The Yellow Book

The Pleasure-Pilgrim

By Alfred Thornton

By Mrs. Murray Hickson

I—At the Cross Roads

” For to no man is it given to understand a woman, nor to
any woman to understand a man.”

THE boat from Dieppe had just arrived, and the passengers
were pushing from the decks on to the quay. A tall
woman, wrapped in a handsome mantle trimmed with sables,
waited for her turn to cross the gangway. Her eyes, wandering
restlessly over the little crowd of spectators that had assembled to
watch for the arrival of the boat, met those of a man who pressed
into the throng towards her. She started, and a sudden flush,
beautiful but transitory, touched her face into a youthfulness
which it did not otherwise possess. The man took off his hat
in salute, and, holding it above his head, thrust forward to the
foot of the gangway. He kept his eyes fastened upon her face ;
and the expression of his own, in spite of the smile on his lips,
was doubtful and anxious. She returned his look gravely, yet
with a certain tenderness in her glance. Beckoning to the maid
who followed her, she slipped adroitly before a party of staggering
sea-sick tourists, and made her way on to the quay.

                                                Their

Their hands met in a pressure, which, on his part, was both
close and lingering.

“I could not help it,” he said. “You will forgive me for
coming ? ”

She smiled a little. “But I meant to stay all night at the
hotel. I am tired. My maid is always ill on the crossing,
so I wrote from Paris, and ordered rooms and dinner to be ready
for us.”

” Yes, so they told me at the hotel. I must go up to town
this evening, but I could not wait until to-morrow to see you.”
He said the last words under his breath. The maid had gone
to pass the luggage through the custom-house. Her mistress
sat down on a bench inside the waiting-room. She looked up at
the man beside her, and sighed a little.

” I am glad that you came,” she said gently.

” You got my letter ? ”

” Yes.”

The colour had faded from her face, the light from her eyes.
She rose and turned towards the door.

“It is hardly necessary for us to wait here,” she said. “Let
us go on to the hotel. Mary can follow with the luggage.”

They walked together side by side ; he, trying to shelter her
from the driving rain, she, heedless of the present, shrinking from
what was to come with an unavailing dread.

The dull October afternoon was closing in ; already the gas
was lit in the sitting-room into which they were shown. She
reached up to it and turned down the glaring flame till it burned
low and dim. The room was cheerless and dreary : on one side a
long black horsehair-covered sofa ; on the other a chiffonier, with
coloured bead mats and models of flowers in wax upon it. A
square table, covered with a red cloth, stood in the middle of the

                                                room,

room, and on it was a large battered tea-tray. A waiter brought
in a teapot and some hot water, stirred the fire into a blaze, and
retired, shutting the door carefully behind him.

The woman threw off her cloak, and sat down beside the table.
She took up the heavy metal teapot and poised it in her slender
hand.

” Will you have some tea ? ” she said to her companion.

He was standing beside her, and she looked at him as she
spoke. Something in the strained expression of his face shook her
hardly-held composure beyond the power of control. Her hands
trembled, and setting the teapot down again unsteadily, she rose
to her feet and confronted him. Her own face was as pale as his ;
their eyes looked into each other’s, his seeking, hers evading, a
solution to the problem which confronted them.

“For God’s sake,” said the man, “don’t let us meet like this.
Anything is better than aloofness between us two. If you cannot
forgive me, say so ; I deserve it.” He stretched out his hands to
her as he spoke ; but she, shivering a little, drew back from his
touch.

” If it were only that,” she said, “the matter would be simple
enough. Forgive you ! I don’t feel—at least the soul of me
doesn’t—that I have much to forgive. When one demands an
impossibility, one should not complain of failure.”

He looked bewildered. ” I don’t think I understand,” he said
gently. “Sit down here and explain what you mean, and I will
try to see the matter through your eyes. It looks black enough
now through mine—I can imagine it to be unpardonable in yours,”
he added bitterly. She sat down obediently upon the sofa. He
was going to take his place beside her, but hesitated and finally
drew a chair opposite.

She looked at him despairingly. “I shall never make you

                                                understand,”

understand,” she said. ” I don’t understand myself. You will
have to give me time.”

” Perhaps, after keeping silence so long, I ought never to have
told you. Such vulgar infidelities are better left unrevealed.”

She was silent. Her hands, which she held clenched in her lap,
were very cold, and presently she fell to rubbing them softly one
over the other. The man set his lips closer together ; he had
often so chafed her hands for her, and he longed to do so now. It
seemed monstrous that, when at last their love was free and
admissible, they two should feel apart the one from the other.
Yet he recognised, with dreary assent, that such was the case.
He regretted the sense of honour which had goaded him, ere he
and she should begin their new life together, into an absolute
frankness about the past. And yet did he regret it ? He doubted
his power to possess his soul in secret, away from hers, and, if that
were so, better a confession now than later, when their union would
be irrevocable. He looked once more at the little hands, motion-
less again in her lap, and longed to take them in his own. But
his heart failed him. It was the old trouble, the old difficulty ;
the difference of outlook between the sexes. A pity, he thought,
that this modern woman whom he loved, had so imbued him with
her modern views that he had been unable to keep his own
counsel. And yet, even if her gospel of equality separated them,
he felt it to be, after all, a true one. He would not have forgiven
her such a fault as he had confessed, and for which, manlike, he
expected absolution. But there the difference of sex came in,
while, when absolute confidence only was demanded, he felt
that she had an equal right to it with himself. After all, she
expected, and he had given, only what was her due. If it
ruined both their lives so much the worse for them. He won-
dered—would it ?

                                                ” I shall

” I shall never make you understand,” she repeated, breaking a
silence which both felt unendurable. ” But try to be patient with
me. It is not that I do not love you ; at least I think not. It
is not that I do not forgive you. It seems to me that I need
your forgiveness more than you need mine. But I feel that
we have both failed, and that the failure has soiled and spoilt our
love.” She looked at him piteously.

” Yes ? ” he said. ” Go on.”

” All these years that we have loved one another and hidden it
from the world, I thought our love was a beautiful thing, good for
us both. Though I could not be your wife, I imagined that I
was everything else you needed : your friend, your comrade, your
very heart and life. As your love raised and made me a better
woman, so I believed that my love made you a better man.”

He was leaning forward in his chair ; a puzzled frown upon his
forehead.

” It did,” he said ; ” it does. Go on.”

” Then, when I heard at last that he was dead, and that we
were free—you and I, to love and to marry—it seemed as if the
joy would kill me. I wrote to you—you know what I wrote.
And then your letter. . . . Perhaps I was over-sensitive ; perhaps
it came at the wrong moment——”

She stopped, and he rose to his feet.

” Never mind,” he said. ” Don’t say any more ; it hurts
you. You can’t get over it, and no wonder. I despise myself,
and I am going.”

She put out her hands to stop him.

“Wait,” she said. ” Indeed—indeed, you do not understand.”
She rose also, and stood before him. “Oh ! ” she went on, with
shaking lips, ” but you must understand, you must. I see—I
suppose that I expected too much. All that hopeless waiting—

                                                all

all those long years—and then the constant strain and restlessness
of it all. Don’t think I blame you—much. I think I com-
prehend. It is not that, though that hurts me too ; but I
see now that the whole thing has been a horrible mistake from
the first. It was insane pride that made me so sure your welfare
lay in my hands. I was dragging you down, not, as I imagined,
helping you to be what I believed you were. I was selfish ; I
thought more of myself than I did of you——”

” If that is your opinion of yourself,” he interrupted bitterly,
” what must you think of me ? I—who took all you could give
to me, and then had not the manhood to keep out of vulgar
dissipation, nor the pluck to hold my tongue about it and save
you the pain and humiliation of the knowledge.”

Suddenly she stretched out her hands to him.

” Oh, no ! not that ! ” she said, with a sob ; ” don’t say that.
You were right to tell me.”

He took her hands in his, and, almost timidly, drew her
towards him.

” I expected more than a man is capable of; it is my fault. I
dragged you down,” she repeated, insistently.

“That is not true, and you know it,” he answered. “The
fault was mine, but——”

He drew her closer. ” Can’t you forgive it ? ” he whispered.
” You were not my wife—I had no hope of ever winning you—
yet I could give my love to no one else. My heart has never
been disloyal to you for a moment, and——” he hesitated.
” There are so few who would have done otherwise,” he added,
hurriedly.

She still held herself braced away from his gentle compulsion.
” I—I suppose so,” she said, under her breath.

” And now—now, when at last you will be my own, surely

                                                you

you could not doubt me ? It would be horrible, impossible.”
His voice dropped again into a murmur.

” Can’t you forgive me—and forget ? ”

There was a pause. His eyes devoured her face.

” Give me time,” she said. ” I don’t think we see it in
the same light ; and if you do not understand I cannot explain
myself. But give me time, I beg of you.”

* * * * *

An hour afterwards the maid came in, and found her mistress
sitting over the dying fire. The girl turned up the gas and, in
the sudden glare, the dreary hotel sitting-room looked more
tawdry and commonplace than ever. The tablecover was pulled
awry ; the curtains, dragged across the window, were ragged and
dirty ; under the maid’s feet, as she crossed the floor, some bits
of scattered coal crunched uncomfortably. She knelt on the
hearth-rug and raked the ashes together, trying to rekindle a
blaze. Her mistress looked on apathetically.

” That is how I feel,” she said to herself. ” It is all dead now ;
he will never understand it ; but that is how I feel. If it had
been before his love for me—but now I know I was no help to him,
only a hindrance, and all the best of me seems cold and numb.”

The maid rose from her knees ; a tiny flame was flickering in
the grate. She went out again, and left her mistress sitting there
before the reviving fire.

WHEN ten o’clock struck she moved uneasily in her chair.
The dainty Dresden china timepiece on the overmantel
had been a wedding present, and, as the soft notes of the hour

                                                broke

broke upon the silence, her thoughts turned swiftly into memories.
The years had been few and short, yet the changes they had
brought, though subtle, were unmistakable. There was nothing
tangible, nothing of which she could complain, and yet, for the
last few months, she had known, in a vague, puzzled way, that
trouble was closing in upon her. The nature of that trouble she
had not faced or analysed ; she put all definition away for as long
as might be possible.

To-night she had not felt any special uneasiness. He might
have stayed at the club, or been detained in the City—such delays
had happened frequently of late, and had not seemed to her of
much moment. She had grown accustomed to the lack of con-
sideration which made him neglect to send her a telegram, but
now the chiming of the clock caught her attention, and, of a
sudden, her mind awoke, expanding to receive the impression of
impending disturbance. There was no particular reason for this
impression, only a certainty of misfortune which she felt advancing
towards her in the coming hours.

She rose and crossed the hall into the dining-room. She had
waited for him until half-past eight, and then had dined alone,
after which the table was relaid in readiness for his return. That
morning, when he left the house, he had kissed her with almost
his old tenderness, and she wanted to express her gratitude for that
kiss. She wandered round the table, rearranging the silver with
solicitous fingers. It was still just possible that he had not dined
in town ; his wife hoped not. He would be sure to catch the
10.15 down train—never since their marriage had he been later
—his supper should be a cosy meal. There were oysters in the
house, and she went into the kitchen to see that they were
opened.

The kitchen was warm and comfortable. She stood for a few

                                                minutes,

minutes, her foot upon the fender, chatting to the servants ; they
had been with her since her marriage, and they loved and cared for
her.

” Your master won’t be home till past eleven,” she said ; ” when
you have laid the supper you can go to bed. I will wait upon him
myself.” She turned to leave the kitchen, but lingered for a
moment in the red glow of the fire. Her own part of the house
was so still and lonely ; here, at any rate, was companionship and
a refuge from haunting fancies. Her maid dragged forward a chair,
but she shook her head, smiling.

” I have so much to do, and my book is interesting,” she said,
as she opened the door. It swung behind her, and the cook, knife
in hand, paused to lift her eyes and meet those of her fellow-servant.
Neither of the women said a word. They heard the drawing-room
door shut softly. The maid sat down again beside the hearth, and
the cook went on with her work.

* * * * *

At a quarter to eleven the servants fastened the doors and went
upstairs to bed. The silence settled down again. Now and then
she heard the regular beat of hoofs upon the road as a carriage
passed the windows ; a wind got up and flicked the frozen snow
against the panes ; the fire burned clear and bright, with a regular
throb of flame or the occasional splutter and crackle of a log.

At eleven o’clock she laid her open book upon the table, and
went out into the hall. It was very cold, and she shivered a little
as she opened the door and looked out upon the night. The air
was keen and frosty, a frail moon, its edges veiled by intermittent
cloud, rode in the sky, and the stars snapped as though the
sharpened atmosphere struck sparks from their steady shining.
The road lay white and deserted, here and there a light shone
from the neighbouring houses, but for the most part the village

                                                had

had already gone to sleep. Presently, as she stood there, the
distant sound of a train sweeping through the country caught her
listening ears. It paused, then broke again upon the silence. She
smiled a little and went back into the house, shutting the door
behind her. The train was late, but it had come at last ; in ten
minutes he would be here. There was no use in sitting down
again during those ten short minutes ; she wanted to be ready,
when his step rang on the hard road, to open the door immediately.
Meantime she trod softly about the drawing-room, shifting the
ornaments upon the overmantel a shade to right or left, and ex-
amining the pretty things upon her silver table with abstracted,
unremarking eyes.

For many weeks the rift between her and her husband had
been widening. To-day, by his unaccustomed tenderness, he had
re-awakened hers, and she longed for him as she had longed for
him in the dead days which seemed so far away. But the minutes
slipped into half an hour, and still he did not come. Then fear
crept into her heart, and her imagination—always vivid—left now
alone in the solitude of the night, played havoc with her reason.
As the quarters struck slowly from the church clock in the village,
and her own little timepiece chimed in musical response, terror
and foreboding shook her spirit in their grip. She sat down again
before the fire, and tried to reason out some plausible excuse for
this unusual delay. No business that she was able to think of
could thus detain her husband, nor had she ever known him to remain
away a whole night without due notice given. He was often late
for dinner—that signified nothing. Once or twice lately he had
come down by this last train ; but even then he had prepared her
for his absence. Something very grave, very unusual, must have
happened.

She lifted her head, and bent forward to rearrange the logs upon

                                                the

the hearth. In so doing she dropped the poker, which fell with a
clash into the fender, and the loud noise startled the echoes of the
sleeping house, awaking in her mind a fresh train of thought. She
imagined him ill—hurt—in some danger. And it was impossible
at this hour to go to him or to be of any use. Besides, where
could she find him, how penetrate the mystery and terror of this
long uncertainty ?

She went back into the hall and consulted a time-table. At
four o’clock a train reached Wensbury ; if he came by that and
walked (he must walk, since no cab would be available), he might
get home about five o’clock. If he was unhurt she would know
—she would feel—— If he did not come she must herself start
early in the morning and go up to town to make inquiries.
Perhaps he had been run over in the streets, and she would find
him in one of the hospitals. He might not be seriously hurt, and
yet, again, if not seriously hurt why had no message come to her ?
Perhaps he was dead, and she—and she a widow. Her fingers
closed convulsively over the time-table in her hand, and she walked
back to her seat before the fire, leaving the door into the hall open
behind her. It was one o’clock now : hours must pass, even if he
came to Wensbury, before this weight of suspense could be lifted
from her heart. And what if he never came ? What if she never
saw him again alive ? She considered that, if an accident only
had detained him—an accident from which he should recover—she
could be glad and thankful. Perhaps the pain, and her care,
might bring them once more together. And if not, better even
death than another explanation which had flashed across the back-
ground of her brain, to be dismissed with horror and self-loathing.
If only there had been a reason for their slipping away from one
another she could have borne it better. The very vagueness and
unreality of the gulf between them frightened her, and rendered

                                                her

her more inarticulate. She had suffered and been still ; now, her
faculties sharpened by suspense, she endured all the accumulated
pain of the last two years fused and mingled with the fancies, fear,
and loneliness of the moment.

Sometimes she paced the room ; sometimes, at the sound of a
chance footstep or the rising of the wind, she opened the hall door
and stared out into the night. Once she went upstairs to wake
the servants, but, recollecting herself, came back and dropped once
more into the big chair by the fire.

With the self-torture of a high-strung brain she could formulate
no explanations save the worst, until, as the hours wore on, mental
torment brought with it the consequent relief of numbness.

* * * * *

When he came into the drawing-room the following evening
she rose from her seat and welcomed him as usual. Her face was
drawn and white, but her voice did not falter, and her eyes met
his unflinchingly.

He stood upon the hearth-rug before the fire, talking for a few
moments carelessly, till a strained silence fell between them. He
took out his watch and glanced at it, then, turning restlessly,
pushed the blazing logs together with his foot.

” You got my letter ? I was sorry not to be home last night.
I m afraid, little woman, that you waited dinner for me, but it was
too late to send you a telegram.”

” Yes, your letter came this morning,” she said, apathetically.
The reaction from last night’s tension had brought with it a strange
indifference. She felt that his presence meant nothing to her now,
that his absence would have meant even less. Her heart was frozen.
Active pain would have been better than this paralysis, and she
longed to feel, but could not do so. He faced her once more ; his
glance met hers uneasily.

                                                “You

” You understand how it was ? I was unable to help it,” he
said, his voice stumbling a little as he spoke. She lifted her
head.

” Yes,” she said, ” I understand.”

He looked at her in silence, then picking up a paper, unfolded it
and began to read. She shivered a little, and leant nearer to the
fire. Her thoughts wandered vaguely. She knew that he had
lied to her, but she did not care. The stealthy sorrow of her
married life, after stalking her spirit for a couple of years, had
sprung upon her in the space of time which it took her to read
his letter. Instinct guided her to the truth, and there it left her.
The rest was a tangle, and, for the moment, she cared only for the
physical comfort of apathy and quiescence.

She stretched out her cold hands to the blaze, while her husband
watched her furtively from behind his newspaper.

The deep tones of the village clock, striking the half-hour, broke
upon the silence ; and a moment later the timepiece on the mantel-
shelf chimed an echoing response.

The Ring of Life

“For Ever and Ever”

By C. S.

IN the cold grey dawn I sit up and look at the woman by my
side. One soft little white hand peeps out from the dainty
lace, and on one ringer is a gold ring. There is just such another
upon my own finger ; and these two rings bind us to one another
for ever and ever. And I am tired already.

She moves in her sleep, and buries her face deeper in the heavy
folds of the bed-clothes. The little hand is still out, and lies so
near me (so temptingly near, as I should have thought only a little
while ago) that I can trace the faint blue lines in it as I have done
many a time before. But now . . . how horrible it all seems !

She stirs again, and draws the hand into the lace so that it is
almost hidden. How pretty she looks ! . . . with her silky
brown hair. Ah, why do I find it so difficult to think of her,
even when she is before my eyes thus ? Why do I never think of
her when she is absent ? Why do great masses of tumbling black
hair come into my mind, while I watch this soft brown tangle on
the pillow before me ? I have tried to beat down these thoughts
—but they will come . . . and how can I help myself?

Look at her neck—how white it is ! And yet—and yet, why
does a warm brown something continually haunt me ? A living
something which brings with it the sun, the sky, and the sea ?

                                                 Our

Our boy sleeps in a little room adjoining. I creep in and look
at him. He is asleep, and has curled himself up almost into a ball,
with one tiny fist in his mouth. I dare not move it to give him
more air, lest he should wake and cry out. As I look a horrible
feeling of loneliness comes over me. . . . He is her child . . .
our child … I creep back to bed. Thank Heaven her eyes are
shut ! . . . Those eyes so solemn and blue.

And in the morning she tells me a curious dream she had last
night. And this is it :

” I dreamed that a dark woman with wonderful black hair came
and stood by our bed ; and stooping, put her arms about you and
kissed you passionately many times, smoothing your forehead with
her hand. And I tried to cry out, but could not from fear. And
suddenly looking up, she saw me watching her ; and her face
grew hard and cruel. And she came round, and stood and looked
at me ; and I trembled. And presently taking hold of me, she
tried to pull me out of bed, but something held me down : and
she gave up, and went and sat by the dull cold grate, and wept
bitterly. And I felt sorry for her in spite of all, because she had
no one to comfort her as I have : and I got up to go to her. But
the cruel hard look crept back into her face—and then I woke,
and saw you, and the empty chair, and the bright sunlight darting
round the edges of the blinds, and found it was only a dream.”

And what can I say ? . . . What can I do ? … How can I
help myself? . . .

Mr. Meredith in Little

I

IN addition to its possible concealment of irrelevant motives,
anonymous criticism has this certain advantage, that it is not
of necessity ridiculous. When the anonymous critic is confronted
with such a question as that put, a trifle rudely but quite con-
clusively, by Charles Lamb to Dr. Nott—” You think : who are
you ? ” ” I,” he may answer proudly, ” am The North Boreshire
Inquisitor.” Being that, he may go on to protect the interests of
our hearths and homes, or to point out the approaching end of the
century, without danger of seeming superfluous or impertinent.
To do these things is felt to be part of the duty of The North
Boreshire Inquisitor. But when Jones—I hope nobody is really
called Jones—implies a supposition that the world will be glad to
read what he, Jones, thinks of some great contemporary, he runs
a risk of humorous eyebrows. Even when the critic is somebody
whose name is a household word for eminence, one of those
distinguished few before whom generations of intruders have
trembled or basked, and the criticised only “a Mr.” So-and-so—
there is a deal of national character in that use of the indefinite
article—one suspects that the judgment, however instructive, has

                                                in

in it some possibility of the absurd. And it may be supposed that
if a beginner in the dodge of scribbling should essay to estimate
the greatest among living writers in his country, the proceeding
would be something worse than ridiculous.

But it may be argued that such a critic would be in a less
obnoxious position than any other. If he had a mind to patronise,
somebody might be amused and nobody could be hurt ; whereas
the patronage of a superior rankles, and that of an inferior is not
to be borne. Or if he set out to damn, it would be nothing ; but
your eminent critic, sitting heavily upon a writhing novice, has
an air of cruel exclusiveness.

For such reasons as these, I have far less diffidence in making
Mr. Meredith’s last published book a little more than the starting-
point of a few digressions, than I should have in criticising Mr.
Max Beerbohm : I name, for example, an author whose works
are of a later date and even less in bulk than my own. I should
fear the satire of Mr. Beerbohm’s eulogists or detractors : from
Mr. Meredith’s, I may hope for indulgent indifference. I was
compelled in my youth to weigh the philosophers of ancient
Greece in the balance of my critical intelligence, and I began to
read Mr. Meredith at about the time I was deciding the com-
parative qualities of Plato and Aristotle. To me he was, and is,
as much a classic as they : I approach him with as little personal
feeling, and if I have to say that all of him is not, in my
apprehension, equally good, I can say it with as little disrespect.

The Tale of Chloe and other Stories gives you Mr. Meredith in
little. In The House on the Beach you have him, as it were, in

                                                his

The Yellow Book—Vol. V. L

his bones. In The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper you
have him alive and imperfect. In The Tale of Chloe you have him
consummate.

If Mr. Meredith were one of those sympathetic writers who
can write only when they are drunk—and is not art life as
expressed by a finely drunken intelligence ?—I should think he
wrote The House on the Beach after a surfeit of tea. The appre-
hension, the phrase and the mechanism of conveyance are there ;
the quickening fire, the ” that” as Sir Joshua Reynolds said, is
absent. ” You shall live ” Mr. Meredith seems to have said to
his potential puppets, and so they live—under protest. As has
happened before, when lack of customary inspiration has been felt,
he seems to have tried, in over self-justification, to do
what the fullest inspiration had hardly made possible. He has
offered you a caprice of feminine emotion more incredible than is
to be found in any other of his books. A middle-aged man,
grotesquely vulgar and abnormally mean-minded, asks, as his
price for not exposing an old friend, this old friend’s daughter to
wife. The daughter, having set herself to make the sacrifice, had
to find in this treacherous cad, Tinman, some human merit for
her comfort, and for a prop of her obstinacy towards a seemlier
wooer. She found it in the fact that Tinman, being knocked
down by her father, did not return the blow. ” She had conceived
an insane idea of nobility in Tinman that blinded her to his
face, figure, and character—his manners, likewise. He had
forgiven a blow ! . . . Tinman’s magnanimity was present in her
imagination to sustain her.” The play of emotional fancy which
follows on this motive is delightful to read, and you are fain to be
persuaded, for your enjoyment, of its truth ; but when you have
shut the book the perversity is plain. Perversity is, I think, the
word. The caprice is gratuitous. When Mr. Meredith tried

                                                our

our powers of faith most severely before, in Diana of the Cross-
ways, he was essaying, as in The Tragic Comedians, the almost
superhuman task of fitting a creature of his imagination to
historical fact. I cannot help fancying that Mrs. Norton, albeit
a wonderful member of a wonderful family, was a thought less
fine than the lady of the book—that when she sold her friend’s
secret to The Times, nature was doing a less elaborate trick than
Mr. Meredith in the case of Diana. But there the attempt,
though almost foolhardy, was successful. Mr. Meredith had set
himself a most difficult but a possible task. He was a rider
exulting in his skill, and he forced his horse up a flight of stoned
steps. In this House on the Beach he has attempted to fly, and in
my opinion has had a tumble. The heroine of the story, then, is
incredible to me as a whole ; but that point set apart, the workings
of her mind are instructive to the student of her creator, because,
while characteristic for certain, they are not very subtle, and are
expressed with notable simplicity.

I cannot agree with some critics that Tinman is a glaring
failure. The effects of the whole story are those of farce rather
than comedy, and the most farcically funny of these, the rescue of
Tinman from his falling house in his Court suit, is only possible
because of the grotesque vanity and smallness of his character.
For all that, I do not think Mr. Meredith can create people like
Tinman and his sister, with such fulness and enjoyment to himself,
as he can create people whose folly is finer and whose manners are
more agreeable. He overdoes silliness of a vulgar type. I have
lately, I confess by the way, reflected with much gratification on
the fact, that of his greatest creations, the most—the exception
readiest to mind is the immortal nurse in Richard Feverel—are
people of breeding and even of affluent habits. Nobody admires
more than I, certain writers among us who take for themes

                                                “humble”

” humble “—the satire of that word is growing crude—” humble “
and uneducated people. But I notice a growing tyranny
which ordains that people who speak in dialect, people who live
in slums, and the more aggressive and anachronistic order
of Bohemians, and none but these, are fit subjects for books. I
read a story the other day which began, somewhat in the
manner of Mr. G. P. R. James, with two men leaving a club—a
sufficiently democratic institution nowadays, one would have
thought—and I happened to see a criticism thereon which
objected, not that the story was bad, but that the author was a
snob for having anything to do—any “truck,” should one say ?—
with “clubmen.” Surely there is more to be said for the blatant
snobbery of an earlier time, than for this proletarian exclusive-
ness. The accident of Mr. Meredith’s choice of material is a
consolation.

The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper is a brilliant and
delicious farce spoiled, and the uselessness of criticising it may be
mitigated by suggesting the question : Why did Mr. Meredith spoil
it ? It is one I cannot answer. You are presented to a General,
stupid, respectable, complacent. He has been a conqueror of
women in his time ; he is enormously pleased with himself. A
keenly humorous and delightfully malicious woman has reason to
punish him. The punishment she devises is a series of carica-
tures, the mere description of which is irresistibly comic, and the
wretched General is driven by outraged vanity, to show them
appealingly to his friends. The farce is furious as it proceeds, and
you wonder what fitting climax to the ludicrousness is to end it.
And lo ! the climax, a simple intensifying of the torture, is passed,

                                                and

and you are faced by a terrible anti-climax, which is the marriage
of the torturer to the tortured ; nothing less, in fact, than a
command to your common sympathies and canting kindliness
of heart, which the farce had artistically excluded, to rush in
pell-mell. It is a slap in the face to a worthy audience,
and I cannot understand why it was done. Mr. Meredith is
far above all suspicion of truckling to the average reviewer,
who insists that everybody be happy and good. Can it have
been—for the apparent revulsion in the lady’s psychology, though
not incredible, is carried with the high hand of mere assertion
—that Mr. Meredith was sorry to have been cruel ? Certainly
he was cruel : pain was inflicted on the ass of a General.
Most satire and most farce involve pain, actual or imaginary,
to some victim—if you think of it. But you should not think
of it, and if you are a unit of a worthy audience, you do not
think of it. If it be the art of the inventor, to exclude so
far as possible, a tendency to think of it, by his presentation of
the victim, Mr. Meredith is here completely successful. The
General is credible and human, but he is absurd, and the absurdity
is duly emphasised to the point of your forgetting his humanity.
And Mr. Meredith, as an artist here of farce, has prevented any
feeling of rancour in you towards the General, rancour which
would have made your appreciation of his punishment, a satis-
faction of morality, and not a pure enjoyment of farce. There is
a pair of lovers to whom the General’s folly brings temporary
disaster, but they are made—and surely the restraint was wonder-
fully artistic—so merely abstract, that you care nothing for their
sorrow. The Case of General Ople and Lady Camper is, in fine,
as artistic—and as abundantly laughable a farce as was ever made,
until you reach the end, which to me is inexplicable. But how
many farces are there in English, for the stage or for the study,

                                                where

where you laugh with all your intelligence alert ? I think they
may be counted easily.

It is to be noticed that both these stories are simple in diction.
The charge of obscurity, that is brought by nine of ten reviewers
against Mr. Meredith’s books, is one that may be supported with
facility. Indubitably he is, as Mr. Henley has said, ” the victim
of a monstrous cleverness that is neither to hold nor to bind.”
Over and over again, he is difficult when he might have been easy.
He compresses impossibly, like Tacitus, or presents a common-
place in crack-jaw oddities of expression, like Browning. But
more often still, the obscurity is in the reader’s intelligence, not in
the writer’s art. We are accustomed to novelists of little indi-
viduality, or no individuality at all : Mr. Meredith’s intellect is as
individual as that of any poet in the English language. Neces-
sarily, therefore, he is hard to understand. We are accustomed to
presentations of the clothes of men and women, and of the baldest
summary of their thoughts and feelings : Mr. Meredith has
penetrated further into character, and has exposed minuter
subtleties of thought and feeling than any writer of English
poetry or prose. Necessarily, therefore, he is hard to under-
stand.

I think this opinion is very well supported by these two stories.
In them he is not concerned with any fine studies of feeling or
thought, and he is quite simple. There are a few pomposities, a
few idle gallantries of expression ; but in the main he is here to be
understood without a second thought.

                                                Mr. Meredith’s

Mr. Meredith’s prose does not satisfy my ideal. The two
qualities of prose that I value above all others are ease and rhythm.
He can be easy, but in his case ease has the appearance of a lapse.
He can be rhythmical, but he is rhythmical at long intervals. That
quality of rhythm which seems to have come so commonly to our
ancestors before the eighteenth century, seems hardly to be sought
by the prose writers among ourselves. Were it sought and found,
I am assured it would be hardly noticed.

Mr. Meredith is often neither musical nor easy. But as a
manipulator of words to express complexity of thought he has no
peer. It was by this complexity, this subtlety, and penetration of
his, that he was valuable to me when first I read him. I imagine
there must be many in my case, to whom he was, above all things,
an educator. It was his very obscurity, another name, so often, for a
higher intelligence, that was the stimulating force in him for such
as myself. Youth can rarely appreciate an achievement of art as
such. But youth is keen to grind its intellect on the stone of the
uncomprehended. That was the service of Mr. Meredith to those
in my case. We puzzled and strove, and were rewarded by the
discovery of some complexity of thought, or some subtlety of
emotion unimagined aforetime. Fortunately for us, advance of
years and multiplying editions had not yet earned him the homage
of the average reviewer ; for youth is conceited, and does not care
to accept the verdict of the mass of its contemporaries. Mr.
Meredith was sometimes an affectation in us, and sometimes the
most powerful educator we had. In the passage of years, as we
grew from conceit of intelligence into appreciation, in our degrees,

                                                of

of things artistic, we perceived that he was also a great artist, and
sympathy was merged in admiration. The Egoist is perhaps the
most stimulating, intellectually, of Mr. Meredith’s books, the
fullest interpreter, perhaps, of the world in which we live. In my
declining years, so to speak, I value it less than The Tale of Chloe.
For in a world that is become, in a superficial way, most deplorably
intelligible, achievements of art are rare.

When I first read The Tale of Chloe it was in an American
edition, and I thank my gods I had not read any summary of its
plot in a review. But from the third chapter I felt that tragedy
was in the air, for I seemed to have the impression of an inevitable
fate drawing nearer, until I reached the end, where the fate comes
and the thing ends sombrely. In other words, I had the im-
pression of a perfect tragedy. I fancy it is the most perfect in form
of Mr. Meredit’ s works of fiction, except Richard Feverel. And
from its length it is even more impressive of its order, for the
air of tragedy is closer. When you had finished Richard Feverel
you felt the tragedy had been inevitable, but you did not, unless
you had a far keener sense than I, feel the tragedy all along. In
The Tale of Chloe the tragedy is with you all the time. The
elect and wise humours of Beau Beamish, the winsomeness of the
dairymaid duchess, the artificial sunshine of the Wells, are perceived
only as you glance away from the shadow, where stand Camwell,
Chloe, and Count Caseldy. One may divide them in this way,
because Duchess Susan, though a wholly realised creation in herself,
stands, as it were, in the plot for an abstract contrast to Chloe ;
another beautiful child of English nature would have served as well.

                                                That

That the tragedy is inevitable you feel altogether. And yet,
when you think it out, you perceive that it is the wonderful art of
the telling, which makes it so. That is more the case than even in
Richard Feverel ; suicide is, in itself, less credible and likely, than a
catastrophe following on a very natural duel. It is the art of the
telling, that brings the truth home to you.

And the force of the tragedy is more wonderful for another
reason. Mr. Meredith has created for it a very artificial atmo-
sphere, or has reproduced a society which was, on the surface, as
artificial as can be imagined. Beau Beamish, the social king of
the Wells, compelled the rude English to conduct themselves by
ordinances of form. He ruled them with a rod of iron ; he
must have inspired an enormous deal of hypocrisy. With a com-
pany of bowing impostors for background, and with some of them
for actors, is played a drama of intense strength. The strongest
emotions of our nature are presented in terms of bric-à-brac.
Everybody is ” strange and well-bred.” Chloe, tying the secret
knots in her skein of silk to mark the progress of an intrigue which
must end, as she has willed, in her death, is gay the while, and talks
with the most natural wit. She discusses the intrigue with Camwell
in polite enigmas. Camwell, who sees the intrigue and foresees the
unhappiness, though not until the end, the death of his mistress,
carries himself as a polished gentleman. Caseldy is none of
your dark conspirators. The guile of the duchess is simple hot
blood.

This delicacy of the setting assists the exquisite pathos of the
central figure, surely one of the noblest in tragic story. The
strength of will, so admirable and so piteous, which enables her to
impose blindness on herself for the enjoyment of a month, and
finally to die that she may save her weaker sister and the man she
loves, is relieved by curiously painful touches of femininity. When

                                                Camwell

Camwell is telling her of the purposed elopement, she knows well
that Caseldy, the traitor to herself, is the man, yet she says, ” I
cannot think Colonel Poltermore so dishonourable.” By many
such touches is the darkness of the tragedy made visible.

Chloe’s words to Camwell in this last interview, are for the
grandeur of their simple resignation, in the finest spirit of tragedy.
” Remember the scene, and that here we parted, and that Chloe
wished you the happiness it was not of her power to bestow,
because she was of another world, with her history written out to
the last red streak before ever you knew her.”

        θάρσει · σὺ μὲν ζῇς, ἡ δἑμἡ ψνχἡ πάλαι
        τἑθνηκεν.

Antigone went not more steadily to her grave.

I fear I have been something egotistical in this attempt of mine,
and would permit myself some apology of quotation to conclude.
Mr. Meredith has found room in The Tale of Chloe for some of the
happiest expressions of his philosophy, and some of his most perfect
images in description. Of the ballad, which relates the marriage of
the duke and the dairymaid, he says : ” That mischief may have
been done by it to a nobility-loving people, even to the love of our
nobility among the people, must be granted : and for the particular
reason that the hero of the ballad behaved so handsomely.” I can-
not think what the guardians of optimism have been about, that
they have not cried out on the ” cynicism ” of this remark. Here
is a vivid summary of observation—Beau Beamish “was neverthe-
less well supported by a sex, that compensates for dislike of its
friend before a certain age, by a cordial recognition of him when it
has touched the period.” There are many such pregnant generalisa-
tions, and never do they intrude on the narrative.

” She smiled for answer. That smile was not the common smile;

                                                it

it was one of an eager exultingness, producing as he gazed the
twitch of an inquisitive reflection of it on his lips. . . . That is
the very heart’s language ; the years are in a look, as mount and
vale of the dark land spring up in lightning.” I question if that
can be matched for beauty and force of imagery in Mr. Mere-
dith’s works.

And this of Chloe’s musings : ” Far away in a lighted hall of the
west, her family raised hands of reproach. They were minute
objects, dimly discerned as diminished figures cut in steel. Feeling
could not be very warm for them, they were so small, and a sea
that had drowned her ran between. . . .”

“Mr. Beamish indulges in verses above the grave of Chloe.
They are of a character to cool emotion.”

As I said in beginning, my eulogy in prose must be impotent
for such disservice.

By Robert Halls

Puppies and Otherwise

By Evelyn Sharp

THE philologist threw down his pen with an exclamation.

” It is really annoying, most annoying,” he said querulously,
” I can’t endure children. They are worse than dogs. You can
kick a dog. But it is impossible to kick a child. What is a
man to do, Parker? Why did that dolt of a Tom recognise her?
He might at least have waited till the morning. And how am I
to send over the hills at this time of night to tell her father? I
am the most unfortunate of men.”

“Twenty mile if it be a step, and a proper rough night,”
murmured his housekeeper, who never allowed the details of a
catastrophe to be neglected.

The philologist cast a distracted look over his papers and swore
softly.

“Can’t you suggest something, Parker?” he demanded irritably.
“Am I to be put to all this inconvenience just because Tom
finds a bit of a girl thrown from her pony and is misguided
enough to bring her home ? Who did he say she was, confound
his memory?”

“Miss Agnes, sir, only child of the Rector of Astley, sir, and
the very happle of his eye, so Tom says, he does. And sleeping
like a lamb in the best bedroom now, sir.”

                                                The

The philologist savagely kicked a footstool that was not in his
way, and took a turn round the room. “What’s the use of
standing there and gossiping?” he shouted suddenly; “did I ask
who the brat was? Do I want to know whether her fool of a
father dotes upon her? Tell Tom to saddle the roan at once and
ride across with my compliments to the Reverend What’s-his-
name, and say that his daughter is here, and be hanged to
him.

” Do you hear ? And don’t let me be disturbed again to-night.
Supper ? Who said supper ? Did I say supper, Parker ? Then
go and don’t make purposeless remarks.”

His housekeeper vanished precipitately, and the philologist
returned to his great work on the Aryan roots. He was a man
to whom fame had come late in life, when he had wholly ignored
his youth in a passionate toil after it. At the age of twenty he
had resolved to be a successful man, and at the age of forty-six he
found himself one, albeit a piece of soulless mechanism with the
wine of life left untasted behind him and its richest possibilities
lying buried in his past.

He sighed self-pityingly, and pulled his manuscript towards him
once more. And just as he did so, the door opened from without
and the child came in.

He did not know, as any other man could have told him, that
she was already almost a woman, even a beautiful woman with
awakening eyes and most seductive hair; but he did recognise
with a vague feeling of dissatisfaction that she was not what he
usually meant by a child, and that he could not class her with
kittens and colts and all other irresponsible animals whom he was
accustomed to regard with prejudice. And this discovery gave
him a sharper sense of injury than before, and he sat staring
stupidly while she walked swiftly across the room to him, holding

                                                up

up her riding skirt with one hand and brushing back her tumbled
curls with the other.

They didn t wake me in time as they promised,” she said,
“and I want to get back to Daddy. People are such idiots. Did
she take me for a baby, that woman? Why does every one think
that children have got to be lied to? And how soon can I have
my pony, please?”

A violent gust of wind rushed round the house at that moment
and rattled viciously at the bolts of the shutters as though mocking
her words. But the girl paid no heed to it, and merely tapped
her toe impatiently on the ground, and waited expectantly for an
answer to her question. The philologist stood up and put on his
spectacles and looked down at her.

“I — I am at a loss,” he said slowly, “are you the — the person
whom Tom picked up and brought home in the gig?”

“Yes, yes, I suppose so ! At least, I think he said he was
Tom. But what does that matter now? Oh, do order my pony
before we talk any more, won’t you? Daddy wants me, don’t
you see.”

“Daddy wants you,” said the philologist absently, for he was
following the train of his own thoughts rather than the meaning
of her words; “I don’t quite understand you.”

“You don’t look as though you did,” said Agnes candidly.
“perhaps I scared you, did I? You see, I thought if I came
across that woman again she would tell me some more lies. And
I smelt smoke so I guessed that meant a man in here. Men
generally stick to the truth, don’t you know ; at least, you can
always tell if they don’t. But I say, why don’t you ring for my
pony?”

” How old are you?” said the philologist, rousing himselt with
an effort.

                                                “What’s

“What’s that got to do with it?” cried the girl angrily.
“Don’t you know that all this time Daddy is — ”

“Daddy be — ” began the philologist, and checked himself with
a smile; “my dear little girl, nobody is going to hurt you
here, and I shall certainly not allow you to go out in this storm. I
really think,” he continued tentatively, ” I really think you had
almost better go to bed. It’s bedtime now, isn’t it?”

“Bedtime?” cried Agnes, opening her eyes, “why it’s not nine
o’clock. Besides, I told you I was going home. What’s the
matter with the weather?”

” The weather is — well, inclement,” said the man of learning
feebly, “and Tom has already gone to set your father’s mind at
rest. It seems to me — ”

“Then why didn t you say so before? It was rather stupid of
you, wasn’t it?” rejoined Agnes cheerfully. “Well, I’m very glad
I haven’t got to ride any more to-day, my arm’s horribly stiff.
Gobbo’s all right, that’s one blessing.”

She was sitting in the arm-chair now, with her feet on the
fender, and the philologist, who was accustomed to be the autocrat
of his household, somehow felt ousted from his own sanctum. He
glanced sideways at the ruddy head that was bent towards the blaze,
and he felt a curious sensation of discomfort.

“Gobbo? Ah, yes, my man said something about the pony
being unhurt,” was all he said, though she paid not the slightest
attention to his words, for they might just as well have been left
unsaid.

“That’s not a bad little stable you’ve got,” she went on in her
fresh voice, “and the puppies are just ripping, ever so much jollier
than the Persian kittens. You shouldn’t have crossed your Persian
with a tabby, it’s such a pity. Why did you?”

The philologist became suddenly conscious of being wonder-

                                                fully

fully ignorant by the side of this child with the red hair and the
large open eyes, and the discovery did not add to his composure.

“I didn’t know I had,” he said, and sat down where he could
see her face.

“Didn’t you really? And the puppies are such beauties too,
five of them. You almost don’t deserve to have puppies, do
you?”

“I’m afraid I am hardly worthy of them,” owned the philologist
meekly.” But do you really like them yourself?”

“Why, I couldn’t help it of course. They’re such jolly little
warm snoozling things. Don’t you know the feel of
a puppy? What! you don’t? Only wait, that s all.”

She was gone before he could protest, and five minutes later she
was teaching him how to keep two puppies warm inside his coat,
while he wondered grimly what it was that the Aryan languages
had not succeeded in teaching him.

“What else do you like besides puppies?” he asked; “dolls?”

“Dolls!” she said contemptuously. “As if any one who could
get animals would ever want dead things. I’ve always hated
dolls.”

“I,” said the philologist slowly, “have lived with dead things
for twenty years.”

“Oh well,” said the child, “that was really quite unnecessary.
There are always lots of puppies about everywhere. So it was
clearly your own fault, wasn’t it?”

“Perhaps it was,” said the philologist.

“Any one can see,” she went on in her frank manner, “that
you’re not really fond of puppies, or else you would be able to hold
them without strangling them. I think I’d better take them,
hadn’t I?”

While she was gone the philologist lay back in his chair and

                                                pondered.

pondered. And he was looking critically at himself in the mirror
when she opened the door and came in again.

“Sit down child, and get warm,” he said brusquely; “you
shouldn’t have gone to that cold stable this time of night.”

“Why not? I always do things like that. There’s no one to
stop me, you see. Besides I expect no one knows except Rob.”

“Who’s Rob?” was his inevitable question.

“Oh, don’t you know? Rob is Daddy’s pupil of course.
Daddy teaches him lots of things, like Latin and physiology.
Rob is awfully clever, and he can breed better terriers than Upton
at the lodge. Im awfully fond of Rob.”

The philologist made a mental synopsis of Rob’s character
which depicted him as anything but a pleasant young fellow.

“I suppose you’re clever too, aren’t you?” he heard her
saying.

“No,” he replied irritably, ” I don’t know anything. Go on
telling me about yourself, child.”

“But,” persisted Agnes, “why do you have such a lot of papers
if you are not clever?”

“That’s just what I don’t know,” he said, “they have not
taught me how to hold a puppy without strangling it, have they?”

“No,” said the child, still looking straight at him with wide
open eyes, “but you could soon learn that. It’s awfully easy,
really. There’s something about a puppy that won’t let you hurt
it, however stupid you are. I could soon teach you all there is to
learn about puppies. It’s the other things I can’t learn.”

“Never mind about the other things, they are not worth
learning, my child,” said the philologist, as he boldly passed his
fingers through her thick hair. She moved a little restively, and
then looked up at him quickly with a comical expression of
concern on her face.

                                                “I say,”

“I say,” she began, and paused.

“What’s the matter now?” he asked.

“Well, you know, I’m — I’m hungry,” she said, and then
laughed as he called himself a brute and sprang to his feet. “No,
don’t ring,” she added imploringly, “I can’t stand any more of
that woman to-night. Don’t you think you could go and
forage?”

Their friendship was in no way weakened by their impromptu
meal over the fire; and when they had finished, and the writing
table with its sheets of valuable manuscript was strewn with
crumbs, the philologist ventured to renew the conversation on a
more natural basis than before.

“Hands cold?” he said, and touched one of them.

“A little,” she said, and put them both into his.

“It’s very good of you to come and cheer a lonely old man like
this,” he went on, half expecting her to contradict his words.

“Oh, but I couldn’t help coming, could I?” she cried laughing.
“And the first thing I did was to want to go back again!”

“And I wouldn’t let you, would I?” he pursued, glancing,
still nervously, at the large grey eyes that met his so unflinchingly.

“All the same, I don’t believe you are a bit lonely,” said the
child, looking away into the fire, “you have got your book about
the Aryan things, haven’t you?”

“Of course I have got my book about the Aryan things, but
that isn’t everything,” exclaimed the philologist with an indefinite
feeling of irritation; “for instance, it does not help me to amuse
you when you pay me a visit. And to-morrow, when you get
home to your father and Rob, you won’t want to come back again
to an old man who can only talk about Aryan roots. Do you
think you will, child?”

The last words were added insinuatingly, and the philologist

                                                held

held his breath when he had said them, but Agnes only laughed
again and kicked away a lighted coal that had fallen into the
fender.

“Why not?” she said carelessly, “I don’t suppose you’d be
any worse than Daddy when he is writing a new sermon. Only
of course that isn’t often.”

The philologist was seized with one of his fits of unreasonable
anger.

“Really, you are a singularly dense child,” he exclaimed,
dropping her hands roughly and thrusting his own into his
pockets; “I always knew that children were tiresome little beasts,
but I did think they had some perspicacity as well.”

Agnes stared and asked if she had done anything.

“Done anything? ” shouted the philologist, jumping out of his
chair and scowling down at her, “it’s time you learned I am not
here to be laughed at just because I am an intellectual old fool!
Don’t you know why I am here, eh? I am here to benefit man-
kind by the knowledge I have been accumulating for twenty
years and more; and you may stare at me as much as you like
with those confounded great eyes of yours, but I’ll drive something
into your bit of a head before I’ve done with you. Oh yes, I
will. And if you don’t ride that pony of yours over here once a
week and do as I tell you when you get here, I’ll be — ”

He did not mention his ultimate destination, for he caught sight
of her face in time, and he thought she looked frightened. So he
sat down again abruptly, and growled out an apology.

“I say, do you often do that ?” she asked, hiding her face from
him with her hand. “Because it’s most awfully funny.”

The astonished philologist had no time to reply before she
broke into a great peal of maddening laughter, such mirthful,
mocking laughter that he was almost stunned by it, and yet was

                                                possessed

possessed at the same time of a desperate impulse to flee from
her.

When she looked up again he was lighting a candle with his
back turned to her.

“Allow me to tell you it is bedtime,” he said shortly.

She got up and came across the room, and stood just behind him.

“I say, you — you are not wild with me, are you?” she asked
wistfully.

“I think you are an exceedingly ill-mannered child,” he replied
without turning round.

She sighed penitently.

“I’m so sorry, because, you know, I do really think it was nice
of you to offer to teach me. And if you still mean it, I will
really come over every week and try to learn something. And —
and — do you know, I think I’m rather glad Gobbo did put his
foot into that rabbit-hole to-day.”

The philologist moved slowly round and scanned her upturned
anxious face. The extreme innocence of her expression, and the
utter absence of mischief in the recesses of her deep eyes, succeeded
in dispelling his anger. But he had a dim idea that the situation
demanded something more definite from him, and the brilliant
thought came to him, that of course she was only a child after all,
and had therefore to be treated like a child, and he believed that
children always expected to be kissed when they said they were
sorry. So he hastily put both his hands behind him, and stooped
very stiffly, and placed a kiss on her cheek, and then backed into
the table and pushed her towards the door.

“There, there, bedtime now, and we won’t say any more
about it,” he muttered awkwardly.

But to his discomfiture, she whirled round and faced him with
her eyes blazing and her lips parted.

                                                “How

“How dare you?” she gasped. “I — it — it is a great shame,
and I shall tell Rob. That s the second time I’ve been treated
like a baby to-day. You’re a horrid, musty old man!”

The door slammed, and her exit was succeeded by a profound
silence. Then the bewildered man returned slowly to the fire
place, and looked at the chair in which she had just been
sitting.

“Yes,” he said out loud with an effort, “I suppose there is still
my book about the Aryan things.”

∗∗∗∗∗

One sunny day in the late spring, they were sitting together
in the garden. It was their last lesson, but they were making no
pretence of learning anything. The philologist was feeling con-
scious of something he wanted to say to her before she went, and
he did not know how to say it, and he did not attempt to begin.
And Agnes, as usual, was doing most of the talking, though when
she asked him the natural questions that belonged to her age and
her womanhood, he ran the risk of her youthful contempt and
shook his head silently in reply, for he knew he had ignored the
same questions years ago, and it was too late now to go back and
search for the answers to them. And the dew came at their feet
and made them shiver, and the sun went down behind the hedge
and sent fluttering rays of light across their faces, and the chestnut-
tree dropped fluttering showers of pink blossoms on their bare
heads, until at last Agnes cried out that she must be going, and
they walked across the lawn with their arms locked.

When he lifted her on her pony he would have given all the
languages he knew to be able to speak the one language he was
too old to learn.

“Agnes,” he said, “have you enjoyed your lessons?”

She darted him a mischievous look.

                                                “Well,

“Well, there hasn’t been much Sanskrit about them, has
there?” she said demurely.

“I suppose you mean,” said the philologist a little sulkily, “that
I can’t even teach you what I do know.”

“No, I didn’t mean that,” she said composedly; ” I meant that
I was too stupid, or too old, or something, to learn.”

“Old? What are you talking about, you absurd child?” he
cried angrily. ” You will never know what it is to be old, you.
It is the deepest hell in God’s earth. Don’t be ridiculous!”

“Then I don’t know how it was, and it doesn’t matter much,
does it? Anyhow we have had great fun, and that is the principal
thing. Good-bye,” she said.

He only ventured to kiss her riding glove passionately, as he
guided her pony out of the gate, though the knowledge he had once
thrown away, would have told him that he might have done more,
and yet not offended her.

“How queer he is,” thought the child at the bottom of the lane,
as she stopped to arrange her stirrup. “I don’t think I ever knew
any one quite so musty. I shall ask Rob — ”

A shout from behind made her look round, and there was the
philologist running after her as fast as he could, with his odd
shambling gait and his loosely swinging arms.

“It is only, that is — ” he gasped wildly, ” I — I have the inten-
tion of driving down to see your father to-morrow.”

“Is that all? How awfully funny you are sometimes,” cried
Agnes with a shout of laughter, as she gave her pony a cut with
the whip. And they both vanished round the corner, and left
the philologist standing where he was, staring silently after them.

“I don’t think he has often been laughed at before,” she told
Rob that evening, as they gave Gobbo his feed in the dimly lighted
stable at home.

                                                Rob’s

Rob’s arm was round her waist, and Rob’s face was close to hers
as she said this; and he kissed her three times very gently at the
end of her confession, and whispered in her ear:

“Poor chap! He’s got something to learn. And it isn’t
Sanskrit, is it, dear?”

But the philologist never learned it. And he never drove over
to see her father as he had intended. He went for a long walk
instead, and his path led him by chance through a wood some miles
off, where he found Gobbo grazing by himself among the bracken,
and whence he returned in hot haste, and without his hat, and very
dishevelled.

He found Tom waiting to speak to him when he at last reached
home and burst into his study.

“What the dev — ?” he began furiously, and then stopped
for sheer want of breath, for he had run all the way back without
stopping.

“If you please, sir,” began Tom stolidly, “what be I to do with
them two puppies you was a-keeping of for Miss Agnes? They
be nigh upon ten weeks — ”

“Do with them?” shouted the exasperated philologist. “Drown
them, of course, you fool! Drown them, and never mention such
farmyard details to me again. Do you take me for a young animal
with insolent eyes and a dandy moustache and a soft voice? Eh?
Do you, sir? Then clear out of my sight at once and go to the
deuce with your puppies. Don’t you know I have got my book
to write on the Aryan — ?”

But the philologist’s words ended in a great sob, and he
dropped heavily into a chair, while Tom slouched awkwardly out
of the room.

For Tom, too, understood.

Suggestion

By Mrs. Ernest Leverson