CHAPTER XIX.
LA FEMME INCOMPRISE.
Lord Silverdale had gone and there was now no need for Lillie topreserve the factitious cheerfulness with which she had listened to hisusual poem, while her thoughts were full of other and even moredepressing things. Margaret Linbridge's miracle had almost underminedthe President's faith in the steadfastness of her sex; she turnedmentally to the yet unaccepted Wee Winnie for consolation, condemningher own half-hearted attitude towards that sturdy soul, and almostpersuading herself that salvation lay in spats. At any rate long skirtsseemed the last thing in the world to find true women in.
But providence had not exhausted its miracles, and Lillie was not tospend a miserable afternoon. The miracle was speeding along towards heron the top of an omnibus--a miracle of beauty and smartness. On reachingthe vicinity of the Old Maid's Club, the miracle, which was of course ofthe female gender, tapped the driver amicably upon the hat with herparasol and said "Stop please." The _petite_ creature was the spirit ofself-help itself and scorned the aid of the gentleman in front of her,preferring to knock off his hat and crush the driver's so long as theindependence of womanhood was maintained. But she maintained itcharmingly and without malice and gave the conductor a sweet smile inaddition to his fare as she tripped away to the Old Maids' Club.
_Amicably said, "Stop please."_]
Lillie was fascinated the instant Turple the magnificent announced "MissWilkins" in suave tones. The mere advent of a candidate raised herspirits and she found herself chatting freely with her visitor evenbefore she had put her through the catechism. But the catechism came atlast.
"Why do I want to join you?" asked the miracle. "Because I am disgustedwith my lover--because I am a _femme incomprise_. Oh, don't stare at meas if I were a medley of megrims and fashionable ailments, I'm the veryopposite of that. Mine is a buoyant, breezy, healthy nature,straightforward and simple. That's why I complain of beingmisunderstood. My lover is a poet--and the misunderstanding I have toendure at his hands is something appalling. Every man is a bit of a poetwhere woman is concerned, and so every woman is more or lessmisunderstood, but when you are unfortunate enough to excite theaffection of a real whole poet--well, that way madness lies. Your wordsare twisted into meanings you never intended, your motives aremisconstrued, and your simplest actions are distorted. Silverplume, forit is the well-known author of 'Poems of Compassion' that I have had themisfortune to captivate, never calls without laying a sonnet next day;in which remarks, that must be most misleading to those who do not knowme, occur with painful frequency. His allowance is two kisses perday--one of salutation, one of farewell. We have only been actuallyengaged two months, yet I have counted up two hundred and thirty-ninedistinct and separate kisses in the voluminous 'Sonnet Series' which hehas devoted to our engagement, and, what is worse, he describes himselfas depositing them.
"'Where at thy flower-mouth exiguous The purple passion mantles to the brim.'
It sounds as if I was berouged like a dowager. Purple passion, indeed!I let him kiss me because he appears to like it and because thereseems something wrong about it--but as for really caring a pin one wayor another, well, you Miss Dulcimer, know how much there is in that!This 'Sonnet Series' promises to be endless, the course of ouracquaintanceship is depicted in its most minute phases with the mostelaborate inaccuracy--if I smile, if I say: 'How do you do?' if I put myhand to my forehead, if I look into the fire, down go fourteen linesgiving a whole world of significance to my meanest actions, and makingHimalayas out of the most microscopic molehills. I am credited withthoughts I never dreamed of and sentiments I never felt, till I askmyself whether any other woman was ever so cruelly misunderstood as I? Igrow afraid to do or say anything, lest I bring upon my head a newsonnet. But even so I cannot help _looking_ something or the other; andwhen I come to read the sonnet I find it is always the other. Once Irefused to see him for a whole week, but that only resulted in seven'Sonnets of Absence,' imaginatively depicting what I was saying anddoing each day, and containing a detailed analysis of his ownsensations, as well as reminiscences of past happy hours together. Mostof them I had no recollection of, and the only one I could at all sharewas that of a morning we spent on the Ramsgate cliffs where Silverplumeput his handkerchief over his face and fell asleep. In the last line ofthe sonnet it came out:
"'There mid the poppies of the planisphere, I swooned for very joy and wearihead.'
But I knew it by the poppies. Then, dear Miss Dulcimer, you should justsee the things he calls me--'Love's gonfalon and lodestar' and what-not.Very often I can't even find them in the dictionary and it makes meuneasy. Heaven knows what he may be saying about me! When he talks of
"'The rack of unevasive lunar things'
I do not so much complain, because it's their concern if they arelibelled. It is different with incomprehensible remarks flungunmistakably at my own head such as
"'O chariest of Caryatides.'
It sounds like a reproach and I should like to know what I have done todeserve it. And then his general remarks are so monotonouslyunintelligible. One of his longest poetical epistles, which is burntinto my memory because I had to pay twopence for extra postage, beganwith this lament:
"'O sweet are roses in the summer time And Indian naiads' weary walruses And yet two-morrow never comes to-day.'
I cannot see any way out of it all except by breaking off ourengagement. When we were first engaged, I don't deny I rather likedbeing written about in lovely-sounding lines but it is a sweet one issoon surfeited with, and Silverplume has raved about me to that extentthat he has made me look ridiculous in the eyes of all my friends. If hehad been moderate, they would have been envious; now they laugh whenthey read of my wonderful charms, of my lithe snake's mouth, and my facewhich shames the sun and my Epipsychidiontic eyes (whatever that may be)and my
"'Wee waist that holds the cosmos in its span,'
and say he is poking fun at me. But Silverplume is quite serious--I amsure of that, and it is the worst feature of the case. He carries onjust the same in conversation, with the most improper allusions toheathen goddesses, and seems really to believe that I am absorbed in thesunset when I am thinking what to wear to-morrow. Just to give you anidea of how he misinterprets my silence let me read to you one of hissonnets called:
"'MOONSHINE.
"'Walking a space betwixt the double Naught, The What Is Bound to Be and What Has Been, How sweet with Thee beneath the moonlit treen, O woman-soul immaculately wrought, To sit and catch a harmony uncaught Within a world that mocks with margarine, In chastened silence, mystic, epicene, Exchanging incommunicable thought.
"'Diana, Death may doom and Time may toss, And sundry other kindred things occur, But Hell itself can never turn to loss, Though Mephistopheles his stumps should stir, That day, when introduced at Charing Cross, I smiled and doffed my silken cylinder.'
"Another distressing feature about Silverplume--indeed, I think aboutall men--is their continuous capacity for love-making. You know, my dearMiss Dulcimer, with us it is a matter of times and seasons--we arecreatures of strange and subtle susceptibilities, sometimes we are inthe mood for love and ready to respond to all shades of sentimentality,but at other moments (and these the majority) men's amorous advances jarhorribly. Men do not know this. Ever ready to make love themselves theythink all moments are the same to us as to them. And of all men, poetsare the most prepared to make love at a moment's notice. So thatSilverplume himself is almost more trying than his verses."
"But after all you need not read them," observed Lillie. "They pleasehim and they do not hurt you. And you have always the consolation ofremembering it is not you he loves but the paragon he has evolved fromhis inner consciousness. Even taking into account his perennialaffectionateness, your reason for refusing him seems scarcely strongenough."
"Ah, wa
it a moment--You have not heard the worst! I might perhaps havetolerated his metrical misinterpretations--indeed on my sending him avigorous protest against the inaccuracies of his last collection (theycame out so much more glaringly when brought all together from thevarious scattered publications to which Silverplume originallycontributed them) he sent me back a semi-apologetic explanation thusconceived:
"'TO CELIA.'
"(You know of course my name is Diana, but that is his way.)
"''Tis not alone thy sweet eyes' gleam Nor sunny glances, For which I weave so oft a dream Of dainty fancies.
"''Tis not alone thy witching play Of grace fantastic That makes me chant so oft a lay Encomiastic.
"'Both editors and thee I see, Thy face, their purses. I offer heart and soul to thee, To them my verses.'
"I was partially mollified by this, for if his poems were not merelycomplimentary, and he really got paid for them, one might put up withinspiring them. We were reconciled and he took me to a reception at thehouse of a wealthy friend of his, a fellow-member of the Sonneteers'Society. It was here that I saw a sight that froze my young blood andwarned me upon the edge of what a precipice I was standing. When we gotinto the drawing-room, the first thing we saw was an awful apparition ina corner--a hideous, unkempt, unwashed man in a dressing-gown andslippers, with his eyes rolling wildly and his lips moving rhythmically.It was the host.
"'Don't speak to him,' whispered the hostess. 'He doesn't see us. He hasbeen like that all day. He came down to look to the decorations thismorning, when the idea took him and he has been glued to the spot eversince. He has forgotten all about the reception--he doesn't know we'rehere and I thought it best not to disturb him till he is safelydelivered of the sonnet.'
"'You are quite right,' everybody said in sympathetic awestruck tonesand left a magic circle round the poet in labor. But I felt a shudderrun through my whole being. 'Goodness gracious, Silverplume,' I said,'is this the way you poets go on?'"
"'No, no, Diana,' he assured me. 'It is all tommyrot (I quoteSilverplume's words). The beggar is just bringing out a new volume, andalthough his wife has always distributed the most lavish hospitality tothe critics, he has never been able to get himself taken seriously as apoet. There will be lots of critics here to-night and he is playing hislast card. If he is not a genius now, he never will be.'
_The poet plays his last card._]
"'Oh, of course,' I replied sceptically, 'two of a trade.' I made himtake me away and that was the end of our engagement. Even as it was,Silverplume's neglect of his appearance had been a constant thorn in myside, and if this was so before marriage, what could I hope for after?It was all very well for him to say his friend was only shamming, buteven so, how did I know he would not be reduced to that sort of thinghimself when his popularity faded and younger rivals came along."
Lillie, who seemed to have some _arriere-pensee_, entered into ananimated defence of the poet, but Miss Wilkins stood her ground andrefused to withdraw her candidature.
"I don't want you to withdraw your candidature," said Lillie, frankly."I shall be charmed to entertain it. I am only arguing upon the generalquestion."
And, indeed, Lillie was enraptured with Miss Wilkins. It was theattraction of opposites. A matter-of-fact woman who could reject apoet's love appealed to her with irresistible piquancy. Miss Wilkinsstayed on to tea (by which time she had become Diana) and they gossipedon all sorts of subjects, and Lillie gave her the outlines of thequeerest stories of past candidates and in the Old Maids' Club thatafternoon all went merry as a marriage bell.
"Well, good-bye, Lillie," said Diana at last.
"Good-bye, Diana," returned Lillie. "Now _I_ understand you I hope youwon't consider yourself a _femme incomprmise_ any longer."
"It is only the men I complained of, dear."
"But we must ever remain _incomprises_ by man," said Lillie. "_Femmeincomprise_--why, it is the badge of all our sex."
"Yes," answered Diana. "A woman letting down her back hair is tragic toa man; to us she only recalls bedroom gossip. Good-bye."
And nodding brightly the brisk little creature sallied into the streetand captured a passing 'bus.
The Old Maids' Club Page 19
