Muslin | Page 4

of a temper, constant perhaps, but not
narrow. He would have been able to discover an intrigue of an
engaging kind in her, and the thinking out of the predestined male
would have been as agreeable a task as falls to the lot of a man of
letters. And being a young man he would begin by considering the long
series of poets, painters and musicians, he had read of in Balzac's
novels, but as none of these would be within the harmony of Violet's
perverse humour, he would turn to life, and presently a vague shaggy
shape would emerge from the back of his mind, but it would refuse to
condense into any recognizable face; which is as well, perhaps, else I
might be tempted to pick up this forgotten flower, though I am fain to
write no more long stories.
But though we regret that the author of Muslin did not gather this
Violet for his literary buttonhole, let no one suggest that the old man
should return to his Springtime to do what the young man left undone.
Our gathering-time is over, and we are henceforth prefacers. The Brook
Cherith is our last. Some may hear this decision with sorrow, but we
have written eighteen books, which is at least ten too many, and none
shall persuade us to pick up the burden of another long story. We swear
it and close our ears to our admirers, and to escape them we plunge into
consideration of Violet's soul and her aptitudes, saying, and saying well,
that if polygamy thrives with Mohammedanism in the East, polyandry
has settled down in the West with Christianity, and that since Nora
slammed the door the practice of acquiring a share in a woman's life,
rather than insisting on the whole of it, has caught such firm root in our
civilization that it is no exaggeration to say that every married woman

to-day will admit she could manage two men better than her husband
could manage two wives. If we inquire still further, we submit, and
confidently, that every woman--saint or harlot, it matters not
which--would confess she would prefer to live with two men rather
than share her husband with another woman. All women are of one
mind on this subject; it is the one thing on which they all agree
irrespective of creed or class, so these remarks barely concern them;
but should male eyes fall on this page, and if in the pride of his heart he
should cry out, 'This is not so,' I would have him make application to
his wife or sister, and if he possess neither he may discover the truth in
his own mind. Let him ask himself if it could be otherwise, since our
usage and wont is that a woman shall prepare for the reception of
visitors by adorning her rooms with flowers and dressing herself in fine
linen and silk attire, and be to all men alike as they come and go. She
must cover all with winning glances, and beguile all with seductive
eyes and foot, and talk about love, though, perhaps she would prefer to
think of one who is far away. Men do not live under such restraint. A
man may reserve all his thoughts for his mistress, but the moment he
leaves, his mistress must begin to cajole the new-comer, however
indifferent he may be to her. The habit of her life is to cajole, to please,
to inspire, if possible, and if she be not a born coquette she becomes
one, and takes pleasure in her art, devoting her body and mind to it,
reading only books about love and lovers, singing songs of love, and
seeking always new scents and colours and modes of fascination. If
lovers are away and none calls, she abandons herself to dreams, and her
imagination furnishes quickly a new romance. Somebody she has
half-forgotten rises up in her memory, and she thinks that she could
like him if he were to come into her drawing-room now. It would be
happiness indeed to walk forward into his arms and to call her soul into
her eyes; or, if a letter were to come from him asking her to dinner, she
would accept it; and, lying back among her silken cushions, she thinks
she could spend many hours in his company without weariness. She
creates his rooms and his person and his conversation, and when he is
exhausted a new intrigue rises up in her mind, and then another and
another. Some drop away and remain for ever unfulfilled, while others
'come into their own,' as the saying is.

If this be a true analysis of a woman's life--and who will say it is
not?--the dreams of the Marchioness of Kilcarney would begin in