Works of Grant Allen

by Grant Allen

  Nor was that all. Hugh’s affairs were getting more and more involved in other ways also. Those were the days of the decline of Squiredom. Agricultural depression had told upon the rents. Turnips were a failure. Mangolds were feeble. Hessian fly had made waste straw of old Grimes’ wheat crops. Barley had never done so badly for years. Foot-and-mouth disease and pleuro-pneumonia had combined with American competition and Australian mutton to lower prices and to starve landlords. Time was, indeed, when Hugh would have laughed aloud at the bare idea of being seriously affected by the fall in corn or taking a personal interest in the ridiculous details of the diseases of cattle. Such loathsome things were the business of the veterinaries. Now, however, he laughed on the wrong side of his mouth: he complained bitterly of the supineness of government in not stamping out the germs of rinderpest, and in taking so little care of the soil of England. Buff all his days till then, by political conviction, he began to go over to the Blues out of sheer chagrin. He doubted the wisdom of free trade, and coquetted openly with the local apostles of retributive protection. But rents came in worse and worse for all that, at each successive Whitestrand audit. The interest on the mortgage was hard to raise, and the servants’ wages at the Hall, it was whispered about, had fallen into arrears for a whole quarter. Clearly the young Squire must be short of funds; and nothing was afloat to help his exchequer into safer waters.

  But drowning men cling to the proverbial straw. For his own part, Hugh had high hopes at first of his “Life’s Philosophy.” He had trimmed his little bark most cunningly, he thought, to tempt the stormy sea of popular approbation. There was the big long poem for heavy ballast, and the songs and occasional pieces in his lightest vein for cork belts to redress the balance. Sooner or later, the world must surely catch glimpses of the truth, that it still inclosed a great “unknown Poet! He waited for the storm of applause to begin; the critics would doubtless soon get up their concerted paean. But one day, a few weeks after the volume was published, he took up a copy of the “Bystander,” that most superior review the special organ of his own special clique and read in it with hushed breath... a hostile notice to his new and hopeful volume. His heart sank as he read and read. Line after line, the sickening sense of failure deepened upon him. It had not been so in the old days. Then, the critics had hasted to bring him butter in a lordly dish. But now, all that was utterly changed. He read with a cheek flushed with indignation. At last, the review touched bottom. “Mr. Massinger,” said his critic in concluding his notice, “has long since retired, we aH know, to Lowther Arcadia. There, among the mimic ranges of the Suffolk sandhills a doll’s paradise of dale and mountain he has betaken himself with his pretty little pipe to the green side of a pretty little knoll, and has tuned his throat to a pretty little lay, all about a series of pretty little ladies, of the usual insipid Lowther-Arcadian style of beauty. Now, these waxen-faced damsels somehow fail to interest us. Their cheeks are all most becomingly red; their eyes are all most liquidly blue; their locks are all of the yellowest tow; and their philosophy is a cheap and ineffective mixture of the Elegant Extracts with the choicest old crusted English morals of immemorial proverbial wisdom. In short, they are unfortunately stuffed with sawdust. The long poem which gives a title to the volume, on the other hand, though molluscofd in its flabbiness, is as ambitious as it is feeble, and as dull as it is involved. Here, for example, selected from some five hundred equally inflated stanzas, are the nKxfest views Mr. Massinger now holds on his own position in the material Cosmos. The scene, we ought to explain, is laid in Oxford: the time, midnight or a little later: and the Bard speaks in propria persona:

  “‘The city lies below me wrapped in slumber; Mute and unmoved in all her streets she liee:

  ‘Mid rapid thoughts that throng me without number Plashes the phantom of an old surmise.

  Her hopes and fears and griefs are all sospentod:

  Ten thousand souls throughout her preomote take Sleep, in whose bosom life and death are blended, And I alone awake.

  “‘Am I alone the solitary center Of all the seeming universe around, With mocking senses, through whose portals enter Unmeaning phantasies of sight and sound?

  Are ail the countless minds wherewith I people The empty forms that float before my eyes Vain as the cloud that girds the distant steeple With snowy canopies?

  “‘Yet though the world be but myself unfolded Soul bent again on soul in mystic play No less each sense and thought and act is moulded By dead necessities I may not sway.

  Some mightier power against my will can move me; Some potent nothing force and overawe:

  Though I be all that is, I feel above me The godhead of blind law!’

  “Seven or eight pages of this hysterical, cartilaginous, invertebrate nonsense have failed to convince us that Mr. Massinger is really, as he seems implicitly to believe, the hub of the universe, and the sole intelligent or sentient being within the entire circle of organic creation. Many other poets, indeed, have thought the same, but few have been so candid as to express their opinion. We are tempted, therefore, to conclude our notice of our Bard’s singular views as to Mr. Massinger’s Place in Nature with a small apologue, in his own best manner, which we will venture to entitle “‘MARINE PHILOSOPHY IN SILLY SUFFOLK.

  “‘A jellyfish swam an East Anglian sea, And he said, “This world, it consists of me. There’s nothing above, and there’s nothing below, That a jellyfish ever can possibly know Since we’ve got no sight or hearing or smell — Beyond what our single sense can tell. Now all we can learn from the sense of touch Is the fact of our feelings, viewed as such; But to thinjk they have any external cause Is an inference clean against logical laws. Again, to suppose, as I’ve hitherto done, There are other jellyfish under the sun Is a pure assumption that can’t be backed By one jot of proof or one single fact:

  And being a bit of a submarine poet, I’ve written some amateur lines to show it. In fact (like Hume) I distinctly doubt If there’s anything else at all about: For the universe simply centers in me, And if I were not, why nothing would be!” Just then, a shark, who was passing by, Gobbled him down, in the twink of an eye: And he died, with a few convulsive twists: But, somehow, the universe still exists.’”

  Hugh laid down the “Bystander” on the table by his side with a burning sense of wrong and indignation. The measure he himself had often meted to others, therewithal had it been meted to him; and he realized now in his own person the bitterness of the stings he had often inflicted out of pure wantonness on endless young and anonymous authors. And how unjust, too, this sweeping condemnation, when he came to think of his splendid “Ode to Manetho,” his touching “Lines on the Death of a Skye Terrier,” his exquisitely humorous “Song of Fee-faw him!” He knew they were good, every verse and word of them. This was a crushing review, and from his own familiar friend as well; for he saw at once from that unmistakable style that it was Mitchison who had penned this cruel criticism. Cheyne Row had clearly cast off her recalcitrant son. He was to it now an outcast and a pariah, a wicked deserter to the camp of the Philistines.

  At the same moment, Winifred, on the sofa opposite, coughing her dry little cough from time to time, was flushing painfully over some funny passage or other she was reading with much gusto in the “Charing Cross Review.” They seldom spoke unnecessarily to one another nowadays. They were leading a life of mutual avoidance, as far as possible, communicating only on strictly practical topics, when occasion demanded, and not even then in the most amicable spirit. But just at that moment, Winifred’s flushed face filled Hugh with intense and profound suspicion. What could she be reading that made her blush so?

  “Let me see it,” he cried, as Winifred tried to smuggle away the paper unseen under a pile of magazines.

  “Oo, no! There’s nothing in it!” Winifred answered nervously.

  “I must see,” Hugh went on, and snatched it from her hand. Winifred fought hard to tear or to destroy it. But Hugh was too strong for her. He caught it and opened it. A single
phrase on a torn page caught his eye as he did so. “Verses addressed to Mr. Massinger of Whitestrand Hall, formerly a poet.” He glanced at the end. They were signed “A. H.” It was Arthur Hatherley.

  Bohemia had declared open war upon him. He saw why. Those tell-tale words, “Of Whitestrand Hall,” struck the keynote of its virtuous indignation. And that fellow Relf, too, had poisoned the mind of Cheyne Row against him. Henceforth, he might expect no quarter thence. His own familiar friands had turned to rend him. No more could he hope to roll the cheerful log. His dream of literary glory was gone clean gone vanished for ever.

  Winifred had lifted the paper which Hugh flung from him, and was skimming the “Bystander” review meanwhile. Her cheek flushed hotter and redder still. But she said never a word in any way about it. She wouldn’t seem to have noticed the attack. “Shall I accept Lady Mortmayne’s invitation?” she asked with a chilly heartsinking.

  Bohemia had clearly turned against them; but Philistia at least, Philistia was left to console their bosoms. If one can’t be a poet, one can at any rate be a snob. In the bitterness of his heart, Hugh answered: “Yes. Go anywhere on earth to a body with a handle.” Then he tried to rouse himself, to put on a cheerful and unconcerned manner. “I like to patronize art,” he went on with a hard smile, “and as a work of art I consider Lady Mortmayne almost perfect.”

  Winifred laid down her paper on the table. “What shall I say to her?” she asked glassily. She was a timid letter-writer. Even since their estrangement, Hugh most often dictated her society notes for her.

  “Dear Lady Mortmayne, we shall have great pleasure “ Hugh began with vigor.

  “Isn’t ‘we have great pleasure’ better English, Hugh?” Winifred asked quietly, as she examined her nib with close attention.

  “No,” Hugh blurted back, “certainly not. Shall have great pleasure’s quite good enough for me, so I suppose it’s good enough for you, too isn’t it?”

  “I don’t know about that. Literary English and society English are two distinct dialects.”

  Hugh bit his lip with an angry look. He was getting positively cruel now. “If you can write so well,” he muttered between his clenched teeth, “write it yourself. ‘Great pleasure in accepting your kind invitation for Thursday next’”

  “Doesn’t ‘Thursday the 11th’ sound rather more formal?” Winifred asked once more, looking up from her paper.

  “Of course it does. That’s just my reason for carefully avoiding it. Why on earth should you go out of your way to be so precious formal? Thursday next’s what everybody says in conversation. Write exactly as you always speak. Formal, indeed! Such absurd rubbish with a next-door neighbor!”

  “But she writes, ‘Lady Mortmayne requests the pleasure.’ I think I ought to answer in the third person.”

  “That’s because she was sending out ever so many invitations at once, all exactly alike. ‘Lady Mortmayne requests the bother I mean the pleasure of Mr and Mrs. So-and-so’s company.’ It’s different when you’re answering people you know intimately. You needn’t be absolutely wooden then. Besides, you’ve got to make that long explanation about those dahlia roots you remember you promised her. No literary man in all England would trust himself to write so complicated a letter as the dahlia roots must make, in the third person. Our language isn’t adapted to it; it can’t be done. But fools rush in where angels fear to tread, we all know perfectly. Write it, if you choose, in the third person.”

  “I think I will. I’ll begin all over again. Thanks very much for calling me a fool. I won’t return the compliment and call you an angel. ‘Mr and Mrs. Massinger have great pleasure ‘“

  “Will have great pleasure!”

  “Have great pleasure. I prefer it so, thank you. It’s better English. ‘Have great pleasure in accepting Lady Mortmayne’s kind invitation for Thursday the 11th, and will bring the dahlias she promised ‘“

  “Who promised? Lady Mortmayne?”

  “Oh, bother! I mean ‘the dahlias Mrs. Massinger promised, which she would have brought before, but she was unfortunately prevented by her gardener having quite inadvertently.”

  “For heaven’s sake, split it up into short sentences,” Hugh cried, on tenter-hooks. “I couldn’t let such a note as that go out of my house I mean, our house, Winifred if my life depended upon it. A man of letters allow his wife to make such an exhibition of impossible English! I won’t dictate to you in the third person the thing’s impossible: I’ll be no party to murdering our mother tongue but you might at least say, ‘Mrs. Massinger will at the same time bring the dahlias she promised Lady Mortmayne. They would have been sent before’ and so forth, and so forth, in logical clauses. My English style may not perhaps suit the exalted standard of our friends in the ‘Bystander,’ but I can at least avoid running a whole letter into one long tortuous snake-like sentence. I never lose myself in the sands of rhetoric. My English will parse if it won’t construe.”

  “I wish I was clever,” Winifred said, growing red, “and then I could write my own letters without you.”

  “‘Be good, my child, and let who will be clever:’ Charles Kingsley,” Hugh quoted provokingly. “‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God:’ Alexander Pope. (I think it was Pope: or was it Sam Johnson?) A placid woman runs him close, ecod: Hugh Massinger. Ecod’s a powerful weak rhyme, I, admit, but what can you expect from a mere impromptu? I only wish all women were placid. Well, the moral of these three immortal lines, selected from the works of three poets in three different ages born (Dryden), is simply this you do very well as you are, Winifred. Don’t seek to be clever. It doesn’t suit you. Take my advice. Leave it alone For if you do, you’ll find it in the end a complete failure.”

  “Hugh! You insult me.”

  “Very well then, my dear. You will be able to exercise Christian patience and resignation in pocketing the insult as I have to do from you very often.”

  Winifred shut down her writing-case with a bang and burst, not into tears, but into an uncontrollable fit of violent coughing. She coughed and coughed till her face was purple and livid with the effort. Hugh watched her silently, as hard as adamant. She had often coughed this way of late. The habit was growing on her. Hugh thought she ought to cure herself of it”

  “I shall go up next week again to consult Sir Anthony Wraxall,” she said at last, when she recovered her breath, gasping and choking. “Will you go with me, Hugh?”

  “We’ve no cash now to waste on junketing and gadding about in town,” Hugh answered gloomily. “A pretty time to talk about riotous living, with the sen-ants’ wages all overdue, and duns bothering at the door for their wretched money. My presence could hardly give you any appreciable pleasure. You can stop at the dingy old lodgings in Albert Row, and Mrs. Bouverie Barton will help gad about with you. You can trapes together over half London.”

  Winifred bowed her poor head down in silence. Her heart was sick. It was full to bursting. This was all she had bought with the fee-simple of Whitestrand.

  That moment the servant came in with a paper on a tray. “What is it?” Hugh asked, glancing listlessly toward it.

  “It’s the Queen’s taxes, sir,” the maid answered; the financial crisis had long since compelled them to discharge their last surviving footman.

  “Tell the Queen she must call again,” Hugh burst out savagely. “She can’t have them. She may whistle for her money. Queen’s taxes indeed! The butcher and the baker’ll be calling to get their bills paid next! But they won’t succeed; that’s one comfort. You can’t get blood out of stone, thank goodness.”

  CHAPTER XXXIII.

  AN ARTISTIC EVENT.

  “Mr. Warren Relf,” said the daintily etched invitation card, “requests the pleasure of a visit from Mr and Mrs. Bouverie Barton and friends to a Private View of his Paintings and Water-color Sketches, on Saturday, October the 3rd, from 2:30 to 6 p m., at 128, Bletchingley Road, South Kensington.”

  Such a graceful little invitation card never was seen, neatly desi
gned by the artist himself, with a bold flight of sea-gulls engaged in winging their way across the upper left-hand corner; and a stretch of stormy waves, bestridden by a fishing-smack in full career before the brisk breeze, occupying the larger part of its broad face in very delicate and exquisite outline. When Winifred Massinger saw it carelessly stuck aside among a heap of others on Mrs. Bouverie Barton’s occasional table in South Audley Street, she took it up with a start and examined it closely. “Mr. Warren Relf!” she cried in a tone of some surprise. “Then you know him, Mrs. Barton? I didn’t remember he was one of your circle. But there, of course you know everybody. What a sweet little etching!”

  “What? Mr. Warren Relf? Oh yes, I know him. Not, I’m afraid, a very successful artist, as yet; but they say he has merit in his own way, merit. And he’s rising now; a coming man, I’m told, in his special line. Mr. Mitchison thinks his delicacy of touch and purity of color are something really quite remarkable. I’m going to see these new pictures of his on Saturday, if I can sandwich him in edgeways between the Society for the Higher Education of Women and the Richter concert or tea at the MacKinnons’. I’ve only five engagements for Saturday. Quite an empty day. Have you got a card for the private view yourself, dear?”

  “No,” Winifred answered with a slight blush. “My husband knew Mr. Relf quite intimately once upon a time; but the fact is, somehow, since our marriage, a coolness seems to have sprung up between them I don’t know why; perhaps from the ordinary human perversity. At any rate, Hugh won’t even so much as see him now. Mr. Relf’s been yachting down our way the last two or three summers, and Hugh positively wouldn’t let me ask him in to have a cup of afternoon tea with us in the garden at VVhitestrand. But I should like to see his new pictures immensely. I used to think his pieces awfully funny, I remember, and quite meaningless, in the old days, down in dear old Suffolk; but Mr. Hatherley tells me that was only my unregenerate nature, and that they’re really beautiful a great deal too good for me. He considers Mr. Relf a very great painter, and has wonderful hopes about his artistic future. I wish I could find out what I thought of them nowadays, after my taste’s been educated and turned topsy-turvy by contact with so much aesthetic society.”