The Greater Inclination | Page 3

inclination, chose to go down to posterity as Silvia rather than as Mrs.
Vincent Rendle!
Mrs. Memorall, from this day forth, acquired an interest in Danyers's
eyes. She was like a volume of unindexed and discursive memoirs,
through which he patiently plodded in the hope of finding embedded
amid layers of dusty twaddle some precious allusion to the subject of
his thought. When, some months later, he brought out his first slim
volume, in which the remodelled college essay on Rendle figured
among a dozen, somewhat overstudied "appreciations," he offered a
copy to Mrs. Memorall; who surprised him, the next time they met,
with the announcement that she had sent the book to Mrs. Anerton.
Mrs. Anerton in due time wrote to thank her friend. Danyers was
privileged to read the few lines in which, in terms that suggested the
habit of "acknowledging" similar tributes, she spoke of the author's
"feeling and insight," and was "so glad of the opportunity," etc. He
went away disappointed, without clearly knowing what else he had
expected.
The following spring, when he went abroad, Mrs. Memorall offered
him letters to everybody, from the Archbishop of Canterbury to Louise
Michel. She did not include Mrs. Anerton, however, and Danyers knew,
from a previous conversation, that Silvia objected to people who
"brought letters." He knew also that she travelled during the summer,
and was unlikely to return to Rome before the term of his holiday
should be reached, and the hope of meeting her was not included
among his anticipations.
The lady whose entrance broke upon his solitary repast in the restaurant
of the Hotel Villa d'Este had seated herself in such a way that her
profile was detached against the window; and thus viewed, her domed
forehead, small arched nose, and fastidious lip suggested a silhouette of
Marie Antoinette. In the lady's dress and movements--in the very turn
of her wrist as she poured out her coffee--Danyers thought he detected
the same fastidiousness, the same air of tacitly excluding the obvious

and unexceptional. Here was a woman who had been much bored and
keenly interested. The waiter brought her a _Secolo,_ and as she bent
above it Danyers noticed that the hair rolled back from her forehead
was turning gray; but her figure was straight and slender, and she had
the invaluable gift of a girlish back.
The rush of Anglo-Saxon travel had not set toward the lakes, and with
the exception of an Italian family or two, and a hump-backed youth
with an _abbé_, Danyers and the lady had the marble halls of the Villa
d'Este to themselves.
When he returned from his morning ramble among the hills he saw her
sitting at one of the little tables at the edge of the lake. She was writing,
and a heap of books and newspapers lay on the table at her side. That
evening they met again in the garden. He had strolled out to smoke a
last cigarette before dinner, and under the black vaulting of ilexes, near
the steps leading down to the boat-landing, he found her leaning on the
parapet above the lake. At the sound of his approach she turned and
looked at him. She had thrown a black lace scarf over her head, and in
this sombre setting her face seemed thin and unhappy. He remembered
afterwards that her eyes, as they met his, expressed not so much sorrow
as profound discontent.
To his surprise she stepped toward him with a detaining gesture.
"Mr. Lewis Danyers, I believe?"
He bowed.
"I am Mrs. Anerton. I saw your name on the visitors' list and wished to
thank you for an essay on Mr. Rendle's poetry--or rather to tell you how
much I appreciated it. The book was sent to me last winter by Mrs.
Memorall."
She spoke in even melancholy tones, as though the habit of perfunctory
utterance had robbed her voice of more spontaneous accents; but her
smile was charming. They sat down on a stone bench under the ilexes,
and she told him how much pleasure his essay had given her. She

thought it the best in the book--she was sure he had put more of himself
into it than into any other; was she not right in conjecturing that he had
been very deeply influenced by Mr. Rendle's poetry? Pour comprendre
il faut aimer, and it seemed to her that, in some ways, he had penetrated
the poet's inner meaning more completely than any other critic. There
were certain problems, of course, that he had left untouched; certain
aspects of that many-sided mind that he had perhaps failed to seize--
"But then you are young," she concluded gently, "and one could not
wish you, as yet, the experience that a fuller understanding would
imply."
II
She stayed a month at