by Grant Allen
“I’d rather a great deal talk with you, Hugh,” Elsie murmured gently, looking down at the sands with an apparently sudden geological interest in their minute composition.
“I’m proud to hear it; so would I,” Hugh answered gallantly. “But we mustn’t be selfish. I hate selfishness. I’ll sacrifice myself by-and-by on the altar of fraternity to give Relf a turn in due season. Meanwhile, Elsie, let’s be happy together while we can. Moments like these don’t come to one often in the course of a lifetime. They’re as rare as rubies and as all good things. When they do come, I prize them far too much to think of wasting them in petty altercation.”
They strolled about among the undulating dunes for an hour or more, talking in that vague emotional way that young men and maidens naturally fall into when they walk together by the shore of the great deep, and each very much pleased with the other’s society, as usually happens under similar circumstances. The dunes were indeed a lovely place for flirting in, as if made for the purpose — high billowy hillocks of blown sand, all white and firm, and rolling like chalk downs, but matted together underfoot with a tussocky network of spurges and campions and soldanella convolvulus. In the tiny combes and valleys In between, where tall reed-like grasses made a sort of petty imitation jungle, you could sit down unobserved under the lee of some mimic range of mountains, and take your ease in an enchanted garden, like sultans and sultanas of the “Arabian Nights,” without risk of intrusion. The sea tumbled in gently on one side upon the long white beach; the river ran on the other just within the belt of blown sandhills; and wedged between the two, in a long line, the barrier ridge of miniature wolds stretched away for miles and miles in long perspective toward the southern horizon. It was a lotus-eating place, to lie down and dream and make love forever. As Hugh sat there idly with Elsie by his side under the lee of the dunes, he wondered the Squire could ever have had the bad taste to object to the generous east wind which was overwhelming his miserable utilitarian salt-marsh pastures with this quaint little fairyland of tiny knolls and Liliputian valleys. For his own part, Hugh was duly grateful to that unconscious atmospheric landscape gardener for his admirable additions to the flat Suffolk scenery; he w anted nothing better or sweeter in life than to lie here for ever stretched at his ease in the sun, and talk of poetry and love with Elsie. —
At the end of an hour, however, he roused himself sturdily. Life, says the philosopher, is not all beer and skittles; nor is it all poetry and dalliance either. “Stern duty sways our lives against our will,” say the “Echoes from Callimachus.” It’s all very well, at odd moments, to sport with Amaryllis in the shade, or with the tangles of Neaera’s hair, for a reasonable period. But if Amaryllis has no money of her own, or if Neaera is a penniless governess in a country-house, the wise man must sacrifice sentiment at last to solid advantages; he must quit Amaryllis in search of Phyllis, or reject Neaera in favour of Vera, that opulent virgin, who has lands and houses, messuages and tenements, stocks and shares, and is a ward in Chancery. Face to face with such a sad necessity, Hugh now found himself. He was really grieved that the circumstances of the case compelled him to tear himself unwillingly away from Elsie; he was so thoroughly enjoying himself in his own pet way; but duty, duty — duty before everything! The slave of duty jumped up with a start.
“My dear child,” he exclaimed, glancing hastily at his watch, “Relf will really never forgive me. I’m sure it’s time for us to set to comers and change partners. Not, of course, that I want to do it myself. For two people who are not engaged, I think we’ve had a very snug little time of it here together, Elsie. But a bargain’s a bargain, and Relf must be inwardly grinding his teeth at me. — Let’s go and meet them.”
Elsie rose more slowly and wistfully. “I’m never so happy anywhere, Hugh,” she said with a lingering cadence, “as when you’re with me.”
“And yet we are not engaged,” Hugh went on in a meditative murmur— “were not engaged. We’re only cousins! For mere cousins, our cousinly solicitude for one another’s welfare is truly touching.’ If all families were only as united as ours, now! interpreters of prophecy would not have far to seek for the date of the millennium. Well, well, instructress of youth, we must look out for these other young people; and if I were you, experience would suggest to me the desirability of not coming upon them from behind too unexpectedly or abruptly. A fellow-feeling makes us wondrous kind. Relf is young, and the pretty pupil is by no means unattractive.”
“I’d trust Winifred as implicitly—” Elsie began, and broke off suddenly.
“As you’d trust yourself,” Hugh put in, with a little quiet irony, completing her sentence. “No doubt, no doubt; I can readily believe it. But even you and I — who are staider and older, and merely cousins — wouldn’t have cared to be disturbed too abruptly just now’, you know, when we were pulling soldanellas to pieces in concert in the hollow down yonder. I shall climb to the top of the big sandhill there, and from that specular mount — as Satan remarks in ‘Paradise Regained’ — I shall spy from afar where Relf has wandered off to with the immaculate Winifred. — Ah, there they are, over yonder by the beach, looking for pebbles or something — I suppose amber. Let’s go over to them, Elsie, and change partners. Common politeness compels one, of course, to pay some attention to one’s host’s daughter.”
As they strolled away again, with a change of partners, back toward the spot where Mrs. Meysey was somewhat anxiously awaiting them, Hugh and Winifred turned their talk casually on Elsie’s manifold charms and excellences. “She’s a sweet, isn’t she?” Winifred cried to her new acquaintance in enthusiastic appreciation. “Did you ever in your life meet anybody like her?”
“No, never,” Hugh answered with candid praise. Candor was always Hugh’s special cue. “She’s a dear, good girl, and I like her immensely. I’m proud of her too. The only inheritance I ever received from my family is my cousinship to Elsie; and I duly prize it as my sole heirloom from fifty generations of penniless Massingers.”
“Then you’re very fond of her, Mr. Massinger?”
“Yes, very fond of her. When a man’s only got one relative in the world, he naturally values that unique possession far more than those who have a couple of dozen or so of all sexes and ages, assorted. Some people suffer from too much family; my misfortune is that, being a naturally affectionate man, I suffer from too little. It’s the old case of the one ewe lamb; Elsie is to me my brothers and my sisters, and my cousins and my aunts, all rolled into one, like the supers at the theatre.”
“And are you and she—” Winifred began timidly.
All girls are naturally inquisitive on that important question.
Hugh broke her off with a quick, little laugh. “Oh dear no, nothing of the sort,” he answered hastily, in his jaunty way. “We’re not engaged, if that’s what you mean, Miss Meysey; nor at all likely to be. Our affection, though profound, is of the brotherly and sisterly order only. It’s much nicer so, of course. When people are engaged, they’re always looking forward with yearning and longing and other unpleasant internal feelings, much enlarged upon in Miss Virginia Gabriel’s songs, to a delusive future. When they’re simply friends, or brothers and sisters, they can enjoy their friendship or their fraternity in the present tense, without forever gazing ahead with wistful eyes toward a distant and ever-receding horizon.”
“But why need it recede?” Winifred asked innocently.
“Why need it recede? Ah, there you pose me. Well, it needn’t, of course, among the rich and the mighty. If people are swells, and amply provided for by their godfathers and godmothers at their baptism, or otherwise, they can marry at once; but the poor and the struggling — that’s Elsie and me, you know, Miss Meysey — the poor and the struggling get engaged foolishly, and hope and hope for a humble cottage — the poetical cottage, all draped with roses and wild honeysuckle, and the well-attired woodbine — and toil and moil and labor exceedingly, and find the cottage receding, receding, receding still, away off in the dista
nce, while they plow their way through the hopeless years, just as the horizon recedes forever before you when you steer straight out for it in a boat at sea. The moral is — poor folks should not indulge in the luxury of hearts, and should wrap themselves up severely in their own interests, till they’re wholly and utterly and irretrievably selfish.”
“And are you selfish, I wonder, Mr. Massinger?”
“I try to be, of course, from a sense of duty; though I’m afraid I make a very poor hand at it. I was born with a heart, and do what I will, I can’t quite stifle that irrepressible natural organ. — But I take, it all out, I believe, in the end, in writing’ verses.”
“You sent Elsie some verses this morning,” Winifred broke out in an artless way, as if she were merely stating a common fact of every day experience.
Hugh had some difficulty in expressing a start, and in recovering his composure so as to answer unconcernedly: “Oh, she showed them to you, then, did she?” (How thoughtless of him to have posted those poor rhymes to Elsie, when he might have known beforehand she would confide them at once to Miss Meysey’s sympathetic ear!)
“No, she didn’t show them to me,” Winifred replied, in the same careless easy way as before. “I saw them drop out of the envelope, that’s all; and Elsie put them away as soon as she saw they were verses; but I was sure they were yours because I know your handwriting — Elsie’s shown me bits of your letters sometimes.”
“I often send copies of my little pieces to Elsie before I print them,” Hugh went on casually, in his most candid manner. “It may be vain of me, but I like her to see them. She’s a capital critic, Elsie; women often are: she sometimes suggests to me most valuable alterations and modifications in some of my verses.”
“Tell me these ones,” Winifred asked abruptly, with a little blush.
It was a trying moment. What was Hugh to do? The verses he had actually sent to Elsie were all emotion and devotion, and hearts and darts, and fairest and thou wearest, and charms and arms; amorous and clamorous chimed together like old friends in one stanza, and sorrow dispelled itself to-morrow with its usual cheerful punctuality in the next. To recite them to Winifred as they stood would be to retire at once from his half-projected siege of the pretty little heiress’ heart and hand. For that decisive step Hugh was not at present entirely prepared. He musn’t allow himself to be beaten by such a scholars mate as this. He cleared his throat, and began boldly on another piece, ringing out his lines with a sonorous lilt — a set of silly, garrulous, childish verses he had written long since, but never published, about some merry sea-elves in an enchanted submarine fairy country.
A tiny fay
At the bottom lay
Of a purple bay
Unruffled,
On whose crystal floor
The distant roar
From the surf-bound shore
Was muffled.
With his fairy wife
He passed his life
Undimmed by strife
Or quarrel;
And the livelong day
They would merrily play
Through a labyrinth gay
With coral.
They loved to dwell
In a pearly shell,
And to deck their cell
With amber;
Or amid the caves
That the riplet laves
And the beryl paves
To clamber.
He went on so, with his jigging versicles, line after line, as they walked along the firm white sand together, through several foolish sing-song stanzas; till at last, when he was more than half-way through the meaningless little piece, a sudden thought pulled him up abruptly. He had chosen, as he thought, the most innocent and non-committing bit of utter trash in all his private poetical repertory; but now, as he repeated it over to Winifred with easy intonation, swinging his stick to keep time as he went on, he recollected all at once that the last rhymes flew off at a tangent to a very personal conclusion — and what was worse, were addressed, too, not to Elsie, but very obviously to another lady! The end was somewhat after this wise:
On a darting-shrimp
Our quaint little imp
With bridle of gimp
Would gambol;
Or across the back
Of a sea-horse black
As a gentleman’s hack
He’d amble.
Of emerald green
And sapphire’s sheen
He made his queen
A tiar;
And the merry two
Their whole life through
Were as happy as you
And I are.
And then came the seriously compromising bit:
But if you say
You think this lay
Of the tiny fay
Too silly,
Let it have the praise
My eye betrays
To your own sweet gaze.
My Lily.
For a man he tries
And he toils and sighs
To be very wise
And witty;
But a dear little dame
Has enough of fame
If she wins the name
Of pretty.
Lily! Lily! Oh, that discomposing, unfortunate, compromising Lily! He had met her down in Warwickshire two seasons since, at a country-house where they were both staying, and had fallen over head and ears in love with her — then. Now, he only wished with all his heart and soul she and her fays were at the bottom of the sea in a body together. For of course she was penniless. If not, by this time she would no doubt have been Mrs. Massinger.
Hugh Massinger was a capital actor; but even he could hardly have ventured to pretend with a grave face that those Lily verses had ever been addressed to Elsie Challoner. Everything depended on his presence of mind and a bold resolve. He hesitated for a moment at the “emerald green and sapphire’s sheen,” and seemed as though he couldn’t recall the next line. After a minute or two’s pretended searching he recovered it feebly, and then he stumbled again over the end of the stanza.
“It’s no use,” he cried at last, as if angry with himself. “I should only murder them if I were to go on now. I’ve forgotten the rest. The words escape me. And they’re really not worth your seriously listening to.”
“I like them,” Winifred said in her simple way. ‘‘They’re so easy to understand; so melodious and meaningless. I love verse that you don’t have to puzzle over. I can’t bear Browning for that — he’s so impossible to make anything sensible out of. But I adore silly little things like these, that go in at one ear and out of the other, and really sound as if they meant something. — I shall ask Elsie to tell me the end of them.”
Here was indeed a dilemma! Suppose she did, and suppose Elsie showed her the real verses! At all hazards, he must extricate himself somehow from this impossible situation.
“I wish you wouldn’t,” he said gently, in his softest and most persuasive voice. “Elsie mightn’t like you to know I sent her my versts — though there’s nothing in it — girls are so sensitive sometimes about these matters. — But I’ll tell you what I’ll do, if you’ll kindly allow me; I’ll write you out the end of them when I get home to the inn, and bring them written out in full, a nice clear copy, the next time I have the pleasure of seeing you.” (“I can alter the end somehow,” he thought to himself with a sudden inspiration, “ami dress them up innocently one way or another with fresh rhymes, so as to have no special applicability of any sort to anybody or anything anywhere in particular.”)
“Thank you,” Winifred replied, with evident pleasure. “I should like that ever so much better. It’ll be so nice to have a poet’s verses written out for one’s self in his own handwriting.”
“You do me too much honor,” Hugh answered, with his mock little bow. “I don’t pretend to be a poet at all; I’m only a versifier.”
They joined the old folks in time by the yawl. The Squire was getting anxious to go back to his garden no
w — he foresaw rain in the sky to westward.
Hugh glanced hastily at his watch with a sigh. “I must be going back, too,” he cried. “It’s nearly five now; we can’t be up at the village till six. Post goes out at nine, they say, and I have a book to review before post-time. It must positively reach town not later than to-morrow morning. And what’s worse, I haven’t yet so much as begun to dip into it.”
“But you can never read it, and review it too, in three hours!” Winifred exclaimed, aghast.
“Precisely so,” Hugh answered in his jaunty way, with a stifled yawn; “and therefore I propose to omit the reading as a very unnecessary and wasteful preliminary. It often prejudices one against a book to know what’s in it. You approach a work you haven’t read with a mind unbiased by preconceived impressions. Besides, this is only a three-volume novel; they’re all alike; it doesn’t matter. You can say the plot is crude and ill-constructed, the dialogue feeble, the descriptions vile, the situations borrowed, and the characters all mere conventional puppets. The same review will do equally well for the whole stupid lot of them. I usually follow Sydney Smith’s method in that matter; I cut a few pages at random, here and there, and then smell the paper-knife.”
