexion, this look of carefully selected breed, of 
 carefully fostered health, was to him the perfect flower 
 of the aristocratic civilization of England. There were 
 more beautiful types, certainly, and, intellectually, higher 
 ones (his experience was that such women were shrewd, 
 practical, and quite deficient in soul), but there was no 
 type more well-defined and striking, in his eyes. This 
 woman did not seem an individual at all. 
 
 " I must go," insisted the tall lady, despite the 
 prayers of her hostess and the assembled guests. " I 
 really can't leave that poor creature alone a minute 
 longer." 
 
 " Order the gondola, Kennedy ; call Titta, please," 
 cried Miss Vanderwerf to one of the many youths whom 
 the kindly old maid ordered about with motherly 
 familiarity. 
 
 " Mayn't I have the honour of offering mine ? " piped 
 the young man. 
 
 " Thanks, it isn't worth while. I shall walk." Here 
 came a chorus of protestations, following the tall young
 
 Lady Tal 69 
 
 woman into the outer drawing-room, through the hall, 
 to the head of the great flight of open-air stairs. 
 
 Marion had mechanically followed the noisy, squab- 
 bling, laughing crew. The departure of this lady sug- 
 gested to him that he would slip away to his inn. 
 
 " Do let me have the pleasure of accompanying you," 
 cried one young man after another. 
 
 " Do take Clarence or Kennedy or Piccinillo, darling," 
 implored Miss Vanderwerf. " You can't really walk 
 home alone." 
 
 " It's not three steps from here," answered the tall 
 one. " And I'm sure it's much more proper for a 
 matron of ever so many years standing to go home 
 alone than accompanied by a lot of fascinating young 
 creatures." 
 
 " But, dear, you really don't know Venice ; suppose 
 you were spoken to ! Just think." 
 
 " Well, beloved friend, I know enough Italian to be 
 able to answer." 
 
 The tall lady raised one beautifully pencilled eye- 
 brow, slightly, with a contemptuous little look. " Be- 
 sides, I'm big enough to defend myself, and see, here's 
 an umbrella with a silver knob, or what passes for 
 such in these degenerate days. Nobody will come 
 near that." 
 
 And she took the weapon from a rack in the hall, 
 where the big seventeenth-century lamp flickered on 
 the portraits of doges in crimson and senators in ermine. 
 
 " As you like, dearest. I know that wilful must have 
 her own way," sighed Miss Vanderwerf, rising on tiptoe 
 and kissing her on both cheeks. 
 
 " Mayn't I really accompany you ? " repeated the 
 various young men.
 
 yo Vanitas 
 
 She shook her head, with the tall, pointed hat on it. 
 
 " No, you mayn't ; good-night, dear friends," and she 
 brandished her umbrella over her head and descended 
 the stairs, which went sheer down into the moonlit 
 yard. The young men bowed. One, with the air of a 
 devotee in St Mark's, kissed her hand at the bottom 
 of the flight of steps, while the gondolier unlocked the 
 gate. They could see him standing in the moonlight and 
 hear him say earnestly : 
 
 " I leave for Paris to-morrow ; good-night." 
 
 She did not answer him, but making a gesture with 
 her umbrella to those above, she cried : " Good-night." 
 
 " Good-night," answered the chorus above the stairs, 
 watching the tall figure pass beneath the gate and into 
 the moonlit square. 
 
 " Well now," said Miss Vanderwerf, settling herself 
 on her ottoman again, and fanning herself after her 
 exertions in the drawing-room, " there is no denying 
 that she's a strange creature, dear thing." 
 
 " A fine figure-head cut out of oak, with a good, solid, 
 wooden heart," said the Roumanian Princess. 
 
 " No, no," exclaimed the lady of the house. " She's 
 just as good as gold — poor Lady Tal ! "
 
 II 
 
 " "T'AL ? " asked Marion. 
 
 " Tal. Her name's Atalanta, Lady Atalanta 
 Walkenshaw — but every one calls her Tal — Lady Tal. 
 She's the daughter of Lord Ossian, you know." 
 
 " And who is or was Walkenshaw ? — is, I presume, 
 otherwise she'd have married somebody else by this time." 
 
 " Poor Tal ! " mused Miss Vanderwerf. " I'm sure 
 she would have no difficulty in finding another husband 
 to make up for that fearful old Walkenshaw creature. 
 But she's in a very sad position for so young a creature, 
 poor girl." 
 
 " Ah ! " ejaculated Marion, familiar with ladies thus 
 to be commiserated, and remembering his friend's 
 passion for romance, unquenchable by many serio- 
 comic disenchantments, " separated from her husband 
 — that sort of thing ! I thought so." 
 
 " Now, why did you think that, you horrid creature ? " 
 asked his hostess, eagerly. " Well, now, there's no 
 saying that you're not real psychological, Jervase. 
 Now do tell what made you think of such a thing." 
 
 " I don't know, I'm sure," answered Marion, sup- 
 pressing a yawn. He hated people who pried into 
 his novelist consciousness, all the more so that he 
 couldn't in the least explain its contents. " Some- 
 thing about her — or nothing about her — a mere guess, 
 a stupid random shot that happens to have hit right." 
 
 " Why, that's just the thing, that you haven't hit 
 
 71
 
 7 2 Vanitas 
 
 quite right. That is, it's right in one way, and wrong in 
 another. Oh, my ! how difficult it is just to explain, 
 when one isn't a clever creature like you ? Well, Lady 
 Tal isn't separated from her husband, but it's just the 
 same as if she were " 
 
 " I see. Mad ? Poor thing ! " exclaimed Marion 
 with that air of concern which always left you in doubt 
 whether it was utterly conventional, or might not contain 
 a grain of sympathy after all. 
 
 " No, he's not mad. He's dead — been dead ever 
 so long. She's one and thirty, you know — doesn't 
 look it, does she ? — and was married at eighteen. But 
 she can't marry again, for all that, because if she marries 
 all his money goes elsewhere, and she's not a penny to 
 bless herself with." 
 
 " Ah — and why didn't she have proper settlements 
 made ? " asked Marion, 
 
 " That's just it. Because old Walkenshaw, who 
 was a beast — just a beast — had a prejudice against 
 settlements, and said he'd do much better for his wife 
 than that — leave her everything, if only they didn't 
 plague him. And then, when the old wretch died, 
 after they'd been married a year or so, it turned out 
 that he had left her everything, but only on condition 
 of her not marrying again. If she did, it would all go 
 to the next of kin. He hated the next of kin, too, they 
 say, and wanted to keep the money away from him as 
 long as possible, horrid old wretch ! So there poor Tal 
 is a widow, but unable to marry again." 
 
 " Dear me ! " ejaculated Marion, looking at the 
 patterns which the moonlight, falling between the gothic 
 balcony balustrade, was making on the shining marble 
 floor ; and reflecting upon the neat way in which the
 
 Lady Tal 73 
 
 late Walkenshaw had repaid his wife for marrying him 
 for his money ; for of course she had married him for 
 his money. Marion was not a stoic, or a cynic, or a 
 philosopher of any kind. He fully accepted the fact 
 that the daughters of Scotch lords should marry for 
 money, he even hated all sorts of sentimental twaddle 
 about human dignity. But he rather sympathised with 
 this old Walkenshaw, whoever Walkenshaw might have 
 been, who had just served a mercenary young lady as 
 was right. 
 
 " I don't see that it's so hard, aunt," said Miss Vander- 
 werf's niece, who was deeply in love with Bill Nettle, 
 a penniless etcher. " Lady Tal might marry again if 
 she'd learn to do without all that money." 
 
 " If she would be satisfied with only a little less," 
 interrupted the sharp-featured Parisian- American whom 
 Miss Vanderwerf wanted for a nej)hew-in-law. " Why, 
 there are dozens of men with plenty of money who 
 have been wanting to marry her. There was Sir Titus 
 Farrinder, only last year. He mayn't have had as much 
 as old Walkenshaw, but he had a jolly bit of money, 
 certainly." 
 
 " Besides, after all," put in the milHonaire, in dis- 
 traction about the sideboard, " why should Lady Tal 
 want to marry again ? She's got a lovely house at 
 Rome." 
 
 " Oh, come, come, Clarence ! " interrupted Kennedy, 
 horrified ; " why, it's nothing but Japanese leather, 
 paper and Chinese fans." 
 
 " I don't know," said Clarence, crestfallen. " Per- 
 haps it isn't lovely. I thought it rather pretty — don't 
 you really think it rather nice, Miss Vanderwerf ? " 
 
 " Any house would be nice enough with such a splendid
 
 74 Vanitas 
 
 creature inside it," put in Marion. These sort of con- 
 versations always interested him ; it was the best way 
 of studying human nature. 
 
 " Besides," remarked the Roumanian Princess, 
 " Lady Tal may have had enough of the married state. 
 And why, indeed, should a beautiful creature like that 
 get married ? She's got every one at her feet. It's 
 much more amusing like that " 
 
 " Well, all the same, I do think it's just terribly sad 
 to see a creature like that condemned to lead such a 
 life, without anyone to care for or protect her, now poor 
 Gerald Burne's dead." 
 
 " Oh, her brother — her brother — do you suppose she 
 cared for him ? " asked the niece, pouring out the iced 
 lemonade and Cyprus wine. She always rebelled 
 against her aunt's romanticness. 
 
 " Gerald Burne ! " said Marion, collecting his thoughts, 
 and suddenly seeing in his mind a certain keen-featured 
 face, a certain wide curl of blond hair, not seen for many 
 a long year. " Gerald Burne ! Do you mean an 
 awfully handsome young Scotchman, who did something 
 very distinguished in Afghanistan ? You don't mean to 
 say he was any relation of Lady Atalanta's ? I never 
 heard of his being dead, either. I thought he must be 
 somewhere in India." 
 
 " Gerald Burne was Lady Tal's half-brother — her 
 mother had married a Colonel Burne before her marriage 
 with Lord Ossian. He got a spear- wound or something 
 out in Afghanistan," explained one of the company. 
 
 " I thought it was his horse," interrupted another. 
 
 " Anyhow," resumed Miss Vanderwerf, " poor Gerald 
 was crippled for life — a sort of spinal disease, you know. 
 That was just after old Sir Thomas Walkenshaw departed,
 
 Lady Tal 75 
 
 so Tal and he lived together and went travelling from 
 one place to another, consulting doctors, and that sort 
 of thing, until they settled in Rome. And now poor 
 Gerald is dead — he died two years ago — Tal's all alone 
 in the world, for Lord Ossian's a wretched, tipsy, bank- 
 rupt old creature, and the other sisters are married. 
 Gerald was just an angel, and you've no idea how 
 devoted poor Tal was to him — he was just her life, I do 
 believe." 
 
 The young man called Ted looked contemptuously at 
 his optimistic hostess. 
 
 " Well," he said, " I don't know whether Lady Tal 
 cared much for her brother while he was alive. My 
 belief is she never cared a jackstraw for anyone. Any- 
 way, if she did care for him you must admit she didn't 
 show it after his death. I never saw a woman look so 
 utterly indifferent and heartless as when I saw her a 
 month later. She made jokes, I remember, and asked 
 me to take her to a curiosity shop. And she went to 
 balls in London not a year afterwards." 
 
 The niece nodded. " Exactly. I always thought it 
 perfectly indecent. Of course Aunt says it's Tal's way 
 of showing her grief, but it's a very funny one, anyhow." 
 
 " I'm sure Lady Tal must regret her brother," said 
 the Roumanian Princess. " Just think how convenient 
 for a young widow to be able to say to all the men she 
 likes : ' Oh, do come and see poor Gerald.' " 
 
 " Well, well ! " remarked Miss Vanderwerf. " Of 
 course she did take her brother's death in a very unusual 
 way. But still I maintain she's not heartless for all that." 
 
 " Hasn't a pretty woman a right to be heartless, after 
 all ? " put in Marion. 
 
 " Oh, I don't care a fig whether Lady Tal is heartless
 
 76 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 or not," answered Ted, brusquely. " Heartlessness isn't 
 a social offence. What I object to most in Lady Tal is 
 her being so frightfully mean." 
 
 " Mean ? " 
 
 " Why, yes ; avaricious. With all those thousands, 
 that woman manages to spend barely more than a few 
 hundreds." 
 
 " Well, but if she's got simple tastes ? " suggested 
 Marion. 
 
 " She hasn't. No woman was ever further from it. 
 And of course it's so evident what her game is ! She 
 just wants to feather her nest against a rainy day. She's 
 putting by five-sixths of old Walkenshaw's money, so 
 as to make herself a nice little dot, to marry someone 
 else upon one of these days." 
 
 " A judicious young lady ! " observed Marion. 
 
 " Well, really, Mr Kennedy," exclaimed the Rou- 
 manian Princess, " you are ingenious and ingenuous ! 
 Do you suppose that our dear Tal is putting by money 
 in order to marry some starving genius, to do love in a 
 cottage with ? Why, if she's not married yet, it's 
 merely because she's not met a sufficient farti. She 
 wants something very grand — a Pezzo Grosso, as they 
 say here." 
 
 " She couldn't marry as long as she had Gerald to 
 look after," said Miss Vanderwerf, fanning herself in the 
 moonlight. " She was too fond of Gerald." 
 
 " She was afraid of Gerald, that's my belief, too," 
 corrected the niece. " Those big creatures are always 
 cowards. And Gerald hated the notion of her making 
 another money marriage, though he seems to have 
 arranged pretty well to live on old Walkenshaw's 
 thousands."
 
 Lady Tal 77 
 
 " Of course Gerald wanted to keep her all for himself ; 
 that was quite natural," said Miss Vanderwerf ; " but 
 I think that as long as he was alive she did not 
 want anyone else. She thought only of him, poor 
 creature " 
 
 " And of a score of ball and dinner-parties and a 
 few hundred acquaintances," put in Ted, making rings 
 with the smoke of his cigarette. 
 
 " And now," said the Princess, " she's waiting to find 
 her Pezzo Grosso. And she wants money because she 
 knows that a Pezzo Grosso will marry a penniless girl of 
 eighteen, but won't marry a penniless woman of thirty ; 
 she must make up for being a little fass^e by loving him 
 for his own sake, and for that, she must have money." 
 
 " For all that, poor Tal's very simple," wheezed the 
 old peeress, apparently awakening from a narcotic 
 slumber. " She always reminds me of an anecdote poor 
 dear Palmerston used to tell " 
 
 " Anyhow," said Kennedy, " Lady Tal's a riddle, 
 and I pity the man who tries to guess it. Good-night, 
 dear Miss Vanderwerf — good-night, Miss Bessy. It's 
 all settled about dining at the Lido, I hope. And you'll 
 come, too, I hope, Mr Marion." 
 
 " I'll come with pleasure, particularly if you ask the 
 enigmatic Lady Tal." 
 
 " Much good it is to live in Venice," thought Jervase 
 Marion, looking out of his window on to the canal, " if 
 one spends two hours discussing a young woman six foot 
 high looking out for a duke."
 
 Ill 
 
 JERVASE MARION had registered three separate, 
 well-defined, and solemn vows, which I recapitulate 
 in the inverse order to their importance. The first was : 
 Not to be enticed into papng calls during that month 
 at Venice ; the second, Not to drift into studying any- 
 individual character while on a holiday ; and the third, 
 a vow dating from more years back than he cared to 
 think of, and resulting from infinite bitterness of spirit. 
 Never to be entrapped, beguiled, or bullied into looking 
 at the manuscript of an amateur novelist. And now 
 he had not been in Venice ten days before he had broken 
 each of these vows in succession ; and broken them on 
 behalf, too, of one and the same individual. 
 
 The individual in question was Lady Atalanta 
 Walkenshaw, or, as he had already got accustomed 
 to call her, Lady Tal. He had called upon Lady Tal ; he 
 had begun studying Lady Tal ; and now he was actually 
 untying the string which fastened Lady Tal's first attempt 
 at a novel. 
 
 Why on earth had he done any of these things, much 
 less all ? Jervase Marion asked himself, leaving the 
 folded parcel unopened on the large round table, 
 covered with a black and red table-cloth, on which were 
 neatly spread out his writing-case, blotter, inkstand, 
 paper-cutter, sundry packets of envelopes, and boxes 
 of cigarettes, two uncut Athenceums, three dog-eared 
 French novels (Marion secretly despised all English ones, 
 
 78
 
 Lady Tal 79 
 
 and was for ever coveting that exquisite artistic sense, 
 that admirable insincerity of the younger Frenchmen), 
 a Baedeker, a Bradshaw, the photograph, done just 
 before her death, of his mother in her picturesque, 
 Puritan-looking widow's cap, and a little portfolio for 
 unanswered letters, with flowers painted on it by his 
 old friend, Biddy Lothrop. 
 
 Marion gave the parcel, addressed in a large, quill- 
 pen hand, a look of utter despair, and thrusting his hands 
 ungracefully but desperately into the armhole of his 
 alpaca writing- jacket, paced slowly up and down his 
 darkened room on a side canal. He had chosen that 
 room, rather than one on the Riva, thinking it would be 
 less noisy. But it seemed to him now, in one of his 
 nervous fits, as if all the noises of the world had con- 
 centrated on to that side canal to distract his brain, 
 weaken his will, and generally render him incapable of 
 coping with his own detestable weakness and Lady Tal's 
 terrible determination. There was a plash of oar, a 
 grind of keel, in that side canal, a cry of Stall or Premd 
 from the gondoliers, only the more worrying for its com- 
 parative rareness. There was an exasperating black- 
 bird who sang Garibaldi's hymn, in separate fragments, 
 a few doors off, and an even more exasperating kitchen- 
 maid, who sang the first bars of the umbrella trio of 
 Boccaccio, without getting any further, while scouring 
 her brasses at the window opposite, and rinsing out her 
 saucepans, with a furtive splash into the canal. There 
 was the bugle of the barracks, the bell of the parish 
 church, the dog yelping on the boats of the Riva ; every- 
 thing, in short, which could madden a poor nervous 
 novehst who has the crowning misfortune of looking 
 delightfully placid.
 
 8o Vanitas 
 
 Why on earth, or rather how on earth, had he let 
 himself in for all this ? " All this " being the horrible 
 business of Lady Atalanta, the visits to pay her, the 
 manuscript to read, the judgment to pass, the advice 
 to give, the lies to tell, all vaguely complicated with 
 the song of that blackbird, the jar of that gondola keel, 
 the jangle of those church bells. How on earth could 
 lie have been such a miserable worm ? Marion asked 
 himself, pacing up and down his large, bare room, 
 mopping his head, and casting despairing glances at the 
 mosquito curtains, the bulging yellow chest of drawers 
 painted over with nosegays, the iron clothes-horse, 
 the towel-stand, the large printed card setting forth in 
 various tongues the necessity of travellers consigning all 
 jewels and valuables to the secretary of the hotel at the 
 Bureau. 
 
 He could not, at present, understand in the very 
 least why he had given that young woman any encour- 
 agement ; for he must evidently have given her some 
 encouragement before she could have gone to the length 
 of asking so great a favour of a comparative stranger. 
 And the odd part of it was, that when he looked into the 
 past, that past of a few days only, it seemed as if, so far 
 from his having encouraged Lady Tal, it had been Lady 
 Tal who had encouraged him. He saw her, the more 
 he looked, in the attitude of a woman granting a favour, 
 not asking one. He couldn't even explain to himself 
 how the matter of the novel had ever come up. He 
 certainly couldn't remember having said : "I wish you 
 would let me see your novel. Lady Tal," or " I should be 
 curious to have a look at that novel of yours ; " such a 
 thing would have been too absurd on the part of a man 
 who had always fled from manuscripts as from the plague.
 
 Lady Tal 8 1 
 
 At the same time he seemed to have no recollection either 
 of her having said the other thing, the more or less 
 humble request for a reading. He recollected her 
 saying : " Mind you tell me the exact truth — and don't 
 be afraid of telling me if it's all disgusting rubbish." 
 Indeed he could see something vaguely amused, mis- 
 chievous, and a little contemptuous in the handsome, 
 regular Scotch face ; but that had been afterwards, after 
 he had already settled the matter with her. 
 
 It was the sense of having been got the better of, 
 and in a wholly unintelligible way, which greatly aggra- 
 vated the matter. For Marion did not feel the very 
 faintest desire to do Lady Atalanta a service. He would 
 not have minded so much if she had wheedled him into 
 it — no man thinks the worse of himself for having been 
 wheedled by a handsome young woman of fashion — or 
 if she had been an appealing or pathetic creature, one 
 of those who seem to suggest that this is just aU that can 
 be done for them, and that perhaps one may regret 
 not having done it over their early grave. 
 
 Lady Tal was not at all an appealing woman ; she 
 looked three times as strong, both in body and in mind, 
 with her huge, strongly-knit frame, and clear, pink 
 complexion, and eyes which evaded you, as himself 
 and most of his acquaintances. And as to wheedling, 
 how could she wheedle, this woman with her rather 
 angular movements, brusque, sarcastic, bantering speech, 
 and look of counting all the world as dust for an Ossian 
 to trample underfoot ? Moreover, Marion was distinctly 
 aware of the fact that he rather disUked Lady Tal. It 
 was not anything people said about her (although they 
 seemed to say plenty), nor anything she said herself ; 
 it was a vague repulsion due to her dreadful strength,
 
 8 2 Vanitas 
 
 her appearance of never having felt anything, the hard- 
 ness of those blue, bold eyes, the resolution of that well- 
 cut, firmly closing mouth, the bantering tone of that 
 voice, and the consequent impression which she left 
 on him of being able to take care of herself to an extent 
 almost dangerous to her fellow-creatures. Marion was 
 not a sentimental novelist ; liis books turned mainly 
 upon the Httle intrigues and struggles of the highly 
 civilised portion of society, in which only the fittest have 
 survived, by virtue of talon and beak. Yet he owned 
 to himself, in the presence of Lady Atalanta Walkenshaw, 
 or rather behind her back, that he did Uke human beings, 
 and especially women, to have a soul ; implying thereby 
 that the lady in question affected him as being hampered 
 by no such impediment to digestion, sleep, and worldly 
 distinction. 
 
 It was this want of soul which constituted the strength 
 of Lady Tal. This negative quality had much more 
 than the value of a positive one. And it was Lady 
 Tal's want of soul which had, somehow, got the better 
 of him, pushed him, bullied him, without any external 
 manifestation, and by a mere hidden force, into accept- 
 ing, or offering to read that manuscript. 
 
 Jervase Marion was a methodical man, full of unformu- 
 lated principles of existence. One of these consisted in 
 always doing unpleasant duties at once, unless they were 
 so unpleasant that he never did them at all. Accord- 
 ingly, after a turn or two more up and down the room, 
 and a minute or two lolling out of the window, and 
 looking into that kitchen on the other side of the canal, 
 with the bright saucepans in the background, and the 
 pipkins with carnations and sweet basil on the sill, 
 Marion cut the strings of the manuscript, rolled it back-
 
 Lady Tal 83 
 
 wards to make it lie flat, and with a melancholy little 
 moan, began reading Lady Tal's novel. 
 
 " Violet " it began. 
 
 " Violet ! and her name's Violet, too ! " ejaculated 
 Marion to himself. 
 
 " Violet is seated in a low chair in the gloom in the 
 big bow window at Kieldar — the big bow window 
 encircled by ivy and constructed it is said by Earl 
 Rufus before he went to the crusades and from which 
 you command a magnificent prospect of the broad 
 champaign coimtry extending for many miles, all dotted 
 with oaks and farmhouses and bounded on the horizon 
 
 by the blue line of the hills of B shire — the window 
 
 in which she had sat so often and cried as a child when 
 her father Lord Rufus had married again and brought 
 home that handsome Jewish wife with the jardee face 
 and the exquisite dresses from Worth — Violet had taken 
 refuge in that window in order to think over the events 
 of the previous evening and that offer of marriage which 
 her cousin Marmaduke had just made to her " 
 
 " Bless the woman ! " exclaimed Marion, " what on 
 earth is it all about ? " And he registered the remark, 
 to be used upon the earliest occasion in one of his own 
 novels, that highly-connected and well-dressed young 
 women of the present generation, appear to leave commas 
 and semicolons, all, in fact, except full stops and dashes, 
 to their social inferiors. 
 
 The remark consoled him, also, by its practical bearing 
 on the present situation, for it would enable him to throw 
 the weight of his criticisms on this part of Lady Tal's 
 performance. 
 
 " You must try, my dear Lady Ataltanta," he would 
 say very gravely, " to cultivate a — a — somewhat more
 
 84 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 lucid style — to cut down your sentences a little — in 
 fact to do what we pedantic folk call break up the 
 members of a period. In order to do so, you must turn 
 your attention very seriously to the subject of punctua- 
 tion, which you seem to have — a — well — rather neglected 
 hitherto. I will send for an invaluable little work on the 
 subject — ' Stops : and how to manage them,' which 
 will give you all necessary information. Also, if you can 
 find it in the library of any of our friends here, I should 
 recommend your studying a book which I used in my 
 boyhood— a great many years ago, alas ! — called 
 ' Blair's Rhetoric' " 
 
 If that didn't quench Lady Tal's literary ardour, 
 nothing ever would. But all the same he felt bound 
 to read on a little, in order to be able to say he had done 
 so.
 
 IV 
 
 JERVASE MARION fixed his eyes, the eyes of 
 the spirit particularly, upon Lady Tal, as he sat 
 opposite her, the next day, at the round dinner table, 
 in Palazzo Bragadin. 
 
 He was trying to make out how on earth this woman 
 had come to write the novel he had been reading. That 
 Lady Tal should possess considerable knowledge of the 
 world, and of men and women, did not surprise him in 
 the least. He had recognised, in the course of various 
 conversations, that this young lady formed an exception 
 to the rule that splendid big creatures with regular 
 features and superb complexions are invariably idiots. 
 
 That Lady Tal should even have a certain talent 
 — about as cultivated as that of the little boys who 
 draw horses on their copy books — for plot and 
 dialogue, was not astonishing at all, any more than 
 that her sentences invariably consisted either of three 
 words, or of twenty-seven hnes, and that her grammar 
 and spelling were nowhere. All this was quite con- 
 sonant with Lady Tal's history, manner, talk, and with 
 that particular beauty of hers — the handsome aquiline 
 features, too clean-cut for anything save wood or stone, 
 the bright, cold, blue eyes, which looked you in the face 
 when you expected it least, and which looked away 
 from you when you expected it least, also ; the absence 
 of any of those little subtle lines which tell of feeling 
 and thought, and which complete visible beauty, while 
 
 85
 
 86 Vanitas 
 
 suggesting a beauty transcending mere visible things. 
 There was nothing at all suprising in this. But Jervase 
 Marion had found in this manuscript something quite 
 distinct and unconnected with such matters : he had 
 found the indications of a soul, a very decided and un- 
 mistakable soul. 
 
 And now, looking across the fruit and flowers, and 
 the set out of old Venetian glass on Miss Vanderwerf's 
 hospitable table, he asked himself in what portion of the 
 magnificent person of Lady Atalanta Walkenshaw that 
 soul could possibly be located. 
 
 Lady Tal was seated, as I have remarked, immediately 
 opposite Marion, and between a rather battered cos- 
 mopolitan diplomatist and the young millionaire who 
 had been in distress about a sideboard. Further along 
 was the Roumanian Princess, and opposite, on the other 
 side of Marion, an elderly American siren, in an extremely 
 simple while muslin frock, at the first glance the work 
 of the nursery maid, at the second of Worth, and sym- 
 bolising the strange, dangerous fascination of a lady 
 whom you took at first for a Puritan and a frump. 
 On the other sat Miss Gertrude Ossian, Lady Tal's 
 cousin, a huge young woman with splendid arms and 
 shoulders and atrocious manners, who thought Venice 
 such a bore because it was too hot to play at tennis and 
 you couldn't ride on canals, and consoled herself by 
 attempting to learn the guitar from various effete Italian 
 youths, whom she alarmed and delighted in turn. 
 
 Among this interesting company Lady Tal was seated 
 with that indefinable look of being a great deal too large, 
 too strong, to highly connected, and too satisfied with 
 herself and all things, for this miserable, effete, plebeian, 
 and self-conscious universe.
 
 Lady Tal 87 
 
 She wore a beautifully-made dress of beautifully- 
 shining silk, and her shoulders and throat and arms 
 were as beautifully made and as shining as her dress ; 
 and her blond hair was as elaborately and perfectly 
 arranged as it was possible to conceive. That blond 
 hair, verging upon golden, piled up in smooth and 
 regular plaits and rolls till it formed a kind of hard 
 and fantastic helmet about her very oval face, and 
 arranged in a close row of symmetrical little curls 
 upon the high, white, mimarked forehead, and about 
 the thin, black, perfectly- arched eyebrows — that hair of 
 Lady Tal's symbolised, in the thought of Marion, all 
 that was magnificent, conventional, and impassive 
 in this creature. Those blue eyes also, which looked 
 at you and away from you, when you expected each 
 least, were too large, under the immense arch of eye- 
 brow, to do more than look out indifferently upon 
 the world. The mouth was too small in its beautiful 
 shape for any contraction or expression of feeling, 
 and when she smiled, those tiny white teeth seemed 
 still to shut it. And altogether, with its finely- 
 moulded nostrils, which were never dilated, and its 
 very oval outline, the whole face affected Marion as 
 a huge and handsome mask, as sometliing clapped 
 on and intended to conceal. To conceal what ? It 
 seemed to the novelist, as he listened to the stream 
 of animated conventionalities, of jokes unconnected 
 with any high spirits, that the mask of Lady Atalanta's 
 face, like those great stone masks in Roman galleries 
 and gardens, concealed the mere absence of every- 
 thing. As Marion contemplated Lady Tal, he reviewed 
 mentally that manuscript novel written in a hand as 
 worn down as that of a journalist, and with rather less
 
 88 Vanitas 
 
 grammar and spelling than might be expected from 
 a nursery maid ; and he tried to connect the impression 
 it had left on his mind with the impression which its 
 author was making at the present moment. 
 
 The novel had taken him by surprise by its subject, 
 and even more by its particular moral attitude. The 
 story was no story at all, merely the unnoticed mar- 
 tyrdom of a delicate and scrujDulous woman tied to 
 a vain, mean, and frivolous man ; the long starvation 
 of a little soul which required affections and duties 
 among the unrealities of the world. Not at all an un- 
 common subject nowadays ; in fact, Marion could 
 have counted you off a score of well-known novels on 
 similar or nearly similar themes. 
 
 There was nothing at all surprising in the novel, the 
 surprising point lay in its having this particular author. 
 
 Little by little, as the impression of the book became 
 fainter, and the impression of the writer more vivid, 
 Marion began to settle his psychological problem. Or 
 rather he began to settle that there was no psychological 
 problem at all. This particular theme was in vogue 
 nowadays, this particular moral view was rife in the 
 world ; Lady Tal had read other people's books, and 
 had herself written a book which was extremely like 
 theirs. It was a case of unconscious, complete imitation. 
 The explanation of Lady Tal's having produced a novel 
 so very different from herself was simply that, as a 
 matter of fact, she had not produced that novel at all. 
 It was unlike herself because it belonged to other people, 
 that was all. 
 
 " Tell me about my novel," she said, after dinner, 
 beckoning Marion into one of the little gothic balconies 
 overhanging the grand canal ; the little balconies
 
 Lady Tal 89 
 
 upon whose cushions and beneath whose drawn-up 
 awning there is room for two, just out of earshot of any 
 two others on the other balconies beyond. 
 
 Places for flirtation. But Lady Tal, Marion had in- 
 stinctively understood, was not a woman who flirted. 
 Her power over men, if she had any, or chose to exert 
 it, must be of the sledge-hammer sort. And how she 
 could possibly have any power over anything save a mere 
 gaping masher, over anything that had, below its starched 
 shirt front, sensitiveness, curiosity, and imagination, 
 Marion at this moment utterly failed to understand. 
 
 The tone of this woman's voice, the very rustle of 
 her dress, as she leaned upon the balcony and shook the 
 sparks from her cigarette into the dark sky and the 
 dark water, seemed to mean business and nothing but 
 business. 
 
 She said : 
 
 " Tell me all about my novel. I don't intend to be 
 put off with mere remarks about grammar and stops. 
 One may learn all about that ; or can't all that, and 
 style, and so forth, be put in for one, by the printer's 
 devil ? I haven't a very clear notion what a printer's 
 devil is, except that he's a person with a thumb. But 
 he might see to such details, or somebody else of the 
 same sort." 
 
 " Quite so. A novelist of some slight established 
 reputation would do as well. Lady Tal." 
 
 Marion wondered why he had made that answer ; 
 Lady Tal's remark was impertinent only inasmuch as he 
 chose to admit that she could be impertinent to him. 
 
 Lady Tal, he felt, but could not see, slightly raised 
 one of those immensely curved eyebrows of hers in the 
 darkness.
 
 90 Vanitas 
 
 " I thought that you, for instance, might get me 
 through all that," she answered ; "or some other 
 novelist, as you say, of established reputation, who was 
 benevolently inclined towards a poor, helpless ignoramus 
 with literary aspirations." 
 
 " Quite apart from such matters — and you are per- 
 fectly correct in supposing that there must be lots of 
 professed novelists who would most gladly assist you 
 with them — quite apart from such matters, your novel, 
 if you will allow me to say a rude thing, is utterly im- 
 possible. You are perpetually taking all sorts of know- 
 ledge for granted in your reader. Your characters don't 
 sufficiently explain themselves ; you write as if your 
 reader had witnessed the whole thing and merely re- 
 quired reminding. I almost doubt whether you have 
 fully realised for yourself a great part of the situation ; 
 one would think you were repeating things from hearsay, 
 without quite understanding them." 
 
 Marion felt a twinge of conscience : that wasn't the 
 impression left by the novel, but the impression due to 
 the discrepancy between the novel and its author. That 
 hateful habit of studying people, of turning them round, 
 prodding and cutting them to see what was inside, why 
 couldn't he leave it behind for awhile ? Had he not 
 come to Venice with the avowed intention of suspending 
 all such studies ? 
 
 Lady Tal laughed. The laugh was a little harsh. 
 " You say that because of the modelling of my face — 
 I know all about modelling of faces, and facial angles, 
 and cheek-bones, and eye cavities : I once learned to 
 draw — people always judge of me by the modelling of 
 my face. Perhaps they are right, perhaps they are 
 wrong. I daresay I have taken too much for granted.
 
 Lady Tal 9 1 
 
 One ought never to take anything for granted, in the 
 way of human insight, ought one ? Anyhow, perhaps 
 you will show me when I have gone wrong, will you ? " 
 
 " It will require a good deal of patience " began 
 
 Marion. 
 
 " On your part, of course. But then it all turns to 
 profit with you novelists ; and it's men's business to be 
 patient, just because they never are." 
 
 " I meant on your part, Lady Tal. I question whether 
 you have any notion of what it means to recast a novel 
 — to alter it throughout, perhaps not only once, but 
 twice, or three times." 
 
 " Make me a note of the main wrongness, and send 
 me the MS., will you ? I'll set about altering it at once, 
 you'll see. I'm a great deal more patient than you 
 imagine, Mr Marion, when I want a thing — and I do 
 want this — I want to write novels. I want the occupa- 
 tion, the interest, the excitement. Perhaps some day I 
 shall want the money too. One makes pots of money in 
 your business, doesn't one ? " 
 
 Lady Atalanta laughed. She threw her cigarette into 
 the canal, and with a crackle and a rustle of her light 
 dress, straightened her huge person, and after looking 
 for a moment into the blue darkness full of dim houses 
 and irregularly scattered lights, she swept back into the 
 hum of voices and shimmer of white dresses of Miss 
 Vanderwerf's big drawing-room. 
 
 Jervase Marion remained leaning on the balcony, 
 listening to the plash of oar and the bursts of hoarse 
 voices and shrill fiddles from the distant music boats.
 
 T^HE temptations of that demon of psychological 
 study proved too great for Marion ; particularly 
 when that tempter allied himself to an equally stub- 
 born though less insidious demon apparently residing in 
 Lady Atalanta : the demon of amateur authorship. So 
 that, by the end of ten days, there was established, 
 between Lady Tal's lodgings and Marion's hotel, a lively 
 interchange of communication, porters and gondoliers 
 for ever running to and fro between " that usual tall 
 young lady at San Vio," and " that usual short, bald 
 gentleman on the Riva." The number of parcels must 
 have been particularly mysterious to these messengers, 
 unless the proverbially rapid intuition (inherited during 
 centuries of intrigue and spying) of Venetian underlings 
 arrived at the fact that the seemingly numberless packets 
 were in reality always one and the same, or portions of 
 one and the same ; the celebrated novel travelling to 
 and fro, with perpetual criticisms from Marion and 
 corrections from Lady Atalanta. This method of 
 intercourse was, however, daily supplemented by sundry 
 notes, in the delicate, neat little hand of the novelist, or 
 the splashing writing of the lady, saying with little 
 variation — " Dear Lady Atalanta, I fear I may not have 
 made my meaning very clear with respect to Chapter 
 I, II, III, IV — or whatever it might be — will you allow 
 me to give you some verbal explanations on the subject ? 
 and " Dear Mr Marion, — Do come at once. I've got 
 
 92
 
 Lady Tal 93 
 
 stuck over that beastly chapter V, VI, or VII, and 
 positively ynust see you about it." 
 
 " Well, I never ! " politely ejaculated Miss Vander- 
 werf regularly every evening — " if that Marion isn't 
 the most really kind and patient creature on this 
 earth ! " 
 
 To which her friend the Princess — the other arbitress 
 of Venetian society in virtue of her palace, her bric-a- 
 brac, and that knowledge of Marie Corelli and Mrs 
 Campbell Praed which balanced Miss Vanderwerf's 
 capacity for grasping the meaning of Gyp — invariably 
 answered in her best English colloquial : 
 
 " Well, my word ! If that Lady Tal's not the most 
 impudent amateur scribble-scrabble of all the amateur 
 scribble-scrabbles that England produces." 
 
 Remarks which immediately produced a lively dis- 
 cussion of Lady Tal and of Marion, including the 
 toilettes of the one and the books of the other, with 
 the result that neither retained a single moral, intel- 
 lectual, or physical advantage; and the obvious corollary, 
 in the mind of the impartial listener, that Jervase 
 Marion evidently gave up much more of his time to Lady 
 Tal and her novel than to Miss Vanderwerf and the 
 Princess and their respective salons. 
 
 As a matter of fact, however, although a degree of 
 impudence more politely described as energy and deter- 
 mination, on the part of Lady Tal ; and of kindness, 
 more correctly designated as feebleness of spirit, on the 
 part of Marion, had undoubtedly been necessary in the 
 first stages of this intercourse, yet nothing of either of 
 these valuable social qualities had been necessary for 
 its continuation. Although maintaining that manner of 
 hers expressive of the complete rights which her name
 
 94 Vanitas 
 
 of Ossian and her additional inches constituted over all 
 things and people, Lady Tal had become so genuinely 
 enthusiastic for the novelist's art as revealed by Marion, 
 that her perpetual intrusion upon his leisure was that 
 merely of an ardent if somewhat inconsiderate disciple. 
 In the eyes of this young lady, development of char- 
 acter, foreshortening of narrative, construction, syntax, 
 nay, even grammar and punctuation, had become in- 
 exhaustible subjects of meditation and discussion, upon 
 which every experience of life could be brought to bear. 
 So much for Lady Tal. As regards Marion, he had, 
 not without considerable self-contempt, surrendered 
 himself to the demon of character study. This passion 
 for investigating into the feelings and motives of his 
 neighbours was at once the joy, the pride, and the bane 
 and humiliation of Marion's placid life. He was aware 
 that he had, for years and years, cultivated this tend- 
 ency to the utmost ; and he was fully convinced that to 
 study other folks and embody his studies in the most 
 lucid form was the one mission of his life, and a mission 
 in nowise inferior to that of any other highly gifted class 
 of creatures. Indeed, if Jervase Marion, ever since his 
 earliest manhood, had given way to a tendency to with- 
 draw from all personal concerns, from aU emotion or 
 action, it was mainly because he conceived that this 
 shrinkingness of nature (which fooKsh persons called 
 egoism) was the necessary complement to his power of 
 intellectual analysis ; and that any departure from 
 the position of dispassioned spectator of the world's 
 follies and miseries would mean also a departure from 
 his real duty as a novelist. To be brought into contact 
 with people more closely than was necessary or advan- 
 tageous for their intellectual comprehension ; to think
 
 Lady Tal 95 
 
 about them, feel about them, mistress, wife, son, or 
 daughter, the bare thought of such a thing jarred upon 
 Marion's nerves. So, the better to study, the better to 
 be soHtary, he had expatriated himself, leaving brothers, 
 sisters (now his mother was dead), friends of childhood, 
 all those things which invade a man's consciousness 
 without any psychological profit ; he had condemned 
 himself to live in a world of acquaintances, of indiffer- 
 ence ; and, for sole diversion, he permitted himself, every 
 now and then, to come abroad to places where he had not 
 even acquaintances, where he could look at faces which 
 had no associations for him, and speculate upon the 
 character of total strangers. Only, being a methodical 
 man, and much concerned for his bodily and intellectual 
 health, he occasionally thought fit to suspend even 
 this contact with mankind, and to spend six weeks, 
 as he had intended spending those six weeks at Venice, 
 in the contemplation of only bricks and mortar. 
 
 And now, that demon of psychological study had 
 got the better of his determination. Marion under- 
 stood it all now from the beginning : that astonishing 
 feebleness of his towards Lady Atalanta, that extra- 
 ordinary submission to this imperious and audacious 
 young aristocrat's orders. The explanation was simple, 
 though curious. He had divined in Lady Atalanta 
 a very interesting psychological problem, considerably 
 before he had been able to formulate the fact to himself : 
 his novelist's intuition, like the scent of a dog, had set 
 him on the track even before he knew the nature of the 
 game, or the desire to pursue. Before even beginning 
 to think about Lady Atalanta, he had begun to watch 
 her ; he was watching her now consciously ; indeed all 
 his existence was engrossed in such watching, so that the
 
 96 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 hours he spent away from her company, or the company 
 of her novel, were so many gaps in his life. 
 
 Jervase Marion, as a result both of that shrinkingness 
 of nature, and of a very delicate artistic instinct, had an 
 aversion of such coarse methods of study as consist in 
 sitting down in front of a human being and staring, in 
 a metaphorical sense, at him or her. He was not a man 
 of theories (their cut-and-driedness offending his subt- 
 lety) ; but had he been forced to formulate his ideas, he 
 would have said that in order to perceive the real values 
 (in pictorial language) of any individual, you must beware 
 of isolating him or her ; you must merely look atten- 
 tively at the moving ocean of human faces, watching for 
 the one face more particularly interesting than the rest, 
 and catching glimpses of its fleeting expression, and 
 of the expression of its neighbours as it appears and 
 reappears. Perhaps, however, Marion's other reason 
 against the sit-down-and-stare or walk-round-and-pray 
 system of psychological study was really the stronger 
 one in his nature, the more so that he would probably 
 not have admitted its superior validity. This other 
 reason was a kind of moral scruple against getting to 
 know the secret mechanism of a soul, especially if such 
 knowledge involved an appearance of intimacy with a 
 person in whom he could never take more than a merely 
 abstract, artistic interest. It was a mean taking 
 advantage of superior strength, or the raising of expecta- 
 tions which could not be fulfilled ; for Marion, although 
 the most benevolent and serviceable of mortals, did not 
 give his heart, perhaps because he had none to give, to 
 anybody. 
 
 This scruple had occurred to Marion almost as soon as 
 he discovered himself to be studying Lady Tal ; and it
 
 Lady Tal 97 
 
 occurred to him once or twice afterwards. But he 
 despatched it satisfactorily. Lady Tal, in the first 
 place, was making use of him in the most outrageous 
 way, without scruple or excuse ; it was only just that he, 
 in his turn, should turn her to profit with equal freedom. 
 This reason, however, savoured slightly of intellectual 
 caddishness, and Marion rejected it with scorn. The 
 real one, he came to perceive, was that Lady Tal 
 gratuitously offered herself for study by her quiet, 
 aggressive assumption of inscrutability. She really 
 thrust her inscrutability down one's throat ; her face, 
 her manner, her every remark, her very novel, were all 
 so many audacious challenges to the more psychological 
 members of the community. She seemed to be playing 
 on a gong and crying : " Does anyone feel inchned to 
 solve a riddle ? Is there any person who thinks himself 
 sufficiently clever to understand me ? " And when a 
 woman takes up such an attitude, it is only natural, 
 human and proper that the first novelist who comes 
 along that way should stop and say : "I intend to get 
 to the bottom of you ; one, two, three, I am going to 
 begin." 
 
 So Jervase Marion assiduously cultivated the society 
 of Lady Atalanta, and spent most of his time instructing 
 her in the art of the novelist.
 
 VI 
 
 ONE morning Marion, by way of exception, saw and 
 studied Lady Tal without the usual medium of the 
 famous novel. It was early, with the very first autumn 
 crispness in the blue morning, in the bright sun which 
 would soon burn, but as yet barely warmed. Marion 
 was taking his usual ramble through the tortuous 
 Venetian alleys, and as usual he had found himself in 
 one of his favourite haunts, the market on the further 
 slope of the Rialto. 
 
 That market — the yellow and white awnings, and 
 the white houses against the delicate blue sky ; the 
 bales and festoons of red and green and blue and purple 
 cotton stuffs outside the little shops, and below that 
 the shawled women pattering down the bridge steps 
 towards it ; the monumental display of piled up peaches 
 and pears, and heaped up pumpkins and mysterious 
 unknown cognate vegetables, round and long, purple, 
 yellow, red, grey, among the bay leaves, the great, huge, 
 smooth, green-striped things, cut open to show their red 
 pulp, the huger things looking as if nature had tried to 
 gild and silver them unsuccessfully, tumbled on to the 
 pavement ; the butchers' shops with the gorgeous 
 bullocks' hearts and sacrificial fleeced lambs ; the endless 
 hams and sausages — all this market, under the blue sky, 
 with this lazy, active, noisy, brawling, friendly popula- 
 tion jerking and lolling about it, always seemed to 
 Marion one of the delightful spots of Venice, pleasing
 
 Lady Tal 99 
 
 him with a sense (although he knew it to be all false) 
 that here was a place where people could eat and drink 
 and laugh and live without any psychological troubles. 
 
 On this particular morning, as this imj)ression with 
 the knowledge of its falseness was as usual invading 
 Marion's consciousness, he experienced a little shock 
 of surprise, incongruity, and the sudden extinction of 
 a pleasingly unreal mood, on perceiving, coming towards 
 him, with hand cavalierly on hip and umbrella firmly 
 hitting the ground, the stately and faultlessly coated 
 and shirted and necktied figure of Lady Atalanta. 
 
 " I have had a go already at Christina,''^ she said, 
 after extending to Marion an angular though friendly 
 handshake, and a cheerful frank inscrutable smile of 
 her big blue eyes and her little red mouth. " That 
 novel is turning me into another woman : the power 
 of sinning, as the Salvationists say, has been extracted 
 out of my nature even by the rootlets ; I sat up till 
 two last night after returning from the Lido, and got 
 up this morning at six, all for the love of Christina and 
 literature. I expect Dawson will give me warning ; she 
 told me yesterday that she ' had never knoiv any other 
 lady that writes so much or used them big sheets of 
 paper, quite henormous, my lady.' Dear old place, isn't 
 it ? Ever tasted any of that fried pumpkin ? It's 
 rather nasty but quite good ; have some ? I wonder 
 we've not met here before ; I come hesre twice a week to 
 shop. You don't mind carrying parcels, do you ? '* 
 Lady Tal had stopped at one of the front stalls, and 
 having had three vast yellow paper bags filled with 
 oranges and lemons, she handed the two largest to 
 Marion. 
 
 " You'll carry them for me, won't you, there's a
 
 I oo Vanitas 
 
 good creature : like that I shall be able to get rather 
 more rolls than I usually can. It's astonishing how 
 much sick folk care for rolls. I ought to explain I'm 
 going to see some creatures at the hospital. It takes 
 too long going there in the gondola from my place, 
 so I walk. If you were to put those bags well on your 
 chest like that, under your chin, they'd be easier to hold, 
 and there'd be less chance of the oranges bobbing 
 out." 
 
 At a baker's in one of the little narrow streets near 
 the church of the Miracoli, Lady Atalanta provided 
 herself with a bag of rolls, which she swung by the string 
 to her wrist. Marion then perceived that she was 
 carrying under her arm a parcel of paper-covered books, 
 fastened with an elastic band. 
 
 " Now we shall have got everything except some 
 flowers, which I daresay we can get somewhere on the 
 way," remarked Lady Tal. " Do you mind coming 
 in here ? " and she entered one of those little grocer's 
 shops, dignified with the arms of Savoy in virtue of the 
 sale of salt and tobacco, and where a little knot of vague, 
 wide-collared individuals usually hang about among the 
 various-shaped liqueur bottles in an atmosphere of stale 
 cigar, brandy and water, and kitchen soap. 
 
 " May — I — a — a — ask for anything for you. Lady 
 Tal ? " requested Marion, taken completely by surprise 
 by the rapidity of his companion's movements. " You 
 want stamps, I presume ; may I have the honour of 
 assisting you in your purchase ? " 
 
 " Thanks, it isn't stamps ; it's snuff, and you wouldn't 
 know what sort to get." And Lady Tal, making her 
 stately way through the crowd of surprised loafers, put 
 a franc on the counter and requested the '■ presiding
 
 Lady Tal loi 
 
 female to give her four ounces of Semolina, but of the good 
 sort — " It's astonishing how faddy those old creatures 
 are about their snuff ! " remarked Lady Tal, pocketing 
 her change. " Would you put this snuff in your pocket 
 for me ? Thanks. The other sort's called Bacubino, 
 it's dark and clammy, and it looks nasty. Have you 
 ever taken snuff ? I do sometimes to please my old 
 creatures ; it makes me sneeze, you know, and they think 
 that awful fim." 
 
 As they went along Lady Atalanta suddenly per- 
 ceived, in a little green den, something which attracted 
 her attention. 
 
 " I wonder whether they're fresh ? " she mused. " I 
 suppose you can't tell a fresh egg when you see it, can 
 you, Mr Marion ? Never mind, I'll risk it. If you'll 
 take this third bag of oranges, I'll carry the eggs — 
 they might come to grief in yom- hands, you know." 
 
 " What an odious, odious creature a woman is," 
 thought Marion. He wondered, considerably out of 
 temper, why he should feel so miserable at having to 
 carry aU those oranges. Of course with three gaping 
 bags piled on his chest there was the explanation of 
 acute physical discomfort ; but that wasn't sufficient. 
 It seemed as if this terrible, aristocratic giantess were 
 doing it all on purpose to make him miserable. He saw 
 that he was intensely ridiculous in her eyes, with those 
 yellow bags against his white waistcoat and the parcel 
 of snuff in liis coat pocket ; his face was also, he thought, 
 streaming with perspiration, and he couldn't get at his 
 handkerchief. It was childish, absurd of him to mind, 
 for, after all, wasn't Lady Atalanta equally burdened ? 
 But she, \vith her packets of rolls, and packet of books, 
 and basket of eggs, and her umbrella tucked under her
 
 I o 2 Vanitas 
 
 arm, looked serene and even triumphant in her striped 
 flannel. 
 
 " I beg your pardon — would you allow me to stop a 
 minute and shift the bags to the other arm ? " Marion 
 could no longer resist that fearful agony. " If you go 
 on I'll catch you up in a second." 
 
 But just as Marion was about to rest the bags upon the 
 marble balustrade of a bridge, his paralysed arm gave 
 an unaccountable jerk, and out flew one of the oranges, 
 and rolled slowly down the stone steps of the bridge, 
 
 " I say, don't do that ! You'll have them all in the 
 canal ! " cried Lady Atalanta, as Marion quickly 
 stooped in vain pursuit of the escaped orange, the 
 movement naturally, and as if it were being done on 
 purpose, causing another orange to fly out in its turn ; 
 a small number of spectators, gondoliers and workmen 
 from under the bridge, women nursing babies at neigh- 
 bouring windows, and barefooted urchins from nowhere 
 in particular, starting up to enjoy the extraordinary 
 complicated conjuring tricks which the stout gentleman 
 in the linen coat and Panama hat had suddenly fallen 
 to execute. 
 
 " Damn the beastly things ! " ejaculated Marion, 
 forgetful of Lady Atalanta and good breeding, and 
 perceiving only the oranges jumping and rolling about, 
 and feeling his face grow redder and hotter in the glare on 
 that white stone bridge. At that moment, as he raised 
 his eyes, he saw, passing along, a large party of Americans 
 from his hotel ; Americans whom he had avoided like 
 the plague, who, he felt sure, would go home and repre- 
 sent him as a poor creature and a snob disavowing his 
 " people." He could hear them, in fancy, describing 
 how at Venice he had turned flunky to one of your
 
 Lady Tal lo 
 
 English aristocrats, who stood looldng and making game 
 of him while he ran after her oranges, " and merely 
 because she's the daughter of an Earl or Marquis or such 
 hke." 
 
 " Bless my heart, how helpless is genius when it 
 comes to practical matters ! " exclaimed Lady Atalanta, 
 And putting her various packages down carefully on the 
 parapet, she calmly collected the bounding oranges, 
 wiped them with her handkerchief, and restored them to 
 Marion, recommending him to " stick them loose in his 
 pockets." 
 
 Marion had never been in an hospital (he had been 
 only a boy, and in Europe with his mother, a Southern 
 refugee, at the time of the War), the fact striking him as 
 an omission in his novelist's education. But he felt as 
 if he would never wish to describe the one into which he 
 mechanically followed Lady Tal. With its immense, 
 immensely lofty wards, filled with greyish light, and 
 radiating hke the nave and transepts of a vast church 
 from an altar with flickering lights and kneeling figures, 
 it struck Marion, while he breathed that hot, thick air, 
 sickly with carbolic and chloride of lime, as a most grue- 
 some and quite objectionably picturesque place. He 
 had a vague notion that the creatures in the rows and 
 rows of greyish white beds ought to have St Vitus's 
 dance or leprosy or some similar mediseval disease. 
 They were nasty enough objects, he thought, as he 
 timidly followed Lady Tal's rapid and resounding foot- 
 steps, for anything. He had, for all the prosaic quahty 
 of his writings, the easily roused imagination of a nervous 
 man : and it seemed to him as if they were all of them 
 either skeletons gibbering and screeching in bed, or 
 frightful yellow and red tumid creatures, covered with
 
 1 04 Vanitas 
 
 plasters and ligatures, or old ladies recently liberated 
 from the cellar in which, as you may periodically read in 
 certain public prints, they had been kept by barbarous 
 nephews or grandchildren 
 
 " Dear me, dear me, what a dreadful place ! " he 
 kept ejaculating, as he followed Lady Atalanta, carrying 
 her bags of oranges and rolls, among the vociferating, 
 grabbing beldames in bed, and the indifferent nuns and 
 serving wenches toiling about noisily : Lady Tal going 
 methodically her way, businesslike, cheerful, giving 
 to one some snuff, to another an orange or a book, 
 laughing, joking in her bad Italian, settling the creatures' 
 disagreeable bed-clothes and pillows for them, as if, 
 instead of cosseting dying folk, she was going round to 
 the counters of some huge shop. A most painful 
 exhibition, thought Marion. 
 
 " I say, suppose you talk to her, she's a nice little 
 commonplace creature who wanted to be a school- 
 mistress and is awfully fond of reading novels — tell 
 her — I don't know how to explain it — that you write 
 novels. See, Teresina, this gentleman and I are writing 
 a book together, all about a lady who married a silly 
 husband — would you like to hear about it ? " 
 
 Stroking the thin white face, with the wide forget-me- 
 not eyes, of the pretty, thin little blonde, Lady Tal left 
 Marion, to his extreme discomfort, seated on the edge of 
 a straw chair by the side of the bed, a bag of oranges on 
 his knees and absolutely no ideas in his head. 
 
 " She is so good," remarked the little girl, opening 
 and shutting a little fan which Lady Tal had just given 
 her, " and so beautiful. Is she your sister ? She told 
 me she had a brother whom she was very fond of, but 
 I thought he was dead. She's like an angel in Paradise."
 
 Lady Tal 105 
 
 " Precisely, precisely," answered Marion, thinking 
 at the same time what an micommonly uncomfortable 
 place Paradise must, in that case, be. All this was not 
 at all what he had imagined when he had occasionally 
 written about young ladies consoling the sick ; this 
 businesslike, bouncing, cheerful shake-up-your-pillows 
 and shake-up-your-soul mode of proceeding. 
 
 Lady Tal, he decided within himself, had emphatically 
 no soul ; all he had just witnessed proved it. 
 
 " Wliy do you do it ? " he suddenly asked, as they 
 emerged from the hospital cloisters. He knew quite 
 well : merely because she was so abominably active. 
 
 " I don't know. I like ill folk. I'm always so dis- 
 gustingly well myself ; and you see with my poor 
 brother, I'd got accustomed to ill folk, so I suppose I 
 can't do without. I should like to settle in England — 
 if it weren't for all those hateful relations of mine and 
 of my husband's — and go and live in the East End and 
 look after sick creatures. At least I think I should ; 
 but I know I shouldn't." 
 
 " Why not ? " asked Marion. 
 
 " Why ? Oh, well, it's making oneself conspicuous, 
 you know, and all that. One hates to be thought 
 eccentric, of course. And then, if I went to England, 
 of course I should have to go into society, otherwise 
 people would go and say that I was out of it and had 
 been up to something or other. And if I went into 
 society, that would mean doing simply nothing else, not 
 even the little I do here. You see I'm not an independent 
 woman ; all my husband's relations are perpetually 
 ready to pull me to pieces on account of his money ! 
 There's nothing they're not prepared to invent about me. 
 I'm too poor and too expensive to do without it, and as
 
 io6 Vanitas 
 
 long as I take his money, I must see to no one being able 
 to say anything that would have annoyed him— see ? " 
 
 " I see," answered Marion. 
 
 At that moment Lady Atalanta perceived a gondola 
 turning a corner, and in it the young millionaire whom 
 she had chaffed about his sideboard. 
 
 " Hi, hi ! Mr Clarence ! " she cried, waving her 
 umbrella. " Will you take me to that curiosity-dealer's 
 this afternoon ? " 
 
 Marion looked at her, standing there on the little 
 wharf, waving her red umbrella and shouting to the 
 gondola ; her magnificent rather wooden figure more 
 impeccably magnificent, uninteresting in her mannish 
 flannel garments, her handsome pink and white face, 
 as she smiled that inexpressive smile with all the pearl- 
 like little teeth, more than ever like a big mask 
 
 " No soul, decidedly no soul," said the novelist to 
 himself. And he reflected that women without souls 
 were vaguely odious.
 
 VII 
 
 " T HAVE been wondering of late why I liked you ? " 
 -L said Lady Tal one morning at lunch, addressing 
 the remark to Marion, and cut short in her speech by a 
 burst of laughter from that odious tomboy of a cousin 
 of hers (how could she endure that girl ? Marion 
 reflected) who exclaimed, with an affectation of milk- 
 maid archness : 
 
 " Oh, Tal ! how can you be so rude to the gentleman ? 
 You oughtn't to say to people you wonder why you like 
 them. Ought she, Mr Marion ? " 
 
 Marion was silent. He felt a weak worm for disliking 
 this big blond girl with the atrocious manners, who 
 insisted on pronouncing his name Mary Anne, with 
 unfailing relish of the joke. Lady Tal did not heed the 
 interruption, but repeated, pensively, leaning her hand- 
 some cleft chin on her hand, and hacking at a peach 
 with her knife : " I have been wondering why I like 
 you, Mr Marion (I usedn't to, but made up to you for 
 Christina's benefit), because you are not a bit Uke poor 
 Gerald. But I've found out now and I'm pleased. 
 There's nothing so pleasant in this world as finding out 
 why one thinks or does things, is there ? Indeed it's the 
 only pleasant thing, besides riding in the Campagna and 
 drinking iced water on a hot day. The reason I like you 
 is l)ecause you have seen a lot of the world and of people, 
 and still take nice views of them. The people one meets 
 always think to show their cleverness by explaining 
 
 107
 
 io8 Vanitas 
 
 everjrthing by nasty little motives ; and you don't. 
 It's nice of you, and it's clever. It's cleverer than your 
 books even, you know." 
 
 In making this remark (and she made it with an 
 aristocratic indifference to being personal) Lady Atalanta 
 had most certainly hit the right nail on the head. That 
 gift, a rare one, of seeing the simple, wholesome, and even 
 comparatively noble, side of things ; of being, although 
 a pessimist, no misanthrope, was the most remarkable 
 characteristic of Jervase Marion ; it was the one wliich 
 made him, for all his old bachelor ways and his shrinking 
 from close personal contact, a man and a manly man, 
 giving this analytical and nervous person a certain 
 calmness and gentleness and strength. 
 
 But Lady Tal's remark, although in the main singu- 
 larly correct, smote him like a rod. For it so happened 
 that for once in his life Marion had not been looking with 
 impartial, serene, and unsuspecting eyes upon one of his 
 fellow-sufferers in this melancholy world ; and that one 
 creature, to whom he was not so good as he might be, was 
 just Lady Tal. 
 
 He could not really have explained how it was. But 
 there was the certainty, that while recognising in Lady 
 Tal's conversation, in her novel, in the little she told 
 him of her life, a great deal which was delicate, and even 
 noble, wherewithal to make up a somewhat unusual and 
 perhaps not very superficially attractive, but certainly 
 an original and desirable personality, he had got into the 
 habit of explaining whatever in her was obscure and 
 contradictory by unworthy reasons ; and even of making 
 allowance for the possibility of all the seeming good 
 points proving, some day, to be a delusion and a snare. 
 Perhaps it depended upon the constant criticisms he was
 
 Lady Tal 109 
 
 hearing on all sides of Lady Atalanta's character and 
 conduct : the story of her mercenary marriage, the 
 recital of the astounding want of feeling displayed upon 
 the occasion of her brother's death, and that perpetual, 
 and apparently too well founded suggestion that this 
 young lady, who possessed fifteen thousand a year and 
 apparently spent about two, must be feathering her nest 
 and neatly evading the intentions of her late lamented. 
 Moreover there was something vaguely disagreeable in 
 the extraordinary absence of human emotion displayed 
 in such portion of her biography as might be considered 
 public property. 
 
 Marion, heaven knows, didn't like women who went 
 in for grande passion ; in fact, passion, which he had 
 neither experienced nor described, was distinctly re- 
 pulsive to him. But, after all, Lady Tal was young, 
 Lady Tal was beautiful, and Lady Tal had for years and 
 years been a real and undoubted widow ; and it was 
 therefore distinctly inhuman on the part of Lady Tal 
 to have met no temptations to part with her heart, and 
 with her jointure. It was ugly ; there was no doubt 
 it was ugly. The world, after all, has a right to demand 
 that a young lady of good birth and average education 
 should have a heart. It was doubtless also, he said to 
 himself, the fault of Lady Atalanta's physique, this 
 suspicious attitude of his ; nature had bestowed upon her 
 a face like a mask, muscles which never flinched, nerves 
 apparently hidden many inches deeper than most 
 folk's : she was enigmatic, and a man has a right to 
 pause before an enigma. Furthermore — But Marion 
 could not quite understand that furthermore. 
 
 He understood it a few days later. They had had 
 the usual stance over Christina that morning ; and now
 
 1 1 o Vanitas 
 
 it was evening, and three or four people had dropped in at 
 Lady Tal's after the usual stroll at Saint Mark's. Lady 
 Tal had hired a small house, dignified with the title of 
 Palazzina, on the Zattere, It was modern, and the 
 sesthetic colony at Venice sneered at a woman with that 
 amount of money inhabiting anything short of a palace. 
 They themselves, being mainly Americans, declared 
 they couldn't feel like home in a dwelling which was not 
 possessed of historical reminiscences. The point of Lady 
 Tal's little place, as she called it, was that it possessed 
 a garden ; small, indeed, but round which, as she re- 
 marked, one solitary female could walk. In this garden 
 she and Marion were at this moment walking. The 
 ground floor windows were open, and there issued from 
 the drawing-room a sound of cups and saucers, of guitar 
 strumming and laughter, above which rose the loud 
 voice, the aristocratic Idtchenmaid pronunciation of 
 Lady Atalanta's tomboy cousin. 
 
 " Where's Tal ? I declare if Tal hasn't gone off with 
 Mary Anne ! Poor Mary Anne ! She's tellin' him all 
 about Christina, you know ; how she can't manage that 
 row between Christina and Christina's mother-in-law, 
 and the semicolons and all that. Christina's the novel, 
 you know. You'll be expected to ask for Christina at 
 your club, you know, when it comes out, Mr Clarence. 
 I've already written to all my cousins to get it from 
 Mudie's " 
 
 Marion gave a little frown, as if his boot pinched him, 
 as he walked on the gravel down there, among the dark 
 bushes, the spectral little terra-cotta statues, with the 
 rigging of the ships on the Giudecca canal black against 
 the blue evening sky, with a vague, sweet, heady smell 
 of Olea fragrans all round. Confound that girl ! Why
 
 Lady Tal i i i 
 
 couldn't he take a stroll in a garden with a handsome 
 woman of thirty without the company being informed 
 that it was only on account of Lady Tal's novel. That 
 novel, that position of literary adviser, of a kind of male 
 daily governess, would make him ridiculous. Of course 
 Lady Tal was continually making use of him, merely 
 making use of him in her barefaced and brutal manner : 
 of course she didn't care a hang about him except to help 
 her with that novel : of course as soon as that novel 
 was done with she would drop him. He knew all that, 
 and it was natural. But he really didn't see the joke 
 of being made conspicuous and grotesque before all 
 Venice 
 
 " Shan't we go in, Lady Tal ? " he said, sharply, 
 throwing away his cigarette. " Your other guests are 
 doubtless sighing for your presence." 
 
 " And this guest here is not. Oh dear, no ; there's 
 Gertrude to look after them and see to their being 
 happy ; besides, I don't care whether they are. I want 
 to speak to you. I can't understand your thinldng that 
 situation strained. I should have thought it the 
 commonest thing in the world, I mean, gracious — I 
 can't understand your not understanding ! " 
 
 Jervase Marion was in the humour when he con- 
 sidered Lady Tal a legitimate subject of study, and 
 intellectual vivisection a praiseworthy employment. 
 Such study implies, as a rule, a good deal of duplicity 
 on the part of the observer ; duplicity doubtless sancti- 
 fied, like all the rest, by the high mission of prying into 
 one's neighbour's soul. 
 
 " Well," answered Marion — he positively hated that 
 good French Alabama name of his since hearing it 
 turned into Mary Anne — " of course one understands a
 
 1 1 2 Vanitas 
 
 woman avoiding, for many reasons, the temptation of 
 one individual passion ; but a woman who makes up her 
 mind to avoid the temptation of all passion in the abstract, 
 and what is more, acts consistently and persistently with 
 this object in view, particularly when she has never 
 experienced passion at all, when she has not even 
 
 burnt the tips of her fingers once in her Hfe ; that 
 
 does seem rather far fetched, you must admit." 
 
 Lady Tal was not silent for a moment, as he expected 
 she would be. She did not seem to see the danger of 
 having the secret of her life extracted out of her. 
 
 " I don't see why you should say so, merely because 
 the person's a woman. I'm sure you must have met 
 examples enough of men who, without ever having been 
 in love, or in danger of being in love — poor little things 
 — have gone through life with a resolute policy of never 
 placing themselves in danger, of never so much as taking 
 their heart out of their waistcoat pockets to look at it, 
 lest it might suddenly be jerked out of their possession." 
 
 It was Marion who was silent. Had it not been dark, 
 Lady Tal might have seen him wince and redden ; and 
 he might have seen Lady Tal smile a very odd but 
 not disagreeable smile. And they fell to discussing the 
 technicalities of that famous novel. 
 
 Marion outstayed for a moment or two the other 
 guests. The facetious cousin was strumming in the 
 next room, trying over a Venetian song which the naval 
 captain had taught her. Marion was slowly taking a 
 third cup of tea — he wondered why he should be taking 
 so much tea, it was very bad for his nerves — seated 
 among the flowering shrubs, the bits of old brocade and 
 embroidery, the various pieces of bric-a-brac which made 
 the drawing-room of Lady Tal look, as"all distinguished
 
 Lady U'al i 1 3 
 
 modern drawing-rooms should, like a cross between a 
 flower show and a pawnbroker's, and as if the height of 
 modern upholstery consisted in avoiding the use of 
 needles and nails, and enabling the visitors to sit in a 
 little heap of variegated rags. Lady Tal was arranging 
 a lamp, which burned, or rather smoked, at this moment, 
 surrounded by lace petticoats on a carved column. 
 
 " Ah," she suddenly said, " it's extraordinary how 
 difficult it is to get oneself understood in this world. 
 I'm thinking about Christina, you know. I never do 
 expect any one to understand anything, as a matter 
 of fact. But I thought that was probably because all 
 my friends hitherto have been all frivolous poops who 
 read only the Peerage and the sporting papers. I should 
 have thought, now, that writing novels would have made 
 you different. I suppose, after all, it's all a question of 
 physical constitution and blood relationship — being able 
 to understand other folk, I mean. If one's molecules 
 aren't precisely the same and in the same place (don't 
 be surprised, I've been reading Carpenter's ' Mental 
 Physiology '), it's no good. It's certain that the only 
 person in the world who has ever understood me one bit 
 was Gerald." 
 
 Lady Tal's back was turned to Marion, her tall figure 
 a mere dark mass against the light of the lamp, and the 
 lit-up white wall behind. 
 
 " And still," suddenly remarked Marion, " you were 
 not — not — very much attached to your brother, were 
 
 you ? " 
 
 The words were not out of Marion's mouth before 
 he positively trembled at them. Good God ! what had 
 he allowed himself to say ? But he had no time to think 
 of his own words. Lady Tal had turned round, her eyes
 
 114 Vanitas 
 
 fell upon him. Her face was pale, very quiet ; not 
 angry, but disdainful. With one hand she continued 
 to adjust the lamp, 
 
 " I see," she said coldly, " you have heard all about 
 my extraordinary behaviour, or want of extraordinary 
 behaviour. It appears I did surprise and shock my 
 acquaintances very much by my proceedings after 
 Gerald's death. I suppose it really is the right thing 
 for a woman to go into hysterics and take to her bed 
 and shut herself up for three months at least, when her 
 only brother dies. I didn't think of that at the time ; 
 otherwise I should have conformed, of course. It's 
 my policy always to conform, you know. I see now 
 that I made a mistake, showed a want of savoir-vivre, 
 and all that — I stupidly consulted my own preferences, 
 and I happened to prefer keeping myself well in hand. I 
 didn't seem to like people's sympathy ; now the world, 
 you know, has a right to give one its sympathies under 
 certain circumstances, just as a foreign man has a right 
 to leave his card when he's been introduced. Also, I 
 knew that Gerald would have just hated my making 
 myself a motley to the view — you mightn't think it, but 
 we used to read Shakespeare's sonnets, he and I — and, 
 you see, I cared for only one mortal thing in the world, 
 to do what Gerald wanted. I never have cared for any 
 other thing, really ; after all, if I don't want to be con- 
 spicuous, it's because Gerald would have hated it — I 
 never shall care for anything in the world besides that. 
 All the rest's mere unreality. One thinks one's aUve, 
 but one isn't." 
 
 Lady Atalanta had left off fidgeting with the lamp. 
 Her big blue eyes had all at once brightened with tears 
 which did not fall ; but as she spoke the last words, in a
 
 Lady Tal 1 1 5 
 
 voice suddenly husky, she looked down at Marion with 
 an odd smile, tearing a paper spill with her large, well- 
 shaped fingers as she did so. 
 
 " Do you see ? " she added, with that half-con- 
 temptuous smile, calmly mopping her eyes. " That's 
 how it is, Mr Marion." 
 
 A sudden light illuminated Marion's mind ; a light, 
 and with it something else, he knew not what, some- 
 thing akin to music, to perfume, beautiful, dehghtful, 
 but solemn. He was aware of being moved, horribly 
 grieved, but at the same moment intensely glad ; he 
 was on the point of saying he didn't know beforehand 
 what, something which, however, would be all right, 
 natural, like the things, suddenly improvised, which 
 one says occasionally to children. 
 
 " My dear young lady— — " 
 
 But the words did not pass Marion's lips. He re- 
 membered suddenly by what means and in what spirit 
 he had elicited this unexpected burst of feeling on the 
 part of Lady Tal. He could not let her go on, he could 
 not take advantage of her ; he had not the courage to 
 say : " Lady Tal, I am a miserable cad who was prying 
 into your feeUngs ; I'm not fit to be spoken to ! " And 
 with the intolerable shame at his own caddishness came 
 that old shrinking from any sort of spiritual contact 
 with others. 
 
 " Quite so, quite so," he merely answered, looking 
 at his boots and moving that ring of his mother's up 
 and down his watch chain. " I quite understand. And 
 as a matter of fact you are quite correct in your remark 
 about our not being always alive. Or rather we are 
 usually alive, when we are living our humdrum little 
 natural existence, full of nothing at all ; and during the
 
 1 1 6 Vanitas 
 
 moments when we do really seem to be alive, to be 
 feeling, living, we are not ourselves, but somebody 
 else." 
 
 Marion had had no intention of making a cynical 
 speech. He had been aware of having behaved like a 
 cad to Lady Tal, and in consequence had somehow 
 informed Lady Tal he considered her as an impostor. 
 He had reacted against that first overwhelming sense of 
 pleasure at the discovery of the lady's much- questioned 
 soul. Now he was prepared to tell her that she had 
 none. 
 
 " Yes," answered Lady Tal, lighting a cigarette over 
 the high lamp, " that's just it. I shall borrow that 
 remark and put it into Christina. You may use up any 
 remark of mine, in return, you know." 
 
 She stuck out her under lip with that ugly little 
 cynical movement which was not even her own pro- 
 perty, but borrowed from women more trivial than her- 
 self, like the way of carrpng the elbows, and the pro- 
 nunciation of certain words : a mark of caste, as a blue 
 triangle on one's chin or a yellow butterfly on one's 
 forehead might be, and not more graceful or engaging. 
 
 " One thinks one has a soul sometimes," she mused. 
 " It isn't true. It would prevent one's clothes fitting, 
 wouldn't it ? One really acts in tliis way or that because 
 it's better form. You see here on the Continent it's good 
 form to tear one's hair and roll on the floor, and to pre- 
 tend to have a soul ; we've got beyond that, as we've 
 got beyond women trying to seem to know about art and 
 literature. Here they do, and make idiots of them- 
 selves. Just now you thought I'd got a soul, didn't 
 you, Mr Marion ? You've been wondering all along 
 whether I had one. For a minute I managed to make
 
 Lady Tal 1 1 7 
 
 you believe it — it was rather mean of me, wasn't it ? 
 I haven't got one. I'm a great deal too well-bred." 
 
 There was a little soreness under all this banter ; 
 but how could she banter ? Marion felt he detested 
 the woman, as she put out her elbow and extended a stiff 
 handsome hand, and said : 
 
 " Remember poor old Christina to-morrow morning, 
 there's a kind man," with that little smile of close eyes 
 and close lips. He detested her just in proportion as he 
 had liked her half an hour ago. Remembering that little 
 gush of feeling of his own, he thought her a base creature, 
 as he walked across the little moonlit square with the 
 well in the middle and the tall white houses all round. 
 
 Jervase Marion, the next morning, woke up with the 
 consciousness of having been very unfair to Lady Tal, 
 and, what was worse, very unfair to himself. It was 
 one of the drawbacks of friendship (for, after all, tliis was 
 a kind of friendship) that he occasionally caught himself 
 saying things quite different from his thoughts and feel- 
 ings, masquerading towards people in a manner distinctly 
 humiliating to his self-respect. Marion had a desire to be 
 simple and truthful ; but somehow it was difficult to be 
 simple and truthful as soon as other folk came into play ; 
 it was difl&cult and disagreeable to show one's real self ; 
 that was another reason for living solitary on a top flat 
 at Westminster, and descending therefrom in the body, 
 but not in the spirit, to move about among mere acquaint- 
 ances, disembodied things, with whom there was no fear 
 of real contact. On this occasion he had let himself 
 come in contact with a fellow-creature ; and behold, as 
 a result, he had not only behaved more or less like a cad, 
 but he had done that odious thing of pretending to feel 
 differently from how he really did.
 
 1 1 8 Vanitas 
 
 From how he had really felt at the moment, be it well 
 understood. Of course Marion, in his capacity of modern 
 analjdiical novelist, was perfectly well aware that feelings 
 are mere momentary matters ; and that the feeling 
 which had possessed him the previous evening, and still 
 possessed him at the present moment, would not last. 
 The feeling, he admitted to himself (it is much easier to 
 admit such things to one's self, when one makes the 
 proviso that it's all a mere passing phase, one's eternal 
 immutable self, looldng on placidly at one's momentary 
 changing self), the feeling in question was vaguely 
 admiring and pathetic, as regarded Lady Tal. He even 
 confessed to himself that there entered into it a slight 
 dose of poetry. This big, correct young woman, with 
 the beautiful inexpressive face and the ugly inexpressive 
 manners, carrying through life a rather exotic little 
 romance which no one must suspect, possessed a charm 
 for the imagination, a decided value. Excluded for some 
 reason (Marion blurred out his knowledge that the 
 reasons were the late Walkenshaw's thousands) from the 
 field for emotions and interests which handsome, big 
 young women have a right to, and transferring them all 
 to a nice crippled brother, who had of course not been 
 half as nice as she imagined, living a conventional life, 
 with a religion of love and fidelity secreted within it, 
 this well-born and well-dressed Countess Olivia of modern _ 
 days, had appealed very strongly to a certain carefully 
 guarded tenderness and chivalry in Marion's nature ; 
 he saw her, as she had stood arranging that lamp, with 
 those unexpected tears brimming in her eyes. 
 
 Decidedly. Only that, of course, wasn't the way to 
 treat it. There was nothing at all artistic in that, 
 nothing modern. And Marion was essentially modern
 
 Lady Tal 1 1 9 
 
 in his novels. Lady Tal, doing the Lady Olivia, with 
 a dead brother in the background, sundry dukes in the 
 middle distance, and no enchanting page (people seemed 
 unanimous in agreeing that Lady Tal had never been in 
 love) perceptible anywhere ; all that was pretty, but 
 it wasn't the right thing. Jervase Marion thought Lady 
 Tal painfully conventional (although of course her con- 
 ventionality gave all the value to her romantic quality) 
 because she slightly dropped her final gr's, and visibly 
 stuck out her elbows, and resolutely refused to display 
 emotion of any kind. Marion himself was firmly 
 wedded to various modes of looking at human concerns, 
 which corresponded, in the realm of novel-writing, to 
 these same modern conventionalities of Lady Atalanta's. 
 The point of it, evidently, must be that the Lady of his 
 novel would have lived for years under the influence of 
 an invalid friend (the brother should be turned into a 
 woman with a mortal malady, and a bad husband, 
 something in the way of Emma and Tony in " Diana of 
 the Crossways," of intellectual and moral quality 
 immensely superior to her own) ; then, of course, after 
 the death of the Princess of Trasimeno (she being the 
 late Gerald Burne), Lady Tal (Marion couldn't fix on a 
 name for her) would gradually be sucked back into 
 frivolous and futile and heartless society ; the liic of 
 the whole story being the slow ebbing of that noble 
 influence, the daily encroachments of the baser sides 
 of Lady Tal's own nature, and of the base side of the 
 world. She would have a chance, say by marrying a 
 comparatively poor man, of securing herself from that 
 rising tide of worldly futility and meanness ; the reader 
 must think that she really was going to love the man, 
 to choose him. Or rather, it would be more modern
 
 I 2 o Vanitas 
 
 and artistic, less romantic, if the intelligent reader were 
 made to foresee the dismal necessity of Lady Tal's final 
 absorption into moral and intellectual nothingness. 
 Yes — the sort of thing she would live for, a round of 
 monotonous dissipation, which couldn't amuse her ; of 
 expenditure merely for the sake of expenditure, of con- 
 ventionality merely for the sake of conventionality — 
 and the sham, clever, demoralised women, with their 
 various semi-imaginary grievances against the world, 
 their husbands and children, their feeble self-conscious 
 hankerings after mesmerism, spiritualism, Buddhism, 
 
 and the other forms of intellectual adulteration he 
 
 saw it all. Marion threw his cigar into the canal, and 
 nursed his leg tighter, as he sat all alone in his gondola, 
 and looked up at the bay trees and oleanders, the 
 yellow straw blinds of Lady Tal's little house on 
 the Zattere. 
 
 It would make a capital novel. Marion's mind began 
 to be inundated with details : all those conversations 
 about Lady Tal rushed back into it, her conventionality, 
 perceptible even to others, her disagreeable parsimonious- 
 ness, visibly feathering her nest with the late Walken- 
 shaw's money, while quite unable to screw up her 
 courage to deliberately forego it, that odd double- 
 graspingness of nature. 
 
 That was evidently the final degradation. It would 
 be awfully plucky to put it in, after showing what the 
 woman had been and might have been ; after shoMang 
 her coquettings with better things (the writing of that 
 novel, for instance, for which he must find an equivalent). 
 It would be plucky, modern, artistic, to face the excessive 
 
 sordidness of this ending. And still — and still 
 
 Marion felt a feeble repugnance to putting it in ; it
 
 Lady Tal i 2 i 
 
 seemed too horrid. And at the same moment, there 
 arose in him that vague, disquieting sense of being a 
 cad, which had distressed him that evening. To suspect 
 a woman of all that — and yet, Marion answered himself 
 with a certain savageness, he knew it to be the case.
 
 VIII 
 
 THEY had separated from the rest of the pic- 
 nickers, and were walking up and down that 
 Httle orchard or field — rows of brown maize distaffs 
 and tangles of reddening half trodden-down maize 
 leaves, and patches of tall grass powdered with hem- 
 lock mider the now rather battered vine garlands, 
 the pomegranate branches weighed down by their 
 vermilion fruit, the peach branches maldng a 
 Japanese pattern of narrow crimson leaves against 
 the blue sky — that odd cultivated corner in the God- 
 forsaken little marsh island, given up to sea-gulls and 
 picnickers, of Torcello. 
 
 " Poor little Clarence," mused Lady Tal, alluding to 
 the rather feeble-minded young millionaire, who had 
 brought them there, five gondolas full of women in lilac 
 and pink and staw-coloured frocks, and men in white 
 coats, three guitars, a banjo, and two mandolins, and the 
 corresponding proportion of table linen, knives and forks, 
 pies, bottles, and sweetmeats with crinkled papers round 
 them. " Poor little Clarence, he isn't a bad little thing, 
 is he ? He wouldn't be bad to a woman who married 
 him, would he ? " 
 
 " He would adore her," answered Jervase Marion, 
 walking up and down that orchard by Lady Tal's side. 
 " He would give her everything the heart of woman 
 could desire ; carriages, horses, and diamonds, and 
 frocks from Worth, and portraits by Lenbach and 
 
 122
 
 Lady Tal 123 
 
 Sargent, and bric-a-brac, and — ever so much money 
 
 for charities, hospitals, that sort of thing and 
 
 and complete leisure and freedom and opportunities for 
 enjoying the company of men not quite so well off as 
 himself." 
 
 Marion stopped short, his hands thrust in his pockets, 
 and with that frown which made people tliink that his 
 boots pinched. He was looking down at his boots at 
 this moment, though he was really thinking of that 
 famous novel, his, not Lady Tal's ; so Lady Tal may 
 have perhaps thought it was the boots that made him 
 frown, and speak in a short, cross little way. Apparently 
 she thought so, for she took no notice of his looks, his 
 intonation, or his speech. 
 
 " Yes," she continued musing, striking the ground 
 with her umbrella, " he's a good little thing. It's good 
 to bring us all to Torcello, with all that food and those 
 guitars, and banjos and things, particularly as we none 
 of us throw a word at him in return. And he seems so 
 pleased. It shows a very amiable, self-effacing dis- 
 position, and that's, after all, the chief thing in marriage. 
 But, Lord ! how dreary it would be to see that man at 
 breakfast, and lunch, and dinner ! or if one didn't, 
 merely to know that there he must be, having breakfast, 
 lunch and dinner somewhere — for I suppose he would 
 have to have them — that man existing somewhere on 
 the face of the globe, and speaking of one as ' my wife.' 
 Fancy knowing the creature was always smiling, what- 
 ever one did, and never more jealous than my umbrella. 
 Wouldn't it feel like being one of the fish in that tank 
 we saw ? Wouldn't Kving with the Bishop — is he a 
 bishop ? — of Torcello, in that musty little house with all 
 the lichen stains and mosquito nests, and nothing but
 
 124 Vanitas 
 
 Attila's throne to call upon — be fun compared with that ? 
 Yes, I suppose it's wise to marry Clarence. I suppose 
 I shall do right in making him marry my cousin. You 
 know " — she added, spealdng all these words slowly — 
 " I could make liim marry anybody, because he wants 
 to marry me." 
 
 Marion gave a little start as Lady Tal had slowly 
 pronounced those two words, " my cousin." Lady 
 Tal noticed it. 
 
 " You thought I had contemplated having Clarence 
 myself ? " she said, looking at the novelist with a 
 whimsical, amused look. " Well, so I have. I have 
 contemplated a great many things, and not had the 
 courage to do them. I've contemplated going off to 
 Germany, and studying nursing ; and going off to 
 France, and studying painting ; I've contemplated 
 turning Cathohc, and going into a convent. I've 
 contemplated — well — I'm contemplating at present — 
 becoming a great novehst, as you know. I've con- 
 templated marrying poor men, and becoming their 
 amateur charwoman ; and I've contemplated marrjdng 
 rich men, and becoming — well, whatever a penniless 
 woman does become when she marries a rich man ; but 
 I've done that once before, and once is enough of any 
 experience in life, at least for a person of philosophic 
 cast of mind, don't you tliink ? I confess I have been 
 contemplating the possibility of marrpng Clarence, 
 though I don't see my way to it. You see, it's not 
 exactly a pleasant position to be a widow and not to be 
 one, as I am, in a certain sense. Also, I'm bored with 
 living on my poor husband's money, particularly as I 
 know he wished me to find it as inconvenient as possible 
 to do so. I'm bored with keeping the capital from that
 
 Lady Tal i 2 
 
 wretched boy and his mother, who would get it all as 
 soon as I was safely married again. That's it. As a 
 matter of fact I'm bored with all life, as I daresay most 
 people are ; but to marry this particular Clarence, or 
 any other Clarence that may be disporting himself about, 
 wouldn't somehow diminish the boringness of things. 
 Do you see ? " 
 
 " I see," answered Marion. Good Heavens, what 
 a thing it is to be a psychological novelist ! and how 
 exactly he had guessed at the reality of Lady Atalanta's 
 character and situation. He would scarcely venture 
 to write that novel of his ; he might as well call it Lady 
 Tal at once. It was doubtless this discovery which made 
 him grow suddenly very red and feel an intolerable 
 desire to say he knew not what. 
 
 They continued walldng up and down that little 
 orchard, the brown maize leaves all around, the bright 
 green and vermilion enamel of the pomegranate trees, 
 the Japanese pattern, red and yellow, of the peach 
 branches, against the blue sky above. 
 
 " My dear Lady Tal," began Marion, " my dear 
 young lady, will you allow — an elderly student of 
 human nature to say — how — I fear it must seem very 
 impertinent — how thoroughly — taking your whole 
 situation as if it were that of a third person — he under- 
 standing its difficulties — and, taldng the situation no 
 longer quite as that of a third person, how earnestly he 
 hopes that " 
 
 Marion was going to say " you will not derogate from 
 the real nobility of your nature." But only a fool could 
 say such a thing ; besides, of course. Lady Tal tnust 
 derogate. So he finished ofi : 
 
 " That events will bring some day a perfectly satis-
 
 126 Vanitas 
 
 factory, though perhaps unforeseen, conclusion for 
 you." 
 
 Lady Tal was paying no attention. She plucked 
 one of the long withered peach leaves, delicate, and red, 
 and transparent, like a Chinese visiting card, and began 
 to pull it through her fingers. 
 
 " You see," she said, " of the income my husband 
 left me, I've been taking only as much as seemed 
 necessary — about two thousand a year. I mean neces- 
 sary that people shouldn't see that I'm doing this sort 
 of thing ; because, after all, I suppose a woman could 
 live on less, though I am an expensive woman. The 
 rest, of course, I've been letting accumulate for the heir ; 
 I couldn't give it him, for that would have been going 
 against my husband's will. But it's rather boring to 
 feel one's keeping that boy — such a nasty young brute as 
 he is — and his horrid mother out of all that money, 
 merely by being there. It's rather humiliating, but it 
 would be more humiliating to marry another man for his 
 money. And I don't suppose a poor man would have 
 me ; and perhaps I wouldn't have a poor man. Now, 
 suppose I were the heroine of your novel — you know you 
 are writing a novel about me, that's what makes you so 
 patient with me and Christina, you're just walking 
 round, and looking at me " 
 
 " Oh, my dear Lady Tal — how — how can you think 
 such a thing ! " gobbled out Marion indignantly. And 
 really, at the moment of speaking, he did feel a perfectly 
 unprofessional interest in this yoimg lady, and was 
 considerably aggrieved at this accusation. 
 
 " Aren't you ? Well, I thought you were. You 
 see I have novel on the brain. Well, just suppose you 
 were writing that novel, with me for a heroine, what
 
 Lady Tal i 2 7 
 
 would you advise me ? One has got accustomed to 
 having certain things — a certain amount of clothes, and 
 bric-a-brac and horses, and so forth, and to consider them 
 necessary. And yet, I think if one were to lose them all 
 to-morrow, it wouldn't make much difference. One 
 would merely say : ' Dear me, what's become of it all ? ' 
 And yet I suppose one does require them — other people 
 have them, so I suppose it's right one should have them 
 also. Other people like to come to Torcello in five 
 gondolas with three guitars, a banjo, and lunch, and to 
 spend two hours feeding and littering the grass with 
 paper bags ; so I suppose one ought to like it too. If 
 it's right, I Kke it. I always conform, you know ; only 
 it's rather dull work, don't you think, considered as an 
 interest in life ? Everything is dull work, for the matter 
 of that, except dear old Christina. What do you think 
 one might do to make things a little less dull ? But 
 perhaps everything is equally dull " 
 
 Lady Tal raised one of those delicately-pencilled, 
 immensely arched eyebrows of hers, with a sceptical 
 little sigh, and looked in front of her, where they were 
 standing. 
 
 Before them rose the feathery brown and lilac of 
 the little marsh at the end of the orchard, long seeding 
 reeds, sere grasses, sea lavender, and Michaelmas daisy ; 
 and above that delicate bloom, on an unseen strip of 
 lagoon, moved a big yellow and brown sail, slowly 
 flapping against the blue sky. From the orchard behind 
 rose at intervals the whirr of a belated cicala ; they 
 heard the dry maize leaves crack beneath their feet. 
 
 " It's all very lovely," remarked Lady Tal pensively ; 
 " but it doesn't somehow fit in properly. It's silly for 
 people like me to come to such a place. As a rule, since
 
 128 Vanitas 
 
 Gerald's death, I only go for walks in civilised places : 
 they're more in harmony with my frocks." 
 
 Jervase Marion did not answer. He leaned against 
 the bole of a peach tree, looking out at the lilac and 
 brown sea marsh and the yellow sail, seeing them with 
 that merely physical intentness which accompanies 
 great mental preoccupation. He was greatly moved. 
 He was aware of a fearful reponsibility. Yet neither 
 the emotion nor the responsibility made him wretched, 
 as he always fancied that all emotion or responsibility 
 must. 
 
 He seemed suddenly to be in this young woman's 
 place, to feel the already begun, and rapid increasing 
 withering-up of this woman's soul, the dropping away 
 from it of all real, honest, vital interests. She seemed 
 to him in horrible danger, the danger of something like 
 death. And there was but one salvation : to give up 
 
 that money, to make herself free Yes, yes, there was 
 
 nothing for it but that. Lady Tal, who usually struck 
 him as so oppressively grown up, powerful, able to cope 
 with everything, affected him at this moment as a some- 
 thing very young, helpless, almost childish ; he under- 
 stood so well that during all those years this big woman 
 in her stiff clothes, with her inexpressive face, had been 
 a mere child in the hands of her brother, that she had 
 never thought, or acted, or felt for herself ; that she had 
 not lived. 
 
 Give up that money ; give up that money ; marry 
 some nice young fellow who will care for you ; become 
 
 the mother of a lot of nice little children The 
 
 words went on and on in Marion's mind, close to his 
 lips ; but they could not cross them. He almost saw 
 those children of hers, the cut of their pinafores and
 
 Lady Tal 1 2 9 
 
 sailor clothes, the bend of their blond and pink necks ; 
 and that nice young husband, blond of course, tall of 
 course, with vague, regular features, a little dull, perhaps, 
 but awfully good. It was so obvious, so right. At the 
 same time it seemed rather tame ; and Marion, he didn't 
 know why, while perceiving its extreme rightness and 
 delightfulness, couldn't help wincing a little bit at the 
 prospect 
 
 Lady Tal must have been engaged simultaneously 
 in some similar contemplation, for she suddenly turned 
 round, and said : 
 
 " But after all, anything else might perhaps be just as 
 boring as all this. And fancy having given up that 
 money all for nothing ; one would feel such a fool. On 
 the whole, my one interest in Ufe is evidently destined 
 to be Christina, and the solution of all my doubts will be 
 the appearance of the ' New George EUot of fashionable 
 life ' ; don't you think that sounds like the heading in 
 one of your American papers, the Buffalo Independent, 
 or Milwaukee Republican ? " 
 
 Marion gave a little mental start. 
 
 " Just so, just so," he answered, hurriedly : " I think 
 it would be a fatal thing — a very fatal thing for you to — 
 well — to do anything rash, my dear Lady Tal. After 
 all, we must remember that there is such a thing as habit ; 
 a woman accustomed to the life you lead, although I don't 
 deny it may sometimes seem dull, would be committing 
 a mistake, in my opinion a great mistake, in depriving 
 herself, for however excellent reasons, of her fortune. 
 Life is dull, but, on the whole, the Hfe we happen to Uve 
 is usually the one which suits us best. My own life, for 
 instance, strikes me at moments, I must confess, as a 
 trifle dull. Yet I should be most unwise to change it,
 
 130 Vanitas 
 
 most unwise. I think you are quite right in supposing 
 that novel-writing, if you persevere in it, will afford 
 you a — very — well — a — considerable interest in life." 
 
 Lady Tal yawned under her parasol. 
 
 " Don't you think it's time for us to go back to the rest 
 of our rabble ? " she asked. " It must be quite three- 
 quarters of an hour since we finished lunch, so I suppose 
 it's time for tea, or food of some sort. Have you ever 
 reflected, Mr Marion, how little there would be in picnics, 
 and in Hfe in general, if one couldn't eat a fresh meal 
 every three-quarters of an hour ? "
 
 IX 
 
 FEW things, of the many contradictory things of 
 this world, are more mysterious than the occasional 
 certainty of sceptical men. Marion was one of the most 
 sceptical of sceptical novelists ; the instinct that nothing 
 really depended upon its supposed or official cause, that 
 nothing ever produced its supposed or official effect, that 
 all things were always infinitely more important or unim- 
 portant than represented, that nothing is much use to 
 anything, and the world a mystery and a muddle ; this 
 instinct, so natural to the psychologist, regularly honey- 
 combed his existence, making it into a mere shifting 
 sand, quite imfit to carry the human weight. Yet at this 
 particular moment, Marion firmly believed that if only 
 Lady Atalanta could be turned into a tolerable novelist, 
 the whole problem of Lady Atalanta's existence would 
 be satisfactorily solved, if only she could be taught con- 
 struction, style, punctuation, and a few other items ; 
 if only one could get into her head the difference 
 between a well-written thing and an ill-written thing, 
 then, considering her undoubted talent — for Marion's 
 opinion of Lady Tal's talent had somehow increased 
 with a bound. Why he should think Christina a more 
 remarkable performance now that he had been tinkering 
 at it for six weeks, it is difficult to perceive. He seemed 
 certainly to see much more in it. Through that extra- 
 ordinary difficulty of expression, he now felt the shape 
 of a personality, a personality contradictory, enig- 
 
 131
 
 I 22 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 matical, not sure of itself, groping, as it were, to the 
 light. Christina was evidently the real Lady Tal, 
 struggling through that overlaying of habits and pre- 
 judices which constituted the false one. 
 
 So Christina could not be given too much care ; and 
 certainly no novel was ever given more, both by its 
 author and by its critic. There was not a chapter, and 
 scarcely a paragraph, which had not been dissected by 
 Marion and re-written by Lady Tal ; the critical insight 
 of the one being outdone only by the scribbling energy of 
 the other. And now, it would soon be finished. There 
 was only that piece about Christina's reconciliation 
 with her sister-in-law to get into shape. Somehow or 
 other the particular piece seemed intolerably difficult 
 to do ; the more Lady Tal worked at it, the worse it 
 grew ; the more Marion expounded his views on the 
 subject, the less did she seem able to grasp them. 
 
 They were seated on each side of the big deal table, 
 which, for the better development of Christina, Lady 
 Tal had installed in her drawing-room, and which at this 
 moment presented a lamentable confusion of foolscap, 
 of mutilated pages, of slips for gumming on, of gum- 
 pots, and scissors. The scissors, however, were at 
 present hidden from view, and Lady Tal, stooping over 
 the litter, was busily engaged looking for them. 
 
 " Confound those beastly old scissors ! " she ex- 
 claimed, shaking a heap of MS. with considerable violence. 
 
 Marion, on his side, gave a feeble stir to the mass of 
 paper, and said, rather sadly : " Are you sure you left 
 them on this table ? " 
 
 He felt that something was going wrong. Lady Tal 
 had been unusually restive about the alterations he 
 wanted her to make.
 
 Lady Tal 133 
 
 " You are slanging those poor scissors because you 
 are out of patience with things in general, Lady Tal." 
 
 She raised her head, and leaning both her long, well- 
 shaped hands on the table, looked full at Marion : 
 
 " Not with things in general, but with things in 
 particular. With Christina, in the first place ; and then 
 with myself ; and then with you, Mr Marion." 
 
 " With me ? " answered Marion, forcing out a smile 
 of pseudo-surprise. He had felt all along that she was 
 irritated with him this morning. 
 
 " With you " — went on the lady, continuing to 
 rummage for the scissors — " with you, because I don't 
 think you've been quite fair. It isn't fair to put it 
 into an unfortunate creature's head that she is an 
 incipient George EHot, when you know that, if she were 
 to slave till doomsday, she couldn't produce a novel 
 fit for the Family Herald. It's very ungrateful of me 
 to complain, but you see it is rather hard lines upon me. 
 You can do all this sort of thing as easy as winking, 
 and you imagine that everyone else must. You put 
 all your own ideas into poor Christina, and you just 
 expect me to be able to carry them out, and when I 
 make a hideous hash, you're not satisfied. You think 
 of that novel just as if it were you writing it — you know 
 you do. Well, then, when a woman discovers at last 
 that she can't make the beastly thing any better ; that 
 she's been made to hope too much, and that too much 
 is asked of her, you understand it's rather irritating. 
 I am sick of re-writing that thing, sick of every creature 
 in it." 
 
 And Lady Tal gave an angry toss to the sheets of 
 manuscript with the long pair of dressmaker's scissors, 
 which she had finally miburied. Marion felt a httle
 
 1 34 Vanitas 
 
 pang. The pang of a clever man who discovers himself 
 to be perpetrating a stupidity. He frowned that little 
 frown of the tight boots. 
 
 Quite true. He saw, all of a sudden, that he really 
 had been over-estimating Lady Tal's Uterary powers. 
 It appeared to him monstrous. The thought made him 
 redden. To what unjustifiable lengths had his interest 
 in the novel — the novel in the abstract, anybody's 
 novel ; and (he confessed to himself) the interest in 
 one novel in particular, his own, the one in which Lady 
 Tal should figure — led him away ! Perceiving himself 
 violently to be in the wrong, he proceeded to assume 
 the manner, as is the case with most of us under similar 
 circumstances (perhaps from a natural instinct of 
 balancing matters) of a person conscious of being in 
 the right. 
 
 " I think," he said, dryly, " that you have rather 
 overdone this novel, Lady Tal — worked at it too much, 
 talked of it too much too, sickened yourself with it." 
 
 " — And sickened others," put in Lady Atalanta, 
 gloomily. 
 
 " No, no, no — not others — only yourself, my dear 
 young lady," said Marion, paternally, in a way which 
 clearly meant that she had expressed the complete 
 truth, being a rude woman, but that he, being a polite 
 man, could never admit it. As a matter of fact, Marion 
 was not in the least sick of Christina, quite the reverse. 
 
 " You see," he went on, plapng with the elastic 
 band of one of the packets of MS., " you can't be ex- 
 pected to know these things. But no professed novelist 
 — no one of any experience — no one, allow me to say so, 
 except a young lady, could possibly have taken such an 
 overdose of novel-writing as you have. Why, you have
 
 Lady Tal 135 
 
 done in six weeks what ought to have taken six months ! 
 The result, naturally, is that you have lost all sense of 
 proportion and quality ; you really can't see your novel 
 any longer, that's why you feel depressed about it." 
 
 Lady Tal was not at all mollified. 
 
 " That wasn't a reason for making me believe I was 
 going to be George Eliot and Ouida rolled into one, with 
 the best qualities of Goethe and Dean Swift into the 
 bargain," she exclaimed. 
 
 Marion frowned, but this time internally. He really 
 had encouraged Lady Tal quite unjustifiably. He 
 doubted, suddenly, whether she would ever get a pub- 
 lisher ; therefore he smiled, and remarked gently : 
 
 " Well, but — in matters of behef, there are two parties, 
 Lady Tal. Don't you think you may be partly re- 
 sponsible for this — this little misapprehension ? " 
 
 Lady Tal did not answer. The insolence of the Ossian 
 was roused. She merely looked at Marion from head 
 to foot ; and the look was ineffably scornful. It 
 seemed to say : " This is what comes of a woman Uke 
 me associating with Americans and noveHsts." 
 
 " I've not lost patience," she said, after a moment ; 
 " don't think that. When I make up my mind to a 
 thing I just do it. So I shall finish Christina, and print 
 her and publish her, and dedicate her to you. Only, 
 catch me ever writing another novel again ! — and " — 
 she added, smiling with her closed teeth as she extended 
 a somewhat stifi hand to Marion — " catch you reading 
 another novel of mine again either, now that you've 
 made all the necessary studies of me for your novel ! " 
 
 Marion smiled politely. But he ran downstairs, and 
 through the narrow Uttle paved lane to the ferry at 
 San Vio with a bent head.
 
 136 Vanitas 
 
 He had been a fool, a fool, he repeated to himself. 
 Not, as he had thought before, by exposing Lady Tal 
 to disappointment and humihation, but by exposing 
 himself. 
 
 Yes, he understood it all. He understood it when, 
 scarcely out of Lady Tal's presence, he caught himself, 
 in the garden, looking up at her windows, half expecting 
 to see her, to hear some rather rough joke thrown at him 
 
 as a greeting, just to show she was sorry He 
 
 understood it still better, when, every time the waiter 
 knocked in the course of the day, he experienced a faint 
 expectation that it might be a note from Lady Tal, a 
 line to say : " I was as cross as two sticks, this morning, 
 wasn't I ? " or merely : " don't forget to come to- 
 morrow." 
 
 He understood. He and the novel, both chucked 
 aside impatiently by this selfish, capricious, imperious 
 young aristocrat : the two things identified, and both 
 now rejected as unworthy of taking up more of her 
 august attention ! Marion felt the insult to the novel 
 — her novel — almost more than to himself. After all, 
 how could Lady Tal see the difference between him and 
 the various mashers of her acquaintance, perceive that 
 he was the salt of the earth ? She had not wherewithal 
 to perceive it. But that she should not perceive the 
 dignity of her own work, how infinitely finer that novel 
 was than herself, how it represented all her own best 
 possibiHties ; that she should be ungrateful for the 
 sensitiveness with which he had discovered its merit, 
 her merits, in the midst of that confusion of illiterate 
 
 fashionable rubbish 
 
 And when that evening, having his coffee at St Mark's, 
 he saw Lady Tal's stately figure, her white dress, amongst
 
 Lady Tal 137 
 
 the promenaders in the moonlight, a rabble of young 
 men and women at her heels, it struck him suddenly 
 that something was over. He thought that, if Lady 
 Tal came to London next spring, he would not call upon 
 her unless sent for ; and he was sure she would not send 
 for him, for as to Christina, Christina would never get 
 as far as the proof-sheets ; and unless Christina re- 
 appeared on the surface he also would remain at the 
 bottom. . 
 
 Marion got up from his table, and leaving the brightly 
 illuminated square and the crowd of summer-like 
 promenaders, he went out on to the Riva, and walked 
 slowly towards the arsenal. The contrast was striking. 
 Out here it looked already like winter. There were no 
 chairs in front of the cafes, there were scarcely any 
 gondola -lights at the mooring places. The passers-by 
 went along quickly, the end of their cloak over their 
 shoulder. And from the water, which swished against 
 the marble landings, came a rough, rainy wind. It 
 was dark, and there were unseen puddles along the 
 pavement. 
 
 This was the result of abandoning, for however little, 
 one's principles. He had broken through his con- 
 victions by accepting to read a young lady's MS. novel. 
 It did not seem a very serious mistake. But through 
 that chink, what disorderly powers had now entered 
 his well -arranged existence ! 
 
 What the deuce did he want with the friendship of a 
 Lady Tal ? He had long made up his mind to permit 
 himself only such friendship as could not possibly 
 involve any feehng, as could not distress or ruffle him by 
 such incidents as illness, death, fickleness, ingratitude. 
 The philosophy of happiness, of that right balance of
 
 138 Vanitas 
 
 activities necessary for the dispassionate student of 
 mankind, consisted in never having anything that one 
 could miss, in never wanting anything. Had he not long 
 ago made up his mind to hve contemplative only of 
 external types, if not on a column like Simon Stylites, 
 at least in its meaner modern equivalent, a top flat 
 at Westminster ? 
 
 Marion felt depressed, ashamed of his depression, 
 enraged at his shame ; and generally intolerably 
 mortified at feeling anything at all, and still more, in 
 consequence, at feeling all this much. 
 
 As he wandered up and down one of the stretches 
 of the Riva, the boisterous wind making masts and 
 sails creak, and his cigar-smoke fly wildly about, he 
 began, however, to take a Uttle comfort. All this, after 
 all, was so much experience ; and experience was 
 necessary for the comprehension of mankind. It was 
 preferable, as a rule, to use up other people's experience ; 
 to look down, from that top flat at Westminster, upon 
 grief and worry and rage in corf ore vili, at a good five 
 storeys below one. But, on reflection, it was doubtless 
 necessary occasionally to get impressions a little nearer ; 
 the very recognition of feeling in others presupposed 
 a certain minimum of emotional experience in oneself. 
 
 Marion had a sense of humour, a sense of dignity, 
 and a corresponding aversion to being ridiculous. He 
 disliked extremely having played the part of the middle- 
 aged fool. But if ever he should require, for a future 
 novel, a middle-aged fool, why, there he would be, 
 ready to hand. And really, unless he had thus miserably 
 broken through his rules of life, thus contemptibly taken 
 an interest in a young lady six foot high, the daughter 
 of a bankrupt earl, with an inexpressive face and a
 
 Lady Tal 139 
 
 sentimental novel, he would never, never have got to 
 fathom, as he now fathomed, the character of the in- 
 telligent woman of the world, with aspirations ending 
 in frivolity, and a heart entirely rusted over by insolence. 
 
 Ah, he did understand Lady Tal. He had gone up 
 to his hotel ; and shut his window with a bang, receiv- 
 ing a spout of rain in his face, as he made that reflection. 
 Really, Lady Tal might be made into something 
 first-rate. 
 
 He threw himself into an arm-chair and opened a 
 volume of the correspondence of Flaubert.
 
 X 
 
 I AM glad to have made an end of Christina,''' 
 remarked Lady Tal, when they were on Miss 
 Vanderwerf's balcony together. Christina had been 
 finished, cleaned up, folded, wrapped in brown paper, 
 stringed, sealing-waxed and addressed to a publisher, a 
 week almost ago. During the days separating this great 
 event from this evening, the last of Lady Atalanta's stay 
 in Venice, the two novelists had met but little. Lady 
 Tal had had farewell visits to pay, farewell dinners and 
 lunches to eat. So had Jervase Marion ; for, two days 
 after Lady Tal's return to her apartment near the Holy 
 Apostles at Rome, he would be setting out for that dear, 
 tidy, solitary flat at Westminster. 
 
 " I am glad to have made an end of Christina,'"' re- 
 marked Lady Tal, " it had got to bore me fearfully." 
 
 Marion winced. He disUked this young woman's 
 ingratitude and brutality. It was ill-bred and stupid ; 
 and of all things in the world the novelist from Alabama 
 detested ill-breeding and stupidity most. He was 
 angry with himself for minding these qualities in Lady 
 Tal. Had he not long made up his mind that she 
 possessed them, must possess them ? 
 
 There was a pause. The canal beneath them was 
 quite dark, and the room behind quite light ; it was 
 November, and people no longer feared lamps on account 
 of mosquitoes, any more than they went posting about 
 in gondolas after illuminated singing boats. The com- 
 
 140
 
 Lady Tal 141 
 
 pany, also, was entirely collected within doors ; the 
 damp sea- wind, the necessity for shawls and overcoats, 
 took away the Romeo and Juliet character from those 
 little gothic balconies, formerly crowded with light 
 frocks and white waistcoats. 
 
 The temperature precluded all notions of flirtation ; 
 one must intend business, or be bent upon catching cold, 
 to venture outside. 
 
 " How changed it all is ! " exclaimed Lady Tal, " and 
 what a beastly place Venice does become in autumn. 
 If I were a benevolent despot, I should forbid any rooms 
 being let or hotels being opened beyond the 15th of 
 October. I wonder why I didn't get my bags together 
 and go earlier ! I might have gone to Florence or 
 Perugia for a fortnight, instead of banging straight 
 back to Rome. Oh, of course, it was all along of 
 Christina ! What were we talking about ? Ah, yes, 
 about how changed it all was. Do you remember the 
 first evening we met here, a splendid moonlight, and 
 ever so hot ? When was it ? Two months ago ? 
 Surely more. It seems years ago. I don't mean merely 
 on account of the change of temperature, and leaving off 
 cotton frocks and that : I mean we seem to have been 
 friends so long. You \vill write to me sometimes, won't 
 you, and send any of your friends to me ? Palazzo 
 Malaspini, Santi Apostoli (just opposite the French 
 Embassy, you know), after five nearly always, in winter. 
 I wonder," continued Lady Tal, musingly, leaning her 
 tweed elbow on the damp balustrade, " whether we 
 shall ever write another novel together ; what do you 
 think, Mr Marion ? " 
 
 Something seemed suddenly to give away inside 
 Marion's soul. He saw, all at once, those big rooms,
 
 142 Vanitas 
 
 which he had often heard described (a woman of her 
 means ought to be ashamed of such furniture, the 
 Roumanian Princess had remarked), near the Holy 
 Apostles at Rome : the red damask walls, the big 
 palms and azaleas, with pieces of embroidery wrapped 
 round the pots, the pastel of Lady Tal by Lenbach, the 
 five hundred photographs dotted about, and fifteen 
 hundred silver objects of indeterminable shape and art, 
 and five dozen little screens all covered with odd bits of 
 brocade — of course there was all that : and the door 
 curtain raised, and the butler bowing in, and behind him 
 the whitish yellowish curl, and pinky grey face of 
 Clarence. And then he saw, but not more distinctly, 
 his writing-table at Westminster, the etchings round his 
 walls, the collection of empty easy-chairs, each easier 
 and emptier, with its book-holding or leg-stretching 
 apparatus, than its neighbour. He became aware of 
 being old, remarkably old, of a paternal position towards 
 this woman of thirty. He spoke in a paternal 
 tone — 
 
 " No ! " he answered, " I think not. I shall be too 
 busy. I must write another novel myself." 
 
 " What will your novel be about ? " asked Lady Tal, 
 slowly, watching her cigarette cut down through the 
 darkness into the waters below, " Tell me." 
 
 " My novel ? What will my novel be about ? " 
 repeated Marion, absently. His mind was full of those 
 red rooms at Rome, with the screens, and the palms, 
 and odious tow-coloured head of Clarence. " Why, my 
 novel will be the story of an old artist, a sculptor — I 
 don't mean a man of the Renaissance, I mean old in 
 years, elderly, going on fifty — who was silly enough to 
 imagine it was all love of art which made him take a
 
 Lady Tal 143 
 
 great deal of interest in a certain young lady and her 
 paintings " 
 
 " You said he was a sculptor just now," remarked 
 Lady Tal, calmly. 
 
 " Of course I meant in her statues — modelling — what 
 d'you call it " 
 
 " And then ? " asked Lady Tal, after a pause, looking 
 down into the canal. " What happened ? " 
 
 " What happened ? " repeated Marion, and he heard 
 his own voice with surprise, wondering how it could 
 be his own, or how he could know it for his, so suddenly 
 had it grown quick and husky and imsteady — " What 
 happened ? Why — that he made an awful old fool of 
 himself. That's all." 
 
 " That's all ! " mused Lady Tal. " Doesn't it seem 
 rather lame ? You don't seem to have got sufficient 
 denouement, do you ? Why shouldn't we write that 
 novel together ? I'm sure I could help you to some- 
 thing more conclusive than that. Let me see. Well, 
 suppose the lady were to answer : ' I am as poor as a rat, 
 and I fear I'm rather expensive. But I can make my 
 dresses myself if only I get one of those wicker dolls, I 
 call them Theresa, you know ; and I might learn to do 
 my hair myself ; and then I'm going to be a great 
 painter — no, sculptor, I mean — and make pots of money ; 
 so suppose we get married.' Don't you think, Mr Marion, 
 that would be more modern than your denouement ? 
 You would have to find out what that painter — no, 
 sculptor, I beg your pardon — would answer. Consider 
 that both he and the lady are rather lonely, bored, and 
 getting into the sere and yellow — We ought to Avrite 
 that novel together, because I've given you the ending 
 — and also because I really can't manage another all
 
 1 44 Vanitas 
 
 by myself, now that I've got accustomed to having my 
 
 semicolons put in for me " 
 
 As Lady Atalanta spoke these words, a sudden 
 downpour of rain drove her and Marion back into the 
 drawing-room.
 
 A WORLDLY WOMAN
 
 A WORLDLY WOMAN 
 
 " T3 UT why should you inind who buys your pots, so 
 
 -D long as your pots are beautiful ? " asked the girl. 
 
 " Because as things exist at present, art can minister 
 only to the luxury of the rich, idle classes. The people, 
 the people that works and requires to play, and requires 
 something to tell it of happier things, gets no share in 
 art. The people is too poor to possess beautiful things, 
 and too brutish to care for them ; the only amusement 
 it can afford is getting drunk. And one wearies and 
 sickens of merely adding one's grain of sand to the 
 inequality and injustice of existing social conditions — 
 don't you see. Miss Flodden ? " 
 
 Leonard Greenleaf stopped short, his breathlessness 
 mingling with the annoyance at having let himself be 
 carried away by his ideas, and producing a vague sense 
 of warm helplessness. 
 
 " Of com'se," he went on, taking up a big jar of yellow 
 Hispano-Moorish lustre ware, and mechanically dusting 
 it with the feather brush, " it's absurd to talk like that 
 about such things as pots, and it's absurd to talk like 
 that to you." 
 
 And raising his head he gave a furtive little glare at 
 the girl, where she stood in a golden beam of dust and 
 sunlight, which slanted through his workshop. 
 
 Miss Valentine Flodden — for such was the name on 
 
 147
 
 148 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 the family card which she had sent in together with that 
 of Messrs Boyce — made rather a delightful picture in 
 that yellow halo : the green light from under the plane 
 trees filtering in through the door behind her, and gleams 
 of crimson and glints of gold flickering, in the brown 
 gloom wherever an enamel plate or pot was struck by 
 a sunbeam, winnowed by the blind which flapped in 
 the draught. Greenleaf knew by some dim, forgotten 
 experience or unaccountable guess-work, that she was 
 what was called, in the detestable jargon of a certain 
 set, a pretty woman. He also recognised in her clothes 
 — they were would-be manly, far more simple and 
 practical than those of the girls he knew, yet telKng of a 
 life anything but practical and simple — that she belonged 
 to that same set of persons ; a fact apparent also in her 
 movements, her words and accent, nay, in the something 
 indefinable in her manner which seemed to take things 
 for granted. But he didn't care for her being beautiful. 
 His feeling was solely of vague irritation at having let 
 himself speak — he had quite unnecessarily told her he 
 intended giving up the pottery next year — about the 
 things which were his very life, to a stranger ; a stranger 
 who had come with a card to ask advice about her own 
 amateur work, and from out of a world which was 
 foreign and odious to him, the world of idleness and 
 luxury. Also, he experienced shght shame at a certain 
 silly, half-romantic pleasure at what was in reality the 
 unconscious intrusion of a fashionable eccentric. This 
 girl, who had been sent on from Boyce & Co.'s for in- 
 formation which they could not give, must evidently 
 have thought she was coming to another shop, other- 
 wise she would never have come all alone ; she evidently 
 took him for a shopman, othermse she would not have
 
 A Worldly Woman 149 
 
 stayed so long nor spoken so freely. It was much better 
 she should continue to regard him as a shopman ; and 
 indeed was it not his pride to have shaken off all class 
 distinctions, and to have become a workingman like any 
 other ? 
 
 It was this thought which made him alter his tone 
 and ask with grave politeness, " Is there any further 
 point upon which I can have the pleasure of giving you 
 any information ? " 
 
 Miss Flodden did not answer this question. She 
 stood contemplating the old warped oaken floor, on 
 whose dust she was drawing a honeysuckle pattern 
 with the end of her parasol. 
 
 " Why did you say that you ought not to speak about 
 such things to — people, Mr Greenleaf ? " she asked. 
 " Of course, one's a PhiUstine, and in outer darkness, 
 but still " 
 
 She had raised her eyes full upon him. They were 
 a strange light blue, darkening as she spoke, under very 
 level brows, and she had an odd way of opening them out 
 at one. Like that, with her delicate complexion, and a 
 little vagueness about the mouth, she looked childish, 
 appeahng, and rather pathetic. 
 
 " All these things are very interesting," she added, 
 quickly ; "at least they must be if one understands 
 anything about them." 
 
 Greenleaf was sorry. He didn't know exactly why ; 
 but he felt vaguely as if he had been brutal. He had 
 made her shut up — for he recognized that the second 
 part of her speech was the reaction against his own ; 
 and that was brutal. He ought not to have let the 
 conversation depart from the technicalities of pottery, as 
 he had done by saying he intended giving it up, and
 
 150 Vanitas 
 
 then bursting into that sociaHstic rhapsody. It wasn't 
 fair upon her. 
 
 By this time the reaction had completely set in with 
 her. Her face had a totally different expression, in- 
 different, bored, a 'little insolent— the expression of her 
 society and order. 
 
 " It's been very good of you," she said, looking 
 vaguely round the room, with the shimmer of green 
 leaves and the glint of enamel in its brown dustiness, 
 " to tell me so many things, and to have given up so 
 much of your time. I didn't know, you know, from 
 Messrs Boyce, that I was breaking in upon you at your 
 work. I suppose they were so kind because of my 
 father having a collection — they thought that I knew 
 more about pottery than I do." 
 
 She stretched out her hand stiffly. Leonard Green- 
 leaf did not know whether he ought to take it, because 
 he guessed that she did not know whether she ought 
 to offer it him. Also he felt awkward, and sorry to have 
 shut her up. 
 
 " I should — be very happy to tell you anything more 
 that I could, Miss Flodden," he said ; " besides, the 
 owners of Yetholme must be privileged people with us 
 potters." 
 
 " If — if ever you should be passing anywhere near Eaton 
 Square — that's where I live with my aunt," she said, 
 " won't you come in and have a cup of tea ? Number 5 ; 
 the number is on the card. But," she added, suddenly, 
 with a little laugh, which was that social stiffening once 
 more, " perhaps you never do pass anywhere near tea- 
 time ; or you pass and don't come in. It would be a 
 great waste of your time." 
 
 What had made her stiffen suddenly like that was a
 
 A Worldly Woman 151 
 
 faint smile which had come into Greenleaf's face at the 
 beginning of her invitation. He had understood, or 
 thought he understood, that his visitor had giasped the 
 fact of his being a sort of gentleman after all, and that 
 she thought it necessary to express her recognition of the 
 difference between him and any other member of the 
 firm of Boyce & Co. by asking him to call. 
 
 " Of course you are a great deal too busy," she re- 
 peated. " Perhaps some day you will let me come to 
 your studio again — some day next year — good-bye." 
 
 " Shall I call you a hansom ? " he asked, wondering 
 whether he had been rude. 
 
 " Thank you ; I think I'll go by the Underground. 
 You cross the big square, and then along the side of 
 the British Museum, don't you ? I made a note of the 
 way as I came. Or else I'll get a 'bus in Tottenham 
 Court Road." 
 
 She spoke the words '6ms and Underground, he thought, 
 with a little emphasis. She was determined to have her 
 fill of eccentricity, now that she had gone in for pottery, 
 and for running about all alone to strange places, and 
 scoring out everything save her own name on the family 
 card. At least so Greenleaf said to himself, as he 
 watched the tall, slight young figure disappearing down 
 the black Bloomsbury Street, and among the green 
 leaves and black stems of the Bloomsbury Square. An 
 unlikely apparition, oddly feminine in its spruce tailoring, 
 in that sleepy part of the world, whence fashion had 
 retreated long, long ago, with the last painted coach 
 which had rumbled through the iron gates, and the last 
 link which had been extinguished in the iron extin- 
 guishers of the rusty areas.
 
 II 
 
 GREENLEAP had a great disbelief in his own 
 intuitions ; perhaps because he vibrated unusually 
 to the touch of other folks' nature, and that the number 
 and variety of his impressions sometimes made it difficult 
 to come to a cut-and-dry conclusion. There was in him 
 also a sensitiveness on the subject of his own beUefs and 
 ideals which made him instinctively avoid contact with 
 other folk, and avoid even loiowing much about them. 
 He often felt that in a way he was very unfit to be a 
 Socialist and an agitator ; for besides the absurd attrac- 
 tion that everything beautiful, distinguished, exotic, 
 exercised upon him, and a corresponding repugnance to 
 the coarse and sordid sights of the world, he knew him- 
 self to look at people in an excessively subjective way, 
 never seeking spontaneously to understand what they 
 themselves were trying to do and say, but analysing 
 them merely from the series of impressions which he 
 received. Just as his consciousness of being a born 
 aesthete and aristocrat had pushed him into social 
 questions and democratic views ; so also his extreme 
 conscientiousness occasionally made him attempt, rather 
 abortively, to behave to others as he might wish to be 
 behaved to himself, his imagination being taxed to the 
 utmost by the inquiry as to what behaviour would be 
 altruistic and just imder the circumstances. 
 
 This preamble is necessary to explain various incon- 
 sistencies in our hero's conduct, and more particularly 
 
 152
 
 A Worldly Woman 153 
 
 at this moment, the inconsistency of suddenly veering 
 round in his suppositions about Miss Valentine Flodden. 
 In his monotonous life of artistic work and social study — 
 in those series of quiet days, as like one another as the 
 rows of black Bloomsbury houses with their garlanded 
 door lintels and worn-out doorsteps, as the spear-heads 
 of the railings, the spikes of blossom on the horse-chest- 
 nuts, and the little lions on the chain curbs roimd the 
 British Museum — the weekly firing of his pottery kiln 
 at Boyce's Works, near Wandsworth, the weekly lecture 
 to workingmen down at Whitechapel, the weekly 
 reception in the sooty rooms of Faber, the Socialist poet 
 and critic who had married the Socialist painter — all 
 these were the landmarks of Greenleaf's existence, and 
 landmarks of the magnitude of martello towers along a 
 seashore. So that anything at all unexpected became, 
 in his life of subversive thoughts and methodical activity, 
 an incident and an adventure. 
 
 Thus it was that the visit of Miss Flodden, although 
 he repeatedly noted its utter unimportance to himself 
 and every one else, became the theme of much idle 
 meditation in the intervals of his work and study. He 
 felt it as extraordinarily strange. And feeling it in this 
 way, his conscientious good sense caused him to analyse 
 it as sometimes almost unusually commonplace. 
 
 It was in consequence of repeatedly informing himself 
 that after all nothing could be more natural than this 
 visit, that he took the step which brought him once more 
 into contact with the eccentricity of the adventure. For 
 he repeated so often to himself how natural it was that 
 a girl with a taste for art should care for pottery (par- 
 ticularly as her father owned the world-famous Yetholme 
 collection), and, caring for pottery, should go for informa-
 
 1 54 Vanitas 
 
 tion to Messrs Boyce's the decorators, and being referred 
 by Boyce's to himself, should come on at once, and quite 
 alone, to the studio of his unknown self ; he identified 
 Miss Flodden so completely with any one of the mature 
 maidens who carried their peacock blue and sage green 
 and amber beads, and interest in economics, archaeology 
 and so forth freely through his world, that he decided 
 to give Miss Flodden the assistance which he would have 
 proffered to one of the independent and studious spinsters 
 of Bloomsbury and West Kensington. Accordingly he 
 took a sheet of paper with " Boyce & Co., Decorators," 
 stamped at the head of it, and wrote a note directed to 
 Miss Valentine Flodden, Eaton Square, saying that as 
 she would doubtless be interested in examining the 
 Rhodian and Damascene pottery of the British Museum, 
 which she had told him she knew very imperfectly, he 
 ventured to enclose an introduction to the Head of the 
 Department, whom she would find a most learned and 
 amiable old gentleman ; the fact of her connection with 
 the famous Yetholme collection would, for the rest, be 
 introduction enough in itself. 
 
 After posting the note and the enclosure, Leonard 
 Greenleaf reflected, with some wonder and a little 
 humihation, that he had chosen a sheet of Boyce's 
 business paper to write to Miss Flodden ; while he had 
 selected a sheet with the name of his old Oxford college 
 for writing to the Head of the Department. But it was 
 not childish contradictoriness after all ; at least so he 
 told himself. For old Colonel Hancock Dunstan (one 
 never dropped the Colonel even in one's thoughts) had 
 a weakness in favour of polite society and against new- 
 fangled democracy, and liked Greenleaf exactly because 
 he had better shaped hands and a better cut coat than
 
 A Worldly Woman 155 
 
 other men who haunted the Museum. And as to Miss 
 Flodden, why, it seemed more appropriate to keep things 
 on the level of pottery and decoration, and therefore to 
 have Boyce & Co. well to the fore. 
 
 Greenleaf had made up his mind that Fate would never 
 again bring him face to face with Miss Flodden, and that 
 he would certainly take no steps towards altering Fate's 
 intentions. It was for this very reason that he had 
 introduced the lady to his old friend of the Museum : 
 for it is singular how introducing someone to somebody 
 else keeps up the sense of the someone's presence ; and 
 how, occasionally, one insists upon such vicarious com- 
 pany. But, as stated already, he never dreamed, at 
 least he thought he never dreamed, to see his eccentric 
 young visitor again. 
 
 Such being the case, it might seem odd, had not his 
 experience of human feelings destroyed all perception 
 of oddity, that Greenleaf experienced no surprise when, 
 obeying a peremptory scrawl from the former terror 
 of Pashas and the present terror of scholars, he found 
 himself one afternoon in Colonel Dunstan's solemn 
 bachelor drawing-room, and in the presence once more 
 of Miss Valentine Flodden. 
 
 Colonel Hancock Dunstan, who in his distant days 
 had gone to Mecca disguised as a pilgrim, dug up Persian 
 temples, slain uncivil Moslems with his own hand, and 
 altogether constituted a minor Eastern question in his 
 one boisterous self, had now settled down (a Government 
 post having been created expressly to keep him quiet) 
 into a life divided between furious archteological disputes 
 and faithful service of the fair sex. He was at this 
 moment promenading his shrunken person — which 
 somehow straightened out into military vigour in the
 
 '56 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 presence of young ladies — round a large table spread 
 with innumerable cups of tea, plates of strawberries and 
 dishes of bonbons. Of this he partook only in the spirit, 
 offering it all, together with the service of a severe house- 
 keeper and a black, barefooted Moor, for the consumption 
 of his fair guests. The other guest, indeed, a gaunt and 
 classic female archaeologist, habited in peacock plush, 
 was fair only in mind ; and Colonel Dunstan, devoted 
 as he was to all womankind, was wont to neglect such 
 intellectual grace when in the presence of more obvious 
 external beauty. Hence, at this moment, the poor 
 archaeological lady, accustomed to a shower of invitations 
 to lunch, tea, dinner, and play-tickets from the gallant 
 though terrible old man, was abandoned to the care of the 
 housekeeper until she could be passed over to that of 
 Greenleaf. And Colonel Dunstan, with his shrunken 
 tissues and shrunken waistcoat regaining a martial 
 ampleness, as the withered rose of Dr Heidegger's 
 experiment regained colour and perfume in the basin of 
 Elixir of Youth, was wandering slowly about (for he 
 never sat still) heaping food and conversation on Miss 
 Flodden. He was informing her, among anecdotes of 
 dead celebrities, reminiscences of Oriental warfare, prin- 
 ciples of Persian colour arrangement, and panegyrics of 
 virtuous incipient actresses, that Greenleaf was a capital 
 fellow, although he would doubtless have been improved 
 by military training ; a scholar, and the son of a great 
 scholar (Thomas Greenleaf's great edition of the " Maha- 
 barata," which she should read some day when he, 
 Colonel Dimstan, taught her Sanskrit), and that, for the 
 rest, philanthropy, socialism, and the lower classes were 
 a great mistake, of which the Ancient Persians would 
 have made very short work indeed. To Greenleaf also he
 
 A Worldly Woman 157 
 
 conveyed sundry information, not troubling to make it 
 quite intelligible, for Colonel Dunstan considered that 
 young men ought to be taught their place, which place 
 was nowhere. So from various mutterings and ejacula- 
 tions addressed to Miss Flodden, such as, " Ah, your 
 great aunt, the duchess — what a woman she was ! she 
 had the shoulders of the Venus of Milo — I always told 
 her she ought to ride out in the desert to excavate 
 Palmyra with me ; " and " that dear little cousin of 
 yours — why didn't she let me teach her Arabic ? " it 
 became gradually apparent to Greenleaf that the old 
 gentleman, who seemed as versed in Burke's Peerage 
 and Baronetage as in cuneiform inscriptions, had known 
 many generations of ladies of the house of Flodden. 
 Nay, most unexpected of all, that the young lady intro- 
 duced by Greenleaf had been a familiar object to the 
 learned and hot-tempered Colonel ever since she had left 
 the nursery. Greenleaf experienced a slight pang at this 
 discovery : he had forgotten, in his own unworldliness, 
 that worldly people like Colonel Dunstan and Miss 
 Flodden probably moved in the same society. 
 
 " And your sister, how is she ? " went on the old 
 gentleman ; "is she as bright as ever, now she is 
 married, and has she got that little air mviin still ? 
 It's months since I've seen her ; why didn't you 
 bring her with you, my dear ? And does she also 
 take an interest in Rhodian pots, the dear, beautiful 
 creature ? " 
 
 Miss Flodden's face darkened as he slowly spun out 
 his questions. 
 
 " I don't know what my sister is doing. I don't 
 live with her any longer, Colonel Dunstan ; and she is 
 always busy rushing about with people ; and Fm busy
 
 58 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 with pots and practising the fiddle ; I've turned hermit 
 since quite a long time." 
 
 " Well, well, practising the fiddle isn't a bad thing ; 
 Orpheus with his lute, you know. But you'd much 
 better let me teach you Greek, my dear, and come to 
 Asia Minor next winter with me. Lady Betty's coming, 
 and we'll see what we can dig up among those sots of 
 Turks. You can get capital tents at that fellow's — 
 what's his name — in Piccadilly. And how are your 
 people ? I saw your brother Herbert the other day at a 
 sale. He told me your father was determined not to let 
 us have your collection, more's the pity ! And what's 
 become of that nice young fellow, Hermann Struwe, 
 who used to be at your house ? He hasn't got a wife 
 yet, eh ? " 
 
 Miss Flodden took no notice of these questions. She 
 passed them over in disdainful silence, Greenleaf thought, 
 till she suddenly said, coldly : 
 
 " I think should Mr Struwe will have no more difficulty 
 in finding a wife than in hiring a shooting, or buying 
 a sham antique." 
 
 She was a very beautiful woman, Greenleaf said to 
 himself. She was very tall (Greenleaf wondered whether 
 the women of that lot, of the idlers, were always a head 
 taller than those of his acquaintance), and slender almost 
 to thinness, with a rigid, undeveloped sort of grace which 
 contrasted with the extreme composure — that sort of 
 taking things for granted — of her manner. Old Colonel 
 Dunstan had just alluded to her mother having been a 
 Welshwoman ; and Greenleaf thought he saw very 
 plainly the Celt in this superficially Saxon-looking girl. 
 That sharp perfection of feature — features almost over- 
 much chiselled and finished in every minutest detail —
 
 A Worldly Woman 159 
 
 that excessive mobility of mouth and eyes, did not belong 
 to the usual kind of English pretty women. She was so 
 much of a Celt, despite her Northumbrian name, that the 
 pale-brown of her hair — hair crisp and close round her 
 ears — gave him almost the impression of a wig ; under- 
 neath it must really be jet black. 
 
 Notwithstanding a slight weariness at Colonel Dun- 
 stan's social reminiscences and questions, she seemed 
 pleased and rather excited at finding herself in the 
 sanctuary of his learning. While quietly taking care 
 of the old gentleman, and much concerned lest he 
 should stumble over chairs and footstools in his polite 
 haverings, she let her eyes ramble over the expanse of 
 books which covered the walls, evidently impressed by 
 all that must be in them. And from the timid though 
 pertinacious fashion in which she questioned him, it was 
 clear that she thought him an oracle, although an oracle 
 rather difficult to keep to the point. 
 
 " And now," she finally said, with a little suppressed 
 desperation, " won't you show me some of the Rhodian 
 ware. Colonel Dunstan ? It would be so awfully good 
 of you." 
 
 Colonel Dunstan suddenly unwrinkled himself with 
 considerable importance. He had forgotten the Rhodian 
 ware, and rather resented its existence. Why, bless 
 you ! He didn't possess such things as pots : and as to 
 going to the Museum, it was the most cold-taking place 
 in the world. He would show her his books some day, 
 and the casts of the cuneiform inscriptions. She must 
 come to tea again soon with him. Did she know Miss 
 Tilly Tandem, who had just been engaged by Irving ? 
 He should like them to meet. That was her photograph. 
 
 " But," said Miss Flodden — Val Flodden it appeared
 
 1 60 Vanitas 
 
 she was called — " mayn't I — couldn't T — be allowed to 
 see those Rhodian pots also ? " She was dreadfully 
 crestfallen, and had a little disappointed eagerness, like 
 a child. 
 
 " Of course you can," Colonel Dunstan answered, 
 with infinite disdain. " / don't think anything of 
 Rhodian ware, you know— mere debased copy of the old 
 Persian. Those Greeks of the islands were a poor lot, 
 then as now. Believe me, those Greeks have always 
 been a set of confounded liars and their account of 
 Salamis will be set right some day. But if you want to 
 see it, why of course you can. Greenleaf, take Miss 
 Val Flodden to see the Rhodian ware some day soon ; 
 do you hear, Greenleaf, eh ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir." Greenleaf had always said sir to Colonel 
 Dunstan, like a little boy, or a subordinate. It made 
 up for a kind of contempt with which the learned, but 
 worldly and hot-tempered old gentleman very unreason- 
 ably inspired him. Greenleaf was full of prejudices, like 
 all very gentle and apostolic persons. 
 
 " There's Greenleaf — go with him some morning," 
 said Colonel Dunstan, regaining his temper ; " but, 
 bless me ! Why haven't you had any more straw- 
 berries. Miss Val ? "
 
 Ill 
 
 THE discovery that he had introduced two people 
 who had already been acquainted for years, 
 depressed Greenleaf with something more than the mere 
 sense of slight comicality. Indeed, Greenleaf, like many 
 apostolic persons, was deficient in the sense of the comic, 
 and destitute of all fear of social solecisms. As he 
 waited under the portico of the Museum, the pigeons 
 fluttering from the black temple frieze on to the sooty 
 steps, and the rusty students pressing through the swing- 
 ing glass doors, he felt a vague dissatisfaction — the sort 
 of faint crossness common in children, and of which no 
 contact with the world, the contact with its grating or 
 planing powers, had cured this dreamer ; but such cross- 
 ness leaves in the candid mind a doubt of possible 
 vicariousness, of being caused by something not its 
 ostensible reason, or being caused by the quite undefin- 
 able. When at last, from out of the blue haze and gauzy 
 blackness of the Bloomsbury summer, there emerged an 
 object of interest, and the slender recognised figure 
 detached itself from the crowd of unreal other creatures, 
 on foot, in cabs, and behind barrows, he was aware of a 
 certain flat and prosaic quality in things since that tea- 
 party at Colonel Dunstan's. And he was very angry 
 with himself, and consequently with everything else, 
 when it struck him suddenly that perhaps he was annoyed 
 at the little eccentric adventure — the adventure of the 
 lady dropped from the clouds and never seen again — 
 
 T. 161
 
 1 62 Vanitas 
 
 turning into a humdrum acquaintance, which might even 
 linger on, with a girl about whose family he now knew 
 everything, who, on her side, was now certain that he was 
 a gentleman, and who did really and seriously intend to 
 find out all about pots. 
 
 They walked quickly upstairs, exchanging very few 
 words, save on the subject of umbrellas and umbrella 
 tickets ; and when they had arrived in the pottery 
 room, they became wonderfully business-like. Miss 
 Flodden was business-like simply because she was extra- 
 ordinarily interested in the matter in hand ; and Green- 
 leaf was business-like because he was ashamed of having 
 perhaps thought about Miss Flodden apart from pottery, 
 and therefore most anxious, for his own moral dignity, 
 to look at her and pottery as indissolubly connected. 
 
 As the narrator of this small history is unhappily 
 an ignoramus on the subject of pottery, prudence forbids 
 all attempt to repeat the questions of Miss Flodden and 
 the answers of Greenleaf on the subject of clay, colours, 
 fixing glaze and similar mysteries. These were duly 
 discussed for some time while the patient assistant 
 unlocked case after case, and let them handle the great 
 Hispano-Moorish dishes, heraldic creatures spreading 
 wings among their arabesques of yellow brown goldiness ; 
 the rotund vases and ewers where Roman consuls and 
 Jewish maidens and Greeks gods were crowded 
 together, yellow and green and brown, on the deep 
 sea-blue of Castel Durante and Gubbio majolica ; the 
 fanciful scalloped blue upon blue nymphs and satyrs of 
 seventeenth century Savona, which looked as if the very 
 dishes and plates had wished to wear furbelows and 
 perukes ; and the precious pieces, cracked and broken, 
 of Brusa tiles and Rhodian and Damascene platters,
 
 A Worldly Woman 163 
 
 with the gorgeous crimson tulips — opening vistas of 
 Oriental bean-fields — and fantastic green and blue 
 fritillaries standing almost in relief on the thick white 
 glaze. 
 
 " I suppose it's being brought up among the Yetholme 
 collection that makes you know so much about pottery ?" 
 remarked Greenleaf, in considerable surprise : " you 
 haven't been to this part of the Museum before ? " 
 
 Miss Flodden raised her pale blue luminous eyes. 
 
 " Do you know, I've never been to the Museum since 
 I was a tiny girl, at least, except once, when my married 
 sister conducted a party of New York friends. I thought 
 we were going to see stuffed birds, and I was so surprised 
 to see all those beautiful Greek things — I had seen 
 statues once when we went to Rome — I wanted so much 
 to look at them a little, but my friends thought they 
 weren't in good repair, and wanted to have tea and go 
 to the park, so they scooted me round among the 
 Egyptian things and the reading rooms and out by the 
 door. Yes, the little I know I have learned by playing 
 with our things at home. Some day you must see them, 
 Mr Greenleaf." 
 
 Greenleaf did not answer for a moment. Good 
 heavens ! here was a young woman of twenty-four or 
 twenty-five who had spent part of every year of her life 
 in London, and had been only once to the British 
 Museum, and then had expected to see stuffed birds ! 
 And the girl apparently an instinctive artist, extra- 
 ordinarily quick and just in her appreciations. 
 
 Then there were other things to do, besides opening 
 galleries on Sundays and promenading East-end work- 
 men in company with young men from Toynbee Hall ! 
 And Greenleaf 's heart withered — as one's mouth withers
 
 1 64 Vanitas 
 
 at the contact of strong green tea or caper sauce — with 
 indignation at all the waste of intellectual power and 
 intellectual riches implied in this hideous present mis- 
 arrangement of all things. Was it possible that the so- 
 called upper classes, or at least some members thereof, 
 were in one way as much the victims of injustice and 
 barbarism as the lower classes, off whose labour they 
 basely subsisted ? 
 
 The thought came over him as his eyes met Miss 
 Flodden's face — that delicately chiselled, mobile young 
 face which was suddenly contracted with a smile of 
 cynical, yet resigned bitterness. He made that reflec- 
 tion once more, when with the wand-bearing custodian 
 imperturbably occupying the only seat in the place, they 
 leaned upon the glass case, and she asked him, and he 
 told her, about the various currents in art history — 
 the form element of ancient Greece, the colour element 
 of the Orientals, the patterns of Persian ware, the out- 
 line figures on Greek and Etruscan vases — things which 
 he imagined every child to know, and about which, as 
 about Greeks, Orientals, and Etruscans, and Latin and 
 geography and most matters, this girl seemed com- 
 pletely ignorant. 
 
 " My word," she exclaimed, and that little piece of 
 slang grated horribly on Greenleaf's nerves ; " how very 
 interesting things are when one knows something about 
 them ! Do you suppose all things would be equally 
 interesting if one knew about them ? Or would it only 
 be every now and then, just as with other matters, balls, 
 and picnics, and so forth ? Or does one get interested 
 whenever one does anything as hard as one can, like 
 hard riding, or rowing, or playing tennis properly ? 
 Some books seem so awfully interesting, you know ;
 
 A Worldly Woman 165 
 
 but there are such a lot of others that one would just 
 throw into the fire if they didn't belong to Mudie. But 
 somehow a thread seems always to be wanting. It's 
 like trying to play a game without knowing the rules. 
 How have you got to know all these things, Mr Green- 
 leaf ? I mean all the connections between things ; and 
 could anybody get the connecting links if they tried, or 
 must one have a special vocation ? 
 
 Greenleaf was embarrassed how to answer. He 
 really could not realise the extraordinary emptiness in 
 this young woman's mind ; and at the same time he felt 
 strangely touched and indignant, as he did sometimes 
 when giving some little street Arab a good thing which 
 it had never eaten before, and did not clearly know how 
 to begin eating. 
 
 " Have you — have you — never read at all methodi- 
 cally ? " he asked. He really meant, " Have you never 
 received any education ? " 
 
 Miss Flodden reflected for a moment. " No. Some- 
 how one never thought of reading as a methodical thing, 
 as a business, you know. Dancing and hunting and 
 playing tennis and seeing people, all that's a business, 
 because one has to do it. At least one has to do it as long 
 as one hadn't turned into a savage ; everyone else has 
 to do it. Of course, there's the fiddle ; I've practised 
 that rather methodically, but it was because I liked 
 the sound of the thing so much, and I once had a little 
 German — my brother's German crammer for diplomacy 
 — who taught me. And then one knew that, unless one 
 got up at five in the morning and did it regularly, it 
 wouldn't be done at all. But reading is different. One 
 just picks up a book before dinner, or while being 
 dressed. And the books are usually such rot."
 
 1 66 Vanitas 
 
 It was getting late, and Greenleaf conducted Miss 
 Flodden back to her parasol, where it was waiting 
 among the vast and shabby umbrellas of the studious, 
 very incongruous in its semi-masculine, yet rather 
 futile smartness, at the door of the reading-room. 
 
 " It is all very beautiful," remarked Miss Flodden, 
 as they descended the Museum steps, with the pigeons 
 fluttering all round in the dim, smoky air, nodding her 
 head pensively. 
 
 " What ? " asked Greenleaf. He had an almost con- 
 ventual hatred of noise and bustle, which seemed to 
 him, perhaps because he had elected to work among 
 them, the utter profanation of life ; and to his aesthetic 
 soul, the fact that many thousands of people lived among 
 smoke and smuts, and never saw a clear stream, a dainty 
 meadow of grass and daisies, or a sky just washed into 
 blueness by a shower, was one of the chief reasons for 
 condemning modern industrial civilisation. 
 
 " Why, all that — the pale blue mist with the black 
 houses quite soft, like black flakes against it, and the 
 green of the trees against the black walls, and the moving 
 crowd." Then, as if suddenly taking courage to say 
 something rather dreadful, she said : " Tell me about 
 Colonel Dunstan. Is he really so learned, does he know 
 such a lot of things ? " 
 
 Greenleaf laughed at the simplicity with which she 
 asked this. She seemed to have a difficulty in realising 
 that anyone could know anything. 
 
 " Yes, he knows a great lot of things. He is one of the 
 first Orientalists in Europe, I believe — at least my father, 
 who was an Oriental scholar himself, used to say so ; 
 and he is a great archaeologist, besides his knowledge 
 of Eastern things, and of course he knows more
 
 A Worldly Woman 167 
 
 about Oriental art, and in fact all art, than almost 
 anyone." 
 
 " Does he know," hesitated Miss Flodden, " what 
 you were telHng me about the different currents of 
 ancient art, Persian and Greek and Etruscan, and the 
 way in which artists hved then — all that you were telling 
 me just now ? " 
 
 Greenleaf laughed. " Good gracious, yes ; I know 
 nothing compared with him. Why, most of the little 
 I know I learned at his lectures. Shall I hail that han- 
 som for you, Miss Flodden ? " 
 
 They were crossing Bedford Square. The birds were 
 singing in the plane trees, and from the open windows 
 of a solemn Georgian house, with its courses of white 
 stone, and its classic door frieze, came the notes of a 
 sonata of Mozart. All was wonderfully peaceful under 
 the hazy summer sky. 
 
 " No — not yet. Tell me, then : since Colonel Dunstan 
 knows so many interesting things, why in the world does 
 he live hke that ? " 
 
 " Like what. Miss Flodden ? " 
 
 " Why, as if — well, as if he knew nothing at all. Why 
 does he go every afternoon a round of calls on silly women 
 gossiping about their dresses, and Ustening to all^well — 
 the horrid, because it often is horrid, nonsense and filth 
 people talk ? I used to meet him about everywhere, 
 when I used still to go into the world. He often came 
 to my sister's — I thought he was just an old — well, an 
 old creature Hke the rest of them, collecting gossip to 
 retail it next door. Since he really knows all about 
 beautiful things, why doesn't he stick to them — why 
 does he go about with stupid folk — he must know lots 
 of clever ones ? "
 
 1 68 Vanitas 
 
 " Because — because Colonel Dunstan is a man of 
 the world," answered Greenleaf bitterly ; " because he 
 cares about art, and history, and philosophy, but he 
 also cares for pretty women, and pretty frocks, and good 
 manners, and white hands." 
 
 " But — why shouldn't one care — doesn't everyone 
 care — for — well, good manners ? " 
 
 He had spoken with such violence that Miss Flodden 
 had turned round. Her question died away as she 
 looked into his face. It had hitherto struck her merely 
 by its great kindness, and a sort of gentle candour which 
 was rare. Now, the clean-shaven features and longish 
 hair gave her the impression of a fanatic priest, at least 
 what she imagined such to be. 
 
 " In this world, as it now exists," continued Green- 
 leaf in an undertone, which was almost a hiss, " things 
 are so divided that a man must choose between people 
 who are pretty and pleasant and well-mannered and 
 people who are ugly and brutish and hateful, because the 
 first are idle and unjust, and the second overworked and 
 oppressed. Nowadays, more even than when Christ 
 taught it, a man cannot serve both God and Mammon ; 
 and God, at present, at least God's servants, live among 
 the ignorant, and dirty, and sufiering. Shan't I stop 
 that hansom for you, Miss Flodden ? " 
 
 " Yes," she answered with a catch in her breath, as if 
 overcome by surprise, almost as by an attack. 
 
 " Good-bye," he said, closing the flaps of the hansom. 
 
 Miss Flodden's hand mechanically dropped on to one 
 of them, and her head, with the little black bonnet 
 all points and bows of lace, was looking straight into 
 space, as one overcome by great astonishment. 
 
 Greenleaf sickened with shame at his vehemence.
 
 A Worldly Woman 169 
 
 " You will let we show you the Etruscan things some 
 day ? " he cried, as the hansom rolled off. 
 
 Ah, could he never, never learn to restrain himself ? 
 What business had he to talk of such things to such a 
 woman. To let the holy of hoHes become, most likely, 
 a subject of mere idle curiosity and idle talk ?
 
 IV 
 
 As Greenleaf looked up from the article on the 
 " Rochdale Pioneers and Co-operation " and 
 glanced out of the window at the smoke-veiled, soot- 
 engrained Northern towns, and the bleak, green North 
 country hillsides which flashed past the express, he did 
 not realise at all clearly that he was going to see once 
 more Miss Val Flodden, and see her in the unexpected 
 relations of hostess and guest. 
 
 She had indeed, during their last ramble through the 
 British Museum, said something vague about his coming 
 to Yetholme if ever he came North ; but he had given 
 the invitation no weight and had forgotten it completely. 
 His journey was due to a circumstance more important 
 in his eyes than the visit of a young lady to his studio, 
 and would be crowned by an event far more satisfactory 
 than the meeting with a stray acquaintance. 
 
 For Sir Percy Flodden had at last decided to sell the 
 famous Yetholme collection of majolica and Palissy 
 ware ; and the South Kensington authorities had 
 selected Leonard Greenleaf, potter and writer on pottery, 
 to verify the catalogue and conclude the purchase. It 
 was one of Greenleaf 's socalist maxims that no important 
 works of art should be hidden from pubHc enjoyment 
 in the houses of private collectors ; an Act of Parliament, 
 in his opinion, should force all owners to sell to the 
 nation, supposing that arguments in favour of true 
 citizenship and true love of art had failed to make them 
 
 170
 
 A Worldly Woman 1 7 1 
 
 bestow their property gratis. Greenleaf had agitated 
 during several years to induce the public to make the 
 first bid for the Yetholme collection ; difficulties of all 
 kinds had stood in the way, and the owner himself had 
 become restive in the negotiations ; but now, at last, 
 this immortal earthenware had been saved from further 
 private collections and secured for the enjoyment of 
 everybody. 
 
 This being the case, it was not wonderful if Miss 
 Flodden was thrown into the shade by her family 
 collection ; and if Greenleaf had gradually got to think 
 very little about her of late — I say of late, because, until 
 the Yetholme sale had diverted his mind from theory 
 to practice, Miss Flodden had played a certain part in 
 Greenleaf's thoughts. Her sudden intrusion upon the 
 monotony of his existence had made him ponder once 
 more upon his undergraduate's dream of reclaiming 
 the upper as well as the lower classes ; a dream which 
 had gradually vanished before practical contact with the 
 pressing want of the poor. He had forgotten, during 
 the last five or six years, that the leisured classes existed 
 otherwise than as oppressors of the overworked ones. 
 But now there had returned to the surface his con- 
 stitutional craving for harmony, his horror of class war- 
 fare, a horror all the greater that in this very gentle soul 
 there was a possibility of intense hatred. Why should 
 not the whole of society work out harmoniously a new 
 and better social order ? After all, he and his chosen 
 friends belonged to the privileged class, and only the 
 privileged class could give the generous initiative 
 required to counteract the selfish claiming of rights from 
 below. Mankind was not wicked and perverse ; and 
 the injustice, wantonness, and cruelty of the rich were.
 
 172 Vanitas 
 
 doubtless, a result of their ignorance : they must be 
 shown that they could do without so many things and 
 that other folk were wanting those things so very much. 
 And, half consciously, the image of Val Flodden rose up 
 to concentrate and typify the ideas she had evoked. 
 She was the living example of the ignorance of all higher 
 right and wrong, of all the larger facts of existence, in 
 which the so-called upper classes lived on no better 
 than heathen blacks. 
 
 In these reflections Greenleaf had never claimed 
 for Miss Flodden any individual superiority : to do so 
 would have been to diminish her value as a type and 
 an illustration. She had become, in his thoughts, the 
 natural woman as produced, or rather as destroyed, by 
 the evil constitution of idle society. She appeared, 
 indeed, to have a personal charm, but this was doubtless 
 a class peculiarity which his inexperience perceived 
 as an individual one. It was the sole business of idle 
 folk, Greenleaf said to himself, to make themselves 
 charming, and they doubtless carried this quality as 
 high as blacksmiths do strength of arm, and sempstresses 
 nimbleness of finger : for the occasional examples of 
 idle folk without any charm at all quickly faded from 
 Greenleaf's logical memory. Also, he forgot for the 
 moment, that many women, neither ignorant nor idle, 
 the three Miss Carpenters for instance, who lived in a 
 servantless flat in Holborn and worked in the East End, 
 had as much charm, though not quite the same ; and 
 that there were tricks of manner and speech, affectations 
 of school-boy slang, yokel ways, about Miss Flodden 
 herself, which affected his sensitive nerves as ungraceful. 
 But, be this as it may, the acquaintance with Miss 
 Flodden had set his thoughts on the disadvantages of
 
 A Worldly Woman 173 
 
 the upper classes, and he found it convenient to use 
 Miss Flodden as an illustration thereof. 
 
 Besides, every now and then, Greenleaf had felt, in 
 those long talks at the Museum, a curious pang of pity 
 for her. In Greenleaf's nature, more thoughtful than 
 logical, the dominating forces were a kind of tran- 
 scendent sestheticism, and an extraordinary, also 
 transcendent, compassion — compassion which, coming 
 upon him in veritable stabs, went to his head and soon 
 passed the boundaries of individual pain and wrong. 
 This man, who aspired towards the future and really 
 hankered painfully after the past, was like some mediaeval 
 monk all quivering at the sufferings of a far-distant, 
 impersonal Godhead, for the sake of whose wrongs he 
 could even hate fiercely, and for the sake of whose more 
 than individual sufferings he could feel, every now and 
 then, overwhelming pity for some small, ill-treated 
 bird, or beast, or man. That this girl — intelligent and 
 good — had been brought up not merely in utter indiffer- 
 ence to real evil (tempered only by a vague fear of a black 
 man who carried you to hell and a much blacker man 
 who turned you out of society) but in ignorance of every 
 one of the nobler and more beautiful activities of Ufe ; 
 this perception of moral and intellectual starvation, 
 veiled his mind with tears and made him spiritually 
 choke, like the sight of a supperless ragged child, or of 
 a dog that had lost its master. 
 
 Such impressions had been common enough in their 
 two or three meetings. They had met several times in 
 the Museum, and once at Messrs Boyce's works, the utter 
 unworldliness of Greenleaf's mind preventing his asking 
 himself, even once, whether such proceedings did not 
 display unusual recklessness on the part of a girl belong-
 
 174 Vanitas 
 
 ing to Miss Flodden's set ; so much that he did not even 
 take heed of Miss Flodden's occasional remarks showing 
 that this liberty, this familiarity with a man and a 
 stranger, were possible only because she had dehberately 
 turned her back on her former companions. IndifEerent 
 to personal matters, he had not even understood very 
 plainly (although he had a pleasant, vague sense of 
 something similar) that unfamiliarity with the class and 
 type to which he belonged had given the girl a sense of 
 absolute safety which allowed her to go about and 
 discuss everything with this man from a different sphere, 
 as she might have done with another woman. This 
 knowledge was vague and scarce conscious, taking the 
 form rather of indignation with Miss Flodden's world 
 and pity for Miss Flodden's self, whenever, incidentally, 
 she said things which revealed the habit of an opposite 
 state of things, the habit of a woman's Uberty of action, 
 speech and feeling being cramped by disbelief in men's 
 purity and honour, or rather by knowledge of their 
 thinly varnished baseness. 
 
 Thus it had come about during that dim and deHcate 
 London June that the young lady from Eaton Square 
 had become a famiUar figure in the mind, if not in the 
 life, of the Socialist potter of Church Street, Bloomsbury. 
 There was, of course, a certain exotic strain in the matter ; 
 and as they rambled among the solemn sitting Pharaohs, 
 the Roman Emperors and headless Greek demigods, and 
 the rows of glass cases in the cool, empty Museum, 
 Greenleaf occasionally experienced, while discussing 
 various forms of art and describing dead civilisations, 
 a Uttle shock of surprise on realising the nature of his 
 companion, on catching every now and then an intona- 
 tion and an expression which told of ball-rooms and
 
 A Worldly Woman 175 
 
 shooting-houses, on perceiving suddenly, silhouetted 
 against the red wall, or reflected in a glass case, the 
 slender, dapper figure in its plain, tight clothes ; the 
 tight, straight-featured head beneath its close little 
 bonnet. But this sense of the unusual and the exotic 
 was subdued by the sense of the real, the actually 
 present, just as, in some foreign or Eastern town, our 
 disbeHef in the possibility of it all is oddly moulded into 
 a sort of familiarity by the knowledge that we are our 
 ourselves, and ourselves are on the spot. 
 
 It was different now ; as his train jogged slowly along 
 the banks of the Tweed, between the bare, green hills 
 and the leafy little ravines of Northumberland. A 
 couple of months' separation had gradually reduced 
 Miss Flodden to an unfamiliar, and almost an abstract 
 being. She was the subject no longer of impressions, 
 but merely of reflections ; and of reflections which had 
 grown daily more general, as the perfume of individuahty 
 faded away. Greenleaf lived so much more in his 
 thoughts than in his life that creatures very speedily 
 got to represent nothing but problems to him. At this 
 moment his main interest in life was to secure the 
 Yetholme collection of majolica and Palissy work ; the 
 fact that he was going, in a few minutes, to meet Miss 
 Flodden was not more important than the fact that he 
 would have to get his portmanteau out of the van. And 
 as to Miss Flodden, she represented to him, in a rather 
 rubbed-out way, the problem of upper class want of 
 education and moral earnestness. 
 
 It seemed to him also, as he shook hands with Miss 
 Flodden, in her cart at Yetholme station, and took his 
 place beside her in the vehicle, that not only all his own 
 feelings about Miss Flodden, but Miss Flodden herself
 
 176 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 had changed. She had grown so much more like every- 
 body else, he thought, or he had got to see her so much 
 more in her reality. There was nothing exotic about 
 her now, wrapped in a big, fuzzy cloak, a big cap drawn 
 over her head, conceaUng the close, light-brown curls, 
 and making her face so very much less keen in feature. 
 He wondered why he had seen so much of the Celt in her, 
 and such a far-fetched nervous fineness. She seemed 
 also, in her almost monosyllabic conversation, mainly 
 preoccupied with his portmanteau, the hours of his 
 train, the names of the villages and hills they passed, 
 and similar commonplace matters ; whereas, in London 
 he had noted the eager insistence with which she had 
 immediately set the conversation and firmly kept it on 
 intellectual and artistic problems. 
 
 The cart rolled away by high-lying fields of pale green 
 barley and oats shivering in the cold breeze, between 
 the stunted hedges, whence an occasional wind-warped 
 thorn-tree rose black against the pale yellow afternoon 
 sky, with every now and then a bunch of blue cranesbill, 
 or a little fluttering group of poppies, taking the import- 
 ance of bushes and trees in this high, bleak. Northern 
 country. Great savage dogs, with chests and pointed 
 ears like the antique Cerberus, came barking out of the 
 black stone cottages ; and over the fields, from the tree- 
 tops just visible in the river valley below, circled in- 
 numerable rooks, loudly cawing. The road made a 
 sudden dip, and they were on a level with the wide, 
 shingly bed of the Tweed, scattered sheep grazing along 
 the banks. Then a black belfry appeared among black 
 ash trees ; a row of black cottages bordered the road 
 with their hollyhocks and asters ; and the cart rolled 
 in between rows of rook-peopled trees, and stopped at
 
 A Worldly Woman 177 
 
 last before a long, black stone house, sunk, as in some 
 parts of Scotland, into a kind of trench. There was a 
 frightful alarum of dogs of all kinds, rushing up from all 
 directions. But Miss Flodden led Greenleaf into the 
 house and through various passages, without any human 
 being appearing, save a boy, to whom she threw the 
 reins at the door. At last, in a big, dark drawing-room, 
 a child was discovered helping herself to milk and bread 
 and jam at a solitary table. 
 
 " They're all out," she said, taking no notice of Green- 
 leaf, although scanning him with the critical eyes of six 
 or seven. " Cut me a scone, Val, and put butter on it, 
 but not too much," 
 
 " This is a step-sister of mine," explained Miss Flodden, 
 laconically, nodding in the child's direction, as she threw 
 aside her cloak, drew ofE her gloves, and began pouring 
 out tea. " I say, leave that scone alone until I can cut 
 it for you. It's rather hard lines on one for the family to 
 have its tea and leave us only the cold dregs." 
 
 She looked listless and calm and bored. Greenleaf 
 wondered how he could ever have romanced about this 
 handsome, commonplace young woman. Then he began 
 to speculate as to where the famous collection was kept. 
 
 M
 
 " TT'S very unfair of me, of course," Miss Flodden 
 X remarked next morning, as she handed down plate 
 after plate, jar after far, to Greenleaf, seated, the cata- 
 logue before him and the pen in his hand, at a long 
 deal table — " it's very unfair, and it isn't at all business, 
 but I used to think I should like to see you again ; and 
 now, on account of these pots, I dislike you." 
 
 Greenleaf looked up in astonishment. It was as if 
 the veil of sullenness, preventing his recognition of Miss 
 Flodden ever since his arrival, had suddenly been torn 
 asunder by a burst of passion. The girl was standing 
 by the glass case, dusting a Limoges platter with a feather 
 brush, her mannish coat and short skirt covered with 
 dust. She spoke in an undertone, and her eyes were 
 looking down upon the platter ; but it struck him at once 
 that she was a Celt once more, and that the Celtic way- 
 wardness and emotion were bursting out the more 
 irresistibly for that long repression due to the Spartan 
 undemonstrativeness of smart society. He noticed also 
 a trait he had forgotten, and which had seemed to be, 
 long ago at the Museum, a sort of mark of temperament, 
 telling of inherited ferocity in this well-bred young lady ; 
 two of her little white teeth, instead of being square 
 pearls, like their companions, were pointed and sharp, 
 like those of a wild animal. And as she raised her eyes, 
 their light, whitish blue, flashed angrily. 
 
 " Excuse my being so rude, Mr Greenleaf," she added 
 
 178
 
 A Worldly Woman 179 
 
 very coldly, " you have been so good, showing and 
 explaining a lot of things to me, that it's only fair you 
 should know that, on account of the pots, I have — well, 
 got to disHke you. You see," she went on, turning her 
 back to him, " they were my toys. They were the only 
 people, except the trees and the river, one had to talk 
 to sometimes." 
 
 Greenleaf had noticed at dinner last night, and again 
 this morning at lunch, that Miss Flodden seemed to have 
 very little in common with her family, and, indeed, 
 scarcely any communication at all. 
 
 Sir Percy Flodden, an old gentleman with a beautiful 
 white beard, and beautiful soft manners, but a deficiency 
 in further characteristics, had found leisure, in the 
 intervals of organizing Primrose meetings, making 
 speeches at Conservative dinners, writing letters to the 
 Times about breeds of cattle, and hunting and fishing a 
 great deal, to get married a second time, and to produce 
 a large number of younger fishermen and huntresses, 
 future Primrose Leaguers and writers to the Times. 
 The second wife being dead, and sundry aunts installed 
 in her place, the younger generation of Flodden, after 
 gradually emerging from the nursery, ran wild in brooks 
 and streams, stables and haylofts, until the boys were 
 packed ofE to civihsation and Eton, pending further 
 civilisation and Sandhurst ; and the girls were initiated 
 into their proper form of civilisation by being taken to a 
 drawing-room and then hustled into further female 
 evolution by an energetic and tactful married sister. 
 The elder girls were now at home, preparing clothes for 
 various balls and packing trunks for various visits ; 
 and the elder boys had come back on hoUdays, with 
 fishing-rods, coin collections, the first three books of
 
 i8o Vanitas 
 
 Euclid, and the last new thing in slang ; as to the younger 
 half-brothers and sisters, they were still in the phase of 
 the hayloft and stable, emerging only to partake of 
 gigantic breakfasts and teas. 
 
 Among all these good-natured and well-mannered, 
 but somewhat dull creatures, Val Flodden moved in 
 an atmosphere of her own, somewhat of a stranger, 
 considerably of a puzzle, and regarded with the mixed 
 awe and suspicion due to her having been recently an 
 admittedly pretty woman, and now showing signs of 
 becoming an undoubtedly eccentric one. Besides, there 
 was the fact that Val Flodden was partially a Celt, and 
 that her father and brothers were most emphatically 
 Saxons. 
 
 All this it has been necessary to explain that the 
 reader might understand that Greenleaf might have 
 understood Miss Flodden's passionate clinging to her 
 sole companions at Yetholme, the old crockery of her 
 grandfather's collection. 
 
 But, although Greenleaf did actually take in a portion 
 of the situation, he was mainly impressed by the want 
 of pubUc spirit exhibited by the young lady ; so inevit- 
 ably do we expect other folk to posses even our most 
 eccentric standards, and to rule their feelings and actions 
 by notions of which they have probably never even heard. 
 
 Miss Flodden had broken through all rules in mani- 
 festing her feelings about the pots ; Greenleaf never 
 dreamed of taking advantage of her false move, but 
 with his usual simplicity, encouraged by a plain-spoken- 
 ness, which never struck him as otherwise than natural, 
 he answered very gravely : "Of course I understand 
 how fond you must be of these beautiful things, and how 
 much it must have been to you — it would be to anyone
 
 A Worldly Woman i8i 
 
 who cared for art, even if not specially interested like 
 you in pottery — to have them constantly before you. 
 But you ought to remember that you are parting with 
 them for the advantage of others." 
 
 Miss Flodden flushed a little. It was probably from 
 surprise and shame at this man's stupidity. She must 
 have felt as if she herself had alluded to the necessity 
 of selling these heirlooms, as if she herself had done the 
 incredible thing of pointing out the pecuniary advantage. 
 Then, apparently, she reflected that if this man was so 
 obtuse, he could not help himself ; but that he was 
 doubtless honest in his intentions. For she added coldly, 
 and hiding her contemptuous face from him with a jar 
 held at arms' length : 
 
 " Of course I know that it's for the benefit of my 
 brothers and sisters. I don't grudge them the money, 
 heaven knows, and when one's broke, one's broke. 
 Only it's sad to think what sort of things — what stupid 
 amusements and useless necessaries these lovely things 
 will be exchanged for, merely because the world is so 
 idiotically constituted. You see, the possession of these 
 pots ought to give everyone more pleasure than the 
 possession of an additional horse, or an extra frock." 
 
 Greenleaf was as much taken aback at her miscon- 
 ception of his meaning as she had been at her supposed 
 understanding of it. 
 
 " Good gracious. Miss Flodden, I didn't mean the 
 advantage of your brothers and sisters. But surely you 
 ought to reflect that these pots, passing from a private 
 house in Northumberland to the South Kensington 
 Museum, will mean that hundreds of people will be 
 afforded pleasure, instead of only one or two — one, 
 namely yourself, by your own account. Besides, do you
 
 1 8 2 Vanitas 
 
 really think that any private individual has a moral 
 right to keep for himself any object capable of giving 
 a noble kind of pleasure to his fellows, merely because 
 the present state of society allows him to possess more 
 money than his neighbours, and to lock up things as his 
 property ? Surely art belongs to all who can enjoy 
 it ! " 
 
 There was something fault-finding in Greenleaf's 
 tone, owing to the fact that he could not realise such 
 ideas, so very familiar to himself, not being equally 
 famiUar to everyone else. 
 
 Miss Flodden set down the jar she was dusting, keeping 
 her wrist balanced on its edge, and looked at Greenleaf 
 with surprise in her blue eyes, which concentrated, 
 and seemed to grow darker and deeper by the 
 concentration. 
 
 " Really," she asked incredulously, " are you speaking 
 seriously ? But then — what would become of luxury 
 and so forth ? " 
 
 " The active would enjoy it as well as the idle — or 
 rather, there would be no longer either active or idle ; 
 everyone would work and enjoy equally, and equally 
 fairly and rationally." 
 
 " Then," went on Miss Flodden slowly, the sequence 
 of thoughts bursting with difficulty on to her mind, 
 " no one would have things, except for real enjoyment 
 and as a result of fairly earning them ? People would 
 all have books and beautiful trees and fields to look 
 at, and pictures and music ; but no diamonds, or step- 
 ping horses, or frocks from Worth — the things one has 
 because other folk have them." 
 
 Greenleaf smiled : she seemed to him, talking of these 
 things which " one " had because " others " had them,
 
 A Worldly Woman 183 
 
 things so futile, so foreign to his mind, extraordinarily 
 like a child talking of the snakes, whales, and ogres, 
 represented by tables and chairs, and hearthrugs. 
 
 " Of course not." 
 
 " At that rate," went on the girl, " there would no 
 longer be any need for marrying and giving in marriage. 
 One would live quite free ; free to work at what one 
 liked, and look about without folks worrying one." 
 
 Greenleaf did not follow her thought, for his own 
 thoughts were too foreign to the habits she was alluding 
 to. 
 
 " I don't see," he added simply, " why people shouldn't 
 marry or be given in marriage because every one worked 
 and had leisure. Some mightn't, perhaps, because 
 some would always, perhaps, want to work too much, 
 and because things matter to me — I mean to some — 
 more than other people. But I can't see why others 
 shouldn't marry and be given in marriage. Miss Flodden." 
 
 A little contraction passed across the girl's face, and 
 she answered in a hurried, husky voice : 
 
 " No, no ; that would be all over." 
 
 And they fell again to the catalogue. It was a very 
 hard day's work, that first one, for the catalogue was in 
 horrid confusion ; and they really could not have had 
 time to talk much about other tilings, for they went on 
 with merely a brief space for lunch, and Greenleaf was 
 sent for a walk with one of the boys at tea time, while 
 Miss Flodden unwillingly entertained some neighbours. 
 Then at dinner the conversation, in which she took no 
 part, rolled mainly upon local pedigrees, crops, how 
 many fish the boys had caught, in what houses friends 
 were staying, whom sundry young ladies of the neigh- 
 bourhood were likely to marry, and how many bags
 
 i84 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 had been made at the various shoots. Still, despite 
 these irrelevant interests, Miss Flodden seemed to have 
 understood why Greenleaf had expected her to like the 
 sale of the collection, and Greenleaf to have understood 
 why Miss Flodden should have been vexed at the col- 
 lection being sold. At least there was a sense of mutual 
 comprehension and good-will, such as the morning had 
 scarcely promised. And when, after fretting a little 
 over more bags of game and more local pedigrees, with 
 his host and the boys after dinner, Greenleaf returned 
 to find the ladies in various stages of somnolence, over 
 the drawing-room fire, he experienced an odd sense 
 of the naturalness of things when Miss Flodden asked 
 whether he could play the piano, and took her violin 
 out of its case. 
 
 Miss Flodden did not play exactly well, for it appears 
 that very few people do ; and she, of course, had had 
 but little opportunity of learning. Yet, in a way, she 
 played the fiddle much better, Greenleaf felt, than he 
 himself, who was decidedly a proficient, could play the 
 piano. For there was in her playing the expression not 
 merely of talent, but of extraordinary, passionate, dogged 
 determination to master the instrument. It was as much 
 this as the actual execution which gave the charm to 
 her performance. To Greenleaf the charm was immense. 
 He nearly always played, when he did play, with men ; 
 and he hated the way in which the fiddle crushes the 
 starched hideous shirt, the movement of bowing rucks 
 the black sleeve and hard white cuff too high above the 
 red, masculine wrist ; and among the dreams of his life 
 there had always been a very one, of a younger sister — 
 he always thought of her as called Emily — who would 
 have learned the violin, and who would have stood
 
 A Worldly Woman 185 
 
 before him like this, bow in hand, while he looked up 
 from his piano. It seems odd, perhaps, that the fair 
 violinist should never have appeared to his mind as a 
 possible wife ; but so it was. And so it was that this 
 image, which had dawned upon his school-boy fancy- 
 long before the delectableness of marriage could ever 
 be understood, and when his solitary little soul still 
 smarted at his dull, grown-up, companionless home — 
 so it was that the image of " Emily " — the imaginary 
 sister with the violin — had gradually taken the place in 
 his heart of that grave Miss Delia Carpenter, the only 
 woman whom he had ever loved, and who had told him 
 she was in love with another. 
 
 The family was beginning to disperse ; the girls to 
 wake up yawning from their novels or their embroidery ; 
 the father to start suddenly from his slumber over the 
 Times ; the boys, having satisfied themselves in the 
 newspapers about the number of brace of grouse, had 
 sneaked of! to prepare flies for the next day's fishing ; 
 and still the duet went on, the image of " Emily " 
 gradually acquiring the blue eyes (its own had been 
 brownish) and clear-cut, nervous features (she had 
 hitherto had an irregular style of beauty) of Val 
 Flodden. 
 
 " That's enough," said Miss Flodden, putting her 
 violin tenderly — she had the same rather imwonted 
 tenderness with some of the majohca — into its case, and 
 looking round at the sleepy faces of the family. " Jack, 
 give Mr Greenleaf his candle. And," she added, as they 
 shook hands, " you'll tell me some more about how it 
 will be when everybody works and has leisure, won't 
 you, to-morrow ? " 
 
 That night Greenleaf saw in his dreams his father's
 
 1 86 Vanitas 
 
 rectory among the south country pines, the garden and 
 paddock, the big Hbrary and loft full of books ; and 
 among it all there wandered about, rather dim in features, 
 but unhesitatingly recognised, that imaginary sister, the 
 viohnist Emily.
 
 VI 
 
 TELL me more about the Miss Carpenters," said 
 Miss Flodden shyly, keeping her eyes fixed on the 
 rapidly flowing twist of water between the big shingle, 
 where every now and then came the spm:t of a salmon's 
 leap. 
 
 They were seated, after tea, and another hard day's 
 cataloguing, under some beech trees that overhung the 
 Tweed. From the fields opposite — no longer England, 
 already Scotland — came the pant and whirr of a thresh- 
 ing-machine ; while from the woods issued the caw of 
 innumerable rooks, blackening the sky. A heron rose 
 from among the reeds of the bank, and mounted, printing 
 the pale sky with his Japanese outhne. There was 
 incredible peacefulness, not unmixed with austerity, in 
 the gurgle of the water, the green of the banks, the scent 
 of damp earth. 
 
 Greenleaf, who was very reserved about his friends, 
 so much that one friend might almost have imagined 
 him to possess no others, had somehow shd into speaking 
 of his little Bloomsbury world to this girl, who was so 
 foreign to it. It had come home to him how utterly 
 Miss Flodden had lived out of contact with all the various 
 concerns of hfe, and out of sight of the people who have 
 such. Except pottery and violin music, come into her 
 existence by the merest accident, and remaining there 
 utterly isolated, she had no experience, save of the 
 vanities of the world. But what struck him most, and 
 
 187
 
 1 88 Vanitas 
 
 seemed to him even more piteous, was her habit of 
 regarding these vanities as matters not of amusement, 
 but of important business. To her, personally, it would 
 seem, indeed, that frocks, horses, diamonds, invitations 
 to this house or that, and all the complications of social 
 standing, afforded little or no satisfaction. But then 
 she accepted the fact of being an eccentric, a creature 
 not quite all it should be ; and she expected everyone 
 else to be different, to be seriously engaged in the pursuit 
 of the things she, personally, and owing to her eccen- 
 tricity, did not want. 
 
 It was extraordinary how, while she expressed her own 
 distaste for various weaknesses and shortcomings, she 
 defended those who gave way to them as perfectly normal 
 creatures. Greenleaf was horrified to hear her explain, 
 with marvellous perception of how and wherefore, and 
 without any blame, the manner in which women may 
 gradually allow men not their husbands to pay their 
 dressmaker's bills, and gradually to become masters 
 of their purse and of themselves : the necessity of a new 
 frock at some race or ball, the desire to outshine another 
 woman, to get into royalty's notice, and the fear of 
 incensing a husband already hard up — all this seemed to 
 Miss Flodden perfectly natural and incontrovertible ; and 
 she pleaded for those who gave way under such pressure. 
 
 " Of course I wouldn't do it," she said, twisting a 
 long straw in her hands ; " it strikes me as bad form, 
 don't you know ; but then I'm peculiar, and there are 
 so many things in the world which other folk don't 
 mind, and which I can't bear. I don't like some of their 
 talk, and I don't like their not rmming quite straight. 
 But then I seem to have been born with a skin less than 
 one ought to have."
 
 A Worldly Woman 189 
 
 Greenleaf listened in silent horror. In the course of 
 discussing how much the world might be improved by- 
 some of his socialistic plans, this young lady of four or 
 five and twenty had very simply and quietly unveiled 
 a state of corruption, of which, in his tirades against 
 wealth and luxury, he had had but the vaguest idea. 
 " You see," Miss Flodden had remarked, " it's because 
 one has to have so many things which one's neighbours 
 have, whether they give one much pleasure or not, that 
 a woman gets into such false positions, which make 
 people, if things get too obvious, treat her in a beastly, 
 unjust way. But women have always been told that 
 they must have this and that, and go to such and such 
 a house, otherwise they'd Hot keep up in it all ; and then 
 they're fallen upon afterwards. It's awfully unfair. 
 Why, of course, if one hadn't always been told that one 
 must have frocks, and carriages, and must go to Marl- 
 borough House, one wouldn't get married. Of course it's 
 different with me, because I'm queer, and I like making 
 pots, and am willing to know no one. But then that's 
 all wrong, at least my married sister is always saying so. 
 And, of course, I'm not going to marry, however much 
 they bore me about it." 
 
 " You speak as if women got married merely for the 
 sake of living like their neighbours," remarked Green- 
 leaf ; " that's absurd." 
 
 Miss Flodden, seated on a stone, looked up at him 
 under his beech tree. Her face bore a curious expression 
 of incredulity dashed with contempt. Could he be a 
 Pharisee ? 
 
 " There may be exceptions," she answered, " and 
 perhaps you may know some. But if a woman were 
 secure of her living, and did not want things, why should
 
 1 90 Vanitas 
 
 she get married ? " It was as if she had said, Why- 
 should a Hindoo widow bum herself ? " There must be 
 some inducement," she added, looking into the water 
 and plucking at the grass, " to give oneself into the keep- 
 ing of another person." Her face had that same con- 
 traction, as once when she had mentioned the matter 
 before. 
 
 " Good God," thought Greenleaf, " into what ugly- 
 bits of life had this girl been forced to look ! " And he 
 felt a great pity and indignation about things in general. 
 
 Miss Flodden sent a stone skimming across the river, 
 as if to dismiss the subject, and then it was that she said 
 rather hesitatingly : 
 
 " Tell me more about the Miss Carpenters." 
 
 She had an odd, timid curiosity about Greenleaf's 
 friends, about everyone who did anything, as if she 
 feared to intrude on them even in thought. 
 
 Greenleaf had spoken about them before and not 
 unintentionally. These three sisters, living in their 
 flat off Holborn, doing all their housework themselves, 
 and yet finding time to work among the poor, to be 
 cultivated and charming, were a stalking horse of his, 
 an example he liked to bring before this member of 
 fast society. 
 
 He had taken his refusal by one of the sisters with 
 a philosophy which had astonished himself, for he 
 certainly had thought that Delia was very dear to him. 
 She was dear in a way now. But he felt quite pleased 
 at her marriage with young Farquhar of the Museum, 
 and he rather enjoyed talking about her. He told Miss 
 Flodden of Maggie Carpenter's work among the sweaters, 
 and of the readings of English literature she and Clara 
 gave to the shop-girls ; and he was a little shocked, when
 
 A Worldly Woman 191 
 
 he told her of the young woman from Shoolbred's who 
 had borrowed a volume of Webster, that Val Flodden had 
 never heard of that eminent dramatist, and thought he 
 was the dictionary. He described the little suppers they 
 gave in their big kitchen, where the one or two guests 
 helped to lay the table and to wash up afterwards, 
 previous to going to the highest seats in the Albert 
 Hall, or to some socalist lecture ; then the return on foot 
 through the silent, black Bloomsbury streets. He 
 made it sound even more idyllic than it really was. 
 Then he spoke of Delia and the piano lessons she gave 
 and the poems she wrote. He even repeated two of the 
 poems out loud and felt that they were very beautiful. 
 
 " They can never bore themselves," remarked Miss 
 Flodden, pensively. 
 
 " Bore themselves ? " responded Greenleaf. 
 
 " Yes : bore themselves and feel they just must 
 have something different to think about, like birds 
 beating against cage bars." Then, after a pause, she 
 said vaguely and hesitatingly. " I wish there were 
 a chance for one to know the Miss Carpenters," 
 
 Greenleaf brightened up. This was what he wished. 
 " Of course you shall know them, if you care, Miss 
 Flodden, only " 
 
 " Only — you mean that they would think me a bore 
 and an intruder." 
 
 " No," answered Greenleaf, he scarcely knew why, 
 " that's not what I meant. But you must remember 
 that you and they belong to different classes of society." 
 
 Miss Flodden's face contracted. " Ah," she ex- 
 claimed angrily. " Why must you throw that in my 
 face ? You have said that sort of thing several times 
 before. Why do you ? "
 
 192 Vanitas 
 
 Why, indeed ? For Greenleaf could not desist, 
 every now and then, from bringing up that fact. It 
 made the girl quiver, but he could not help himself ; 
 it was an attempt to find out whether she was really 
 in earnest, which he occasionally doubted ; and also 
 it was a natural reaction against certain cynical assump- 
 tions, certain takings for granted on Miss Flodden's 
 part that the vanity and corruption of her miserable 
 little clique permeated the whole of the world — of the 
 world which did not even know, in many instances, that 
 there was such a thing as a smart lot ! 
 
 But now he was sorry. 
 
 " Indeed," he said sorrowfully, " such a gulf between 
 classes unfortunately still exists. In our civilisation, 
 where luxury and the money which buys it go for so 
 much, those who work must necessarily be separate from 
 those who play." 
 
 " Heaven knows you have no right to abuse us for 
 having money," exclaimed Miss Flodden, much hurt. 
 " Why, if I don't get married, and I shan't, I shall never 
 have a penny to bless myself with." 
 
 " It's a question of the lot one belongs to," answered 
 Greenleaf unkindly ; but added, rather remorsefully : 
 " Would you like me to give you a letter for the Miss 
 Carpenters when next you go to town ? I have," he 
 hesitated a little, " talked a good deal about you with 
 them." 
 
 " Really ! " exclaimed Miss Flodden quickly. 
 " That's awfully good of you — I mean to give me a 
 letter — only I fear it will bore them. I shall be going 
 to town for a week or two in October. May I call on 
 them then, do you think ? " 
 
 " Of course." And Greenleaf, who was a businesslike
 
 A Worldly Woman 193 
 
 man, drew out his pocket-book, full of little patterns for 
 pots and notes for lectures, and wrote on a clean page : 
 
 " Mem. : Letter for the Miss Carpenters for Miss 
 Flodden." 
 
 " I will write it to-night or to-morrow ; you shall 
 have it before I leave. By the way, that train the day 
 after to-morrow is at 6.20, is it not ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Miss Flodden. " I wish you could 
 stay longer." 
 
 And they walked home. 
 
 As they wandered through the high-lying fields of 
 green oats and yellow barley, among whose long beards 
 the low sun made golden dust, with the dark, greenish 
 Cheviots on one side, purple clouds hanging on their 
 moor sides, and the three cones of the Eildons rising, 
 hills of fairy-land, faint upon the golden sunset mist — 
 as they wandered talking of various things, pottery, 
 philosophy, and socialism, Greenleaf felt stealing across 
 his soul a peacefulness as unlike his usual mood, as this 
 northern afternoon, with soughing grain and twittering 
 of larks, was different from the grime and bustle of 
 London. He knew, now, that Miss Delia Carpenter's 
 refusal had been best for him ; his nature was too thin 
 to allow of his giving himself both to a wife and family, 
 and to the duties and studies which claimed him ; he 
 would have starved the affections of the first while 
 neglecting the second. His life must always be a solitary 
 one with his work. But into this rather cheerless 
 solitude, there seemed to be coming something, he could 
 scarcely tell what. Greenleaf believed in the possible 
 friendship between a man and a woman ; if it had not 
 existed often hitherto, that was the fault of our corrupt 
 bringing up. But it was possible and necessary ; a
 
 194 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 thing different from, more perfect and more useful, than 
 any friendship between persons of the same sex. But 
 more different still, breezier, more robust and serene, 
 than love even at its best. And had he not always 
 wished for that sister, that Emily who had never existed ? 
 Of course he did not contemplate seeing very much of 
 Miss Flodden ; still less did he admit to himself that 
 this strange, reserved, yet outspoken girl might be the 
 friend he craved for. But he felt a curious satisfaction, 
 despite his better reason, which protested against every- 
 thing abnormal, and which explained a great deal by 
 premature experience of the world's ugliness — he felt 
 a satisfaction at Miss Flodden's aversion to marriage. 
 He could not have explained why, but he knew in a 
 positive manner that this girl never had been, and never 
 would be, in love ; that this young woman of a frivolous 
 and fast lot, was a sort of female Hippolytus, but without 
 a male Diana ; and he held tight to the knowledge as to 
 a treasure.
 
 VII 
 
 THE next day, Greenleaf was a little out of conceit 
 with himself and the world at large : a vague 
 depression and irritation got hold of him. Before 
 breakfast, while ruminating over a list of books for Miss 
 Flodden's reading, he had mechanically taken up a 
 volume which lay on the drawing-room table. There 
 were not many books at Yetholme, except those which 
 were never moved from the library shelves ; and the 
 family's taste ran to Rider Haggard and sporting novels ; 
 while the collection put in his room, and bearing the name 
 of Valentine Flodden, consisted either of things he already 
 knew by heart — a selection from Browning, a volume of 
 Tolstoy, and an Imitation of Christ ; — or of others — as 
 sundry works on Esoteric Buddhism, a handbook of 
 Perspective, and a novel by Marie Corelli — which he 
 felt little desire to read. The book that he took up was 
 from the Circulating Library, Henry James's " Princess 
 Casamassima." He had read it, of course, and dived 
 into it — the last volume it was — at random. Do 
 authors ever reflect how much influence they must 
 occasionally have, coming by accident, to arouse some 
 latent feeling, or to reinforce some dominant habit of 
 mind ? Certainly Henry James had been possessed of 
 no ill-will towards Miss Val Flodden, whom indeed he 
 might have made the heroine of some amiable story. 
 Yet Henry James, at that moment, did Val Flodden a 
 very bad turn. Greenleaf got up from the book, after 
 
 195
 
 196 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 twenty minutes' random reading, in a curiously suspicious 
 and aggressive mood. Of course he never dreamed 
 that he, a gentleman of some independent means, 
 a scholar, a man who had known the upper classes long 
 before he had ever come in contact with the lower, could 
 have anything in common with poor Hyacinth, the 
 socialist bookbinder, pining for luxury and the love of a 
 great lady ; neither was there much resemblance 
 between Christina Light, married to Prince Casamas- 
 sima, and this young Val Flodden married to nobody ; 
 yet the book depressed him horribly, by its suggestion 
 of the odd freaks of curiosity which relieve the weariness 
 of idle lives. And the depression was such, that he could 
 not hold his tongue on the subject. 
 
 " Have you read that book — the ' Princess Casa- 
 massima ' — Miss Flodden ? " he asked at breakfast. 
 
 " Yes," answered the girl ; " isn't it good ? and so 
 natural, don't you think ? " 
 
 " You don't mean that you think the Princess natural 
 — you don't think there ever could be such a horrible 
 woman ? " 
 
 He was quite sure there might be, indeed the fear of 
 such an one quite overpowered him at this very moment ; 
 and he asked in hopes of Miss Flodden saying that there 
 were no Princess Casamassimas. 
 
 Something in his tone appeared to irritate Miss 
 Flodden. She thought him pharisaical, as she some- 
 times did, and considered it her duty to give him a 
 setting down with the weight of her superior worldly 
 wisdom. 
 
 " Of course I think her natural ; only she might be 
 more natural still." 
 
 " You mean more wicked ? " asked Greenleaf sharply.
 
 A Worldly Woman 197 
 
 " No, not more wicked. The woman in the book 
 may be intended to be wicked ; but she needn't have 
 been so in real Hfe. Not at all wicked. She's merely 
 a clever woman who is bored by society, and who wants 
 to know about a lot of things and people. Heaps of 
 women want to know about things because they're 
 bored, but it's not always about nice things and nice 
 people, as in the case of the Princess. She may have 
 done mischief — she shouldn't have played with that 
 wretched little morbid bookbinding boy ; women 
 oughtn't to play with men even when they're fools, 
 indeed especially not then. But that wasn't inevitable. 
 Hyacinth would run under her wheels. Of course I 
 shouldn't have cared for that chemist creature either, 
 nor for that Captain Sholto ; he behaved rather like a 
 cad all round, don't you think ? But after all, they all 
 talked very well ; about interesting things — real, 
 important things — didn't they ? " 
 
 " And you think that to hear people talk about real, 
 important things is a great delight, Miss Flodden ? " 
 asked Greenleaf, with a bitterness she did not fully 
 appreciate. 
 
 " You would understand it if you had lived for years 
 among people who talked nothing but gossip and rot," 
 she answered sadly, rising from her place. 
 
 No more was said that morning about the Princess 
 Casamassima. Miss Flodden was rather silent during 
 their cataloguing work, and Greenleaf felt vaguely sore, 
 he knew not what about. 
 
 Throughout the day, there kept returning to his mind 
 those words, " You see they talked very well, about 
 interesting things, important, real things, didn't they ? " 
 and the simple, taking-things-for-grauted tone in which
 
 198 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 they had been said. Women of her lot, Miss Floddcn 
 had once informed him, would go great lengths for the 
 sake of a new frock or a pair of stepping horses. Was 
 it not possible that some of them, to whom frocks and 
 horses had been offered in too great abundance, might 
 transfer their desire for novelty to interesting talk and 
 real things ? 
 
 That was their last afternoon together. The catalogue 
 had been finished with. Miss Flodden took Greenleaf 
 for a drive in her cart. They sped along under the rolling 
 clouds of the blustering northern afternoon, the rooks, 
 in black swarms, cawing loudly, and the pee- wits screech- 
 ing among the stunted hedges and black stones of the 
 green, close-nibbled pastures ; it was one of those August 
 days which foretell winter. Greenleaf could never 
 recollect very well what they had talked about, except 
 that it had been about a great variety of things, which 
 the blustering wind had seemed to sweep away Uke the 
 brown beech leaves in the hollows. The fact was that 
 Greenleaf was not attending. He kept revolving in his 
 mind the same idea, with the impossibility of solving it. 
 He was rather like a man in love, who cannot decide 
 whether or not he is sufficiently so to make a declaration 
 and feels the propitious moment escaping. Greenleaf 
 was not in love ; had he been, had there been any chance 
 of his being so, Val Flodden would not have been there in 
 the cart by his side ; she had once told him, in one of 
 her fits of abstract communicativeness, that people in 
 love were despicable, but for that reason to be pitied, 
 and that to let them fall in love was to be unkind to them, 
 and to prepare a detestable exhibition for oneself. So 
 Greenleaf was not in love. But he was as excited as if 
 he had been. He felt that a great suspicion had arisen
 
 A Worldly Woman icjg 
 
 within him ; and that this suspicion was about to deprive 
 him of a friendship to which he clung as to a newly- 
 found interest in life. 
 
 About Miss Flodden he did not think — that is to say, 
 whether he might be running the risk of depriving her 
 of something. He had not made love to her, so what 
 could he deprive her of ? Besides he thought of Miss 
 Flodden exclusively as of the person who was probably 
 going to deprive him of something he wanted. Deprive 
 him if his suspicions should be true. For if his sus- 
 picions were true, there was no alternative to giving up 
 all relations with her. He was not a selfish man, trying 
 to save himself heartburns and disenchantments. He 
 was thinking of his opinions, solely. It was quite 
 impossible that they should become the toys of an idle, 
 frivolous woman. Such a thing could not be. The sense 
 of sacrilege was so great that he did not even say to 
 himself that such a thing could not he alloived : to him 
 it took the form of impossibility of its being at all. 
 
 Greenleaf was in an agony of doubt ; he kept on re- 
 peating to himself — " Is she a Princess Casamassima ? " 
 so often, that at last he found it quite natural to put the 
 question, so often formulated internally, out loud to her. 
 Of course if she were a Princess Casamassima, her denial, 
 would be worth nothing ; but when we cannot endure a 
 suspicion against someone, we do not, in our wild desire 
 to have it denied at any price, stop short to reflect that 
 the denial will be worthless. A denial ; he wanted a 
 denial, not for the sake of justice towards her, but for 
 his own peace of mind. He was on the very point of 
 putting that strange question to her, when, in the process 
 of a conversation in which he had taken part as in a 
 dream, there suddenly came the unasked-for-answer.
 
 200 Vanitas 
 
 They must have been talking of the Princess Casa- 
 massima again, and of the uninterestingness of most 
 people's lives. Greenleaf could not remember. It was 
 all muddled in his memory, only there suddenly flashed 
 a sentence, distinct, burning, out of that forgotten 
 confusion. 
 
 " It's odd," said Miss Flodden's high, occasionally 
 childish voice ; " but I've always found that the people 
 who bored one least were either very clever or very 
 fast." 
 
 They were clattering into a little border town, with 
 low black houses on either side, and a square tower, 
 with a red tile extinguisher, and a veering weather-cock, 
 closing the distance and connecting the grey, wet flags 
 below with the grey, billowy sky above. 
 
 Greenleaf, although forgetful of all save theories, 
 remembered for a long time that street and that tower. 
 He did not answer, for his heart was overflowing with 
 bitterness. 
 
 So it was true ; and it just had to be. He had let his 
 behef become the plaything of a capricious child. He 
 had lost his dear friend. It was inevitable. 
 
 Greenleaf did not say a word, and showed nothing 
 until his departure. But his letter to Miss Flodden, 
 thanking for the hospitahty of Yetholme, was brief, 
 and it contained no allusion to any future meeting, and 
 no promised introduction to the Miss Carpenters. Only 
 at the end was this sentence : "I have lately been re- 
 reading Henry James's ' Princess Casamassima ' : and I 
 agree with you completely now as to the naturalness of 
 her character."
 
 VIII 
 
 SOME ten years later found Leonard Greenleaf once 
 more — but this time with only a brougham and a 
 footman to meet him — on his way to stay in a country 
 house. He had been left penniless by his attempts to 
 start co-operative workshops : and overwork and worry 
 had made him far too weak to be a tolerable artisan ; 
 so, after having given up his pottery, those long years 
 ago, because it ministered exclusively to rich men's 
 luxury, he had been obhged to swallow the bitterness 
 of perfecting rich men's dwellings in the capacity of 
 Messrs. Boyce & Co.'s chief decorator ; and now he 
 was bent upon one of these hated errands. 
 
 Time, and the experience of many failures, had indeed 
 perplexed poor Greenleaf's socialistic schemes a Httle, 
 and had left him doubtful how to hasten the millennium, 
 except by the slow methods of preaching morality and 
 thrift ; but time had rather exasperated his hatred of 
 the idleness and selfishness of the privileged classes, to 
 whose luxury he now found himself a minister. And, 
 as he looked out of his window while dressing for dinner 
 (those evening clothes, necessary for such occasions, 
 had become a badge of servitude in his eyes), he felt that 
 old indignation arise with unaccountable strength, and 
 choke him with his own silence. It was a long, low 
 house, the lawn spread, with scarcely any fall, down to 
 the river brink ; a wide band of green, then a wide band 
 of shimmering, undecided blue and grey, reflecting the 
 
 201
 
 202 Vanitas 
 
 coppery clouds and purple banks of loose-strife, and then 
 beyond and higher up in the picture, flat meadows, 
 whose surface was beginning to be veiled in mist, and 
 whose boundary elms were growing flat and unsub- 
 stantial, like painted things. There were birds twittering, 
 and leaves rustling : a great sense of peacefulness, for the 
 family and guests were doubtless within doors busy 
 dressing. Suddenly, there was a plash of oars, and a 
 peal of laughter ; and, after a minute, two men and a 
 woman came hurrying up the green lawn, against whose 
 darkening slopes their white clothes made spots of 
 unearthly whiteness in the twilight. They were noisy, 
 and Greenleaf hated their laughter ; but suddenly the 
 lady stopped short a moment, and said to her companions 
 in a tone of boredom and irritation : " Oh, shut up ; can't 
 you let one look about and listen to things once in a 
 way ? " 
 
 There was more laughter, and they all disappeared 
 indoors. Greenleaf leaned upon his window, wondering 
 where he had heard that voice before — that voice, or 
 rather one different, but yet very like it. 
 
 Downstairs, after a few civil speeches about the 
 pleasure of having the assistance of so great an artistic 
 authority, and sundry contradictory suggestions about 
 styles of furniture and architecture, Greenleaf's host 
 and hostess requested him to join in a little game devised 
 for the removal of precedence in the arrangement of 
 places at table. The game, which had been suggested 
 that very moment by one of the various tall, blond and 
 moustached youths hanging about the drawing-room, 
 consisted in hiding all the men behind a door curtain, 
 whence projected, as sole clue to their identity, their 
 more or less tell-tale feet, by which the ladies were to
 
 A Worldly Woman 203 
 
 choose their partners. The feet, so Greenleaf said to 
 himself, were singularly without identity ; he saw in his 
 mind's eye the row of projecting, pointed-tooed, shining 
 pumps, cut low upon the fantastic assortment of striped, 
 speckled, and otherwise enlivened silk stockings. Among 
 them all there could only be a single pair betraying the 
 nature of their owner, and it was his. They said, or would 
 say, in the mute but expressive language of their square- 
 toedness (Greenleaf felt as if they might have elastic 
 sides even, although his democratic views had always 
 stopped short before that), that their owner was the 
 curate, the tutor, the house-decorator, in fine, the inter- 
 loper. He wondered whether, as good nature to himself 
 and consideration for the other guests must prompt, 
 those feet would be immediately selected by the mistress 
 of the house, or whether they would be left there un- 
 claimed, when all the others had marched cheerfully 
 off. 
 
 But his suspense was quickly converted into another 
 feeling, when among the laughter and exclamations pro- 
 voked by the performance, a voice came from beyond the 
 curtain, saying slowly : " I think I'll have this pair." 
 The voice was the same he had heard from the lawn, the 
 same he had heard years ago in the British Museum, and 
 on the banks of the Tweed — the same which once or 
 twice since, but at ever-increasing intervals, he had tried 
 in vain to recall to his mind's hearing. The voice — but 
 grown deeper, more deliberate and uniformly weary — 
 of Val Flodden. 
 
 Greenleaf heard vaguely the introductory interchange 
 of names performed by his hostess ; and felt in his back 
 the well-bred smile of amusement of the couples still 
 behind, as the lady took his unprepared arm and walked
 
 204 Vanitas 
 
 him ofE in the helter-skelter move to the dining-room ; 
 and it was as in a dream that he heard his name pro- 
 nounced, with the added information, on the part of his 
 companion, that it was a long time since they had last 
 met. 
 
 " Yes," answered G-reenleaf, as the servant gently 
 pushed him and his chair nearer the table ; "it must 
 be quite a lot of years ago. I have come here," he added, 
 he scarce knew why — but with a vague sense of protest 
 and self-defence — " about doing up the house." 
 
 " Yes, to be sure — it is all going to be overhauled and 
 made beautiful and inappropriate," replied the lady, with 
 a faint intonation of insolence, Greenleaf thought, in her 
 bored voice. 
 
 " It is not always easy, is it," rejoined Greenleaf, " to 
 make things appropriate ? " 
 
 " And beautiful ? I suppose not. We aren't any of 
 us very appropriate to a river-bank, with cows lowing 
 and scythes being whetted and all that sort of thing, 
 when one comes to think of it." 
 
 " Oh, I do think cows are such interesting creatures 
 — don't you ? " put in the charming voice of a charming, 
 charmingly dressed, innocent looking woman opposite, 
 who was evidently the accredited fool of the party. 
 " Sir Robert took us to see a lot of his — all over the 
 dairies, you know — this afternoon, while you were 
 punting." 
 
 Another lady, also very charming and charmingly 
 dressed, but neither innocent nor foolish, made some 
 comment on this speech to the man next to her ; he said 
 something in his turn, there was a general suppressed 
 laugh, and the innocent looking lady laughed too ; 
 but protesting they oughtn't to say such things.
 
 A Worldly Woman 205 
 
 Greenleaf's mind, little accustomed to the charms 
 of innuendoes and slippery allusions, had not followed 
 the intricacies of the conversation. An astonishing 
 girl, beautiful with the beauty of a well-bred horse, sat 
 next to him, and tried to perplex him with sundry 
 questions which she knew he could not follow ; but she 
 speedily found there was no rise to be got out of him, 
 and bestowed elsewhere her remarks, racy in more senses 
 than one. So Greenleaf sat silent, looking vaguely at 
 the pools of light beneath the candle-shades, in which 
 the rose petals strewn about, the roses lying loosely, took 
 warm old ivory tints, and the silver — the fantastic 
 confusion of chased salt-cellars and menu-holders and 
 spoons and indescribable objects — flashed blue and lilac 
 on its smooth or chiselled surfaces. From the table the 
 concentrated, shaded light led upwards to the opal neck- 
 lace of the lady opposite, the blue of the opals changing, 
 with the movement of her head, to green, burning and 
 flickering into fiery sparks ; then Greenleaf noticed, 
 sometimes modelled into roundness and sometimes 
 blurred into flatness in the shadow, the black sleeves 
 of the men, the arms of the women, ivory like the rose 
 petals where they advanced beneath the candleshades ; 
 and behind, to the back of the shimmer of the light stuffs 
 and the glare of white shirt-fronts, the big footmen, 
 vague, shadowy, moving about. A man opposite, with 
 babyish eyes and complexion, was telling some story 
 about walking from a punt into the water, which raised 
 the wrath of the girl near Greenleaf ; others added further 
 details, which she laughingly tried to deny ; there was 
 something about having fastened her garter with a 
 diamond star, and the river having to be dragged for it. 
 Another man, gaunt and languid, said something about
 
 2o6 Vanitas 
 
 not hiding old damask under rose-leaves ; but being 
 unnoticed by his hostess, went on about " Parsifal " 
 to his neighbour, the lady interested in cows. There 
 were also allusions to the other Cowes, the place, and to 
 yachting ; and a great many to various kinds of sport 
 and to gambling and losing money ; indeed, it was 
 marvellous how much money was lost and bankruptcy 
 sustained (technically called getting broke). 
 
 The men were mostly more good-looking than not ; 
 the women, it seemed to Greenleaf, beautiful enough, 
 each of them, to reward a good month's search. There 
 was a smell, cool and white and acute, of gardenias, from 
 the buttonholes, and a warmer, vaguer one of rose petals ; 
 the mixture of black coats and indescribable coloured 
 silk, and of bare arms and necks, the alternations of con- 
 centrated light and vague shadow, the occasional glint 
 and glimmer of stones, particularly that warm ivory of 
 roses among the silver, struck Greenleaf, long unaccus- 
 tomed to even much slighter luxury, as extraordinarily 
 beautiful, like some Tadema picture of Roman orgies. 
 And the more beautiful it seemed to him, with its 
 intentional, elaborate beauty, the more did it make 
 him gnash his teeth with the sense of its wickedness, and 
 force him, for his own conscience' sake, to conjure up 
 other pictures : of grimy, gaslit London streets, and 
 battered crowds round barrows of cheap, half-spoilt 
 food. 
 
 The lady who had once been called Val Flodden, and 
 whose name — and he fancied he had heard it before — 
 was now Mrs Hermann Struwe, addressed him with the 
 necessary politeness, and asked him one or two questions 
 about his work and so forth, in a conventional, bored 
 tone. But, although the knowledge that this was his
 
 A Worldly Woman 207 
 
 old acquaintance, and the recognition, every now and 
 then, of the fact, put his feelings into a superficial 
 flutter, Greenleaf's mind kept revolving the fact that 
 this woman was really quite a stranger to him ; and the 
 apparently somewhat contradictory fact that this was 
 what, after all, he had known she would end in. He noted 
 that among these beautiful and self-satisfied women, with 
 their occasional cleverness and frequent unseemliness of 
 word and allusion, the former Val Flodden was in a way 
 conspicuous, not because she was better looking, but 
 because she was more weary, more reckless, because one 
 somehow expected her to do more, for good or bad, than 
 the others. 
 
 " I don't see exactly which of the party could have 
 reported the case," said the woman with the opals, " at 
 least, the crucifix could scarcely have done so . . . well, 
 well." 
 
 There was a great deal of laughter, as the hostess gave 
 the signal for rising ; but over it and the rustle and 
 crackle of the ladies' frocks, the voice of Mrs Hermann 
 Struwe was heard to say in languid, contemptuous tone : 
 " I think your story is a little bit beastly, my dear 
 
 Algy." 
 
 Fortunately for Greenleaf, the men did not stay long 
 at table, as smoking was equally allowed all over the 
 house and in the ladies' presence. For Greenleaf, whose 
 conversation with other men had for years turned only 
 on poHtics, philosophy, or business, was imbued, much 
 as a woman might have been, with a foregone con- 
 viction that as soon as idle men were left to themselves 
 they began to discuss womankind. And there was at the 
 table one man in particular, a long, black, nervous man, 
 with a smiling, jerky, mouth, an odd sample of Jewry
 
 2o8 Vanitas 
 
 acclimatized in England, a horrid, half-handsome man, 
 with extraordinarily bland manners and an extra- 
 ordinarily hard expression, obstinate and mocking, about 
 whom Greenleaf felt that he positively could not sit out 
 any of his conversation on women, and, of course, his 
 conversation ivould turn on women ; partly, perhaps, 
 because the fellow had been introduced as Mr Hermann 
 Struwe. 
 
 Her husband — that was her husband ! Greenleaf 
 kept repeating to himself, as he answered as best he could 
 his host's remarks about Elizabethan as against Queen 
 Anne. It was only now when he thought of her in con- 
 nection with this man that Greenleaf realised that he was 
 really a little upset by this meeting with his old acquaint- 
 ance. And the thought went on and on, round and 
 round, in his head, when he had followed the first 
 stragglers who went to smoke their cigarettes with the 
 ladies, and answered the interrogations of the aesthetic 
 man who had talked about old damask and Wagner. 
 The man in question, delighted to lay hold of so great an 
 authority as Greenleaf, had also noticed that Greenleaf 
 had known Mrs Hermann Struwe at some former period. 
 He had evidently been snubbed a little by the lady, and 
 partly from a desire to hear her artistic capacities pooh- 
 poohed by a professional (since every amateur imagines 
 himself the only tolerable one), and partly from a natural 
 taste for laiowing what did not concern him, he had set 
 very artfully to pump poor Greenleaf, who, at best, was 
 no match for a wily man of the world. 
 
 " Miss Flodden had a good deal of talent — quite a 
 remarkable talent — as a draughtsman, had she only 
 studied seriously," he answered emphatically, seeing only 
 that the fellow wished for some quotable piece of running
 
 A Worldly Woman 209 
 
 down. " It is, in fact, a pity " — but he stopped. He 
 was really not thinking of that. The long drawing-room 
 opened with all its windows on to the lawn, and you 
 could see, at the bottom of that, the outhnes of trees and 
 boats in the moonlight, and Chinese lanterns hanging 
 about the flotilla of moored punts and canoes and skiffs, to 
 which some of the party had gone down, revealing them- 
 selves with occasional splashings, thrummings on the 
 banjo, and little cries and peals of laughter. Nearer the 
 house a couple was walking up and down on the grass, the 
 light of the drawing-room lamps catching their faces with 
 an odd, yellow glow every now and then, and making the 
 woman's white frock shimmer like silver against the 
 branches of the big cedars. " It appears Lady Lilly told 
 her mother she was going to try on a frock, but somehow 
 on the way there she met Morton's coach, so she thought 
 she'd get on to it and have some change of air and she 
 changed the air so often that by the evening she had 
 contrived to win sixty pounds at Sandown," said one of 
 the promenading couples, pausing in the stream of hght 
 from the window. " Oh, bless your soul, she doesn't 
 mind it's being told ; she thinks it an awful joke, and so 
 it was." 
 
 That man — that Val Flodden should have married 
 that man — Greenleaf kept repeating to himself, and the 
 recollection of her words about never getting married, 
 about a world where there would be no diamonds and 
 no stepping horses, and also, as she expressed it, no 
 marrying and giving in marriage, filled Greenleaf's mind 
 as with some bitter, heady dram. And he had thought 
 of her as a sort of unapproachable proud amazon, or 
 Diana of Hippolytus, incapable of any feeUng save in- 
 dignation against injustice and pity for weak and gentle 
 o
 
 2 1 o Vanitas 
 
 things. Oh Lord, oh Lord ! It was horrible, horrible, 
 and at the same time laughable. And just that man, 
 too — that narrow, obstinate looking creature with the 
 brain and the heart (Greenleaf knew it for a certainty) 
 of a barn-door cock ! And yet, was he any worse than 
 the others, the others who, perhaps, had a Uttle more 
 brains and a little more heart, and who all the same lived 
 only to waste the work of the poor, to make debts, to 
 gamble, to ruin women, and to fill the world with filthy 
 talk and disbelief in better things ? Was he worse 
 than all the other manly, well-mannered, accomplished, 
 futile, or mischievous creatures ? Was he worse than 
 she? 
 
 " Ah, well, of course ; you have known her so much 
 more than I have," said the aesthetic man, puffing at his 
 cigarette, opposite to Greenleaf. " But now, I should 
 have thought there would have always been something 
 lacking in anything that woman would do. A certain — 
 I don't know what to call it — but, in short, proper mental 
 balance and steadiness. I consider, that for real artistic 
 quality, it is necessary that one should possess some sort 
 of seriousness, of consistency of character — of course you 
 know her so much better, Mr Greenleaf — but now I can't 
 understand a really artistic woman — after refusing half 
 a dozen other fellows who were at least gentlemen, 
 suddenly choosing a tubbed Jew like that — and appar- 
 ently not seeing that he is only a tubbed Jew," the 
 aesthetic man stopped, disappointed in not getting a rise 
 from Greenleaf, but Greenleaf was scarcely listening. 
 
 A man had sat down to the piano and was singing, 
 on the whole, rather well. Some of the people were 
 standing by him, others were in little groups, men and 
 women nearly all smoking equally, scattered about the
 
 A Worldly Woman 2 1 1 
 
 big white room with the delicate blue china, and the big 
 stacks of pale pink begonias. Mrs Hermann Struwe 
 was standing near the piano, leaning against the long, 
 open window, the principal figure in a group of two other 
 women and a man. In her fanciful, straight-hanging 
 dress of misty-coloured crape, her hair, elaborately and 
 tightly dressed, making her small head even smaller, 
 and her strong, slender neck, with the black pearls around 
 it, drawn up hke a peacock's, she struck Greenleaf as 
 much more beautiful than before, and even much taller ; 
 but there had been a gentleness, a something timid 
 and winning, in her former occasional Httle stoop, which 
 was now quite gone. She looked young, but young in 
 quite another way ; she was now very thin, and her 
 cheeks were hollowed very perceptibly. 
 
 The bland, blurred man at the piano was singing with 
 all his might, and with considerable voice and skill ; 
 but the music, of his own composition, was indecorously 
 passionate as he sang it, at least taken in connection with 
 the words, culled from some decadent French poet, and 
 which few people would have dehberately read out aloud. 
 The innocent lady who had talked about cows even made 
 some faint objection, to which the singer answered much 
 surprised, by blandly pointing out the passionate charm 
 of the words, and assuring her that she did not know 
 what real feeling was. And when he had finished that 
 song, and begun another, one of the two other women 
 actually moved away, while the other buried her head 
 in a volume of Punch ; there was a little murmur, 
 " Well, I think he is going a little too far." But Mrs 
 Hermann Struwe never moved. 
 
 " I can't make out that woman," remarked Greenleaf's 
 new acquaintance, the aesthetic man ; " she's usually
 
 2 1 2 Vanitas 
 
 by way of being prudish, and has a way of shutting up 
 poor Chatty when he gets into this strain. Only yester- 
 day, she told him his song was beastly, and it wasn't 
 half as bad as this one. I expect she's doing it from 
 cussedness, because her husband was bored at her being 
 too particular yesterday ; because, of course, he'll be 
 bored by her not being particular enough to-day." 
 
 Greenleaf walked up to a picture, and thence slunk ofi 
 to the door. As he was leaving the room, he looked back 
 at the former Miss Flodden : she was still standing near 
 the piano, listening composedly, but he thought that 
 her thin face bore an expression of defiance. 
 
 He was so excited that he opened his room door too 
 quickly to give effect to a practical joke, consisting of a 
 can of water balancing on its angle as it stood ajar, and 
 intended to tumble on his head while he was passing in ; 
 a delicate jest which the girl who had sat next to him — 
 she of the punt, diamond garter and coach adventures — 
 occasionally practised on the new inmates of what she 
 technically called " houses."
 
 IX 
 
 THE next morning, after surveying the house with 
 his host, and maldng elaborate plans for its altera- 
 tion with his hostess, Greenleaf was going for a stroll 
 outside the grounds, when he suddenly heard his name 
 called by the voice of her who had once been Val Flodden, 
 but of whom he already thought only as Mrs Hermann 
 Struwe. She arose from under a big cedar, among 
 whose sweeping branches she had been seated reading, 
 
 " Are you going for a walk ? " she asked, coming 
 towards him in her white frock, incredibly white against 
 the green lawn, and trailing her also incredibly white 
 parasol after her. 
 
 " Is it true that you go back to town this afternoon ? " 
 
 " Yes," answered Greenleaf, laconically. 
 
 " Then," she said, " I will come with you a little way." 
 
 They walked silently through a little wood of beeches, 
 and out into the meadows by the river. Greenleaf found 
 it too difficult to say anything, and, after all, why say 
 anything to her ? 
 
 " Look here," began Mrs Hermann Struwe, suddenly 
 stopping short by the water's brink. " I want to speak 
 to you quite plainly, Mr Greenleaf. Quite plainly, as one 
 does, don't you know, to a person one isn't likely ever to 
 meet again. I didn't want to speak to you yesterday, 
 because — well — because I disliked you too much." 
 
 Greenleaf looked up from the grasses steeping at the 
 root of a big willow, in the water. 
 
 213
 
 2 14 Vanitas 
 
 " Why ? " he asked blankly, but a vague pain invad- 
 ing his consciousness, with the recollection of the library 
 at Yetholme, of the catalogue and the dusty majolica, 
 when Miss Flodden had said once before that she disliked 
 him, because he was taking away the pots. 
 
 " But I've thought over it," she went on, not noticing 
 his interruption ; " and I see again, what I recognised 
 years ago — only that every now and then I can't help 
 forgetting it and feeling bad — namely, that it was quite 
 natural on your part — I mean your never having intro- 
 duced me to the Miss Carpenters, nor even written to me 
 again." She spoke slowly and very gently, with just a 
 little hesitation, as he remembered so well her having 
 done those years ago in Northumberland. 
 
 An unknown feeling overwhelmed Greenleaf and 
 prevented his speaking — the feeling, he vaguely under- 
 stood, of having destroyed, of having killed something. 
 
 " I don't reproach you with it. I never really did. 
 I imderstood very soon that it was quite natural on 
 your part to take me for a Princess Casamassima. I 
 had done nothing to make you really know me, and 
 I had no right to expect you to take me on my own 
 telling. And there must have been so many things to 
 make you suspect my not deserving to know your friends, 
 or to learn about your ideas. It wasn't that," she added, 
 hurriedly, " that I wished really to explain, because, as 
 I repeat, although I sometimes feel unreasonable and 
 angry, like last night, when something suddenly makes 
 me see the contrast between what I might have been, 
 and what I am, I don't bear you any grudge. What 
 I wanted to tell you, Mr Greenleaf, is that I wasn't 
 unworthy of the confidence, though it wasn't much, 
 which you once placed in me. I was not a Princess
 
 A Worldly Woman 2 i 5 
 
 Casamassima ; I was not a humbug then, saying things 
 and getting you to say them for the sake of the novelty. 
 And I'm not really changed since. I wasn't a worthless 
 woman then ; and I haven't really become a worthless 
 woman now. Shall we go towards home ? I think I 
 heard the gong." 
 
 They were skirting the full river, with its fringe 
 of steeping loose-strife and meadow-sweet, and its 
 clumps of sedge, starred with forget-me-not, whence 
 whirred occasional water-fowl. From the field oppo- 
 site there came every now and then the lazy low of 
 a cow. 
 
 " It was very different, wasn't it, on the Tweed," 
 she said, looking round her ; " the banks so steep and 
 bare, and all that shingle. Do you remember the heron ? 
 Didn't he look Japanese ? I hate all this," and she dug 
 up a pellet of green with her parasol point, and flung it 
 far into the water. 
 
 " Of course," she went on, " to you it must seem the 
 very proof of your suspicions having been justified, I 
 mean your finding me again — well, in this house. 
 And, perhaps you may remember my telling you, 
 all those years ago at Yetholme, that I would never 
 marry." 
 
 She raised her eyes from the ground and looked straight 
 into his, with that odd deepening of colour of her own. 
 She had guessed his thoughts : that sentence about not 
 marrying and being given in marriage was ringing in his 
 mind ; and he felt, as she looked into his face, that she 
 wished above all to clear herself from that unspoken 
 accusation. 
 
 " I never should have, most likely," she went on. 
 "Although you must remember that all my bringing up
 
 2 1 6 Vanitas 
 
 had consisted in teaching me that a woman's one business 
 in life is to marry, to make a good marriage, to marry into 
 this set, a man like my husband. For a long while 
 before I ever met you, I had made up my mind that 
 although this was undoubtedly the natural and virtuous 
 course, I would not follow it, that I would rather earn 
 my living or starve ; and I had been taught that to do 
 either, to go one's own ways and think one's own 
 thoughts, was scandalous. It was about this that I had 
 broken with my sister. She had bothered me to marry 
 one of a variety of men whom she unearthed for the 
 purpose ; and we quarrelled because I refused the one 
 she wanted me to have most — the one, as a matter of 
 fact, who is now my husband. I tell you all these 
 uninteresting things because I want you to know that I 
 was in earnest when I told you I did not want the things 
 a woman gets by marrying. I was in earnest," she went 
 on, stopping and twisting a long willow leaf round her 
 finger, the tone of her voice changing suddenly from 
 almost defiant earnestness to a sad, helpless little tone, 
 " but it was of no good. I saw — you showed me — that 
 I was locked, walled into the place into which I had been 
 born ; you made me feel that it was useless for an out- 
 sider to try to gain the confidence of you people who 
 work and care about things ; that your friends would 
 consider me an intruder, that you considered me a hum- 
 bug — you slammed in my face the little door through 
 which I had hoped to have escaped from all this sort 
 of thing." 
 
 And she nodded towards the white house, stretched 
 like a little encampment upon the green river bank, 
 with the flotilla of boats and punts and steam launches, 
 moored before its windows.
 
 A Worldly Woman 2 i 7 
 
 " Then," said Greenleaf, a light coming into his 
 mind, a light such as would reveal some great ruin 
 of flood or fire to the unconscious criminal who has 
 opened the sluice or dropped the match in the dark, 
 " then you sat out that song last night to make me 
 understand. . . . ? " 
 
 " It was very childish of me, and also very unjust," 
 answered Mrs Hermann composedly. " Of course you 
 couldn't help it. I don't feel angry with you. But 
 sometimes, when I remember those weeks when I 
 gradually understood that it was all to be, and I made 
 up my mind to live out the life for which I had been born 
 — and, now that the pots were sold — well, to sell myself 
 also to the highest bidder — sometimes I did feel a little 
 bad. You see when one is really honest oneself, it is 
 hard to be misunderstood — and the more misunderstood 
 the more one explains oneself — by other people who are 
 honest." 
 
 They walked along in silence ; which Greenleaf broke 
 by asking as in a dream — " And your violin ? " 
 
 " Oh ! I've given that up long ago — my husband 
 didn't like it, and as he has given me everything that 
 I possess, it wouldn't be business, would it, to do things 
 he dislikes ? If it had been the piano, or the guitar, or 
 the banjo ! But a woman can't lock herself up and 
 practise the fiddle ! People would think it odd. And 
 now," she added, as they came in sight of the little groups 
 of variegated pink and mauve frocks, and the white 
 boating-clothes under the big cedars, " good-bye, Mr 
 Greenleaf ; and — be a little more trustful to other 
 people who may want your friendship — won't you ? 
 I shall like to think of that." She stretched out 
 her hand, with the thin glove loosely wrinkled
 
 2 1 8 Vanitas 
 
 over the arm, and she smiled that good, wide-eyed 
 smile, like that of k good, serious child who wishes 
 to understand. 
 
 Greenleaf did not take her hand at once. 
 
 " You have children at least ? " he asked hoarsely. 
 
 She understood his thought, but hesitated before 
 answering, 
 
 " I have three — somewhere — at the sea-side, or some 
 other place where children ought to be when their parents 
 go staying about," — she answered quickly — " they are 
 quite happy, with plenty of toys, now ; and they will 
 be quite happy when they grow up, for they will have 
 plenty of money, and they will be their father's image — 
 good-bye ! " 
 
 " Good-bye," answered Greenleaf, and added, after 
 he had let go her hand, " It is very generous of you to be 
 so forgiving. But your generosity makes it only more 
 impossible for me ever to forgive myself." 
 
 Out of the station of that little group of river houses 
 the line goes almost immediately on to a long bridge. 
 It was in process of repair, and as the train moved slowly 
 across, Greenleaf could see, on the upper river reach, 
 close beneath him, a flotilla of boats, canoes, and skiffs 
 of various sizes, surrounding a punt, and all of them gay 
 with lilac and pale green and pale pink frocks, and wliite 
 flannels, and coloured sashes and cushions, and fantastic 
 umbrellas. Some of the ladies were scrambling from one 
 of the skiffs into the punt, which was pinned into its 
 place by the long pole held upright in the green, glassy 
 water, reflecting the pink, green, lilac, and white, the red 
 cushions, and the shimmering greyness of the big willows. 
 There was much laughter and some little shrieks, and the 
 twang of a banjo ; and it looked altogether like some
 
 A Worldly Woman 219 
 
 modern Watteau's version of a latter-day embarkation 
 for the island of Venus. And, in the little heap of 
 bright colours, Greenleaf recognised, over the side of a 
 skiff, the parasol, white, incredibly white, of the former 
 Val Flodden.
 
 THE 
 LEGEND OF MADAME KRASINSKA
 
 THE 
 LEGEND OF MADAME KRASINSKA 
 
 IT is a necessary part of this story to explain how I 
 have come by it, or rather, how it has chanced to have 
 me for its writer. 
 
 I was very much impressed one day by a certain 
 nun of the order calling themselves Little Sisters of the 
 Poor. I had been taken to these sisters to support 
 the recommendation of a certain old lady, the former 
 door-keeper of his studio, whom my friend Cecco Ban- 
 dini wished to place in the asylum. It turned out, of 
 course, that Cecchino was perfectly able to plead his 
 case without my assistance ; so I left him blandishing 
 the Mother Superior in the big, cheerful kitchen, and 
 begged to be shown over the rest of the establishment. 
 The sister who was told ofE to accompany me was the 
 one of whom I would speak. 
 
 This lady was tall and slight ; her figure, as she 
 preceded me up the narrow stairs and through the white- 
 washed wards, was uncommonly elegant and charming ; 
 and she had a girHsh rapidity of movement, which caused 
 me to experience a little shock at the first real sight which 
 I caught of her face. It was young and remarkably 
 pretty, with a kind of refinement peculiar to American 
 women ; but it was inexpressibly, solemnly tragic ; and 
 one felt that under her tight hnen cap, the hair must be 
 snow white. The tragedy, whatever it might have been, 
 
 223
 
 2 24 Vanitas 
 
 was now over ; and the lady's expression, as she spoke 
 to the old creatures scraping the ground in the garden, 
 ironing the sheets in the laundry, or merely huddling 
 over their braziers in the chill winter sunshine, was 
 pathetic only by virtue of its strange present tenderness, 
 and by that trace of terrible past suffering. 
 
 She answered my questions very briefly, and was 
 as taciturn as ladies of rehgious communities are usually 
 loquacious. Only, when I expressed my admiration for 
 the institution which contrived to feed scores of old 
 paupers on broken victuals begged from private houses 
 and inns, she turned her eyes full upon me and said, 
 with an earnestness which was almost passionate, " Ah, 
 the old ! The old ! It is so much, much worse for them 
 than for any others. Have you ever tried to imagine 
 what it is to be poor and forsaken and old ? " 
 
 These words and the strange ring in the sister's voice, 
 the strange light in her eyes, remained in my memory. 
 What was not, therefore, my surprise when, on returning 
 to the kitchen, I saw her start and lay hold of the back of 
 the chair as soon as she caught sight of Cecco Bandini. 
 Cecco, on his side also, was visibly startled, but only after 
 a moment ; it was clear that she recognized him long 
 before he identified her. What little romance could 
 there exist in common between my eccentric painter and 
 that serene but tragic Sister of the Poor ? 
 
 A week later, it became evident that Cecco Bandini 
 had come to explain the mystery ; but to explain it (as I 
 judged by the embarrassment of his manner) by one of 
 those astonishingly elaborate lies occasionally attempted 
 by perfectly frank persons. It was not the case. 
 Cecchino had come indeed to explain that little dumb 
 scene which had passed between him and the Little
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 225 
 
 Sister of the Poor. He had come, however, not to 
 satisfy my curiosity, or to overcome my suspicions, but 
 to execute a commission which he had greatly at heart ; 
 to help, as he expressed it, in the accomplishment of a 
 good work by a real saint. 
 
 Of course, he explained, smiling that good smile under 
 his black eyebrows and white moustache, he did not 
 expect me to believe very literally the story which he had 
 undertaken to get me to write. He only asked, and the 
 lady only wished, me, to write down her narrative without 
 any comments, and leave to the heart of the reader the 
 decision about its truth or falsehood. 
 
 For this reason, and the better to attain the object 
 of appealing to the profane, rather than to the religious, 
 reader, I have abandoned the order of narrative of the 
 Little Sister of the Poor ; and attempted to turn her 
 pious legend into a worldly story, as follows : —
 
 CECCO BANDINI had just returned from the 
 Maremma, to whose solitary marshes and jungles 
 he had fled in one of his fits of fury at the stupidity and 
 wickedness of the civilised world. A great many months 
 spent among buffaloes and wild boars, conversing only 
 with those wild cherry-trees, of whom he used whimsi- 
 cally to say, " they are such good little folk," had sent 
 him back with an extraordinary zest for civilisation, and 
 a comic tendency to find its products, human and other- 
 wise, extraordinary, picturesque, and suggestive. He 
 was in this frame of mind when there came a hght rap 
 on his door-slate ; and two ladies appeared on the thres- 
 hold of his studio, with the shaven face and cockaded 
 hat of a tall footman over-topping them from behind. 
 One of them was unknown to our painter ; the other 
 was numbered among Cecchino's very few grand 
 acquaintances. 
 
 " Why haven't you been round to me yet, you 
 savage ? " she asked, advancing quickly with a brusque 
 hand-shake and a brusque bright gleam of eyes and 
 teeth, well-bred but audacious and a trifle ferocious. 
 And dropping on to a divan she added, nodding first at 
 her companion and then at the pictures all round, " I 
 have brought my friend, Madame Krasinska, to see your 
 things," and she began poking with her parasol at the 
 contents of a gaping portfolio. 
 
 The Baroness Fosca — for such was her name — 
 
 226
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 227 
 
 was one of the cleverest and fastest ladies of the place, 
 with a taste for art and ferociously frank conversation. 
 To Cecco Bandini, as she lay back among her furs on that 
 shabby divan of his, she appeared in the light of the 
 modern Lucretia Borgia, the tamed panther of fashion- 
 able life. " What an interesting thing civilisation is ! " 
 he thought, watching her every movement with the eyes 
 of the imagination ; " why, you might spend years 
 among the wild folk of the Maremma without meeting 
 such a tremendous, terrible, picturesque, powerful 
 creature as this ! " 
 
 Cecchino was so absorbed in the Baroness Fosca, 
 who was in reality not at all a Lucretia Borgia, but merely 
 an impatient lady bent upon amusing and being amused, 
 that he was scarcely conscious of the presence of her 
 companion. He knew that she was very young, very 
 pretty, and very smart, and that he had made her his 
 best bow, and offered her his least rickety chair ; for the 
 rest, he sat opposite to his Lucretia Borgia of modern life, 
 who had meanwhile found a cigarette, and was puffing 
 away and explaining that she was about to give a fancy 
 ball, which should be the most crdne, the only amusing 
 thing, of the year. 
 
 " Oh," he exclaimed, kindling at the thought, " do 
 let me design you a dress all black and white and wicked 
 green — you shall go as Deadly Nightshade, as Bella- 
 donna Atropa " 
 
 " Belladonna Atropa ! why, my ball is in comic 
 costume." . . . The Baroness was answering con- 
 temptuously, when Cecchino's attention was suddenly 
 called to the other end of the studio by an exclamation 
 on the part of his other visitor. 
 
 " Do tell me all about her ; has she a name ? Is
 
 2 28 Vanitas 
 
 she really a lunatic ? " asked the young lady who had 
 been introduced as Madame Krasinska, keeping a port- 
 folio open with one hand, and holding up in the other a 
 coloured sketch she had taken jErom it. 
 
 " What have you got there ? Oh, only the Sora 
 Lena ! " and Madame Fosca reverted to the contem- 
 plation of the smoke-rings she was making. 
 
 " Tell me about her — Sora Lena, did you say ? " 
 asked the younger lady eagerly. 
 
 She spoke French, but with a pretty little American 
 accent, despite her Polish name. She was very charm- 
 ing, Cecchino said to himself, a radiant impersonation of 
 youthful brightness and elegance as she stood there in her 
 long, silvery furs, holding the drawing with tiny, tight- 
 gloved hands, and shedding around her a vague, exquisite 
 fragrance — no, not a mere literal perfume, that would 
 be far too coarse, but something personal aldn to it. 
 
 " I have noticed her so often," she went on, with 
 that silvery young voice of hers ; " she's mad, isn't she ? 
 And what did you say her name was ? Please tell me 
 again." 
 
 Cecchino was delighted. " How true it is," he 
 reflected, " that only refinement, high-breeding, luxury 
 can give people certain kinds of sensitiveness, of rapid 
 intuition ! No woman of another class would have 
 picked out just that drawing, or would have been 
 interested in it without stupid laughter." 
 
 " Do you want to know the story of poor old Sora 
 Lena ? " asked Cecchino, taking the sketch from 
 Madame Krasinska's hand, and looking over it at the 
 charming, eager young face. 
 
 The sketch might have passed for a caricature ; but 
 anyone who had spent so little as a week in Florence
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 229 
 
 those six or seven years ago would have recognised at 
 once that it was merely a faithful portrait. For Sora 
 Lena — more correctly Signora Maddalena — had been 
 for years and years one of the most conspicuous sights 
 of the town. In all weathers you might have seen that 
 hulking old woman, with her vague, staring, reddish 
 face, trudging through the streets or standing before 
 shops, in her extraordinary costume of thirty years 
 ago, her enormous crinoline, on which the silk skirt and 
 ragged petticoat hung limply, her gigantic coal-scuttle 
 bonnet, shawl, prunella boots, and great muff or parasol ; 
 one of several outfits, all alike, of that distant period, 
 all alike inexpressibly dirty and tattered. In all 
 weathers you might have seen her stolidly going her 
 way, indifferent to stares and jibes, of which, indeed, 
 there were by this time comparatively few, so familiar 
 had she grown to staring, jibing Florence. In all 
 weathers, but most noticeably in the worst, as if the 
 squalor of mud and rain had an affinity with that sad, 
 draggled, soiled, battered piece of human squalor, that 
 lamentable rag of half-witted misery. 
 
 " Do you want to know about Sora Lena ? " repeated 
 Cecco Bandini, meditatively. They formed a strange, 
 strange contrast, these two women, the one in the sketch 
 and the one standing before him. And there was to him 
 a pathetic whimsicalness in the interest which the one 
 had excited in the other, " How long has she been 
 wandering about here ? Why, as long as I can remember 
 the streets of Florence, and that," added Cecchino 
 sorrowfully, " is a longer while than I care to count up. 
 It seems to me as if she must always have been there, 
 like the olive-trees and the paving-stones ; for, after all, 
 Giotto's tower was not there before Giotto, whereas poor
 
 230 Vanitas 
 
 old Sora Lena — But, by the way, there is a limit even 
 to her. There is a legend about her ; they say that 
 she was once sane, and had two sons, who went as 
 Volunteers in '59, and were killed at Solferino, and ever 
 since then she has sallied forth, every day, winter or 
 summer, in her best clothes, to meet the young fellows 
 at the station. May be. To my mind it doesn't matter 
 much whether the story be true or false ; it is fitting," 
 and Cecco Bandini set about dusting some canvases 
 which had attracted the Baroness Fosca's attention. 
 When Cecchino was helping that lady into her furs, she 
 gave one of her little brutal smiles, and nodded in the 
 direction of her companion. 
 
 " Madame Krasinska," she said laughing, " is very 
 desirous of possessing one of your sketches, but she is 
 too polite to ask you the price of it. That's what comes 
 of our not knowing how to earn a penny for ourselves, 
 doesn't it, Signor Cecchino ? " 
 
 Madame Krasinska blushed, and looked more young, 
 and delicate, and charming. 
 
 " I did not know whether you would consent to part 
 with one of your drawings," she said in her silvery, 
 child-like voice, — " it is — this one — which I should so 
 much have liked to have — ... to have . . . 
 bought." Cecchino smiled at the embarrassment which 
 the word " bought " produced in his exquisite visitor. 
 Poor, charming young creature, he thought ; the only 
 thing she thinks people one knows can sell, is themselves, 
 and that's called getting married. " You must explain 
 to your friend," said Cecchino to the Baroness Fosca, 
 as he hunted in a drawer for a piece of clean paper, " that 
 such rubbish as this is neither bought nor sold ; it is not 
 even possible for a poor devil of a painter to offer it as a
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 231 
 
 gift to a lady — but,"— and he handed the Httle roll to 
 Madame Krasinska, making his very best bow as he did 
 so — " it is possible for a lady graciously to accept it." 
 
 " Thank you so much," answered Madame Krasinska, 
 sHpping the drawing into her muff ; " it is very good 
 of you to give me such a . . . such a very interesting 
 sketch," and she pressed his big brown fingers in her 
 little grey-gloved hand. 
 
 " Poor Sora Lena ! " exclaimed Cecchino, when 
 there remained of the visit only a faint perfume of 
 exquisiteness ; and he thought of the hideous old draggle- 
 tailed mad woman, reposing, rolled up in effigy, in the 
 delicious daintiness of that delicate grey mufE.
 
 II 
 
 A FORTNIGHT later, the great event was Madame 
 Fosca's fancy ball, to which the guests were bidden 
 to come in what was described as comic costume. Some, 
 however, craved leave to appear in their ordinary 
 apparel, and among these was Cecchino Bandini, who was 
 persuaded, moreover, that his old-fashioned swallow- 
 tails, which he donned only at weddings, constituted 
 quite comic costume enough. 
 
 This knowledge did not interfere at all with his 
 enjoyment. There was even, to his whimsical mind, 
 a certain charm in being in a crowd among which he 
 knew no one ; uimoticed, or confused, perhaps, with the 
 waiters, as he hung about the stairs and strolled through 
 the big palace rooms. It was as good as wearing an 
 invisible cloak, one saw so much just because one was not 
 seen ; indeed, one was momentarily endowed (it seemed 
 at least to his fanciful apprehension) with a faculty akin 
 to that of understanding the talk of birds ; and, as he 
 watched and Ustened he became aware of innumerable 
 charming little romances, which were concealed from 
 more notable but less privileged persons. 
 
 Little by little the big white and gold rooms began to 
 fill. The ladies, who had moved in gorgeous isolation, 
 their skirts displayed as finely as a peacock's train, 
 became gradually visible only from the waist upwards ; 
 and only the branches of the palm-trees and tree ferns 
 detached themselves against the shining walls. Instead 
 
 232
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 233 
 
 of wandering among variegated brocades and iridescent 
 silks and astonishing arrangements of feathers and 
 flowers, Cecchino's eye was forced to a higher level by the 
 thickening crowd ; it was now the constellated sparkle of 
 diamonds on neck and head which dazzled him, and the 
 strange, miaccustomed splendour of white arms and 
 shoulders. And, as the room filled, the invisible cloak 
 was also drawn closer round our friend Cecchino, and the 
 extraordinary faculty of perceiving romantic and 
 delicious secrets in other folks' bosoms became more and 
 more developed. They seemed to him like exquisite 
 children, these creatures rustling about in fantastic 
 dresses, powdered shepherds and shepherdesses with 
 diamonds spirting fire among their ribbons and top- 
 knots ; Japanese and Chinese embroidered with sprays 
 of flowers ; mediaeval and antique beings, and beings 
 hidden in the plumage of birds, or the petals of flowers ; 
 children, but children somehow matured, transfigured 
 by the touch of luxury and good-breeding, children full 
 of courtesy and kindness. There were, of course, a few 
 costumes which might have been better conceived or 
 better carried out, or better — not to say best — omitted 
 altogether. One grew bored, after a Httle while, with 
 people dressed as marionettes, champagne bottles, sticks 
 of sealing-wax, or captive balloons ; a young man 
 arrayed as a female ballet dancer, and another got up as a 
 wet nurse, with baby ohligato, might certainly have been 
 dispensed with. Also, Cecchino could not help wincing 
 a little at the daughter of the house being mummed 
 and painted to represent her own grandmother, a 
 respectable old lady whose picture hung in the dining- 
 room, and whose spectacles he had frequently picked 
 up in his boyhood. But these were mere trifling details.
 
 2 34 Vanitas 
 
 And, as a whole, it was beautiful, fantastic. So Ceccliino 
 moved backward and forward, invisible in his shabby 
 black suit, and borne hither and thither by the well- 
 bred pressure of the many-coloured crowd ; pleasantly 
 blinded by the innumerable lights, the sparkle of chan- 
 delier pendants, and the shooting flames of jewels ; 
 gently deafened by the confused murmur of innumerable 
 voices, of crackling stuffs and soughing fans, of distant 
 dance music ; and inhaling the vague fragrance which 
 seemed less the decoction of cunning perfumers than the 
 exquisite and expressive emanation of this exquisite 
 bloom of personality. Certainly, he said to himself, 
 there is no pleasure so delicious as seeing people amusing 
 themselves with refinement : there is a transfiguring 
 magic, almost a moralising power, in wealth and elegance 
 and good-breeding. 
 
 He was making this reflection, and watching between 
 two dances, a tiny fluff of down sailing through the 
 warm draught across the empty space, the sort of whirl- 
 pool of the ball-room — when a little burst of voices came 
 from the entrance saloon. The multi-coloured costumes 
 fluttered like butterflies toward a given spot, there was 
 a little heaping together of brilliant colours and flashing 
 jewels. There was much craning of delicate, fluffy young 
 necks and heads, and shuffle on tip-toe, and the crowd 
 fell automatically aside. A little gangway was cleared ; 
 and there walked into the middle of the white and gold 
 drawing-room, a lumbering, hideous figure, with reddish, 
 vacant face, sunk in an immense, tarnished satin bonnet ; 
 and draggled, faded, lilac silk skirts spread over a vast 
 dislocated crinoline. The feet dabbed along in the 
 broken prunella boots ; the mangy rabbit-skin muff 
 bobbed loosely with the shambling gait ; and then, under
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 235 
 
 the big chandelier, there came a sudden pause, and the 
 thing looked slowly round, a gaping, moorjng, blear-eyed 
 stare. 
 
 It was the Sora Lena. 
 
 There was a perfect storm of applause.
 
 Ill 
 
 CECCHINO BANDINI did not slacken his pace till 
 he found himself, with his thin overcoat and opera 
 hat all drenched, among the gas reflections and puddles 
 before his studio door ; that shout of applause and that 
 burst of clapping pursuing him down the stairs of the 
 palace and all through the rainy streets. There were a 
 few embers in his stove ; he threw a faggot on them, lit a 
 cigarette, and proceeded to make reflections, the wet 
 opera hat still on his head. He had been a fool, a 
 savage. He had behaved like a child, rushing past 
 his hostess with that ridiculous speech in answer to her 
 inquiries : "I am running away because bad luck has 
 entered your house." 
 
 Why had he not guessed it at once ? What on earth 
 else could she have wanted his sketch for ? 
 
 He determined to forget the matter, and, as he 
 imagined, he forgot it. Only, when the next day's 
 evening paper displayed two colunms describing Madame 
 Fosca's ball, and more particularly " that mask," as the 
 reporter had it, " which among so many which were 
 graceful and ingenious, bore off in triumph the palm for 
 witty novelty," he threw the paper down and gave it a 
 kick towards the wood-box. But he felt ashamed of 
 himself, picked it up, smoothed it out, and read it all — 
 foreign news and home news, and even the description 
 of Madame Forsca's masked ball, conscientiously through. 
 Last of all he perused, with dogged resolution, the 
 
 236
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 237 
 
 colunm of petty casualties : a boy bit in the calf by a dog 
 who was not mad ; the frustrated burgling of a baker's 
 shop ; even to the bunches of keys and the umbrella and 
 two cigar-cases picked up by the police, and consigned 
 to the appropriate municipal limbo ; until he came to 
 the following Unes : " This morning the Guardians of 
 Public Safety, having been called by the neighbouring 
 inhabitants, penetrated into a room on the top floor 
 of a house situate in the Little Street of the Gravedigger 
 (Viccolo del Beccamorto), and discovered, hanging from 
 a rafter, the dead body of Maddalena X. Y. Z. The 
 deceased had long been noted throughout Florence for 
 her eccentric habits and apparel." The paragraph was 
 headed, in somewhat larger type : " Suicide of a female 
 lunatic." 
 
 Ceccliino's cigarette had gone out, but he continued 
 blowing at it all the same. He could see in his mind's 
 eye a tall, slender figure, draped in silvery plush and 
 silvery furs, standing by the side of an open portfolio, 
 and holding a drawing in her tiny hand, with the slender, 
 soUtary gold bangle over the grey glove.
 
 IV 
 
 MADAME KRASINSKA was in a very bad humour. 
 The old Chanoinesse, her late husband's aunt, 
 noticed it ; her guests noticed it ; her maid noticed it : 
 and she noticed it herself. For, of all human beings, 
 Madame Krasinska — Netta, as smart folk familiarly 
 called her — was the least subject to bad humour. She 
 was as uniformly cheerful as birds are supposed to be, 
 and she certainly had none of the causes for anxiety or 
 sorrow which even the most proverbial bird must 
 occasionally have. She had always had money, health, 
 good looks ; and people had always told her — in New 
 York, in London, in Paris, Rome, and St Petersburg — 
 from her very earliest childhood, that her one business in 
 life was to amuse herself. The old gentleman whom 
 she had simply and cheerfully accepted as a husband, 
 because he had given her quantities of bonbons, and 
 was going to give her quantities of diamonds, had been 
 kind, and had been kindest of all in dying of sudden 
 bronchitis when away for a month, leaving his young 
 widow with an affectionately indifferent recollection 
 of him, no remorse of any kind, and a great deal of money, 
 not to speak of the excellent Chanoinesse, who constituted 
 an invaluable chaperon. And, since his happy demise, 
 no cloud had disturbed the cheerful life or feelings of 
 Madame Krasinska. Other women, she knew, had 
 innumerable subjects of wretchedness ; or if they had 
 none, they were wretched from the want of them. Some 
 
 238
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 239 
 
 had children who made them mihappy, others were 
 mihappy for lack of children, and similarly as to lovers ; 
 but she had never had a child and never had a lover, 
 and never experienced the smallest desire for either. 
 Other women suffered from sleeplessness, or from 
 sleepiness, and took morphia or abstained from morphia 
 with equal inconvenience ; other women also grew 
 weary of amusement. But Madame Krasinska always 
 slept beautifully, and always stayed awake cheerfully ; 
 and Madame Krasinska was never tired of amusing her- 
 self. Perhaps it was all this which culminated in the 
 fact that Madame Krasinska had never in all her life 
 envied or disliked anybody ; and that no one, apparently, 
 had ever envied or disliked her. She did not wish to 
 outshine or supplant any one ; she did not want to be 
 richer, younger, more beautiful, or more adored than 
 they. She only wanted to amuse herself, and she 
 succeeded in so doing. 
 
 This particular day — the day after Madame Fosca's 
 ball — Madame Krasinska was not amusing herself. She 
 was not at all tired : she never was ; besides, she had 
 remained in bed till mid-day : neither was she unwell, 
 for that also she never was ; nor had anyone done the 
 slightest thing to vex her. But there it was. She was 
 not amusing herself at all. She could not tell why ; 
 and she could not tell why, also, she was vaguely miser- 
 able. When the first batch of afternoon callers had 
 taken leave, and the following batches had been sent 
 away from the door, she threw down her volume of Gyp, 
 and walked to the window. It was raining : a thin, 
 continuous spring drizzle. Only a few cabs, with wet, 
 shining backs, an occasional lumbering omnibus or cart, 
 passed by with wheezing, straining, downcast horses.
 
 240 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 In one or two shops a light was aj)pearing, looking tiny, 
 blear, and absurd in the gray afternoon. Madame 
 Krasinska looked out for a few minutes ; then, suddenly 
 turning round, she brushed past the big palms and 
 azaleas, and rang the bell. 
 
 " Order the brougham at once," she said. 
 
 She could by no means have explained what earthly 
 reason had impelled her to go out. When the footman 
 had inquired for orders she felt at a loss : certainly she 
 did not want to go to see anyone, nor to buy anything, 
 nor to inquire about anjrthing. 
 
 What did she want ? Madame Krasinska was not 
 in the habit of driving out in the rain for her pleasure ; 
 still less to drive out without knowing whither. What 
 did she want ? She sat muffled in her furs, looldng out 
 on the wet, grey streets as the brougham rolled aimlessly 
 along. She wanted — she wanted — she couldn't tell 
 what. But she wanted it very much. That much she 
 knew very well — she wanted. The rain, the wet streets, 
 the muddy crossings — oh, how dismal they were ! and 
 still she wished to go on. 
 
 Instinctively, her polite coachman made for the politer 
 streets, for the polite Lung' Arno. The river quay was 
 deserted, and a warm, wet wind swept lazily along its 
 muddy flags. Madame Krasinska let down the glass. 
 How dreary ! The foundry, on the other side, let fly 
 a few red sparks from its tall chimney into the grey sky ; 
 the water droned over the weir ; a lamplighter hurried 
 along. 
 
 Madame Krasinska pulled the check-string. 
 
 " I want to walk," she said. 
 
 The polite footman followed behind along the messy 
 flags, muddy and full of pools ; the brougham followed
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 241 
 
 behind him. Madame Krasinska was not at all in the 
 habit of walking on the embankment, still less walking 
 in the rain. 
 
 After some minutes she got in again, and bade the 
 carriage drive home. When she got into the lit streets 
 she again pulled the check-string and ordered the 
 brougham to proceed at a foot's pace. At a certain spot 
 she remembered something, and bade the coachman 
 draw up before a shop. It was the big chemist's. 
 
 " What does the Signora Contessa command ? " and 
 the footman raised his hat over his ear. Somehow she 
 had forgotten. " Oh," she answered, " wait a minute. 
 Now I remember, it's the next shop, the florist's. Tell 
 them to send fresh azaleas to-morrow and fetch away 
 the old ones." 
 
 Now the azaleas had been changed only that morning. 
 But the polite footman obeyed. And Madame Krasinska 
 remained for a minute, nestled in her fur rug, looking on 
 to the wet, yellow, lit pavement, and into the big 
 chemist's window. There were the red, heart-shaped 
 chest protectors, the frictioning gloves, the bath towels, 
 all hanging in their place. Then boxes of eau-de- 
 Cologne, lots of bottles of all sizes, and boxes, large and 
 small, and variosities of indescribable nature and use, 
 and the great glass jars, yellow, blue, green, and ruby 
 red, with a spark from the gas lamp behind in their heart. 
 She stared at it all, very intently, and without a notion 
 about any of these objects. Only she knew that the 
 glass jars were uncommonly bright, and that each had a 
 ruby, or topaz, or emerald of gigantic size, in its heart. 
 The footman returned. 
 
 " Drive home," ordered Madame Krasinska. As her 
 maid was taking her out of her dress^ a thought — the 
 
 Q
 
 242 Vanitas 
 
 first since so long — flashed across her mind, at the sight 
 of certain skirts, and an uncouth cardboard mask, lying 
 in a corner of her dressing-room. How odd that she had 
 not seen the Sora Lena that evening. . . She used always 
 to be walking in the lit streets at that hour.
 
 THE next morning Madame Krasinska woke up quite 
 cheerful and happy. But she began, nevertheless, 
 to suffer, ever since the day after the Fosca ball, from the 
 return of that quite unprecedented and inexplicable 
 depression. Her days became streaked, as it were, with 
 moments during which it was quite impossible to amuse 
 herself ; and these moments grew gradually into hours. 
 People bored her for no accountable reason, and things 
 which she had expected as pleasures brought with them 
 a sense of vague or more distinct wretchedness. Thus 
 she would find herself in the midst of a ball or dinner- 
 party, invaded suddenly by a confused sadness or boding 
 of evil, she did not know which. And once, when a box 
 of new clothes had arrived from Paris, she was overcome, 
 while putting on one of the frocks, with such a fit of tears 
 that she had to be put to bed instead of going to the 
 Tornabuoni's party. 
 
 Of course, people began to notice this change ; indeed, 
 Madame Krasinska had ingenuously complained of the 
 strange alteration in herself. Some persons suggested, 
 that she might be suffering from slow blood-poisoning 
 and urged an inquiry into the state of the drains. Others 
 recommended arsenic, morphia, or antipyrine. One 
 kind friend brought her a box of peculiar cigarettes ; 
 another forwarded a parcel of still more pecuHar novels ; 
 most people had some pet doctor to cry up to the skies ; 
 and one or two suggested her changing her confessor ;
 
 244 Vanitas 
 
 not to mention an attempt being made to mesmerise her 
 into cheerfulness. 
 
 When her back was tm'ned, meanwhile, all the kind 
 friends discussed the probability of an unhappy love 
 affair, loss of money on the Stock Exchange, and similar 
 other explanations. And while one devoted lady tried 
 to worm out of her the name of her unfaithful lover and 
 of the rival for whom he had forsaken her, another 
 assured her that she was suffering from a lack of personal 
 affections. It was a fine opportunity for the display of 
 pietism, materiahsm, ideaUsm, reaHsm, psychological 
 lore, and esoteric theosophy. 
 
 Oddly enough, all this zeal about herself did not 
 worry Madame Krasinska, as she would certainly have 
 expected it to worry any other woman. She took 
 a little of each of the tonic or soporific drugs ; and read 
 a little of each of those sickly sentimental, brutal, or 
 politely improper novels. She also let herself be accom- 
 panied to various doctors ; and she got up early in the 
 morning and stood for an hour on a chair in a crowd 
 in order to benefit by the preaching of the famous 
 Father Agostino. She was quite patient even with the 
 friends who condoled about the lover or absence of such. 
 For all these things became, more and more, completely 
 indifferent to Madame Krasinska — unrealities which 
 had no weight in the presence of the painful reality. 
 
 This reality was that she was rapidly losing all power 
 of amusing herself, and that when she did occasionally 
 amuse herself she had to pay for what she called this 
 good time by an increase of listlessness and melancholy. 
 
 It was not melancholy or listlessness such as other 
 women complained of. They seemed, in their fits of 
 blues, to feel that the world around them had got all
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 245 
 
 wrong, or at least was going out of its way to annoy 
 them. But Madame Krasinska saw the world quite 
 plainly, proceeding in the usual manner, and being quite 
 as good a world as before. It was she who was all 
 wrong. It was, in the literal sense of the words, what she 
 supposed people might mean when they said that So- 
 and-so was not himself ; only that So-and-so, on exam- 
 ination, appeared to be very much himself — only him- 
 self in a worse temper than usual. Whereas she . . . 
 Why, in her case, she really did not seem to be herself 
 any longer. Once, at a grand dinner, she suddenly 
 ceased eating and talking to her neighbour, and sur- 
 prised herself wondering who the people all were and 
 what they had come for. Her mind would become, 
 every now and then, a blank ; a blank at least full of 
 vague images, misty and muddled, which she was unable 
 to grasp, but of which she knew that they were painful, 
 weighing on her as a heavy load must weigh on the head 
 or back. Something had happened, or was going to 
 happen, she could not remember which, but she burst 
 into tears none the less. In the midst of such a state of 
 things, if visitors or a servant entered, she would ask 
 sometimes who they were. Once a man came to call, 
 during one of these fits ; by an effort she was able to 
 receive him and answer his small talk more or less at 
 random, feeling the whole time as if someone else were 
 speaking in her place. The visitor at length rose to 
 depart, and they both stood for a moment in the midst 
 of the drawing-room. 
 
 " This is a very pretty house ; it must belong to some 
 rich person. Do you know to whom it belongs ? " 
 suddenly remarked Madame Krasinska, looking slowly 
 round her at the furniture, the pictures, statuettes,
 
 246 Vanitas 
 
 nicknacks, the screens and plants. " Do you know to 
 whom it belongs ? " she repeated. 
 
 " It belongs to the most charming lady in Florence," 
 stammered out the visitor politely, and fled. 
 
 " My darling Netta," exclaimed the Chanoinesse from 
 where she was seated crocheting benevolently futile 
 garments by the fire ; " you should not joke in that way. 
 That poor young man was placed in a painful, in a very 
 painful position by your nonsense." 
 
 Madame Krasinska leaned her arms on a screen, and 
 stared her respectable relation long in the face. 
 
 " You seem a land woman," she said at length. 
 " You are old, but then you aren't poor, and they don't 
 call you a mad woman. That makes all the difEerence." 
 
 Then she set to singing — drumming out the tune on 
 the screen — the soldier song of '59, Addio, mia bella, 
 addio. 
 
 " Netta ! " cried the Chanoinesse, dropping one ball 
 of worsted after another. " Netta ! " 
 
 But Madame Krasinska passed her hand over her 
 brow and heaved a great sigh. Then she took a cigarette 
 off a cloisonne tray, dipped a spill in the fire and 
 remarked, 
 
 " Would you like to have the brougham to go to see 
 your friend at the Sacre Coeur, Aunt Therese ? I have 
 promised to wait in for Molly Wolkonsky and Bice 
 Forteguerra. We are going to dine at Doney's with 
 young Pomfret."
 
 VI 
 
 MADAME KRASINSKA had repeated her evening 
 drives in the rain. Indeed she began also to walk 
 about regardless of weather. Her maid asked her 
 whether she had been ordered exercise by the doctor, and 
 she answered yes. But why she should not walk in the 
 Cascine or along the Lung' Arno, and why she should 
 always choose the muddiest thoroughfares, the maid 
 did not inquire. As it was, Madame Krasinska never 
 showed any repugnance or seemly contrition for the state 
 of draggle in which she used to return home ; sometimes 
 when the woman was unbuttoning her boots, she would 
 remain in contemplation of their muddiness, murmuring 
 things which Jefferies could not understand. The 
 servants, indeed, declared that the Countess must have 
 gone out of her mind. The footman related that she used 
 to stop the brougham, get out and look into the lit shops, 
 and that he had to stand behind, in order to prevent 
 lady-killing youths of a caddish description from 
 whispering expressions of admiration in her ear. And 
 once, he affirmed with horror, she had stopped in front 
 of a certain cheap eating-house, and looked in at the 
 bundles of asparagus, at the uncooked chops displayed 
 in the window. And then, added the footman, she had 
 turned round to him slowly and said, 
 
 " They have good food in there." 
 
 And meanwhile, Madame Krasinska went to dinners 
 and parties, and gave them, and organised picnics, as 
 
 247
 
 248 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 much as was decently possible in Lent, and indeed a 
 great deal more. 
 
 She no longer complained of the blues ; she assured 
 everyone that she had completely got rid of them, that 
 she had never been in such spirits in all her life. She 
 said it so often, and in so excited a way, that judicious 
 people declared that now that lover must really have 
 jilted her, or gambling on the Stock Exchange have 
 brought her to the verge of ruin. 
 
 Nay, Madame Krasinska's spirits became so ob- 
 streperous as to change her in sundry ways. Although 
 living in the fastest set, Madame Krasinska had never 
 been a fast woman. There was something childlike in her 
 nature which made her modest and decorous. She had 
 never learned to talk slang, or to take up vulgar attitudes, 
 or to tell impossible stories ; and she had never lost a 
 silly habit of blushing at expressions and anecdotes 
 which she did not reprove other women for using and 
 relating. Her amusements had never been flavoured 
 with that spice of impropriety, of curiosity of evil, 
 which was common in her set. She liked putting on 
 pretty frocks, arranging pretty furniture, driving in well 
 got up carriages, eating good dinners, laughing a great 
 deal, and dancing a great deal, and that was all. 
 
 But now Madame Krasinska suddenly altered. She 
 became, all of a sudden, anxious for those exotic sen- 
 sations which honest women may get by studying the 
 ways, and frequenting the haunts, of women by no 
 means honest. She made up parties to go to the low 
 theatres and music-halls ; she proposed dressing up and 
 going, in company with sundry aventurous spirits, for 
 evening strolls in the more dubious portions of the town. 
 Moreover, she, who had never touched a card, began to
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 249 
 
 gamble for large sums, and to surprise people by pro- 
 ducing a folded green roulette cloth and miniature 
 roulette rakes out of her pocket. And she became so 
 outrageously conspicuous in her flirtations (she who had 
 never flirted before), and so outrageously loud in her 
 manners and remarks, that her good friends began to 
 venture a little remonstrance .... 
 
 But remonstrance was all in vain ; and she would 
 toss her head and laugh cynically, and answer in a 
 brazen, jarring voice. 
 
 For Madame Krasinska felt that she must live, live 
 noisily, live scandalously, live her own life of wealth 
 and dissipation, because . . . 
 
 She used to wake up at night with the horror of that 
 suspicion. And in the middle of the day, pull at her 
 clothes, tear down her hair, and rush to the mirror and 
 stare at herself, and look for every feature, and clutch for 
 every end of silk, or bit of lace, or wisp of hair, which 
 proved that she was really herself. For gradually, 
 slowly, she had come to understand that she was herself 
 no longer. 
 
 Herself — well, yes, of course she was herself. Was 
 it not herself who rushed about in such a riot of amuse- 
 ment ; herself whose flushed cheeks and over-bright eyes, 
 and cynically flaunted neck and bosom she saw in the 
 glass, whose mocking loud voice and shrill laugh she 
 listened to ? Besides, did not her servants, her visitors, 
 know her as Netta Krasinska ; and did she not know 
 how to wear her clothes, dance, make jokes, and en- 
 courage men, afterwards to discourage them ? This, 
 she often said to herself, as she lay awake the long nights, 
 as she sat out the longer nights gambling and chaffing, 
 distinctly proved that she really was herself. And she
 
 250 Vanitas 
 
 repeated it all mentally when she returned, muddy, 
 worn out, and as awakened from a ghastly dream, after 
 one of her long rambles through the streets, her daily 
 walks towards the station. 
 
 But still . . . What of those strange forebodings o 
 evil, those muddled fears of some dreadful calamity 
 . . . something which had happened, or was going to 
 happen . . . poverty, starvation, death — whose death, 
 her own ? or someone else's ? That knowledge that it 
 was all, all over ; that blinding, felling blow which used 
 every now and then to crush her . . . Yes, she had felt 
 that first at the railway station. At the station ? but 
 what had happened at the station ? Or was it going 
 to happen still ? Since to the station her feet seemed 
 unconsciously to carry her every day. What was it all ? 
 Ah ! she knew. There was a woman, an old woman, 
 walking to the station to meet . . . Yes, to meet a 
 regiment on its way back. They came back, those 
 soldiers, among a mob yelling triumph. She remem- 
 bered the illuminations, the red, green, and white 
 lanterns, and those garlands all over the waiting-rooms. 
 And quantities of flags. The bands played. So gaily ! 
 They played Garibaldi's hymn, and Addio, Mia Bella. 
 Those pieces always made her cry now. The station 
 was crammed, and all the boys, in tattered, soiled uni- 
 forms, rushed into the arms of parents, wives, friends. 
 Then there was like a blinding light, a crash ... An 
 officer led the old woman gently out of the place, mopping 
 his eyes. And she, of all the crowd, was the only one 
 to go home alone. Had it really all happened ? and to 
 whom ? Had it really happened to her, had her boys 
 .... But Madame Krasinska had never had any boys. 
 
 It was dreadful how much it rained in Florence ; and
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 251 
 
 stuff boots do wear out so quick in mud. There was such 
 a lot of mud on the way to the station ; but of course it 
 was necessary to go to the station in order to meet the 
 train from Lombardy — the boys must be met. 
 
 There was a place on the other side of the river where 
 you went in and handed your watch and your brooch 
 over the counter, and they gave you some money and a 
 paper. Once the paper got lost. Then there was a 
 mattress, too. But there was a kind man — a man who 
 sold hardware — who went and fetched it back. It was 
 dreadfully cold in winter, but the worst was the rain. 
 And having no watch one was afraid of being late for 
 that train, and had to dawdle so long in the muddy 
 streets. Of course one could look in at the pretty shops. 
 But the little boys were so rude. Oh, no, no, not that — 
 anything rather than be shut up in an hospital. The 
 poor old woman did no one any harm — why shut her up ? 
 
 " Faites voire jeu, messieurs," cried Madame 
 Krasinska, raking up the counters with the little rake 
 she had had made of tortoise-shell, with a gold dragon's 
 head for a handle — " Rien ne va plus — vingt-trois — Rouge, 
 impair et manqus."
 
 VII 
 
 How did she come to know about this woman ? 
 She had never been inside that house over the 
 tobacconist's, up three pairs of stairs to the left ; and 
 yet she knew exactly the pattern of the wall-paper. It 
 was green, with a pinkish trellis-work, in the grand 
 sitting-room, the one which was opened only on Sunday 
 evenings, when the friends used to drop in and discuss 
 the news, and have a game of tresetfe. You passed 
 through the dining-room to get through it. The dining- 
 room had no window, and was lit from a skylight ; there 
 was always a little smell of dinner in it, but that was 
 appetising. The boys' rooms were to the back. There 
 was a plaster Joan of Arc in the hall, close to the clothes- 
 peg. She was painted to look like silver, and one of the 
 boys had broken her arm, so that it looked like a gas-pipe. 
 It was Momino who had done it, jumping on to the table 
 when they were playing. Momino was always the 
 scapegrace ; he wore out so many pairs of trousers 
 at the knees, but he was so warm-hearted ! and after 
 all, he had got all the prizes at school, and they all said 
 he would be a first-rate engineer. Those dear boys ! 
 They never cost their mother a farthing, once they were 
 sixteen ; and Momino bought her a big, beautiful muff 
 out of liis own earnings as a pupil-teacher. Here it is ! 
 Such a comfort in the cold weather, you can't think, 
 especially when gloves are too dear. Yes, it is rabbit- 
 skin, but it is made to look like ermine, quite a handsome 
 
 232
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 253 
 
 article. Assunta, the maid of all work, never would 
 clean out that kitchen of hers — servants are such sluts ! 
 and she tore the moreen sofa-cover, too, against a nail 
 in the wall. She ought to have seen that nail ! But 
 one mustn't be too hard on a poor creature, who is an 
 orphan into the bargain. Oh, God ! oh, God ! and 
 they lie in the big trench at San Martino, without even a 
 cross over them, or a bit of wood with their name. But 
 the white coats of the Austrians were soaked red, I 
 warrant you ! And the new dye they call magenta is 
 made of pipe-clay — the pipe-clay the dogs clean their 
 white coats with — and the blood of Austrians. It's a 
 grand dye, I tell you ! 
 
 Lord, Lord, how wet the poor old woman's feet are ! 
 And no fire to warm them by. The best is to go to bed 
 when one can't dry one's clothes ; and it saves lamp-oil. 
 That was very good oil the parish priest made her a 
 present of . . . Ai, ai, how one's bones ache on the mere 
 boards, even with a blanket over them ! That good, 
 good mattress at the pawnshop ! It's nonsense about 
 the Italians having been beaten. The Austrians were 
 beaten into bits, made cats'-meat of ; and the volunteers 
 are returning to-morrow. Temistocle and Momino — 
 Momino is Girolamo, you know — will be back to-morrow ; 
 their rooms have been cleaned, and they shall have a 
 flask of real Montepulciano . . . The big bottles in the 
 chemist's window are very beautiful, particularly the 
 green one. The shop where they sell gloves and scarfs 
 is also very pretty ; but the English chemist's is the 
 prettiest, because of those bottles. But they say the 
 contents of them is all rubbish, and no real medicine 
 . . . Don't speak of San Bonifazio ! I have seen it. 
 It is where they keep the mad folk and the wretched,
 
 2 54 Vanitas 
 
 dirty, wicked, wicked old women. . . . There was a 
 handsome book bound in red, with gold edges, on the 
 best sitting-room table ; the -^neid, translated by Caro. 
 It was one of Temistocle's prizes. And that Berlin-wool 
 cushion .... yes, the little dog with the cherries looked 
 quite real. . . . 
 
 " I have been thinking I should like to go to SicUy, 
 to see Etna, and Palermo, and all those places," said 
 Madame Krasinska, leaning on the balcony by the side 
 of Prince Mongibello, smoking her fifth or sixth cigarette. 
 
 She could see the hateful hooked nose, like a nasty 
 hawk's beak, over the big black beard, and the creature's 
 leering, languishing black eyes, as he looked up into 
 the twilight. She knew quite well what sort of man 
 Mongibello was. No woman could approach him, or 
 allow him to approach her ; and there she was on that 
 balcony alone with him in the dark, far from the rest of 
 the party, who were dancing and talking within. And 
 to talk of Sicily to him, who was a Sicilian too ! But 
 that was what she wanted — a scandal, a horror, any- 
 thing that might deaden those thoughts which would go 
 on inside her .... The thought of that strange, lofty 
 whitewashed place, which she had never seen, but which 
 she knew so well, with an altar in the middle, and rows 
 and rows of beds, each with its set-out of bottles and 
 baskets, and horrid slobbering and gibbering old women. 
 Oh . . . she could hear them ! 
 
 " I should like to go to Sicily," she said in a tone 
 that was now common to her, adding slowly and with 
 emphasis, " but I should like to have someone to show 
 me all the sights. ..." 
 
 " Countess," and the black beard of the creature bent 
 over her — close to her neck — " how strange — I also feel
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 255 
 
 a great longing to see Sicily once more, but not alone — 
 those lovely, lonely valleys. ..." 
 
 All ! — there was one of the creatures who had sat up 
 in her bed and was singing, singing " Casta Diva ! " 
 " No, not alone " — she went on hurriedly, a sort of fury 
 of satisfaction, of the satisfaction of destroying some- 
 thing, destroying her own fame, her own life, filling her 
 as she felt the man's hand on her arm — " not alone. 
 Prince — with someone to explain things — someone who 
 knows all about it — and in this lovely spring weather. 
 You see, I am a bad traveller — and I am afraid ... of 
 being alone. . . ." The last words came out of her 
 throat loud, hoarse, and yet cracked and shrill — and just 
 as the Prince's arm was going to clasp her, she rushed 
 wildly into the room, exclaiming — 
 
 " Ah, I am she — I am she — I am mad ! " 
 For in that sudden voice, so different from her own, 
 Madame Krasinska had recognised the voice that should 
 have issued from the cardboard mask she had once worn, 
 the voice of Sora Lena.
 
 VIII 
 
 YES, Cecchino certainly recognised her now. Stroll- 
 ing about in that damp- May twilight among the 
 old, tortuous streets, he had mechanically watched the 
 big black horses draw up at the posts which closed that 
 labyrinth of black, narrow alleys ; the servant in his 
 white waterproof opened the door, and the tall, slender 
 woman got out and walked quickly along. And 
 mechanically, in his wool-gathering way, he had followed 
 the lady, enjoying the charming note of delicate pink 
 and grey which her little frock made against those 
 black houses, and under that wet, grey sky, streaked 
 pink with the sunset. She walked quickly along, quite 
 alone, having left the footman with the carriage at the 
 entrance of that condemned old heart of Florence ; and 
 she took no notice of the stares and words of the boys 
 playing in the gutters, the pedlars housing their barrows 
 under the black archways, and the women leaning out 
 of window. Yes ; there was no doubt. It had struck 
 him suddenly as he watched her pass under a double 
 arch and into a kind of large court, not unlike that of a 
 castle, between the frowning tall houses of the old Jews' 
 quarter ; houses escutcheoned and stanchioned, once 
 the abode of Ghibelline nobles, now given over to rag- 
 pickers, scavengers and unspeakable trades. 
 
 As soon as he recognised her he stopped, and was about 
 to turn : what business has a man following a lady, 
 prpng into her doings when she goes out at twilight, 
 
 256
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 257 
 
 with carriage and footman left several streets back, 
 quite alone through unlikely streets ? And Cecchino, 
 who by this time was on the point of returning to the 
 Maremma, and had come to the conclusion that civihsa- 
 tion was a boring and loathsome thing, reflected upon 
 the errands which French novels described ladies as 
 performing, when they left their carriage and footman 
 round the corner. . . . But the thought was disgraceful 
 to Cecchino, and unjust to this lady — no, no ! And at 
 this moment he stopped, for the lady had stopped a few 
 paces before him, and was staring fixedly into the grey 
 evening sky. There was something strange in that 
 stare ; it was not that of a woman who is hiding dis- 
 graceful proceedings. And in staring round she must 
 have seen him ; yet she stood still, like one wrapped in 
 wild thoughts. Then suddenly she passed under the 
 next archway, and disappeared in the dark passage of a 
 house. Somehow Cecco Bandini could not make up his 
 mind, as he ought to have done long ago, to turn back. 
 He slowly passed through the oozy, ill-smelling archway, 
 and stood before that house. It was very tall, narrow, 
 and black as ink, with a jagged roof against the wet, 
 pinkish sky. From the iron hook, made to hold brocades 
 and Persian carpets on gala days of old, fluttered some 
 rags, obscene and ill-omened in the wind. Many of 
 the window panes were broken. It was evidently one 
 of the houses which the municipality had condemned 
 to destruction for sanitary reasons, and whence the 
 inmates were gradually being evicted. 
 
 " That's a house they're going to pull down, isn't 
 it ? " he inquired in a casual tone of the man at the 
 corner, who kept a sort of cookshop, where chestnut 
 pudding and boiled beans steamed on a brazier in a den. 
 
 B
 
 2s8 
 
 Vanitas 
 
 Then his eye caught a half-efEaced name close to the 
 lamp-post, " Little Street of the Grave-digger." " Ah," 
 he added, quickly, " this is the street where old Sora 
 Lena committed suicide — and — is — is that the house ? " 
 
 Then, trying to extricate some reasonable idea out 
 of the extraordinary tangle of absurdities which had all 
 of a sudden filled his mind, he fumbled in his pocket for 
 a silver coin, and said hurriedly to the man with the 
 cooking brazier, 
 
 " See here, that house, I'm sure, isn't well inhabited. 
 That lady has gone there for a charity — but — but one 
 doesn't know that she mayn't be annoyed in there. 
 Here's fifty centimes for your trouble. If that lady 
 doesn't come out again in three-quarters of an hour 
 — ^there ! it's striking seven — just you go round to the 
 stone posts — you'll find her carriage there — black horses 
 and grey liveries — and tell the footman to run up- 
 stairs to his mistress — understand ? " And Cecchino 
 Bandini fled, overwhelmed at the thought of the indis- 
 cretion he was committing, but seeing, as he turned 
 round, those rags waving an ominous salute from the 
 black, gaunt house with its irregular roof against the 
 wet, twilight sky.
 
 IX 
 
 MADAME KRASINSKA hurried through the long, 
 black corridor, with its slippery bricks and typhoid 
 smell, and went slowly but resolutely up the black stair- 
 case. Its steps, constructed perhaps in the days of 
 Dante's grandfather, when a horn buckle and leathern 
 belt formed the only ornaments of Florentine dames, 
 were extraordinarily high, and worn o£E at the edges by 
 innumerable generations of successive nobles and 
 paupers. And as it twisted sharply on itself, the stair- 
 case was lighted at rare intervals by barred windows, 
 overlooking alternately the black square outside, with 
 its jags of overhanging roof, and a black yard, where a 
 broken well was surrounded by a heap of half-sorted 
 chickens' feathers and unpicked rags. On the first 
 landing was an open door, partly screened by a line of 
 drying tattered clothes ; and whence issued shrill sounds 
 of altercation and snatches of tipsy song. Madame 
 Krasinska passed on heedless of it all, the front of her 
 delicate frock brushing the unseen filth of those black 
 steps, in whose cr}^t-like cold and gloom there was an 
 ever-growing breath of charnel. Higher and higher, 
 flight after flight, steps and steps. Nor did she look to 
 the right or to the left, nor ever stop to take breath, but 
 cHmbed upward, slowly, steadily. At length she reached 
 the topmost landing, on to which fell a flickering beam 
 of the setting sun. It issued from a room, whose door 
 was standing wide open. Madame Krasinska entered. 
 
 R* 259
 
 26o Vanitas 
 
 The room was completely empty, and comparatively 
 light. There was no furniture in it, except a chair, 
 pushed into a dark corner, and an empty bird-cage at 
 the window. The panes were broken, and here and 
 there had been mended with paper. Paper also hung, 
 in blackened rags, upon the walls. 
 
 Madame Krasinska walked to the window and looked 
 out over the neighbouring roofs, to where the bell in an 
 old black belfry swung tolling the Ave Maria. There 
 was a porticoed gallery on the top of a house some way 
 off ; it had a few plants growing in pipkins, and a drying 
 line. She knew it all so well. 
 
 On the window-sill was a cracked basin, in which 
 stood a dead basil plant, dry, grey. She looked at it 
 some time, moving the hardened earth with her fingers. 
 Then she turned to the empty bird-cage. Poor solitary 
 starling ! how he had whistled to the poor old woman ! 
 Then she began to cry. 
 
 But after a few moments she roused herself. Mechani- 
 cally, she went to the door and closed it carefully. Then 
 she went straight to the dark corner, where she knew that 
 the staved-in straw chair stood. She dragged it into the 
 middle of the room, where the hook was in the big rafter. 
 She stood on the chair, and measured the height of the 
 ceiling. It was so low that she could graze it with the 
 palm of her hand. She took off her gloves, and then her 
 bonnet — it was in the way of the hook. Then she 
 unclasped her girdle, one of those narrow Russian ribbons 
 of silver woven stuff, studded with niello. She buckled 
 one end firmly to the big hook. Then she unwound the 
 strip of muslin from under her collar. She was standing 
 on the broken chair, just under the rafter. " Pater 
 noster qui es in cselis," she mumbled, as she still
 
 Legend of Madame Krasinska 261 
 
 childishly did when putting lier head on the pillow 
 every night. 
 
 The door creaked and opened slowly. The big, 
 hulking woman, with the vague, red face and blear stare, 
 and the rabbit-skin muff, bobbing on her huge crinolined 
 skirts, shambled slowly into the room. It was the Sora 
 Lena.
 
 X 
 
 WHEN the man from the cook-shop under the 
 archway and the footman entered the room, it 
 was pitch dark. Madame Krasinska was lying in the 
 middle of the floor, by the side of an overturned chair, 
 and under a hook in the rafter whence himg her 
 Russian girdle. When she awoke from her swoon, she 
 looked slowly round the room ; then rose, fastened 
 her collar and murmured, crossing herself, " God, thy 
 mercy is infinite." The men said that she smiled. 
 
 Such is the legend of Madame Krasinska, known as 
 Mother Antoinette Marie among the Little Sisters of the 
 Poor. 
 
 THE END
 
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