Violet Hunt

“ Tom never took much notice of me, but once when he was leaning over Beatrice's bed she told him that I was not well.
'Poor brute,' said he, 'I should like to know how it could be well! Fed on messes and deprived of exercise! No dog could thrive on a regimen like that, and I suppose a cat is put together something after the same fashion.'
'But,' said Beatrice, 'how can he have exercise, Tom? They tell me that there were two degrees of frost the night before last, and the garden is a mush, and the grass all white with rime!'
'No matter, that's what he wants. ”

“ Ariadne was thinking of him when she bought a billycock hat on purpose to stick in a moorcock’s wing Simon had once given her that he had shot. I did not interfere, for I thought if he saw her in it he might think some other fellow had given her a moorcock’s feather; there are plenty of them about, and plenty of fools to shoot them.
I myself did not make much preparation. Just a new elastic to my hat, and new laces to my boots. How delightful it is to care for no man! How it simplifies life! All this bother about Ariadne has choked me off love for a long while to come. ”

“ And she who would lay down her life to save him a moment’s annoyance must endure to look on the little enemy of his peace, sitting opposite her, careless, irresponsible, drinking in flattery and champagne, flashing her bright eyes about, and waving the little fluttering hands that held the future of a man worth twenty such as she, in the might of his art and intellect!
However, that Phœbe Elles should thoroughly enjoy her dinner party was necessary for the furtherance of a plan of action that Egidia had conceived—one of the many plans that she had conceived. ”

“ I don’t think George will ever be asked again, but I don’t wonder Lady Scilly was able to get hold of Simon. She doesn’t frown over her décolleté bodices, and she is amusing in her silly way. Simon hangs round like one of those young fox-hound puppies “at walk” that one sees in the villages, and Lord Scilly looks after his future and got him into the Foreign Office. I believe, though, Lord Scilly twigs about Ariadne caring for him, that Lady Scilly doesn’t, or else she would not let him out so freely. She would be like most teachers and insist on her pupil’s finishing his term. ”

“ He was probably sitting brooding by the window in that chair she had sat in. He had omitted to put his drawing away,—presently she rose and tenderly put a sheet of tissue paper over it, as she had seen him do sometimes, when called away even for a moment. Then she sat down again. Her eyes fell on a Bradshaw on the mantelpiece; she thought of getting it and looking out a train to go home by to-morrow. She had no longer any thought of committing suicide, the idea of expiation of which she was now possessed did not admit of any selfish solution of that sort. ”

“ Worse than this, there was a large black cat with a white star on its breast, mumbling a fish's head in the middle of the floor, that didn't even have the grace to leave off when we came in.
'Oh, my dear, darling Dad!' cried Auntie May, rushing to him. 'How glad I am to see you; and how are you, and why do I find you all—silted up with cats like this?'
Mr. Graham put down his palette and his mahl-stick, and Zobeide ran off with the latter, and Fred jumped on to the former, and he kissed Auntie May again and again, and answered her question rather slowly. ”

“ She never says a sharp word—can’t! George says she is bound to get left, like the first Ariadne was. She is long and pale and thin, and white like a snowdrop, except for her reddish hair. The pert hepatica is my favourite flower. It comes straight out of the ground, like me, without any fuss or preparation in the way of leaves and trimmings.
I know that I am not ugly. I know it by the art of deduction. We none of us are, or we should not have been allowed to survive. George would never have condescended to own ugly children. ”

“ I married Mortimer like a blind puppy, not knowing, not seeing. I am nothing wonderful, but I do think I am too good for him! Why did I not see it then? Why is a girl such a fool? Why does nobody tell her? It is very hard. They say, as one has made one’s bed, so one must lie on it.... But suppose I decline to lie on it?”
She almost leaped in her bed with the shock of this crude presentment of a new idea. Then she rose, lit a candle and walked out of her room, and across a landing, and straight into Mortimer’s room. ”

“ Oh, if they only could all get the man they want at the time they want him, what a nice place the world would be, for children at any rate! All grown-up people’s tempers come because they can’t get what they want. And here was I, boxed up with one who hadn’t got what she wanted, for a whole blessed day! She was simply weltering in love, if I may say so. She had a penny note-book ready to write poetry in, and meant to dream and write and cry for four hours. I had a nice improper six-penny of my Aunt Gerty’s, but I scarcely hoped that Ariadne would allow me to enjoy it. ”

“ I felt another kitten. Yet nothing really was changed. Rosamond's moonface was as round as ever, Auntie May was still sitting there with her apron full of great pools where Fred and Zobeide and Admiral Togo had let it run down out of the corners of their mouths, mother was purring away and looking at us all with her great big mournful eyes.
In less than a week I was no better or cleverer than everybody else. The others could do it too, but they hated the bother of it. The other way is really so much more convenient. And mother prefers it; she says that it brings us together. ”

“ Egidia laughed.
“No? Well, I must say I don’t care for pictures without any human interest at all.”
“Then you wouldn’t care for Edmund Rivers’ work, unless you could get your romance out of the scarred, weather-beaten face of an old windmill or a ruined castle! He leaves the human interest entirely out of his pictures.”
“And out of his life, too, it seems,” said the other, “and both suffer in consequence. Don’t tell me; there is something wrong about a man who doesn’t care for women! Some day one will awaken him. ”

“ She goes out nearly every morning at ten, with Aunt Gerty, whose manners are worse than ever, and who has a little chuckling, cheerful way of going about that simply irritates me to death! There is a secret, evidently, and George and I are out of it. It brings us together. He is not happy, no more than I am, no more than Mother is. She is excited, not happy. She has taken to wearing her mouth shut lately; once we used to tease her because she kept it open, and looked always just as if she were going to speak, or had done speaking. But Mother is a good woman. ”

“ Still, you are going to be a fluffy cat, one can see that, and invalids—if poor Beatrice really is an invalid—prefer fluffiness. I think I'll take you, Loki. No, Fred, not you, indeed, you pertinacious darling, for you always go for one's eyes, you are such a dangerous cat, without a single atom of self-control. So, Loki, you may as well say goodbye to your mother and make the most of her, for she just won't know you when you come back. ”

“ Elles’s first taste of London society. She had thought of it, dreamed of it,{216} yearned for it for years. Now it had come to her, like a draught of heady champagne, vivifying after the two nights of waking misery and anxiety she had undergone. Only two nights ago, she had stood, a shaking, quaking figure in the dark passage of the inn at Rokeby, hearing the clock tick, and the rustle of the heavy leaf screen against the pane outside the door of her lover’s room, whence no sound came—no voice of pardon. ”

“ I wished the Scilly motor-car might upset and spoil Lady Scilly a little sooner, and that Simon mightn’t be in it when that happened.
When Christina had tucked me in, and kissed us, and gone away, I made Ariadne make me a solemn promise that come what would, if she were ever married to Simon Hermyre, or indeed to any one else, that she would let all the others alone and not poach; for even if a young man seems unattached, you may be pretty sure there’s a girl worrying about him somewhere in the background. One woman, one man! ”

“ For in spite of Phœbe’s frivolity and Edmund’s asceticism, she could read through Phœbe’s admissions and falsifications, that for a brief space they had been lovers—the woman in her had been genuinely stirred, the man in him. It had not lasted, but it had been. But now it was winter, “the days dividing lover and lover, the light that loses, the night that wins,” the season when no man can paint, and loves that are ephemeral die down and are buried under the wrack of autumn. ”

“ Poor Ben, he may as well make himself useful, for he certainly isn’t ornamental just now. He can’t speak, he can only croak, and though he isn’t very big, he seems to have the power of burrowing inside himself and bringing up a great voice like a steam-roller. He is not a manly man, yet, but he certainly is a boily boy. He has got some spots on his face that he thinks much bigger than they really are, and he keeps them and himself out of sight as much as possible. He says just now he doesn’t care at all what he does, he doesn’t even mind playing servant for a bit, if George would like it. ”

“ Where are you staying? Let me introduce Mr. Edmund Rivers—Mrs. Mortimer Elles!”
Why should he not be calling on Egidia? It was the most natural thing. Mrs. Elles had never thought of this contingency, and yet she would not have had it not happen for the world. She was not a woman who would go out of her way to avoid situations. She bowed—he bowed; and then Egidia seeming by her manner to prescribe a greater intimacy, they shook hands. Oh! why was it so dark? She could not see his face.
“Will you ring the bell, Edmund, please, for another cup. Mrs. Elles, you must have some tea!” ”

“ We sometimes meet Simon on the quay, when we are carrying a whole hodful, and Ariadne won’t let him carry them for her, she doesn’t like him to know that she is reading all about Love.
Simon doesn’t really want to find out. He never wants very much anything. He never fights any point. That is what I like about him, and hate about Bohemians. They never glide or slip over things, they always scrape and drag and insist. But people who have got their roots in the country, as Simon has, are simple and not fussy and have no fads. I wonder what Simon thinks of George? ”

“ She saw that dim notions of Madame Récamier to be emulated and a salon to be held prevailed in the mind of the lady whom she had dubbed the Muse of Newcastle. Such culture, such an atmosphere of literary gossip as is current in many a second-class literary centre in London, flourished here, and Mrs. Elles led the inferior revels with aplomb and discrimination. She manœuvred her guests very cleverly, on the whole, and talked much and well—with the slight tendency to exaggerate which Egidia had already noticed in her. ”