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Old Maids' Club

<h2>CHAPTER VII.</h2> THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN. "No, we can't have Diana," the President said, when Lord Silverdale reported the matter. "That is, not if the Moon-man breaks off the engagement. According to the rules, the candidate must have herself discarded an advantageous marriage, and that Miss Diana will give up Mr. Wilkins is extremely questionable." "Like everything connected with the Moon-man's bride. However, my aerial expedition has not been fruitless; if I have not brought you a member from the clouds, at least we know how right I was to pluck Clorinda Bell." "Yes, and how right I was to appoint you Honorary Trier!" said Lillie. "I have several more candidates for you, chosen from my last batch of applications. While you were in the clouds, I was working. I have already interviewed them. They fulfil all the conditions. It only remains for you to do your part." "Have they given good reasons for their refusal to marry their lovers?" "Excellent reasons. Reasons so strange as to bear the stamp of truth. Here is the first reduced to writing. It is compounded of what Miss Ellaline Rand said to me and of what she left unsaid. Read it, while I put another of these love stories into shape. I am so glad I founded the Old Maids' Club. It has enlarged my experience incalculably." Lord Silverdale took the manuscript and read. <hr /> [pg 99] When John Beveridge went to nurse his misanthropy in the obscure fishing village of Trepolpen, he had not bargained for the presence of Ellaline Rand. And yet there she was, living in a queer little cottage on the very top of the steep hill which constituted Trepolpen, and sloped down to a pebbly beach where the dark nets dried and the trawl boats were drawn up. The people she was staying with were children of the soil and the sea—the man, a rugged old fish-dealer who had been a smuggler in his time; the woman, a chirpy grandame whose eyes were still good enough to allow her to weave lace by lamplight. The season was early June, and the glittering smile on the broad face of the Atlantic made the roar of the breakers sound like stentorian laughter. There was always a whiff of fish—a blend of mackerel and crabs and mullet—striking up from the beach, but the salt in the air kept the odoriferous atoms fairly fresh. Everything in Trepolpen was delightfully archaic, and even the far-away suggestions of antiquity about the prevailing piscine flavor seemed in poetic keeping with the spirit of the primitive little spot. In a village of one street it is impossible not to live in it, unless you are a coastguard, and then you don't live in the village. This was why John Beveridge was a neighbor of Ellaline's. He lived much lower down, where the laugh of the Atlantic was louder and the scent of the fish was stronger, and before he knew of Ellaline's existence he used to go down hill (which is easy), smoke his pipe and chat with the trawlers, and lie on his back in the sun. After they had met, he grew less lazy and used to take exercise by walking up to the top of the hill. Probably by this time the sea-breezes had given him strength. Sometimes he met Ellaline coming down; which was accident. Then he would turn and walk down with her; which was design. The manner of their first meeting was novel, but [pg 100] in such a place it could not be long delayed. Beveridge had obeyed a call from the boatmen to come and help them drag in the seine. He was tugging with all his might at the section of the netting, for the fishers seemed to be in luck and the fish unfortunate. Suddenly he heard the pit-pat of light feet running down the hill, and the next moment two little white hands peeping out of white cuffs were gripping the net at the side of his own fleshy brown ones. For some thirty seconds he was content to divine the apparition from the hands. There was a flutter of sweet expectation about his heart, a stirring of the sense of romance. The day was divine. The sky was a brooding blue; the sea was a rippling play of light on which the seine-boat danced lightly. One little brown sail was visible far out in the bay, the sea-gulls hovering about it. It seemed to Beveridge that the scene had only been waiting for those gentle little hands, whose assistance in the operation of landing the spoil was such a delicious farce. They could be no native lass's, these soft fingers with their pink little nails like pretty sea-pearls. They were fingers that spoke (in their mute digital dialect) of the crayon and the violin-bow, rather than of the local harmonium. There was something, too, about the coquettish cuffs, irresistibly at variance with the village Wesleyanism. Gradually, as the net came in, Beveridge let his eyes steal towards her face. The prevision of romance became a certainty. It was a charming little face, as symmetrically proportioned to the hands as the face of a watch is. The nose was retroussé and piquant, but the eyes contradicted it, being demure and dreamy. There was a little Cupid's bow of a mouth, and between the half-parted rosy lips a gleam of white teeth clenched with the exertion of hauling in the seine. A simple sailor's hat crowned a fluff of flaxen hair, and her dress was of airy muslin. [pg 101] She was so absorbed in the glee of hauling in the fish that it was some moments before she seemed to notice that her neighbor's eyes were fixed upon her, and that they were not set in the rugged tan of the local masculine face. A little blush leapt into the rather pale cheeks and went out again like a tiny spurt of rosy flame. Then she strained more desperately than ever at the net. It was soon ashore, with its wild and whirling mixture of mackerel, soles, dabs, squids, turbot—John Beveridge was not certain but what his heart was already among the things fluttering there in the net at her feet. While the trawlers were sorting out the fish, spreading some on the beach and packing the mackerel in baskets, Ellaline looked on, patently interested in everything but her fellow amateur. After all, despite his shaggy coat and the clay pipe in his mouth, he was of the town, towny; some solicitor, artist, stockbroker, doctor, on a holiday; perhaps, considering the time of year, only a clerk. What she had come to Trepolpen for was something more primitive. And he! Surely he had seen and loved pretty women enough, not to stir an inch nearer this dainty vision. For what but to forget the wiles and treacheries of women of the town had he buried himself here? And yet was it the unexpectedness, was it that while bringing back the atmosphere of great cities she yet seemed a creature of the woods and waters, he felt himself drawn to her? He wanted to talk to her, to learn who she was and what she was doing here, but he did not know how to begin, though he had the gift of many tongues. Not that he deemed an introduction necessary—in Trepolpen, where not to give everybody you met "good-morning" was to court a reputation for surliness. And it would have been easy enough to open on the weather, or the marine harvest they had both helped to gather in. But somehow John Beveridge learnt embarrassment in the presence of [pg 102] this muslined mermaiden, who seemed half of the world and half of the sea. And so, amid the bustle of the beach, the minutes slipped away, and Beveridge spoke no word but leaned against the cliff, content to drowse in the light of the sun and Ellaline. The dealers came down to the beach—men and women—among them a hale, grizzly old fellow who clasped Ellaline's hand in his huge, gnarled fist. The auction began. John Beveridge joined the crowd at a point behind the strangely assorted couple. Of a sudden Ellaline turned to him with her great limpid eyes looking candidly into his, and said, "Some of those poor mackerel are not quite dead yet—I wonder if they suffer." John Beveridge was taken aback. The last vestiges of his wonted assurance were swept away before her sweet simplicity. "I—I—really—I don't know—I've never thought about it," he stammered. "Men never do," said Ellaline with a gentle reproachful look. "They think only of their own pain. I do hope fish have no feelings." "They are cold-blooded," he reminded her, beginning to recover himself. "Ah!" she said musingly. "But what right have we to take away their lives? They must be—oh so happy!—in the beautiful wide ocean! I am sorry I had a hand in destroying them. I shall never do it again." "You have very little to reproach yourself with," he said, smiling. "Ah! now you are laughing at me. I know I'm not big and strong, and that my muscles could have been dispensed with. But the will was there, the intention was there," she said with her serious air. "Oh, of course, you are a piscicide in intention," he admitted. "But you will enjoy the mackerel all the same." [pg 103] "No, I won't," she said with a charming little shake of the head, "I won't eat any." "What! you will nevermore eat fish?" "Never," she said emphatically. "I love fish, but I won't eat 'em! only tinned things, like sardines. Oh, what a little stupid I am! Don't laugh at me again, please. I forgot the sardines must be caught first, before they are tinned, mustn't they?" "Not necessarily," he said. "It often suffices if sprats are caught." She laughed. Her laugh was a low musical ripple, like one of the little sunlit waves translated into sound. "Twenty-two shillings!" cried the owner of a lot. "I'll give 'ee eleven!" said Ellaline's companion, and the girl turned her head to listen to the violent chaffering that ensued, and when she went away she only gave John Beveridge a nod and a smile. But he followed her with his eyes as she toiled up the hill, growing ever smaller and daintier against the horizon. The second time he met her was at the Cove, a little way from the village, where great foliage-crowned cliffs came crescent-wise round a space of shining sand, girdled at its outer margin by tumbling green, foam-crested surges. Huge mammoth-like boulders stood about, bathing their feet in the incoming tide, the cormorants perching cautiously down the precipitous half-worn path that led to the sands. There was a point at which the landward margin of the shore beneath first revealed itself to the descending pedestrian, and it was a point so slippery that it was thoughtless of Fate to have included Ellaline in the area of vision. She was lying, sheltered by a blue sunshade, on the golden sand, with her head on the base of the cliff, abstractedly tearing a long serpentine weed to dark green ribbons, and gazing out dreamily into the throbbing depths of sea and sky. There was an open book before her, but she did not seem to be [pg 104] reading. John Beveridge saved himself by grasping a stinging bush, and he stole down gently towards her, forgetting to swear. He came to her with footsteps muffled by the soft sand, and stood looking down at her, admiring the beauty of the delicate flushed young face and the flaxen hair against the sober background of the aged cliff with its mellow subtly-fused tints. "Thinking of the little fishes—or of the gods?" he said at last in a loud pleasant voice. Ellaline gave a little shriek. "Oh, where did you spring from?" she said, half raising herself. "Not from the clouds," he said. "Of course not. I was not thinking of the gods," said Ellaline. He laughed. "I am not even a Perseus," he said, "for the tide though coming in is not yet dangerous enough to be likened to the sea-monster, though you might very well pass for Andromeda." Ellaline blushed and rose to her feet, adjusting a wrap round her shoulders. "I do not know," she said with dignity, "what I have done to encourage such a comparison." John Beveridge saw he had slipped. This time there was not even a stinging bush to cling to. "You are beautiful, that is all I meant," he said apologetically. "Is it worth while saying such commonplace things?" she said a little mollified. It was an ambiguous remark. From her it could only mean that he had been guilty of compliment. "I am very sorry. A thousand pardons. But, pray, do not let me drive you away. You seemed so happy here. I will go back." He made a half turn. [pg 105] "Yes, I was happy," she said simply. "In my foolish little way I thought I had discovered this spot—as if anything so beautiful could have escaped the attention of those who have been near it all their lives." Her words caused him a sudden pang of anxious jealousy. Must they not be true of herself? "And you, too, seemed to have discovered it," she went on. "Doubtless you know all the coast well, for you were here before me. Do you know," she said, looking up at his face with her candid gray eyes, "this is the first time in my life I have seen the sea, so you must not laugh if I seem ignorant, but oh! how I love to lie and hear it roar, tossing its mane like some great wild animal that I have tamed and that will not harm me." "There are other wild animals that you may tame, here by the sea," he said. She considered for a moment gravely. "That is rather pretty," she announced. "I shall re-remember that. But please do not tell me again I am beautiful." She sat down on the sand, with her back to the cliff, re-adjusting her parasol. "Very well. I sit reproved," he replied, taking up his position by her side. "What book is that you are reading?" She handed him the little paper-covered, airily-printed volume, suggesting summer in every leaf. "Ah, it is The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft!" he said, with a shade of superciliousness blent with amusement. "Yes, have you read it?" she asked. "No," he said, "I have heard of it. It's by that new woman who came out last year and calls herself Andrew Dibdin, isn't it?" "Yes," said Ellaline. "It's made an enormous hit, don't you know." "Oh, yes, I know," he said, laughing. "It's a lot of sentimental rot, isn't it? Do you like it?" [pg 106] "I think it is sweetly pretty," she said, a teardrop of vexation gathering on her eyelid. "If you haven't read it, why should you abuse it?" "Oh, one can't read everything," he said. "But one gets to pick up enough about a book to know whether he cares to read it. Of course, I am aware it is about a little baby on board a ship that makes charming inarticulate orations and is worshipped by everybody, from the captain to the little stowaway, and is regarded by the sailors as the sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, etc., and that there is a sensational description of a storm at sea—which is Clarke Russell and water, or rather Clarke Russell and more water." "Ah, I see you're a cynic," said Ellaline. "I don't like cynics." "No, indeed, I am not," he pleaded. "It is false, not true, sentiment I object to." "And how do you know this is false sentiment?" she asked in honest indignation. "When you haven't read it?" "What does it matter?" he murmured, overwhelmed by her sense of duty. She was evidently unaccustomed to the light flippancies of elegant conversation. "Oh, nothing. To some people nothing matters. Will you promise to read the book if I lend it you?" "Of course I will," he said, delighted at the establishment of so permanent a link. "Only I don't want to deprive you of it—I can wait till you have finished with it." "I have finished. I have read it over and over again. Take it." She handed it to him. Their finger-tips met. "I recant already," he said. "It must have something pure and good in it to take captive a soul like yours." And indeed the glamour of Ellaline was over every page of it. As he read, he found tears of tenderness in his eyes, when otherwise they might have sprung from laughter. [pg 107] He adored the little cherub who sat up aloft on the officers' table and softened these crusty sea-dogs whose hearts were become as ship's-biscuits. He could not tell what had come over himself, that his own sere heart should be so quick again to the beauties of homely virtue and duty, to the engaging simplicity and pathos of childhood, to the purity of womanhood. Was it that Ellaline was all these things incarnate? He avowed his error and his conversion, and gradually they came to meet often in the solitary creek, as was but right for the only two intellectual people in Trepolpen. Sometimes, too, they wandered further afield, amid the ferny lanes. But the Cove was their favorite trysting place, and there lying with his head in her lap, he would talk to her of books and men and one woman. <div class="image-center" style="max-width: 600px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i108.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="446" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> Talked to her of books and men and one woman. </div> </div> He found her tastes were not limited to The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft, for she liked Meredith. "Really," he said, "if you had not been yourself, I should have doubted whether your admiration was genuine." "Yes, his women are so real. But I do not pretend to care for the style." "Style!" he said, "I call it a five-barred fence. To me style is everything. Style alone is literature, whether it be the man or not." "Oh, then you are of the school of Addiper?" "Ah, have you heard of that? I am. I admire Addiper and agree with him. Form is everything—literature is only a matter of form. And a book is only a form of matter." "I see," she said, smiling. "But I adore Addiper myself, though I regret the future seems likely to be his. I have read all he has written. Every line is so lucid. The form is exquisite. But as for the matter——!" "No matter!" summed up John Beveridge, laughing heartily. [pg 109] "I am so glad you agree with me sometimes," said Ellaline. "Because it shows you don't think I am so very stupid after all." "Of course I don't—except when you get so enthusiastic about literary people and rave about Dibdin and Addiper and Blackwin and the rest. If you mixed with them, my little girl, as I have done, you would soon lose your rosy illusions. Although perhaps you are better with them." "Ah, then you're not a novelist yourself?" she said anxiously. "No, I am not. What makes you ask?" "Nothing. Only sometimes, from your conversation, I suspected you might be." "Thank you, Ellaline," he said, "for a very dubious compliment. No, I am afraid I must forego that claim upon your admiration. Unless I tell a lie and become a novelist by doing so. But then wouldn't it be the truth?" "Are you, then, a painter or a musician?" He shook his head. "No, I do not get my living by art." "Not of any kind?" "Not of any kind." "How do you get it?" she asked simply, a candid light shining in the great gray eyes. "My father was a successful saddle-maker. He is dead." "Oh!" she said. "Leather has made me, from childhood up—it has chastised, supported, educated me, and given me the entrée everywhere. So you see I cannot hold a candle to your demigods." "Ah, but there is nothing like leather," said Ellaline, and stroked the head in her lap reassuringly. [pg 110] The assurance permeated John Beveridge's frame like a pleasant cordial. All that was hard and leathery in him seemed to be soaked soft. Here, at last, was a woman who loved him for himself—an innocent, trusting woman in whose weakness a man might find strength. Her pure lips were like the wayside well at which the wearied wanderer from great stony cities might drink and be refreshed. And yet, delightful as her love would be in his droughty life, he felt that his could not prove less delightful to her. That he, John Beveridge, with the roses thrusting themselves into his eyes, should stoop to pick the simple little daisy at his feet, could not fail to fill her with an admiring gratitude that would add the last charm to her passion for him. But it was not till a week afterwards that the formal proposal, so long impending, broke. They were resting in a lane and discussing everything they didn't want to discuss, the unspoken playing with subtle sweetness about the spoken. "Have you read Mr. Gladstone's latest?" she asked at last. "No," he said; "has Mr. Gladstone ever a latest?" "Oh, yes, take him day by day, like an evening paper. I'm referring to his article on 'Ancient Beliefs in a Future State.'" "What's that—the belief of old maids that they'll get married?" "Now you are blasphemous," she cried with a pretty pout. "How? Are old maids a sacred subject?" "Everything old should be sacred to us," she said simply. "But you know that is not what I mean." "Then why do you say it?" he asked. "Oh, what a tease you are!" she cried. "I shan't be [pg 111] sorry to be quit of you. Your flippancy is quite dreadful." "Why, do you believe in a future state?" he said. "Of course I do. If we had only one life, it would not be worth living." "But nine times one life would be worth living. Is that the logic? If so, happy cats! I wonder," he added irrelevantly, "why the number nine always goes with cats—nine lives, nine tails, nine muses?" Ellaline made a moue and shrank petulantly away from him. "I will not discuss our future state, unless you are prepared to do it seriously," she said. "I am," he replied with sudden determination. "Let us enter it together. I am tired of the life I've been leading, and I love you." "What!" she said in a little horrified whisper. "You want us to commit suicide together?" "No, no—matrimony. I cannot do it alone—I have never had the courage to do it at all. With you at my side, I should go forward, facing the hereafter cheerfully, with faith and trust." "I—I—am—afraid—I——" she stammered. "Why should you be afraid?" he interrupted. "Have you no faith and trust in me?" "Oh, yes," she said with a frank smile, "if I had not confidence in you, I should not be here with you." "You angel!" he said, his eyes growing wet under her clear, limpid gaze. "But you love me a little, too?" "I do not," she said, shaking her head demurely. John Beveridge groaned. After so decisive an avowal from the essence of candor, what remained to be said? Nothing but to bid her and his hopes farewell—the latter at once, the former as soon as she was escorted back to Trepolpen. His affection had grown so ripe, he could [pg 112] not exchange it for the green fruit of friendship. And yet, was this to be the end of all that sweet idyllic interlude, a jarring note and then silence for evermore? "But could you never learn to love me?" She laughed her girlish, ringing laugh. "I am not so backward as all that," she said. "I mastered it in a dozen lessons." He stared at her, a wild hope kindling in his eyes. "Did I hear aright?" he asked in a horse tone. She nodded, still smiling. "Then I did not hear aright before?" "Oh, yes, you did. I said I did not love you a little. I love you a great deal." There were tears in the gray eyes now, but they smiled on. He caught her in his arms and the Devonshire lane was transformed to Eden. How exquisite this angelic frankness, when the words pleased! How delicious the frankness of her caress when words were de trop! But at last she spoke again. "And now that I know you love me for myself, I will tell you a secret." The little hands that had first clasped his attention were laid on his shoulders, the dreamy face looked up tenderly and proudly into his. "They say a woman cannot keep a secret," she said. "But you will never believe that again, when I tell you mine?" "I never believed it," he said earnestly. "Consider how every woman keeps the great secret of her age." "Ah, that is not what I am going to tell you," she said archly. "It is another of the great secrets of my age. You remember that book you liked so much—The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft?" "Yes!" he said wonderingly. "Well, I wrote it!" "You!" he exclaimed, startled. His image of her seemed a pillar of sand upon which the simoom had burst. [pg 113] This fresh, simple maiden a complex literary being, a slave of the midnight lamp. "Yes, I—I am Andrew Dibdin—the authoress who drew tears from your eyes." "You, Andrew Dibdin!" he repeated mechanically. She nodded her head with a proud and happy smile. "I knew you would be pleased—but I wanted you to love me, not my book." "I love both," he exclaimed. The new conceptions had fitted themselves into the old. He saw now what the charm of the little novel was—the book was Ellaline between covers. He wondered he had not seen it before. The grace, the purity, the pathos, the sweet candor, the recollections of a childhood spent on the great waters in the company of kindly mariners—all had flowed out at the point of her pen. She had put herself into her work. He felt a subtle jealousy of the people who bought her on the bookstalls for a shilling—or even for ninepence at the booksellers'. He wanted to have her all to himself. He experienced a mad desire to buy up the edition. But there would be a new one. He realized the feelings of Othello. Oh, if he could but arrest her circulation! "If you knew how happy it made me to hear you say you love my book!" she replied. "At first I hated you because you sneered at it. All my friends love my books—and I wanted you to be a friend of mine." "I am more than that," he said exultantly. "And I want to love all your books. What else have you written?" "Only two others," she said apologetically. "You see I have only been in literature six months and I only write straight from the heart." "Yes, indeed!" he said. "You wear your heart upon your leaves." Jealous as he was of her readers, he felt that there was balm in Gilead. She was not a hack-writer, turning out [pg 114] books for the market of malice aforethought; not the complex being he had figured in the first moment of consternation, the literary quack with finger on the pulse of the public. She did but write as the birds carolled—not the slave, but the genius of the midnight lamp. "But I must not wear my heart out," she replied, laughingly. "So I came down here for a month to get fresh material. I am writing a novel of Cornish peasant life—I want to photograph the people with all their lights and shades, all their faiths and superstitions, all their ways of speech and thought—the first thorough study ever made of a fast-fading phase of Old English life. You see, I didn't know what to do; I feared the public would be tired of my sailor-stories and I thought I'd locate my next story on land. Accident determined its environment. I learnt, by chance, that we had some poor relatives in Trepolpen, whom my people had dropped, and so I thought I'd pick them up again, and turn them into 'copy,' and I welcomed the opportunity of making at the same time the acquaintance of the sea, which, as I think I told you, I have never seen before. You see I was poor myself till The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft showered down the gold, and, being a Cockney, had never been able to afford a trip to the seaside." "My poor Ellaline!" he said, kissing her candid lips. She was such an inveterate truth-teller that he could only respect and admire and adore—though she fell from heaven. Her candor infected him. He felt an overwhelming paroxysm of veracity. The mask could be dropped now. Did she not love John Beveridge? "Now I see why you rave so over literary people!" he said. "You are dipped in ink yourself." "Yes," she said with a happy smile, "there is nobody I admire so much as our great writers." [pg 115] "But you would not love me more, if I were a great writer?" he said anxiously. "No, certainly not. I couldn't," she said decisively. He stooped and kissed her gratefully. "Thank you for that, my sweet Ellaline. And now I think I can safely confess that I am Addiper." She gave a little shriek. Her face turned white. "Addiper!" she breathed. "Yes, dearest, it is my nom de guerre. I am Addiper, the writer you admire so much, the man with whose school, you were pleased to say, the future lies." "Addiper!" she said again. "Impossible! why you said you did not get your living by art of any kind." "Of course I don't!" he said. "Books like mine—all style, no sentiment, morals or theology—never pay. Fortunately I am able to publish them at my own expense. I write only for writers. That is why you like me. Successful writers are those who write for readers, just as popular painters are those who paint for spectators." The poor little face was ashen gray now. The surprise was too much for the fragile little beauty. "Then you really are Addiper!" she said in low, slow tones. "Yes, dearest," he said not without a touch of pride. "I am Addiper—and in you, love, I have found a fresh fount of inspiration. You shall be the guiding star of my work, my rare Ellaline, my pearl, my beryl. Ah, this is a great turning-point in my life. To-day I enter into my third manner." "This is not one of your teasing jokes?" she said appealingly, her piteous eyes looking up into his. "No, my Ellaline. Do you think I would hoax you thus—to dash you to earth again?" "Then," she said slowly and painfully, "then I can never marry you. We must say 'good-bye.'" Her lover gazed at her in dazed silence. The butterflies [pg 117] floated in the summer air, a bee buzzed about a wayside flower, from afar came the tinkle of a brook. A deep peace was on all things—only in the hearts of the two littérateurs was pain and consternation. <div class="image-center" style="max-width: 558px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i116.jpg" width-obs="558" height-obs="700" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> The Confession of Ellaline. </div> </div> "You can never marry me!" repeated John Beveridge at last. "And why not?" "I have told you. Because you are Addiper." "But that is no reason." "Is it not?" she said. "I thought Addiper would have a subtler apprehension." "But what is it you object to in me?" "To your genius, of course." "To my genius!" "Yes, no mock modesty. Between augurs it won't do. Every author must know very well he stands apart from the world, or he would not set himself to paint it. I know quite well I am not as other women. What is the use of paltering with one's consciousness!" Still the same delicious candor shone in the gray eyes. John Beveridge, not at all grasping his dismissal, felt an unreasoning impulse to kiss them. "Well, supposing I am a genius," he said instead. "Where's the harm?" "No harm till you propose to yoke me with it! I never will marry a genius." "Oh, don't be so absurd, Ellaline!" he said. "You've been reading the foolish nonsense about the geniuses necessarily making bad husbands. No doubt in some prominent instances geniuses have not been working models of the domestic virtues, but on the other hand there are scores of instances to the contrary. And blockheads make quite as bad husbands as your Shelleys and your Byrons. Besides it was only in the past that geniuses were blackguards; to-day it is the correct thing to be correct. Respectability nowadays adds chastity to the studies from the nude; [pg 118] marital fidelity enhances the force of poems of passion: and philanthropy adds the last touch to tragic acting. So why should I suffer for the sins of my predecessors? If I may judge myself by my present sensations, what I am gifted with is a genius for domesticity. Do not sacrifice me, dearest, to an unproved and unscientific generalization." "It is not of that I am thinking," Ellaline replied, shaking her head sadly. "In my opinion the woman who refused Shakespeare merely on the ground that he wrote Shakespeare's works, should be sent to Coventry as a coward. No, do not fancy I am that. I may not be strong, but I have courage enough to marry you if that were all. It is not because I am afraid you would make me unhappy." "Ah, there is something you are hiding from me," he said anxiously, impressed by the gravity and sincerity of her tones. "No, there is nothing. I cannot marry you, because you are a genius." He saw what she meant now. She had been reading the modern works on genius and insanity. "Ah, you think me mad!" he cried. "Mad—when you love me?" she said, with a melancholy smile. "You know what I mean. You think that 'great wits to madness nearly are allied,' that sane as I appear, there is in me a hidden vein of madness. And yet, if anything, the generalization connecting genius with insanity is more unsound than that connecting it with domestic infelicity. It would require a genius to really prove such a connection, and as he would, on his own theory, be a lunatic, what becomes of his theory?" "Your argument involves a fallacy," replied Ellaline quietly. "It does not follow that if a man is a lunatic [pg 119] everything he says or does has the taint of madness. A genius who held that genius meant insanity might be sane just on this one point." "Or insane just on the one point. Seriously, Ellaline," said John Beveridge, beginning to lose his temper, "you don't mean to say that you believe that genius is really 'a psychical neurosis of the epileptoid order.' If you do you must be mad yourself, that's all I can say." "Of course I should have to admit I am mad myself if I held the theory that genius meant insanity. But I don't." "You don't!" he said, staring blankly at her. "You don't believe I'm insane, and you don't believe I'll make a bad husband—I should be insane if I did, my sweet little Ellaline. And you still wish to cry off?" "I must." "Then you no longer love me!" "Oh, I beg of you, do not say that! You do not know how hard it is for me to give you up—do not make our parting harder." "Ellaline, in heaven's name vex me no further. What is this terrible mystery? Why can you no longer think of me?" "If you only thought of me a little you would guess. But men are so selfish. If it were only you that had genius the thing would be simple. But you forget that I, too——" She paused; a little modest blush completed the sentence. "Yes, I know you are a genius, my rare Ellaline. But what then?" he cried. "I only love you the more for it." "Yes, but if we marry," said Ellaline, "we two geniuses, look what will happen." He stared at her afresh—she met his gaze unflinchingly. "What new scientific bogie have you been conjuring up." he murmured. "Oh, I wish you would drive science out of your head," [pg 120] she replied pettishly. "What have I to do with science? Really, if you go on so stupidly I shall believe you're not a genius after all." "And then you will marry me?" he said eagerly. "Don't be so stupid! To speak plainly, for you seem as dull as a clod-hopper to-day, I cannot afford to marry a genius, and a recognized genius to boot. I am only a struggling young authoress, with a considerable following, it is true, but still without an unquestioned position. The high-class organs that review you all to yourself still take me as one of a batch and are not always as complimentary as they might be. The moment I marry you and my rushlight is hidden in your bushel, out it goes. I become absorbed simply in you, a little satellite circling round your planetary glory. I shall have no independent existence—the fame I have toiled and struggled for will be eclipsed in yours. 'Mrs. Addiper—the wife of the celebrated writer, scribbles a little herself, don't you know! Wonder what he could see in her!' That's how people will talk of me. When I go into a room we shall be announced, 'Mr. and Mrs. Addiper'—and everybody will rush round you and hang on your words, and I shall be talked to only by the way of getting you at second-hand, as a medium through which your personality is partially radiated. And parties will be given 'To meet Mr. Addiper,' and I shall accompany you for the same reason that your dress-coat will—because it is the etiquette." "But, Ellaline——" he protested. "Let me finish. I could not even afford to marry you, if my literary position were equal to yours. Such a union would do nothing to enhance my reputation. No woman of genius should marry a man of genius—were she even the greater of the two she would become merged in him, even as she would take his name. The man I must marry, the man I have been waiting to fall in love with and be [pg 121] loved by, is a plain honest gentleman, unknown to fame and innocent of all aspiration but that of making me happy. He must devote his life to mine, sink himself in me, sacrifice himself on the altar of my fame, live only for the enhancement of my reputation. Such a man I thought I had found in you—but you deceived me. I thought here is a man who loves me only for myself, but whose love will increase tenfold when he learns that I stand on a pedestal of glory, and who will rejoice at the privilege of passing the rest of his days uplifting that pedestal to the gaze of the world, a man who will say of me what I can hardly say of myself, who will drive the bargains with my publishers, wrap me up against the knowledge of malicious criticisms, conduct my correspondence, receive inconvenient callers, arrange my interviews, and send incessant paragraphs to the papers about me, commencing Mrs. John Beveridge (Andrew Dibdin), varied by Andrew Dibdin (Mrs. John Beveridge). Here is a man who will be a living gratuitous advertisement, inserted daily in the great sheets of the times, a steadfast column of eulogy, a pillar of praise. Here is a man who will be as much a halo as a husband. When I enter a drawing-room with him (so ran my innocent, maiden dream) there will be a thrill of excitement, everybody will cluster round me, he will efface himself or be effaced, and, even if he finds anybody to talk to, it is about me he will talk. Invitations to our own 'At Homes' will be eagerly sought for—not for his sake, but for mine. All that is famous in literature and art will crowd our salon—not for his sake, but for mine. And while I shall be the cynosure of every eye, it will be his to note down the names of the illustrious gazers in society paragraphs beginning Mrs. John Beveridge (Andrew Dibdin), alternating with Andrew Dibdin (Mrs. John Beveridge). And am I to give up all this, merely because I love you?" <div class="image-center" style="max-width: 600px;"> <ANTIMG src="images/i122.jpg" width-obs="600" height-obs="343" alt="" /> <div class="caption"> So ran my Innocent Maiden Dream. </div> </div> "Yes, why not!" he said passionately. "What is fame, [pg 123] reputation, weighed against love? What is it to be on the World's lips, if the lips we love are to be taken away?" "How pretty!" she said with simple admiration. "If you will not claim the phrase, I should like to give it to my next heroine." "Claim it!" he said bitterly. "I do not want any phrases. I want you." "Do you not see it is impossible? If you could become obscure again, it might be. You say fame is nothing weighed against love. Come now, would you give up your genius, your reputation, just to marry me?" He was silent. "Come!" she repeated. "I have been frank with you, have I not!" "You have," he admitted, with a melancholy grimace. "Well, be equally frank with me. Would you sacrifice these things to your love for me?" "I could not if I would." "But would you, if you could?" He did not answer. "Of course you wouldn't," she said. "I know you as I know myself." "What is the use of thinking of what can never be!" he said impatiently. "Just so. That is what I say. I can never give you my hand; so give me yours and we'll turn homewards." He gave her his hand and she jumped lightly to her feet. Then he got up and shook himself, and looked still in a sort of daze, at the gentle face and the dainty figure. He seized her passionately by the arms. "And must this be the end?" he cried hoarsely. "Finis," she said decisively, though the renewed pallor of her face showed what it cost her to complete the idyl. "An unhappy ending?" he said in hopeless interrogation. [pg 124] "It is not my style," she said simply, "but, after all, this is only real life." He burst forth in a torrent of half reproachful regrets—he, Addiper, the chaste, the severe, the self-contained. "And you the sweet, innocent girl who won the heart I no longer hoped to feel living, you would coldly abandon the love for whose existence you are responsible! You, who were to be so fresh and pure an influence on my work, are content to deprive literature of those masterpieces our union would have called into being! Oh, but you cannot unshackle yourself thus from my life—for good or evil your meeting with me determined my third manner. Hitherto I thought it was for good; now I fear it will be for evil." "You seem to have forgotten all your manners," she said, annoyed. "And if our meeting was for evil, at least our parting shall be for good." John Beveridge and Ellaline Rand spake no more, but walked home in silence through the country lanes on which the sunlight seemed to lie cold. The past was but a dream—not for these two the simple emotions which cross with joy or sorrow the web of common life. At the cottage near the top of the hill, where the sounds and scents of the sea were faintest, they parted. The idyl of Trepolpen was ended. And John Beveridge went downhill. [pg 125] <hr class="hr2" /> <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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