"Fancy! No gas and no electric light! It is simply charming!" she thought, "And so becoming to one's dress and complexion! Only there's nobody to see the becomingness. But I can soon remedy that. Lots of people will come down and stay here if I only ask them. There's one thing quite certain about society folk—they will always come where they can be lodged and boarded free! They call it country visiting, but it really means shutting up their houses, dismissing their servants, and generally economising on their housekeeping bills. I've seen SUCH a lot of it!"
She heaved a little sigh over these social reminiscences, and finished her repast in meditative silence. She had not been accustomed to much thinking, and to indulge in it at all for any length of time was actually a novelty. Her aunt had told her never to think, as it made the face serious, and developed lines on the forehead. And she had, under this kind of tutelage, became one of a brilliant, fashionable, dress-loving crowd of women, who spend most of their lives in caring for their complexions and counting their lovers. Yet every now and again, a wave of repugnance to such a useless sort of existence arose in her and made a stormy rebellion. Surely there was something nobler in life—something higher— something more useful and intelligent than the ways and manners of a physically and morally degenerate society?
It was a still, calm evening, and the warmth of the sun all day had drawn such odours from the hearts of the flowers that the air was weighted with perfume when she wandered out again into her garden after dinner, and looked up wistfully at the gables of the Manor set clear against a background of dark blue sky patterned with stars. A certain gravity oppressed her. There was, after all, something just a little eerie in the on-coming of night in this secluded woodland place where she had voluntarily chosen to dwell all alone and unprotected, rather than lend herself to her aunt's match-making schemes.
"Of course," she argued with herself, "I need not stay here if I don't like it. I can get a paid companion and go travelling,—but, oh dear, I've had so much travelling!—or I can own myself in the wrong to Aunt Emily, and marry that wretch Roxmouth,—Oh, no! I COULD not! I WILL not!"
She gave an impatient little stamp with her foot, and anon surveyed the old house with affectionate eyes.
"You shall be my rescue!" she said, kissing her hand playfully to the latticed windows,—"You shall turn me into an old-fashioned lady, fond of making jams and pickles, and preserves and herbal waters! I'll put away all the idiotic intrigues and silly fooling of modern society in one of your quaint oaken cupboards, and lock them all up with little bags of lavender to disinfect them! And I will wait for someone to come and find me out and love me; and if no one ever comes—" Here she paused, then went on,—"If no one ever comes, why then—" and she laughed—"some man will have lost a good chance of marrying as true a girl as ever lived!—a girl who could love— ah!" And she stretched out her pretty rounded arms to the scented air. "HOW she could love if she were loved!"
The young moon here put in a shy appearance by showing a fleck of silver above the highest gable of the Manor.
"A little diamond peak,
No bigger than an unobserved star,
Or tiny point of fairy scimitar;
Bright signal that she only stooped to tie
Her silver sandals ere deliciously
She bowed unto the heavens her timid head,
Slowly she rose as though she would have fled."
"There's no doubt," said Maryllia, "that this place is romantic! And romance is what I've been searching for all my life, and have never found except in books. Not so much in modern books as in the books that were written by really poetical and imaginative people sixty or seventy years ago. Nowadays, the authors that are most praised go in for what they call 'realism'—and their realism is very UNreal, and very nasty. For instance, this garden,—these lovely trees,—this dear old house—all these are real—but much too romantic for a modern writer. He would rather describe a dusthole and enumerate every potato paring in it! And here am I—I'm real enough—but I'm not a bad woman—I haven't got what is euphoniously called 'a past,' and I don't belong to the right-down vicious company of 'Souls.' So I should never do for a heroine of latter-day fiction. I'm afraid I'm abnormal. It's dreadful to be abnormal! One becomes a 'neurotic,' like Lombroso, and all the geniuses. But suppose the world were full of merely normal people,—people who did nothing but eat and sleep in the most perfectly healthy and regular manner,—oh, what a bore it would be! There would be no pictures, no sculpture, no poetry, no music, no anything worth living for. One MUST have a few ideas beyond food and clothing!"
The moon, rose higher and shed a shower of silver over the grass, lighting up in strong relief the fair face upturned to it.