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 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
Casamassima, 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 Casamassima'--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 sometimes 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.
"No, not more wicked. The woman in the book may be intended to be
wicked; but she needn't have been so in real life. 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-granted tone
in which they had been said. Women of her lot, Miss Flodden 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 screeching
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 like 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 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 suspicions 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 be allowed_: to him it took the form of impossibility
of its being at all.
Greenleaf was in an agony of doubt; he kept on repeating 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.
They must have been talking of the Princess Casamassima 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 belief 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 hospitality 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."