<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></SPAN>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
<p class="center">"LA FEMME INCOMPRISE.</p>
<p class="indent">Lord Silverdale had gone and there was now no need
for Lillie to preserve the factitious cheerfulness with which
she had listened to his usual poem, while her thoughts were
full of other and even more depressing things. Margaret
Linbridge's miracle had almost undermined the President's
faith in the steadfastness of her sex; she turned
mentally to the yet unaccepted Wee Winnie for consolation,
condemning her own half-hearted attitude towards
that sturdy soul, and almost persuading herself that salvation
lay in spats. At any rate long skirts seemed the last
thing in the world to find true women in.</p>
<p class="indent">But providence had not exhausted its miracles, and Lillie
was not to spend a miserable afternoon. The miracle
was speeding along towards her on the top of an omnibus—a
miracle of beauty and smartness. On reaching the
vicinity of the Old Maid's Club, the miracle, which was
of course of the female gender, tapped the driver amicably
upon the hat with her parasol and said "Stop please." The
<i>petite</i> creature was the spirit of self-help itself and scorned
the aid of the gentleman in front of her, preferring to
knock off his hat and crush the driver's so long as the independence
of womanhood was maintained. But she
maintained it charmingly and without malice and gave
the conductor a sweet smile in addition to his fare as she
tripped away to the Old Maids' Club.</p>
<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page310" id="page310"></SPAN>[pg 310]</span></p>
<div class="image-center" style="max-width: 516px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i310.jpg" width-obs="516" height-obs="700" alt="" />
<div class="caption">
<p class="center"><i>Amicably said, "Stop please."</i></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page311" id="page311"></SPAN>[pg 311]</span>
Lillie was fascinated the instant Turple the magnificent
announced "Miss Wilkins" in suave tones. The mere
advent of a candidate raised her spirits and she found
herself chatting freely with her visitor even before she
had put her through the catechism. But the catechism
came at last.</p>
<p class="indent">"Why do I want to join you?" asked the miracle.
"Because I am disgusted with my lover—because I am
a <i>femme incomprise</i>. Oh, don't stare at me as if I were a
medley of megrims and fashionable ailments, I'm the very
opposite of that. Mine is a buoyant, breezy, healthy
nature, straightforward and simple. That's why I complain
of being misunderstood. My lover is a poet—and the
misunderstanding I have to endure at his hands is something
appalling. Every man is a bit of a poet where woman
is concerned, and so every woman is more or less misunderstood,
but when you are unfortunate enough to excite
the affection of a real whole poet—well, that way madness
lies. Your words are twisted into meanings you never
intended, your motives are misconstrued, and your simplest
actions are distorted. Silverplume, for it is the well-known
author of 'Poems of Compassion' that I have had
the misfortune to captivate, never calls without laying a
sonnet next day; in which remarks, that must be most misleading
to those who do not know me, occur with painful
frequency. His allowance is two kisses per day—one of
salutation, one of farewell. We have only been actually
engaged two months, yet I have counted up two hundred
and thirty-nine distinct and separate kisses in the voluminous
'Sonnet Series' which he has devoted to our engagement,
and, what is worse, he describes himself as
depositing them.</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'Where at thy flower-mouth exiguous</span><br/>
<span class="i0">The purple passion mantles to the brim.'</span><br/></div>
</div>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page312" id="page312"></SPAN>[pg 312]</span>
It sounds as if I was berouged like a dowager. Purple
passion, indeed! I let him kiss me because he appears
to like it and because there seems something wrong about
it—but as for really caring a pin one way or another,
well, you Miss Dulcimer, know how much there is in
that! This 'Sonnet Series' promises to be endless, the
course of our acquaintanceship is depicted in its most
minute phases with the most elaborate inaccuracy—if I
smile, if I say: 'How do you do?' if I put my hand to
my forehead, if I look into the fire, down go fourteen lines
giving a whole world of significance to my meanest actions,
and making Himalayas out of the most microscopic molehills.
I am credited with thoughts I never dreamed of
and sentiments I never felt, till I ask myself whether any
other woman was ever so cruelly misunderstood as I? I
grow afraid to do or say anything, lest I bring upon my
head a new sonnet. But even so I cannot help <i>looking</i>
something or the other; and when I come to read the
sonnet I find it is always the other. Once I refused to
see him for a whole week, but that only resulted in seven
'Sonnets of Absence,' imaginatively depicting what I
was saying and doing each day, and containing a detailed
analysis of his own sensations, as well as reminiscences
of past happy hours together. Most of them I had no
recollection of, and the only one I could at all share was
that of a morning we spent on the Ramsgate cliffs where
Silverplume put his handkerchief over his face and fell
asleep. In the last line of the sonnet it came out:</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'There mid the poppies of the planisphere,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">I swooned for very joy and wearihead.'</span><br/></div>
</div>
<p class="indent">But I knew it by the poppies. Then, dear Miss Dulcimer,
you should just see the things he calls me—'Love's
gonfalon and lodestar' and what-not. Very often I can't
even find them in the dictionary and it makes me uneasy.
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page313" id="page313"></SPAN>[pg 313]</span>
Heaven knows what he may be saying about me! When
he talks of</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'The rack of unevasive lunar things'</span><br/></div>
</div>
<p class="indent">I do not so much complain, because it's their concern if
they are libelled. It is different with incomprehensible
remarks flung unmistakably at my own head such as</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'O chariest of Caryatides.'</span><br/></div>
</div>
<p class="indent">It sounds like a reproach and I should like to know what
I have done to deserve it. And then his general remarks
are so monotonously unintelligible. One of his longest
poetical epistles, which is burnt into my memory because
I had to pay twopence for extra postage, began with this
lament:</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'O sweet are roses in the summer time</span><br/>
<span class="i0">And Indian naiads' weary walruses</span><br/>
<span class="i0">And yet two-morrow never comes to-day.'</span><br/></div>
</div>
<p class="indent">I cannot see any way out of it all except by breaking off
our engagement. When we were first engaged, I don't
deny I rather liked being written about in lovely-sounding
lines but it is a sweet one is soon surfeited with, and Silverplume
has raved about me to that extent that he has
made me look ridiculous in the eyes of all my friends. If
he had been moderate, they would have been envious;
now they laugh when they read of my wonderful charms,
of my lithe snake's mouth, and my face which shames the
sun and my Epipsychidiontic eyes (whatever that may be)
and my</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'Wee waist that holds the cosmos in its span,'</span><br/></div>
</div>
<p class="indent">and say he is poking fun at me. But Silverplume is quite
serious—I am sure of that, and it is the worst feature of
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page314" id="page314"></SPAN>[pg 314]</span>
the case. He carries on just the same in conversation,
with the most improper allusions to heathen goddesses,
and seems really to believe that I am absorbed in the
sunset when I am thinking what to wear to-morrow. Just
to give you an idea of how he misinterprets my silence let
me read to you one of his sonnets called:</p>
<p class="center">"'MOONSHINE.</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'Walking a space betwixt the double Naught,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">The What Is Bound to Be and What Has Been,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">How sweet with Thee beneath the moonlit treen,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">O woman-soul immaculately wrought,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">To sit and catch a harmony uncaught</span><br/>
<span class="i0">Within a world that mocks with margarine,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">In chastened silence, mystic, epicene,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">Exchanging incommunicable thought.</span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'Diana, Death may doom and Time may toss,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">And sundry other kindred things occur,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">But Hell itself can never turn to loss,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">Though Mephistopheles his stumps should stir,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">That day, when introduced at Charing Cross,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">I smiled and doffed my silken cylinder.'</span><br/></div>
</div>
<p class="indent">"Another distressing feature about Silverplume—indeed,
I think about all men—is their continuous capacity
for love-making. You know, my dear Miss Dulcimer,
with us it is a matter of times and seasons—we are creatures
of strange and subtle susceptibilities, sometimes we are
in the mood for love and ready to respond to all shades
of sentimentality, but at other moments (and these the
majority) men's amorous advances jar horribly. Men do
not know this. Ever ready to make love themselves they
think all moments are the same to us as to them. And of
all men, poets are the most prepared to make love at a
moment's notice. So that Silverplume himself is almost
more trying than his verses."</p>
<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page315" id="page315"></SPAN>[pg 315]</span>
"But after all you need not read them," observed Lillie.
"They please him and they do not hurt you. And you
have always the consolation of remembering it is not you
he loves but the paragon he has evolved from his inner
consciousness. Even taking into account his perennial
affectionateness, your reason for refusing him seems
scarcely strong enough."</p>
<p class="indent">"Ah, wait a moment—You have not heard the worst!
I might perhaps have tolerated his metrical misinterpretations—indeed
on my sending him a vigorous protest
against the inaccuracies of his last collection (they came out
so much more glaringly when brought all together from the
various scattered publications to which Silverplume originally
contributed them) he sent me back a semi-apologetic
explanation thus conceived:</p>
<p class="center">"'TO CELIA.'</p>
<p class="center">"(You know of course my name is Diana, but that is his way.)</p>
<div class="poem">
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"''Tis not alone thy sweet eyes' gleam</span><br/>
<span class="i2">Nor sunny glances,</span><br/>
<span class="i0">For which I weave so oft a dream</span><br/>
<span class="i2">Of dainty fancies.</span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"''Tis not alone thy witching play</span><br/>
<span class="i2">Of grace fantastic</span><br/>
<span class="i0">That makes me chant so oft a lay</span><br/>
<span class="i2">Encomiastic.</span></div>
<div class="stanza">
<span class="i0">"'Both editors and thee I see,</span><br/>
<span class="i2">Thy face, their purses.</span><br/>
<span class="i0">I offer heart and soul to thee,</span><br/>
<span class="i2">To them my verses.'</span><br/></div>
</div>
<p class="indent">"I was partially mollified by this, for if his poems were
not merely complimentary, and he really got paid for them,
one might put up with inspiring them. We were reconciled
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page316" id="page316"></SPAN>[pg 316]</span>
and he took me to a reception at the house of a
wealthy friend of his, a fellow-member of the Sonneteers'
Society. It was here that I saw a sight that froze my
young blood and warned me upon the edge of what a
precipice I was standing. When we got into the drawing-room,
the first thing we saw was an awful apparition in a
corner—a hideous, unkempt, unwashed man in a dressing-gown
and slippers, with his eyes rolling wildly and his lips
moving rhythmically. It was the host.</p>
<p class="indent">"'Don't speak to him,' whispered the hostess. 'He
doesn't see us. He has been like that all day. He came
down to look to the decorations this morning, when the
idea took him and he has been glued to the spot ever
since. He has forgotten all about the reception—he
doesn't know we're here and I thought it best not to disturb
him till he is safely delivered of the sonnet.'</p>
<p class="indent">"'You are quite right,' everybody said in sympathetic
awestruck tones and left a magic circle round the poet in
labor. But I felt a shudder run through my whole being.
'Goodness gracious, Silverplume,' I said, 'is this the way
you poets go on?'"</p>
<p class="indent">"'No, no, Diana,' he assured me. 'It is all tommyrot
(I quote Silverplume's words). The beggar is just bringing
out a new volume, and although his wife has always
distributed the most lavish hospitality to the critics, he
has never been able to get himself taken seriously as a
poet. There will be lots of critics here to-night and he is
playing his last card. If he is not a genius now, he never
will be.'</p>
<div class="image-center" style="max-width: 570px;">
<ANTIMG src="images/i317.jpg" width-obs="570" height-obs="700" alt="" />
<div class="caption">
<p class="center"><i>The poet plays his last card.</i></p>
</div>
</div>
<p class="indent">"'Oh, of course,' I replied sceptically, 'two of a trade.'
I made him take me away and that was the end of our
engagement. Even as it was, Silverplume's neglect of
his appearance had been a constant thorn in my side, and
if this was so before marriage, what could I hope for after?
It was all very well for him to say his friend was only
<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page318" id="page318"></SPAN>[pg 318]</span>
shamming, but even so, how did I know he would not be
reduced to that sort of thing himself when his popularity
faded and younger rivals came along."</p>
<p class="indent">Lillie, who seemed to have some <i>arrière-pensée</i>, entered
into an animated defence of the poet, but Miss
Wilkins stood her ground and refused to withdraw her
candidature.</p>
<p class="indent">"I don't want you to withdraw your candidature," said
Lillie, frankly. "I shall be charmed to entertain it. I
am only arguing upon the general question."</p>
<p class="indent">And, indeed, Lillie was enraptured with Miss Wilkins.
It was the attraction of opposites. A matter-of-fact
woman who could reject a poet's love appealed to her
with irresistible piquancy. Miss Wilkins stayed on to tea
(by which time she had become Diana) and they gossiped
on all sorts of subjects, and Lillie gave her the outlines of
the queerest stories of past candidates and in the Old
Maids' Club that afternoon all went merry as a marriage
bell.</p>
<p class="indent">"Well, good-bye, Lillie," said Diana at last.</p>
<p class="indent">"Good-bye, Diana," returned Lillie. "Now <i>I</i> understand
you I hope you won't consider yourself a <i>femme
incomprmise</i> any longer."</p>
<p class="indent">"It is only the men I complained of, dear."</p>
<p class="indent">"But we must ever remain <i>incomprises</i> by man," said
Lillie. "<i>Femme incomprise</i>—why, it is the badge of all our
sex."</p>
<p class="indent">"Yes," answered Diana. "A woman letting down her
back hair is tragic to a man; to us she only recalls bedroom
gossip. Good-bye."</p>
<p class="indent">And nodding brightly the brisk little creature sallied
into the street and captured a passing 'bus.</p>
<p class="indent"><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="page319" id="page319"></SPAN>[pg 319]</span></p>
<hr class="hr2" />
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