James Cabell - The Cords of Vanity. A Comedy of Shirking

"That's all very well," Peter growled, "but you needn't try to change the subject. You know you have angled after any number of rich women who have had sense enough, thank God, to refuse you. You didn't use to be—but now you're quite notoriously good-for-nothing."

"It is the one blemish," said I, sweetly, "upon an otherwise perfect character. And it is true," I continued, after an interval of meditation, "that I have, in my time, encountered some very foolish women. There was, for instance, Elena Barry-Smith, who threw me over for Warwick Risby; and Celia Reindan, who had the bad taste to prefer Teddy Anstruther; and Rosalind Jemmett, who is, very inconsiderately, going to marry Tom Gelwix, instead of me. These were staggeringly foolish women, Peter, but while their taste is bad, their dinners are good, so I have remained upon the best of terms with them. They have trodden me under their feet, but I am the long worm that has no turning. Moreover, you are doubtless aware of the axiomatic equality between the fish in the sea and those out of it. I hope before long to better my position in life. I hope—Ah, well, that would scarcely interest you. Good morning, Peter. And I trust, when I return," I added, with chastening dignity, "that you will evince a somewhat more Christian spirit toward the world in general, and that your language will be rather less reminiscent of the blood-stained buccaneer of historical fiction."

"You're a grinning buffoon," said Peter. "You're a fat Jack-pudding. You're an ass. Where are you going, anyway?"

"I am going," said I, "to the extreme end of Gridlington. Afterward I am going to climb the wall that stands between Gridlington and Selwoode."

"And after that?" said Peter.

I gave a gesture. "Why, after that," said I, "fortune will favour the brave. And I, Peter, am very, very brave."

Then I departed, whistling. In view of all my memories it had been strangely droll to worry Peter Blagden into an abuse of marrying for money. For this was on the twenty-eighth of April, the anniversary of the day that Stella had died, you may remember….

And a half-hour subsequently, true to my word, I was scaling a ten-foot stone wall, thickly overgrown with ivy. At the top of it I paused, and sat down to take breath and to meditate, my legs meanwhile bedangling over an as flourishing Italian garden as you would wish to see.

"Now, I wonder," I queried, of my soul, "what will be next? There is a very cheerful uncertainty about what will be next. It may be a spring-gun, and it may be a bull-dog, and it may be a susceptible heiress. But it is apt to be—No, it isn't," I amended, promptly; "it is going to be an angel. Or perhaps it is going to be a dream. She can't be real, you know—I am probably just dreaming her. I would be quite certain I was just dreaming her, if this wall were not so humpy and uncomfortable. For it stands to reason, I would not be fool enough to dream of such unsympathetic iron spikes as I am sitting on."

"Perhaps you are not aware," hazarded a soprano voice, "that this is private property?"

"Why, no," said I, very placidly; "on the contrary I was just thinking it must be heaven. And I am tolerably certain," I commented further, in my soul, "that you are one of the more influential seraphim."

The girl had lifted her brows. She sat upon a semi-circular stone bench, some twenty feet from the wall, and had apparently been reading, for a book lay open in her lap. She now inspected me, with a sort of languid wonder in her eyes, and I returned the scrutiny with unqualified approval in mine.

And in this I had reason. The heiress of Selwoode was eminently good to look upon.

So I regarded her for a rather lengthy interval, considering meanwhile, with an immeasurable content how utterly and entirely impossible it would always be to describe her.

Clearly, it would be out of the question to trust to words, however choicely picked, for, upon inspection, there was a delightful ambiguity about every one of this girl's features that defied such idiotic makeshifts. Her eyes, for example, I noted with a faint thrill of surprise, just escaped being brown by virtue of an amber glow they had; what colour, then, was I conscientiously to call them?

And her hair I found a bewildering, though pleasing, mesh of shadow and sunlight, all made up of multitudinous graduations of some anonymous colour that seemed to vary with the light you chanced to see it in, through the whole gamut of bronze and chestnut and gold; and where, pray, in the bulkiest lexicon, in the very weightiest thesaurus, was I to find the adjective which could, if but in desperation, be applied to hair like that without trenching on sacrilege? … For it was spring, you must remember, and I was twenty-five.

So that in my appraisal, you may depend upon it, her lips were quickly passed over as a dangerous topic, and were dismissed with the mental statement that they were red and not altogether unattractive. Whereas her cheeks baffled me for a time,—but always with a haunting sense of familiarity—till I had, at last, discovered they reminded me of those little tatters of cloud that sometimes float about the setting sun,—those irresolute wisps which cannot quite decide whether to be pink or white, and waver through their tiny lives between the two colours.

To this effect, then, I discoursed with my soul, what time I sat upon the wall-top and smiled and kicked my heels to and fro among the ivy. By and by, though, the girl sighed.

"You are placing me in an extremely unpleasant position," she complained, as if wearily. "Would you mind returning to your sanatorium and allowing me to go on reading? For I am interested in my book, and I can't possibly go on in any comfort so long as you elect to perch up there like Humpty-Dumpty, and grin like seven dozen Cheshire cats."

"Now, that," I spoke, in absent wise, "is but another instance of the widely prevalent desire to have me serve as scapegoat for the sins of all humanity. I am being blamed now for sitting on top of this wall. One would think I wanted to sit here. One would actually think," I cried, and raised my eyes to heaven, "that sitting on the very humpiest kind of iron spikes was my favorite form of recreation! No,—in the interests of justice," I continued, and fell into a milder tone, "I must ask you to place the blame where it more rightfully belongs. The injuries which are within the moment being inflicted on my sensitive nature, and, incidentally, upon my not overstocked wardrobe, I am willing to pass over. But the claims of justice are everywhere paramount. Miss Hugonin, and Miss Hugonin alone, is responsible for my present emulation of Mohammed's coffin, and upon that responsibility I am compelled to insist."

"May one suggest," she queried gently, "that you are probably—mistaken?"

I sketched a bow. "Recognising your present point of view," said I, gallantly, "I thank you for the kindly euphemism. But may one allowably demonstrate the fallacy of this same point of view? I thank you: for silence, I am told, is proverbially equal to assent. I am, then, one Robert Townsend, by birth a gentleman, by courtesy an author, by inclination an idler, and by lucky chance a guest of Mr. Peter Blagden, whose flourishing estate extends indefinitely yonder to the rear of my coat-tails. My hobby chances to be gardening. I am a connoisseur, an admirer, a devotee of gardens. It is, indeed, hereditary among the Townsends; a love for gardens runs in our family just as a love for gin runs in less favoured races. It is with us an irresistible passion. The very founder of our family—one Adam, whom you may have heard of,—was a gardener. Owing to the unfortunate loss of his position, the family since then has sunken somewhat in the world; but time and poverty alike have proven powerless against our horticultural tastes and botanical inclinations. And then," cried I, with a flourish, "and then, what follows logically?"