The Heart of Penelope

by Marie Belloc Lowndes

Situated at the extreme western end of the villa, on which, indeed, it still formed a strange excrescence, the room had been added to the main building at a time when Penelope's parents had been inclined to believe much more than they afterwards came to do in the power of eloquent speech. The substantial brick walls of the hall, as it was still called by some of the older servants, had witnessed curious gatherings, and heard the voices of many a famous lay-preacher dealing with schemes which, whether practical or nebulous, had all the same single purpose—that of leaving the world better than it had been before.

Penelope Wantley, as a little girl, had once been taken, when in Paris, to see a certain old lady, who had in her day played a considerable rôle in the brilliant society of the forties. The room in which the English visitors had been received made a deep impression on the child's imagination. The walls were painted in that soft shade of blue which the turquoise is said to assume when a heart is untrue to its wearer, and which is of all tints that best suited to be a background, whether of human beings or of paintings; and the old lady's furniture had been hidden in what the little Penelope had likened to herself as white dimity overalls. The windows looked out on a fine old garden, along whose shady paths had once walked blind Châteaubriand, led by Madame Récamier.

Many years later, when Mrs. Robinson was arranging and transforming the one room at Monk's Eype which she felt at liberty to alter and to arrange after her own fancy, she followed, perhaps unconsciously, the scheme of colouring which had so much pleased her childish fancy. But whereas in the French lady's salon there had been no books—indeed, no sign that such a thing as literature existed in the world—books were not lacking at Monk's Eype. Had Penelope followed her own natural instinct, perhaps she would have kept even more closely than she had done to the Frenchwoman's example; but, though she prided herself on being one of the most unconventional of human beings, she was naturally influenced by the atmosphere in which she had always moved and lived.

'By Penelope's books you may know, not Penelope, but Penelope's friends,' her cousin, Lord Wantley, had once observed. He had been tempted to substitute the word 'adorers' for 'friends,' but had checked himself in time, recollecting that the man with whom he was speaking was one to whom the warmer term was notoriously applicable.

As to what the books were—for there was no lack of variety—French novels, much old and modern verse, mock-erudite volumes, and pamphlets of the type that are written a hundredfold round whatever happens to be the fad of the moment, warred here and there with a substantial Blue-Book, or, stranger still, with some volume which contained deep and painful probings into the gloomier problems of life. Such were the contents of the book-shelves, which, by a curious conceit of the present owner of Monk's Eype, framed the tall narrow door connecting her studio with the rest of the building.

Lord Wantley would also have told you that his brilliant cousin never read. That, however, would have been unjust and untrue. Mrs. Robinson, however deeply absorbed in other things, always found time to glance through the books certain of her friends were good enough to send her.

Sometimes, indeed, she felt considerable interest in what she had been bidden to read, and almost always she showed an extraordinary, if passing, insight into the author's meaning; but to tell the truth, and I hope that in so doing I shall not prejudice my readers against my heroine, she was one of those women, a greater number than is in these days suspected, who regard literature much as the modern civilized man of the world regards art. Such a man goes to those exhibitions which have been specially mentioned to him as worthy of notice, but even to the best of these it would never occur to him to go, save with a pleasant companion, a second time; and in buying, it is always the expert on whom he leans, not his own taste and judgment. In the same way Penelope was always willing to read any volume which her world was discussing at the moment, but she would have been a happier woman had she been able sometimes to take up, not necessarily a classic, but at any rate a book of yesterday rather than of to-day.

But if literature was in her room only used in a decorative sense, the water-colours and drawings, the casts, and the bas-reliefs, which were so hung as to form a low dado down the whole length of the studio, were one and all of remarkable quality, and here you touched the quick reality of Penelope's life. In these matters she needed no advice, for, while as an artist she was truly humble, she only cared to measure herself with the best.

There was something pathetic in this beautiful woman's desire to discover hidden genius; only certain French painters with whom she herself from time to time still studied could have told how generous and how intelligent was the help she was ever ready to bestow on those of her fellow art-students whose means were more slender than their talent. It was to these, so rich and yet so poor, that her heart really warmed; it was on them that she bestowed what time that she could spare from herself.

And yet the room which was specially her own showed very few signs of artistic occupation. True, on a plain table were set out paint-boxes, palettes, sketch-books; but an unobservant visitor might have come and gone without knowing that the woman he had come to see ever took up a pencil or used a brush.