Maurice Baring

“ At that moment a tall dark lady, elegant as a figure carved by Jean Goujon, and splendid as a Titian, no longer young, but still more than beautiful, walked past them, talking rather vehemently in Italian to a young man, also an Italian.
"Who is that?" asked Kathleen.
"That," said Mrs. Roseleigh, "is Donna Laura Bartolini. She is still very beautiful, isn't she? The man with her is a diplomat."
"I think," said Kathleen, "she is very striking-looking. But what extraordinary clothes."
"They are specially designed for her."
"Do you know her?"
"A little. She is not at all what she seems to be. ”

“ Anikin remained pensive.
"What I find still more complicated," he said, "is when there is a right reason for doing a thing, but one can't use it because the right reason is not the real reason; there is another one as well."
"For doing a duty," said Arkright. "Is that what you mean?"
"There are circumstances," said Anikin, "in which one could point to duty as a motive, but in which the duty happens to be the same as one's inclinations, and if one took a certain course it would not be because of the duty but because of the inclinations. So one can't any more talk or think of duty." ”

“ I said no one had read me the newspaper as yet.
"The marriage is announced," she said, "of Miss Brandon to a man called Sir Somebody Canning."
"That," said I, "is the Englishman in the book."
"So Mr. Rudd was wrong altogether," she said, and she laughed.
That is all that passed between us on this occasion, and I think this is a literal and complete transcription of our conversation. Countess Yaskov told me her story, the narrative of her friend, with perfect naturalness and with a quiet ease. She talked as if she were relating facts that had no particular personal interest for her. ”

“ Count Tilsit, who was younger than anyone present, said he found her young.
"She is older than you think," said Princess Oulchikov. "I remember her coming out in Rome in 1879."
"Do you think she is over fifty?" said Kathleen.
"I do not think it, I am sure," said the Princess.
"Her figure is wonderful," said Mrs Knolles.
"Was she very beautiful then?" asked Anikin.
"The most beautiful woman I have ever seen," said the Princess. "People stood on chairs to look at her one night at the French Embassy. It is cruel to see her dressed as she is now." ”

“ But as soon as things get as far as this the man finds that in some inexplicable way she is different, and he breaks off the engagement, and she goes on living as she did before, apparently the same, but in reality dead.
"Then," I said, "she always loves the Fairy Prince of her youth."
He said: "She thinks she loves him when it is too late, but in reality she never loves anyone. She is only half-awake in life. She never gets over the enchantment which numbs her for life." ”

“ I asked her if she thought Rudd was always wrong.
"I don't know," she said, "but he would be wrong about Jean. Wrong about you. Wrong about me. Wrong about Princess Kouragine, and wrongest of all about Netty Lennox. Perhaps his instincts as an artist are right. I think people's books are sometimes written by someone else, a kind of planchette. All the authors I have met have been so utterly and completely wrong about everything that stared them in the face." ”

“ Whereas here was this rich and idle Russian who, if he pleased, could roam throughout Europe from one end to the other, who could take an apartment in Rome or a palace in Venice, for whom all the immense spaces of Russia were too small, and who could talk of suddenly going to Africa, as he, Arkright, could scarcely talk of going to Brighton.
"Life is very complicated sometimes," said Anikin. "Just when one thinks things are settled and simple and easy, and that one has turned over a new leaf of life, like a new clean sheet of blotting-paper, one suddenly sees it is not a clean sheet ”

“ I said Princess Kouragine liked him.
"Ah," he said, "that is an interesting type. The French character infected by the Slav microbe.
"What a powerful thing the Slav microbe is; more powerful even than the Irish microbe. Her French common sense and her Latin logic had been stricken by that curious Russian intellectual malaria. She will never get it out of her system."
I asked him if he thought Kranitski had the same malaria.
"It is less noticeable in him," Rudd said, "because he is Russian; there is no contrast to observe, no conflict. He is simply a Slav of a rather conventional type. ”

“ Knolles.
"And so do I," said Kathleen. "I could understand anyone being in love with her."
"That there will always be people in love with her," said the Princess, "and young people. She has charm as well as beauty, and how rare that is!"
"Yes," said Anikin, pensively, "how rare that is."
Kathleen looked at the mirror as if she was appraising Donna Laura's beauty, but in reality it was to see whether Lancelot was talking to her. As far as she could see he seemed to be rather silent. General conversation, with a lot of Italian intermixed with it, was going up from the table like fireworks. ”

“ I thought to myself: "She knows about Kranitski and doesn't want to discuss it."
"The man who marries Jean would be very lucky," she said. "Jean is—well—there is no one like her. She's more than rare. She's introuvable."
I said that Rudd thought she would never marry anyone.
"Perhaps not," she said, "but if Mr. Rudd is right about her he will be right for the wrong reasons. Sometimes the people who see everything wrong are right. It is very irritating." ”

“ One year she had taken Kathleen to Bayreuth, hoping to rouse her interest in music, but Kathleen had found the music tedious and noisy, although she listened to it without complaining, and when her aunt suggested going there another year, she agreed to the suggestion with alacrity. The only thing which ever roused her interest was horse-racing. Sometimes they went to the races near Saint-Yves, and then Kathleen would become a different girl. She would be, as long as the racing lasted, alive for the time being, and sink back into her dreamless apathy as soon as they were over. ”

“ I said I supposed she thought Kranitski would be strong enough to do without marriage.
"I think so," she said, "but then, I hardly know him."
"Does your theory apply to women, too?" I asked. "Are there some women who are strong enough to face life alone?"
She said women were strong enough to do either. In either case life was for them just as difficult.
I asked if she thought Miss Brandon would be happier married or not married.
"Jean would never marry unless she married the right person, the man she wanted to marry," she said. ”

“ Roseleigh stood out in startling detail, her melancholy, laughing, mocking eyes, her quick nervous laugh, her swift flashes of intuition. How she understood the shade of the shadow of what he meant!
And that mocking face seemed to say to him: "You have made a mistake and you know it. You were spellbound for a moment by a face. It is a ravishing face, but the soul behind it is not your soul. You do not understand one another. You never will understand one another. There is an unpassable gulf between you. ”

“ And she, she does not love you. She never will love you. She was spellbound, too, for the moment. But you have only to look at her now to see that the spell is broken and it will never come back, at least you will never bring it back. She is English, English to the core, although she looks like the illustration to some strange fairy-tale, and you are a Slav. You cannot do without Russian comfort, the comfort of the mind, and she cannot do without English solidity. She will marry a squire or, perhaps, who knows, a man of business ”

“ I said I thought intelligence mattered a great deal.
"When it's natural," she said.
"Do you think people can become religious if they're not?" she asked suddenly.
I said that I didn't feel that I could, but it certainly did happen to some people.
"I'm afraid it will never happen to me," she said. "I used to hope it might never happen, but now I hope the opposite. Last night, after you went in, Aunt Netty took us to the café, and we all sat there: Mr. Rudd, Mabel, a Frenchman whose name I don't know, and M. Kranitski. ”

“ Kathleen turned to Count Tilsit and made conversation to him, while Anikin and the Princess began to talk in a passionately argumentative manner of all the beauties they had known. The Princess had come to life once more. Mrs. Knolles, having done her duty, relapsed into a comfortable conversation with Arkright. They understood each other without effort.
The Italian party finished their dinner first, and went out on to the terrace, and as they walked out of the room the extraordinary dignity of Donna Laura's carriage struck the whole room. ”

“ It isn't always necessarily what you would call a sin, but is the wages of the past and that is just as bad, just as strong at any rate. They have to be paid in full, those wages, one day or other, sooner or later."
Arkright had not been an observer of human nature and a careful student of minute psychological shades and impressions for twenty years for nothing. He had had his eyes wide open during the last weeks, and Mrs. Knolles had furnished him with the preliminary and fundamental data of her niece's case. He felt quite certain that something had taken place between Anikin and Kathleen. ”

“ Kathleen Farrel was reading listlessly without interest. She had lived so much abroad that English news had little attraction for her, and she was no longer young enough to regret missing any of the receptions, race-meetings, garden-parties, and other social events which she was idly skimming the record of. For it was now the height of the London season, but Mrs. Knolles had let the London house in Hill Street. She always let it every summer, and in the winter as well, whenever she could find a tenant. ”

“ It is simply a case of choosing between duty and inclination."
"No," said Anikin, "it is sometimes a case of choosing between a pleasure which is not contrary to duty (et qui pourrait même avoir l'excuse du devoir) " he lapsed into French, which was his habit when he found it difficult to express himself in English, "and an obligation which is contrary both to duty and inclination."
"What is the difference between an obligation and a duty?" asked Arkright. He wished to pin the elusive Slav down to something definite.
"Isn't there in life often a conflict between them?" asked Anikin. ”

“ It was Anikin, the Russian, who had in the last month become an accepted and established factor in their small group of hotel acquaintances. Kathleen had met him first some years ago at Rome, but it was only at Saint-Yves that she had come to know him.
As he took off his hat in a hesitating manner, as if afraid of interrupting her thoughts, she registered the fact that she knew him, not only better than anyone else at the hotel, but better almost than anyone anywhere.
"Would you like a game?" he asked. He meant a game which was provided in the park for the distraction of the patients. ”

“ Rudd looked at us. It was awful, but Mabel recovered and said she didn't think we could realize now the kind of atmosphere that Thackeray lived in."
I said I didn't suppose that Rudd had noticed anything. He didn't seem to me to notice that kind of thing.
She agreed, but said he had moments of lucidity which were unexpected and disconcerting. "For one second," she said, "he suspected we were laughing at him. Aunt Netty manages him perfectly. He loves her. She knows exactly what to say to him. He knows she is not critical. I think he is rather suspicious. How funny clever men are!" ”

“ His conscience pricked him; but, so far from wanting to stop, he wanted to go on; and instead of their intimacy being accidental it became on his part intentional. That is to say, he allowed himself to listen to all that was not said, and he sent out himself silent wordless messages which he felt were received instantly on an invisible aerial.
For the moment he put all thoughts of what had happened away from him, and gave himself up to the enchantment of understanding and being understood so easily, so lightly. He put up his feet and coasted down the long hill of a newly discovered intimacy. ”

“ And now Miss Brandon marries the young man. Either she had loved him all the time, or else, feeling her romance was over, she was marrying to be married. In any case, her novel, so far from being ended, is only just beginning. And the Russian? Was it a real amour or a coup-de-tête? Time will show. For himself he thought it was only a coup-de-tête: he will go back to his first love, but she will never divorce."
I asked him again whether he was sure that Countess Yaskov was divorced from her husband. ”

“ But as Arkright and Anikin dined with them frequently, and as she had forgotten who Count Tilsit was, this was difficult for her. Arkright was an English author, who was a friend of her aunt's, and had sufficient penetration to realize that Mrs. Knolles was something more than a woman of the world; to appreciate her fundamental goodness as well as her obvious cleverness, and to divine that Kathleen's exterior might be in some ways deceptive. ”

“ I can see that that poor Jean suffers in the same way. And then, what a life! To spend all one's time with that Mrs. Lennox, who is as hard as a stone and ruthlessly selfish. She does not want Jean to marry. Jean is too useful to her."
I said I wondered why she had not married. Surely lots of men must have wanted to marry her.
Princess Kouragine said that Mrs. Lennox was quite capable of preventing it. She rarely took her out in London. She brought her to Haréville when the London season began and they stayed here two months. It was cheaper. In the winter they went to Florence or Nice. ”