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 paying 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
_Athenaeums_, three dog-eared French novels (Marion secretly despised all
English ones, 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 concentrated 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 _Stali_ or
_Preme_ from the gondoliers, only the more worrying for its comparative
rareness. There was an exasperating blackbird 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; everything in short
which could madden a poor nervous novelist who has the crowning
misfortune of looking delightfully placid.
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 he 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 encouragement; 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. 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, mischievous, 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 aggravated 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 all 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 disliked 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, her
appearance of never having felt anything, the hardness 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; his books turned mainly upon the little intrigues and
struggles of the highly civilized 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 like 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 accepting, or offering to read that
manuscript.
Jervase Marion was a methodical man, full of unformulated 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.
Accordingly, 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 backwards 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 country 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 _fardee_ 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 Atalanta," he would say very gravely, "to
cultivate a--a--somewhat more 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 punctuation, 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.