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.
* * * * *
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 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.
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 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."
"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 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.
"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?"
"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. 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.
[Illustration: Talked to her of books and men and one woman.]
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.
"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.
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 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 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. 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 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."
"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 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.
[Illustration: _The Confession of Ellaline._]
"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;
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 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," 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 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?"
[Illustration: _So ran my Innocent Maiden Dream._]
"Yes, why not!" he said passionately. "What is fame, 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.
"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 put 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.