CYNTHIA
By
LEONARD MERRICK
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
MAURICE HEWLETT
NEW YORK
E.P. DUTTON AND COMPANY
1919
INTRODUCTION
My first acquaintance with Mr. Merrick's engaging and stimulating
muse was made in the pages of _Violet Moses_, an early work, which
appeared, I remember, in three volumes. Reading it again in the light
of my appreciation of what its author has done since, I think of it
now as I felt of it then. It has great promise, and though its texture
is slight its fibres are of steel. It shows the light hand, which has
grown no heavier, though it has grown surer, the little effervescence
of cynicism, with never a hiccough in it, the underlying, deeply-funded
sympathy with real things, great things and fine things, and the
seriousness of aim which, tantalisingly, stops short just where you
want it to go on, and provokes the reader to get every book of Mr.
Merrick's as it appears, just to see him let himself go--which he never
does. He is one of the most discreet dissectors of the human heart we
have.
In _Violet Moses_ Mr. Merrick avoided the great issue after coming
up against it more than once. So did he in The Quaint Companions, a
maturer but less ambitious study. I don't know why he avoided it in
_Violet's_ case, unless it was because he found it too big a matter for
his light battery. In the _Companions'_ case I do know. It was because
he came upon another problem which interested him more, a problem with
a sentimental attraction far more potent than any he could have got out
of miscegenation. The result was the growth, out of a rather ugly root,
of a charming and tender idyll of two poets, an idyll, nevertheless,
with a psychological _crux_ involved in its delicate tracery. All this
seems a long way from _Cynthia_, which is my immediate business, but
is not so in truth. In _Cynthia_ (which, I believe, followed _Violet_)
you have a problem of psychology laid out before you, and again Mr.
Merrick does not, I think, fairly tackle it. But he fails to tackle
it, not because it is too big for his guns, as _Violet's_ was, and not
because he finds another which he likes better, as he did when he was
upon _The Companions_, but because, I am going to suggest, he found it
too small. He took up his positions, opened his attack, and the enemy
in his trenches dissolved in mist.
The problem with which _Cynthia_ opens is the familiar one of the
novelist, considered as such, and as lover, husband, father and
citizen. Now it's an odd thing, but not so odd as it seems at first
blush, that while you may conceive a poet in these relations and
succeed in interesting your readers, you will fail with a novelist.
I cannot now remember a single interesting novel about a novelist.
There is _Pendennis_ of course; but who believes that Pen was a great
novelist, or cares what kind of a novelist he was? Who cares about
_Walter Lorraine_? Would anybody give twopence to read it? The reason
is that in the poet the manifestations of literary genius are direct
and explicit--some are susceptible of quotation, some may be cut out
with the scissors--while in the novelist they are oblique and implied.
Humphrey Kent in _Cynthia_ is in no sense an explicit genius; we are
not, in fact, told that he was a genius at all. His technique seems to
have been that of Mr. George Moore, then rather fashionable. The book
puts it no higher than this, that the hero, with an obvious bent for
writing, marries in a hurry and then finds out that he cannot be an
honest man and support his wife and child by the same stroke. It is not
whether he can be a good novelist and a good lover too, but whether he
can be a good novelist and pay his bills. That's not very exciting,
though George Gissing in _New Grub Street_ drew out of it a squalid
and miserable tale which, once begun, had to be finished. Luckily,
in _Cynthia_, Mr. Merrick finds a secondary theme, and handles it so
delicately and so tenderly that the book has an abiding charm because
of it. That theme is the growth of Cynthia's soul.
I myself am one of Cynthia's victims, and I am sure that Mr. Merrick
is another. He sketches her with admirable reticence in the beginning,
where she is shown to us as very little more than a pretty girl. His
strokes are few and sure. But she grows from chapter to chapter, and at
the end, after the tragic crisis, she sweeps onward to the sentimental
crisis which crowns the tale of her married life with a dignity and
grave beauty which justify a belief in Hestia, even now, when modern
testimony and practice alike are against such a belief. She justifies
Mr. Merrick's conclusion too. It is seldom enough that we are able to
believe in the happy solution of such troubles as he has traced out
in _Cynthia_. Cynics against inclination, we feel that the dog will
return to his vomit after the easy reconciliation and facile tears upon
Hestia's generous bosom. Not so here. Cynthia has got her Humphrey
for what he is worth, and will hold him. She is one of Mr. Merrick's
loveliest women; and he has made many lovely women.
MAURICE HEWLETT.
CHAPTER I
Two friends were sitting together outside the Café des Tribunaux at
Dieppe. One of them was falling in love; the other, an untidy and
morose little man, was wasting advice. It was the hour of coffee and
liqueurs, on an August evening.
"You are," said the adviser irritably, "at the very beginning of a
career. You have been surprisingly fortunate; there's scarcely a
novelist in England who wouldn't be satisfied with such reviews as
yours, and it's your first book. Think: twelve months ago you were a
clerk in the city, and managed to place about three short stories a
year at a guinea each. Then your aunt what-was-her-name left you the
thousand pounds, and you chucked your berth and sat down to a novel.
'Nothing happens but the unforeseen'--the result justified you. You
sold your novel; you got a hundred quid for it; and _The Saturday_, and
_The Spectator_, and every paper whose opinion is worth a rush, hails
you as a coming light. For you to consider marrying now would be flying
in the face of a special providence."
"Why?" said Humphrey Kent.
"'Why'! Are you serious? Because your income is an unknown quantity.
Because you've had a literary success, not a popular one. Because, if
you keep single, you've a comfortable life in front of you. Because
you'd be a damned fool."
"The climax is comprehensive, if it isn't convincing. But the
discussion is a trifle 'previous,' eh? I can't marry you, my pretty
maid, et cetera."
"You are with her all day," said Turquand--"I conclude she likes you.
And the mother countenances it."
"There's really nothing to countenance; and, remember, they haven't
any idea of my position: they meet me at a fashionable hotel, they had
read the book, and they saw _The Times_ review. What do they know of
literary earnings? the father is on the Stock Exchange, I believe. I am
an impostor!"
"You should have gone to the little show I recommended on the quay,
then. _I_ find it good enough."
Kent laughed and stretched himself.
"I am rewarding industry," he said. "For once I wallow. I came into the
money, and I put it in a bank, and by my pen, which is mightier than
the sword, I've replaced all I drew to live during the year. Ain't I
entitled to a brief month's splash? Besides, I've never said I want to
marry--I don't know what you're hacking at."
"You haven't 'said' it, but the danger is about as plain as pica
to the average intelligence, all the same. My son, how old are
you--twenty-seven, isn't it? Pack your bag, ask for your bill, and go
back with me by the morning boat; and, if you're resolved to make an
ass of yourself over a woman, go and live in gilded infamy and buy
sealskin jackets and jewellery while your legacy lasts. I'll forgive
you that."
"The prescription wouldn't be called orthodox?"
"You'd find it cheaper than matrimony in the long-run, I promise you.
Now and again, when some man plays ducks and drakes with a fortune for
a cocotte there are shrieks enough to wake his ancestors; but marriage
ruins a precious sight more men every year than the demi-monde and the
turf and the tables put together, and nobody shrieks at all--except
the irrepressible children. Did it never occur to you that the price
paid for the virtuous woman is the most exorbitant price known in an
expensive world?"
"No," said Kent shortly, "it never did."
"And they call you 'an acute observer'! Marriage is Man's greatest
extravagance."
"The apothegm excepted. It sounds like a dissipated copybook."
"It's a fact, upon my soul. I tell you, a sensible girl would shudder
at the thought of entrusting her future to a man improvident enough to
propose to her; a fellow capable of marrying a woman is the sport of a
reckless and undisciplined nature that she should beware of."
"The end is curaçoa-and-brandy," said Kent, "and in your best vein.
What else? You'll contradict yourself with brilliance in a moment if
you go on."
The journalist dissembled a grin, and Kent, gazing down the sunny
little street, inhaled his cigarette pleasurably. To suppose that
Miss Walford would ever be his wife looked to him so chimerical that
his companion's warnings did not disturb him, yet he was sufficiently
attracted by her to find it exciting that a third person could think
it likely. He was the son of a man who had once been very wealthy,
and who, having attempted to repair injudicious investments by rasher
speculation, had died owning little more than enough to defray the
cost of his funeral. At the age of nineteen Humphrey had realised
that, with no stock-in-trade beyond an education and a bundle of
rejected manuscripts, it was incumbent on him to fight the world
unassisted, and, suppressing his literary ambitions as likely to tell
against him, he had betaken himself to some connections who throve
in commerce and had been socially agreeable. To be annihilated by a
sense of your own deficiencies, seek an appointment at the hands of
relations. The boy registered the aphorism, and withdrew. When "life"
means merely a struggle to sustain existence, it is not calculated to
foster optimism, and the optimistic point of view is desirable for
the production of popular English fiction. His prospect of achieving
many editions would have been greater if his father had been satisfied
with five per cent. He shifted as best he could, and garnered various
experiences which he would have been sorry to think would be cited
by his biographer, if he ever had one. "Poverty is no disgrace," but
there are few disgraces that cause such keen humiliations. Eventually
he found regular employment in the office of a stranger, and, making
Turquand's acquaintance in the lodging-house at which he obtained
a bedroom, contemplated him with respect and envy. Turquand was
sub-editing _The Outpost_, a hybrid weekly for which he wrote a little
of what he thought and much that he disapproved, in consideration of
a modest salary. The difference in their years was not too great to
preclude confidences. An intimacy grew between the pair over their
evening pipes in the arid enclosure to which the landlady's key gave
them access; and it was transplanted to joint quarters embellished
with their several possessions, chiefly portmanteaus and photographs,
equally battered. The elder man, perceiving that there was distinction
in the unsuccessful stories displayed to him, imparted a good deal
of desultory advice, of which the most effectual part was not the
assurance that the literary temperament was an affliction, and
authorship a synonym for despair. The younger listened, sighed, and
burned. Aching to be famous, and fettered to a clerk's stool, he tugged
at his chains. He had begun to doubt his force to burst them, when
he was apprised, to his unspeakable amazement, that a maternal aunt,
whom he had not seen since he was a school-boy, had bequeathed him a
thousand pounds.
Dieppe had dined, and the Grande Rue was astir. He watched the
passers-by with interest. In the elation of his success he was equal
to tackling another novel on the morrow, and he saw material in
everything: in the chattering party of American girls running across
the road to eat more ices at the pastrycook's; in the coquettish
dealer in rosaries and Lives of the Saints, who had put up her shutters
for the night and was bound for the Opera; in the little boy-soldiers
from the barracks, swaggering everywhere in uniforms several sizes too
big for them. Sentences from the reviews that he was still receiving
bubbled through his consciousness deliciously, and he wished, swelling
with gratitude, that the men who wrote them were beside him, that he
might be introduced, and grip their hands, and try to express the
inexpressible in words.
"I should like to live here, Turk," he remarked: "the atmosphere is
right. It's suggestive, stimulating. When I see a peasant leaning out
of a window in France, I want to write verses about her; when I see the
same thing at home, I only notice she's dirty."
"Ah!" said Turquand, "that's another reason why you had better go back
with me to-morrow. The tendency to write verses leads to the casual
ward. Let us go and watch the Insolent Opulence losing its francs."
The Casino was beginning to refill, and the path and lawn were gay
with the flutter of toilettes when they reached the gates. Two of the
figures approaching the rooms were familiar to the novelist, and he
discovered their presence with a distinct shock, though his gaze had
been scanning the crowd in search of them.
"There are the Walfords," he said.
The other grunted--he also had recognised a girl in mauve; and Kent
watched her silently as long as she remained in view. He knew that
he had nerves when he saw Miss Walford. The sight of her aroused a
feeling of restlessness in him latterly which demanded her society for
its relief; and he had not denied to himself that when a stranger,
sitting behind him yesterday in the salon de lecture, had withdrawn a
handkerchief redolent of the corylopsis which Miss Walford affected, it
had provided him with a sensation profoundly absurd.
If he had nerves, however, there was no occasion to parade the fact,
and he repressed impatience laudably. It was half an hour before the
ladies were met. Objecting to be foolish, he felt, nevertheless,
that Cynthia Walford was an excuse for folly as she turned to him on
the terrace with her faint smile of greeting; felt, with unreasoning
gratification, that Turquand must acknowledge it.
She was a fair, slight girl, with dreamy blue eyes bewitchingly
lashed, and lips so delicately modelled that the faint smile always
appeared a great tribute upon them. She was no less beautiful for
her manifest knowledge that she was a beauty, and though she could
not have been more than twenty-two, she had the air of carrying her
loveliness as indifferently as her frocks--which tempted a literary man
to destruction. She accepted admiration like an entremets at a table
d'hôte--something included in the menu and arriving as a matter of
course; but her acceptance was so graceful that it was delightful to
bend to her and offer it.
Kent asked if they were going in to the concert, and Mrs. Walford said
they were not. It was far too warm to sit indoors to listen to that
kind of music! She found Dieppe insufferably hot, and ridiculously
over-rated. Now, Trouville was really lively; didn't he think so?
He said he did not know Trouville.
"Don't you? Oh, it is ever so much better; very jolly--really most
jolly. We were there last year, and enjoyed it immensely. We--we
had such a time!" She giggled loudly. "How long are you gentlemen
remaining?"
"Mr. Turquand is 'deserting' to-morrow," he said. "I? Oh, I shall have
to leave in about a week, I'm afraid."
"You said that a week ago," murmured Miss Walford.
"I like the place," he confessed; "I find it very pleasant, myself."
Mrs. Walford threw up her hands with a scream of expostulation. Her
face was elderly, despite her attentions to it, but in her manner she
was often a great deal more youthful than her daughter; indeed, while
the girl had already acquired something of the serenity of a woman, the
woman was superficially reverting to the artlessness of a girl.
"What is there to like? Dieppe is the Casino, and the Casino is Dieppe!"
"But the Casino is very agreeable," he said, his glance wandering from
her.
"And the charges are perfectly monstrous. Though, of course, you
extravagant young men don't mind that!"
"A friend might call me young," said Turquand gloomily; "my worst enemy
couldn't call me extravagant."
"Oh, I mind some of the charges," returned Kent. "I hate being 'done.'"
She was pleased to hear him say so. Her chief requirement of a young
man was that he should be well provided for, but if he had the good
feeling to exercise a nice economy till he became engaged, it was an
additional recommendation. Her giggle was as violent as before, though.
"Oh, I daresay!" she exclaimed facetiously; "I'm always being taken
in; I don't believe those stories any longer. Do you remember Willy
Holmes, Cynthia, and the tales he used to tell me? I used to think that
young man was so steady, I was always quoting him! And it turned out he
was a regular scapegrace and everybody knew it all the time, and had
been laughing at me. I've given up believing in any one, Mr. Kent--in
anyone, do you hear?" She shook the splendours of her hat at him, and
gasped and gurgled archly. "I've no doubt you're every bit as bad as
the rest!"
He answered with some inanity. Miss Walford asked him a question,
and he took a seat beside her in replying. Turquand sat down too.
Twilight was falling, and a refreshing breeze began to make itself
felt. A fashionable sea purled on the sand below with elegant decorum.
In the building the concert commenced, and snatches of orchestration
reached them through the chatter of American and English and French
from the occupants of the chairs behind. Presently Mrs. Walford wanted
to go and play petits chevaux. The sub-editor, involuntarily attached
to the party, accompanied her, and Kent and the girl followed. The
crowd round the tables was fairly large, but Turquand prevailed on
the dame to see that there was space for four persons in a group. She
complimented him on his dexterity, but immediately afterwards became
"fatigued," and begged him to take her to the "settee in the corner."
The party was now divided into couples.