“I—I was obliged to give him an—an opportunity,” said Miss Trix, having the grace to stumble a little in her speech. “And—and it’s all your fault.”
The war was thus, by happy audacity, carried into Newhaven’s own quarters.
“My fault!” he exclaimed. “My fault that you walk all day with that curate!”
Then Miss Trix—and let no irrelevant considerations mar the appreciation of line acting—dropped her eyes and murmured softly, “I—I was so terribly afraid of seeming to expect you.”
Wherewith she (and not he) ran away, lightly, up the stairs, turning just one glance downwards as she reached the landing. Newhaven was looking up from below with an ‘enchanted’ smile—the word is Trix’s own: I should probably have used a different one.
Was then the curate of Poltons utterly defeated—brought to his knees, only to lie spurned? It seemed so: and he came down to dinner that night with a subdued and melancholy expression. Trix, on the other hand, was brilliant and talkative to the last degree, and the gayety spread from her all round the table, leaving untouched only the rejected lover and Mrs. Wentworth; for the last-named lady, true to her distinguishing quality, had begun to talk to poor Jack Ives in low soothing tones.
After dinner Trix was not visible; but the door of the little boudoir beyond stood half-open, and very soon Newhaven edged his way through. Almost at the same moment Jack Ives and Mrs. Wentworth passed out of the window and began to walk up and down the gravel. Nobody but myself appeared to notice these remarkable occurrences, but I watched them with keen interest. Half an hour passed and then there smote on my watchful ear the sound of a low laugh from the boudoir. It was followed almost immediately by a stranger sound from the gravel walk. Then, all in a moment, two things happened. The boudoir door opened, and Trix, followed by Newhaven, came in smiling; from the window entered Jack Ives and Mrs. Wentworth. My eyes were on the curate. He gave one sudden comprehending glance towards the other couple; then he took the widows hand, led her up to Dora, and said, in low yet penetrating tones, “Will you wish us joy, Mrs. Polton?” The Squire, Rippleby, and Algy Stanton were round them in an instant. I kept my place, watching now the face of Trix Queenborough. She turned first flaming red, then very pale. I saw her turn to Newhaven and speak one or two urgent imperative words to him. Then, drawing herself up to her full height, she crossed the room to where the group was assembled round Mrs. Wentworth and Jack Ives.
“What’s the matter? What are you saying?” she asked.
Mrs. Wentworth’s eyes were modestly cast down, but a smile played round her mouth. No one spoke for a moment. Then Jack Ives said, “Mrs. Wentworth has promised to be my wife. Miss Queenborough.”
For a moment, hardly perceptible. Trix hesitated; then, with the most winning, touching, sweetest smile in the world, she said, “So you took my advice, and our afternoon walk was not wasted after all!”
Mrs. Polton is not used to these fine flights of diplomacy; she had heard before dinner something of what had actually happened in the afternoon; and the simple woman positively jumped. Jack Ives met Trix’s scornful eyes full and square.
“Not at all wasted,” said he with a smile. “Not only has it shown me where my true happiness lies, but it has also given me a juster idea of the value and sincerity of your regard for me, Miss Queenborough.”
“It is as real, Mr. Ives, as it is sincere,” said she.
“It is like yourself, Miss Queenborough,” said he, with a little bow; and he turned from her and began to talk to his fiancie.
Trix Queenborough moved slowly towards where I sat. Newhaven was watching her from where he stood alone on the other side; of the room.
“And have you no news for us?” I asked, in low tones.
“Thank you,” she said haughtily; “I don’t care that mine should be a pendant to the great tidings about the little widow and the curate.”
After a moment’s pause she went on:
“He lost no time, did he? He was wise to secure her before what happened this afternoon could leak out. Nobody can tell her now.”
“This afternoon?”
“He asked me to marry him this afternoon.”
“And you refused?”
“Yes.”
“Well, his behavior is in outrageously bad taste, but—-”
She laid a hand on my arm, and said in calm level tones,
“I refused him because I dared not have him; but I told him I cared for him, and he said he loved me. And I let him kiss me. Good-night, Mr. Wynne.”
I sat still and silent. Newhaven came across to us. Trix put out her hand and caught him by the sleeve.
“Fred,” she said, “my dear honest old Fred, you love me, don’t you?”
Newhaven, much embarrassed and surprised, looked at me in alarm. But her hand was in his now, and her eyes imploring him.
“I should rather think I did, my dear,” said he.
I really hope that Lord and Lady Newhaven will not be very unhappy, while Mrs. Ives quite worships her husband, and is convinced that she eclipsed the brilliant and wealthy Miss Queenborough. Perhaps she did—perhaps not. There are, as I have said, great qualities in the curate of Poltons, but I have not quite made up my mind precisely what they are. I ought, however, to say that Dora takes a more favorable view of him and a less lenient view of Trix than I. That is perhaps natural. Besides, Dora does not know the precise manner in which the curate was refused. By the way, he preached next Sunday on the text, “The children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of light.”
It was, I believe, mainly as a compliment to me that Miss Audrey Liston was asked to Poltons. Miss Liston and I were very good friends, and my cousin Dora Polton thought, as she informed me, that it would be nice for me to have someone I could talk to about “books and so on.” I did not complain. Miss Liston was a pleasant young woman of six-and-twenty; I liked her very much except on paper, and I was aware that she made it a point of duty to read something at least of what I wrote. She was in the habit of describing herself as an “authoress in a small way.” If it were pointed out that six three-volume novels in three years (the term of her literary activity at the time of which I write) could hardly be called “a small way.” she would smile modestly and say that it was not really much; and if she were told that the English language embraced no such word as “authoress,” she would smile again and say that it ought to, a position towards the bugbear of correctness with which, I confess, I sympathize in some degree. She was very diligent; she worked from ten to one every day while she was at Poltons; how much she wrote is between her and her conscience.
There was another impeachment which Miss Liston was hardly at the trouble to deny. “Take my characters from life!” she would exclaim. “Surely every artist (Miss Liston often referred to herself as an artist) must!” And she would proceed to maintain—what is perhaps true sometimes—that people rather liked being put into books, just as they liked being photographed, for all that they grumble and pretend to be afflicted when either process is levied against them. In discussing this matter with Miss Liston I felt myself on delicate ground, for it was notorious that I figured in her first book in the guise of a misogynistic genius; the fact that she lengthened (and thickened) my hair, converted it from an indeterminate brown to a dusty black, gave me a drooping mustache, and invested my very ordinary work-a-day eyes with a strange magnetic attraction, availed nothing; I was at once recognized, and, I may remark in passing, an uncommonly disagreeable fellow she made me. Thus I had passed through the fire. I felt tolerably sure that I presented no other aspect of interest, real or supposed, and I was quite content that Miss Liston should serve all the rest of her acquaintance as she had served me. I reckoned they would last her, at the present rate of production, about five years.
Fate was kind to Miss Liston, and provided her with most suitable patterns for her next piece of work at Poltons itself. There were a young man and a young woman staying in the house—Sir Gilbert Chillington and Miss Pamela Myles. The moment Miss Liston was appraised of a possible romance; she began the study of the protagonists. She was looking out, she told me, for some new types (if it were any consolation—and there is a sort of dignity about it—to be called a type, Miss Liston’s victims were always welcome to so much), and she had found them in Chillington and Pamela. The former appeared to my dull eye to offer no salient novelty; he was tall, broad, handsome, and he possessed a manner of enviable placidity. Pamela, I allowed, was exactly the heroine Miss Liston loved—haughty, capricious, difficile, but sound and true at heart (I was mentally skimming Volume I.). Miss Liston agreed with me in my conception of Pamela, but declared that I did not do justice to the artistic possibilities latent in Chillington; he had a curious attraction which it would tax her skill (so she gravely informed me) to the utmost to reproduce. She proposed that I also should make a study of him, and attributed my hurried refusal to a shrinking from the difficulties of the task.
“Of course,” she observed, looking at our young friends who were talking nonsense at the other side of the lawn, “they must have a misunderstanding.”
“Why, ‘of course’,” said I, lighting my pipe. “What should you say to another man?”
“Or another woman?” said Miss Liston.
“It comes to the same thing,” said I. (About a volume and a half I meant.)
“But it’s more interesting’. Do you think she’d better be a married woman?” And Miss Liston looked at me inquiringly.
“The age prefers them married,” I remarked.
This conversation happened on the second day of Miss Liston’s visit, and she lost no time in beginning to study her subjects. Pamela, she said, she found pretty plain sailing, but Chillington continued to puzzle her. Again, she could not make up her mind whether to have a happy or a tragic ending. In the interests of a tender-hearted public, I pleaded for marriage-bells.
“Yes, I think so,” said Miss Liston, but she sighed, and I think she had an idea or two for a heart-broken separation, followed by mutual, life-long, hopeless devotion.
The complexity of young Sir Gilbert did not, in Miss Liston’s opinion, appear less on further acquaintance; and indeed, I must admit that she was not altogether wrong in considering him worthy of attention. As I came to know him better, I discerned in him a smothered self-appreciation, which came to light in response to the least tribute of interest or admiration, but was yet far remote from the aggressiveness of a commonplace vanity. In a moment of indiscretion I had chaffed him—he was very good-natured—on the risks he ran at Miss Liston’s hands; he was not disgusted, but neither did he plume himself or spread his feathers. He received the suggestions without surprise, and without any attempt at disclaiming fitness for the purpose; but he received it as a matter which entailed a responsibility on him. I detected the conviction that, if the portrait was to be painted, it was due to the world that it should be well painted; the subject must give the artist full opportunities.
“What does she know about me?” he asked, in meditative tones.
“She’s very quick; she’ll soon pick up as much as she wants,” I assured him.
“She’ll probably go all wrong,” he said, sombrely; and of course I could not tell him that it was of no consequence if she did. He would not have believed me, and would have done precisely what he proceeded to do, and that was to afford Miss Liston every chance of appraising his character and plumbing the depths of his soul.
I may say at once that I did not regret this course of action; for the effect of it was to allow me a chance of talking to Pamela Myles, and Pamela was exactly the sort of a girl to beguile the long pleasant morning hours of a holiday in the country. No one had told Pamela that she was going to be put in a book, and I don’t think it would have made any difference had she been told. Pamela’s attitude towards books was one of healthy scorn, confidently based on admitted ignorance. So we never spoke of them, and my cousin Dora condoled with me more than once on the way in which Miss Liston, false to the implied terms of her invitation, deserted me in favor of Sir Gilbert, and left me to the mercies of a frivolous girl. Pamela appeared to be as little aggrieved as I was. I imagined that she supposed that Chillington would ask her to marry him some day before very long, and I was sure she would accept him; but it was quite plain that, if Miss Liston persisted in making Pamela her heroine, she would have to supply from her own resources a large supplement of passion. Pamela was far too deficient in the commodity to be made anything of, without such reinforcement, even by an art more adept at making much out of nothing than Miss Liston’s straightforward method could claim to be.
A week passed, and then, one Friday morning, a new light burst on me. Miss Liston came into the garden at eleven o’clock and sat down by me on the lawn. Chillington and Pamela had gone riding with the squire, Dora was visiting the poor. We were alone. The appearance of Miss Liston at this hour (usually sacred to the use of the pen), no less than her puzzled look, told me that an obstruction had occurred in the novel. Presently she let me know what it was.
“I’m thinking of altering the scheme of my story, Mr. Wynne,” said she. “Have you ever noticed how sometimes a man thinks he’s in love when he isn’t really?”
“Such a case sometimes occurs,” I acknowledged.
“Yes, and he doesn’t find out his mistake——”
“Till they’re married?”
“Sometimes, yes,” she said, rather as though she were making an unwilling admission. “But sometimes he sees it before—when he meets somebody else.”
“Very true,” said I, with a grave nod.
“The false can’t stand against the real.” pursued Miss Liston; and then she fell into meditative silence. I stole a glance at her face; she was smiling. Was it in the pleasure of literary creation—an artistic ecstasy? I should have liked to answer yes, but I doubted it very much. Without pretending to Miss Liston’s powers, I have the little subtlety that is needful to show me that more than one kind of smile may be seen on the human face, and that there is one very different from others; and finally, that that one is not evoked, as a rule, merely by the evolution of the troublesome encumbrance in pretty writing, vulgarly called a “plot.”
“If,” pursued Miss Liston, “some one comes who can appreciate him and draw out what is best in him——”
“That’s all very well,” said I, “but what of the first girl?”
“Oh, she’s—she can be made shallow, you know; and I can put in a man for her. People needn’t be much interested in her.”
“Yes, you could manage it that way,” said I, thinking how Pamela—I took the liberty of using her name for the shallow girl—would like such treatment.
“She will really be valuable mainly as a foil,” observed Miss Liston; and she added generously, “I shall make her nice, you know, but shallow—not worthy of him.”
“And what are you going to make the other girl like?” I asked.
Miss Liston started slightly; also she colored very slightly, and she answered, looking away from me across the lawn, “I haven’t quite made up my mind yet, Mr. Wynne.”
With the suspicion which this conversation aroused fresh in my mind, it was curious to hear Pamela laugh, as she said to me on the afternoon of the same day, “Aren’t Sir Gilbert and Audrey Liston funny? I tell you what, Mr. Wynne, I believe they’re writing a novel together.”
“Perhaps Chillington’s giving her the materials for one,” I suggested.
“I shouldn’t think,” observed Pamela, in her dispassionate way, “that anything very interesting had ever happened to him.”
“I. thought you liked him,” I remarked, humbly.
“So I do. What’s that got to do with it?” asked Pamela.
It was beyond question that Chillington enjoyed Miss Liston’s society; the interest she showed in him was incense to his nostrils. I used to overhear fragments of his ideas about himself, which he was revealing in answer to her tactful inquiries. But neither was it doubtful that he had by no means lost his relish for Pamela’s lighter talk; in fact, he seemed to turn to her with some relief—perhaps it is refreshing to escape from self-analysis, even when the process is conducted in the pleasantest possible manner—and the hours which Miss Liston gave to work were devoted by Chillington to maintaining his cordial relations with the lady whose comfortable and not over-tragical disposal was taxing Miss Liston’s skill. For she had definitely decided all her plot; she told me so a few days later. It was all planned out; nay, the scene in which the truth as to his own feelings bursts on Sir Gilbert (I forget at the moment what name the novel gave him) was, I understood, actually written; the shallow girl was to experience nothing worse than a wound to her vanity, and was to turn with as much alacrity as decency allowed to the substitute whom Miss Liston had now provided. All this was poured into my sympathetic ear, and I say sympathetic with all sincerity; for, although I may occasionally treat Miss Liston’s literary efforts with less than proper respect, she herself was my friend, and the conviction under which she was now living would, I knew, unless it were justified, bring her into much of that unhappiness in which one generally found her heroine plunged about the end of Volume II. The heroine generally got out all right, and the knowledge that she would enabled the reader to preserve cheerfulness. But would poor little Miss Liston get out? I was none too sure of it.
Suddenly a change came in the state of affairs. Pamela produced it. It must have struck her that the increasing intimacy of Miss Liston and Chillington might become something other than “funny.” To put it briefly and metaphorically, she whistled her dog back to her heels. I am not skilled in understanding or describing the artifices of ladies; but even I saw the transformation in Pamela. She put forth her strength and put on her prettiest gowns; she refused to take her place in the see-saw of society, which Chillington had recently established for his pleasure. If he spent an hour with Miss Liston, Pamela would have nothing of him for a day; she met his attentions with scorn unless they were undivided. Chillington seemed at first puzzled; I believe that he never regarded his talks with Miss Liston in other than a business point of view, but directly he understood that Pamela claimed him, and that she was prepared, in case he did not obey her call, to establish a grievance against him, he lost no time in manifesting his obedience. A whole day passed in which, to my certain knowledge, he was not alone a moment with Miss Liston, and did not, save at the family meals, exchange a word with her. As he walked off with Pamela, Miss Liston’s eyes followed him in wistful longing; she stole away upstairs and did not come down till five o’clock. Then finding me strolling about with a cigarette, she joined me.
“Well, how goes the book?” I asked.
“I haven’t done much to it just lately,” she answered, in a low voice. “I—it’s—I don’t quite know what to do with it.”
“I thought you’d settled?”
“So I had, but—oh, don’t let’s talk about it, Mr. Wynne!”
But a moment later she went on talking about it.
“I don’t know why I should make it end happily,” she said. “I’m sure life isn’t always happy, is it?”
“Certainly not,” I answered. “You mean your man might stick to the shallow girl after all?”
“Yes,” I just heard her whisper.
“And be miserable afterwards?” I pursued.
“I don’t know,” said Miss Liston. “Perhaps he wouldn’t.”
“Then you must make him shallow himself.”
“I can’t do that,” she said quickly. “Oh, how difficult it is!”
She may have meant merely the art of writing—when I cordially agreed with her—but I think she meant also the way of the world, which does not make me withdraw my assent. I left her walking up and down in front of the drawing-room windows, a rather forlorn little figure, thrown into distinctness by the cold rays of the setting sun.
All was not over yet. That evening Chillington broke away. Led by vanity, or interest, or friendliness, I know not which—tired maybe of paying court (the attitude in which Pamela kept him), and thinking it would be pleasant to play the other part for a while—after dinner he went straight to Miss Liston, talked to her while we had coffee on the terrace, and then walked about with her. Pamela sat by me; she was very silent; she did not appear to be angry, but her handsome mouth wore a resolute expression. Chillington and Miss Liston wandered on into the shrubbery, and did not come into sight again for nearly half an hour.
“I think it’s cold,” said Pamela, in her cool, quiet tones. “And it’s also, Mr. Wynne, rather slow. I shall go to bed.”
I thought it a little impertinent of Pamela to attribute the ‘slowness’ (which had undoubtedly existed) to me, so I took my revenge by saying, with, an assumption of innocence purposely and obviously unreal, “Oh, but won’t you wait and bid Miss Liston and Chillington good-night?”
Pamela looked at me for a moment. I made bold to smile.
Pamela’s face broke slowly into an answering smile.
“I don’t know what you mean, Mr. Wynne,” said she.
“No?” said I.
“No,” said Pamela, and she turned away. But before she went she looked over her shoulder, and, still smiling, said, “Wish Miss Liston good-night for me, Mr. Wynne. Anything I have to say to Sir Gilbert will wait very well till to-morrow.”
She had hardly gone in when the wanderers came out of the shrubbery and rejoined me. Chillington wore his usual passive look, but Miss Liston’s face was happy and radiant. Chillington passed on into the drawing-room. Miss Liston lingered a moment by me.
“Why, you look,” said I, “as if you’d invented the finest scene ever written.”
She did not answer me directly, but stood looking up at the stars. Then she said in a dreamy tone, “I think I shall stick to my old idea in the book.”
As she spoke Chillington came out. Even in the dim light I saw a frown on his face.
“I say, Wynne,” said he, “where’s Miss Myles?”
“She’s gone to bed,” I answered. “She told me to wish you good-night for her, Miss Liston. No message for you, Chillington.”
Miss Liston’s eyes were on him. He took no notice of her; he stood frowning for an instant, then, with some muttered ejaculation, he strode back into the house. We hoard his heavy tread across the drawing-room; we heard the door slammed behind him, and I found myself looking on Miss Liston’s altered face.
“What does he want her for, I wonder?” she said, in an agitation that made my presence, my thoughts, my suspicions, nothing to her. “He said nothing to me about wanting to speak to her to-night.” And she walked slowly into the house, her eyes on the ground, and all the light gone from her face and the joy dead in it. Whereupon I, left alone, began to rail at the gods that a dear, silly little soul like Miss Liston should bother her poor, silly little head about a hulking fool; in which reflections I did, of course, immense injustice not only to an eminent author, but also to a perfectly honorable, though somewhat dense and decidedly conceited, gentleman.
The next morning Sir Gilbert Chillington ate dirt—there is no other way of expressing it—in great quantities and with infinite humility. My admirable friend Miss Pamela was severe. I saw him walk six yards behind her for the length of the terrace; not a look nor a turn of her head gave him leave to join her. Miss Liston had gone upstairs, and I watched the scene from the window of the smoking-room. At last, at the end of the long walk, just where the laurel-bushes mark the beginning of the shrubberies—on the threshold of the scene of his crime—Pamela turned round suddenly and faced the repentant sinner. The most interesting things in life are those which, perhaps by the inevitable nature of the case, one does not hear; and I did not hear the scene which followed. For a while they stood talking—rather, he talked and she listened. Then she turned again and walked slowly into the shrubbery. Chillington followed. It was the end of a chapter, and I laid down the book.
How and from whom Miss Liston heard the news, which Chillington himself told me without a glimmer of shame or a touch of embarrassment some two hours later, I do not know; but hear it she did before luncheon; for she came down, ready armed with the neatest little speeches for both the happy lovers. I did not expect Pamela to show an ounce more feeling than the strictest canons of propriety demanded, and she fulfilled my expectations to the letter; but I had hoped, I confess, that Chillington would have displayed some little consciousness. He did not; and it is my belief that, throughout the events which I have recorded, he retained, and that he still retains, the conviction that Miss Liston’s interest in him was purely literary and artistic, and that she devoted herself to his society simply because he offered an interesting problem and an inspiring theme. An ingenious charity may find in that attitude evidence of modesty; to my thinking it argues a more subtle and magnificent conceit than if he had fathomed the truth, as many humbler men in his place would have done.
On the day after the engagement was accomplished Miss Liston left us to return to London. She came out in her hat and jacket and sat down by me; the carriage was to be round in ten minutes. She put on her gloves slowly and buttoned them carefully. This done, she said, “By the way, Mr. Wynne, I’ve adopted your suggestion. The man doesn’t find out.”
“Then you’ve made him a fool?” I asked bluntly.
“No,” she answered. “I—I think it might happen though he wasn’t a fool.”
She sat with her hands in her lap for a moment or two, then she went on in a lower voice, “I’m going to make him find out afterwards.”
I felt her glance on me, but I looked straight in front of me.
“What! after he’s married the shallow girl?”
“Yes,” said Miss Liston.
“Rather too late, isn’t it? At least if you mean there is to be a happy ending.”
Miss Liston enlaced her fingers.
“I haven’t decided about the ending yet,” said she.
“If you’re intent is to be tragical—which is the fashion—you’ll do as you stand,” said I.
“Yes,” she answered slowly, “if I’m tragical I shall do as I stand.”
There was another pause, and rather a long one; the wheels of the carriage were audible on the gravel of the front drive. Miss Liston stood up. I rose and held out my hand.
“Of course,” said Miss Liston, still intent on her novel, “I could—” She stopped again, and looked apprehensively at me. My face, I believe, expressed nothing more than polite attention and friendly interest.
“Of course,” she began again, “the shallow girl—his wife—might—might die, Mr. Wynne.”
“In novels,” said I, with a smile, “while there’s death there’s hope.”
“Yes, in novels,” she answered, giving me her hand.
The poor little woman was very unhappy. Unwisely, I dare say, I pressed, her hand. It was enough; the tears leapt to her eyes; she gave my great fist a hurried squeeze. I have seldom been more touched by any thanks, however warm or eloquent, and hurried away.
I have read the novel. It came out a little while ago. The man finds out after the marriage; the shallow girl dies un regretted (she turns out as badly as possible); the real love comes, and all ends joyfully. It is simple story, prettily told in its little way, and the scene of the reunion is written with genuine feeling—nay, with a touch of real passion. But then Sir Gilbert Chillington never meets Miss Liston now. And Lady Chillington not only behaves with her customary propriety, but is in the enjoyment of most excellent health and spirits.
True art demands an adaptation, not a copy, of life. I saw that remark somewhere the other day. It seems correct, if Miss Liston be any authority.
It was a charmingly mild and balmy day. The sun shone beyond the orchard, and the shade was cool inside. A light breeze stirred the boughs of the old apple-tree under which the philosopher sat. None of these things did the philosopher notice, unless it might be when the wind blew about the leaves of the large volume on his knees, and he had to find his place again. Then he would exclaim against the wind, shuffle the leaves till he got the right page, and settle to his reading. The book was a treatise on ontology; it was written by another philosopher, a friend of this philosopher’s; it bristled with fallacies, and this philosopher was discovering them all, and noting them on the fly-leaf at the end. He was not going to review the book (as some might have thought from his behavior), or even to answer it in a work of his own. It was just that he found a pleasure in stripping any poor fallacy naked and crucifying it. Presently a girl in a white frock came into the orchard. She picked up an apple, bit it, and found it ripe. Holding it in her hand, she walked up to where the philosopher sat, and looked at him. He did not stir. She took a bite out of the apple, munched it, and swallowed it. The philosopher crucified a fallacy on the fly-leaf. The girl flung the apple away.
“Mr. Jerningham,” said she, “are you very busy?”
The philosopher, pencil in hand, looked up.
“No, Miss May,” said he, “not very.”
“Because I want your opinion.”
“In one moment,” said the philosopher, apologetically.
He turned back to the fly-leaf and began to nail the last fallacy a little tighter to the cross. The girl regarded him, first with amused impatience, then with a vexed frown, finally with a wistful regret. He was so very old for his age, she thought; he could not be much beyond thirty; his hair was thick and full of waves, his eyes bright and clear, his complexion not yet divested of all youth’s relics.
“Now, Miss May, I’m at your service,” said the philosopher, with a lingering look at his impaled fallacy; and he closed the book, keeping it, however, on his knee.
The girl sat down just opposite to him.
“It’s a very important thing I want to ask you,” she began, tugging at a tuft of grass, “and it’s very—difficult, and you mustn’t tell any one I asked you; at least, I’d rather you didn’t.”
“I shall not speak of it; indeed, I shall probably not remember it,” said the philosopher.
“And you mustn’t look at me, please, while I’m asking you.”
“I don’t think I was looking at you, but if I was I beg your pardon,” said the philosopher, apologetically.
She pulled the tuft of grass right out of the ground, and flung it from her with all her force.
“Suppose a man—” she began. “No, that’s not right.”
“You can take any hypothesis you please,” observed the philosopher, “but you must verify it afterward, of course.”
“Oh, do let me go on. Suppose a girl, Mr. Jerningham—I wish you wouldn’t nod.”
“It was only to show that I followed you.”
“Oh, of course you ‘follow me’, as you call it. Suppose a girl had two lovers—you’re nodding again—or, I ought to say, suppose there were two men who might be in love with a girl.”
“Only two?” asked the philosopher. “You see, any number of men might be in love with—
“Oh, we can leave the rest out,” said Miss May, with a sudden dimple; “they don’t matter.”
“Very well,” said the philosopher, “if they are irrelevant we will put them aside.”
“Suppose, then, that one of these men was, oh,awfullyin love with the girl, and—and proposed, you know—”
“A moment!” said the philosopher, opening a note-book. “Let me take down his proposition. What was it?”
“Why, proposed to her—asked her to marry him,” said the girl, with a stare.
“Dear me! How stupid of me! I forgot that special use of the word. Yes?”
“The girl likes him pretty well, and her people approve of him, and all that, you know.”
“That simplifies the problem,” said the philosopher, nodding again.
“But she’s not in—in love with him, you know. She doesn’t really care for him—much. Do you understand?”
“Perfectly. It is a most natural state of mind.”
“Well then, suppose that there’s another man—what are you writing?”
“I only put down (B)—like that,” pleaded the philosopher, meekly exhibiting his note-book.
She looked at him in a sort of helpless exasperation, with just a smile somewhere in the background of it.
“Oh, you really are—” she exclaimed. “But let me go on. The other man is a friend of the girl’s: he’s very clever—oh, fearfully clever—and he’s rather handsome. You needn’t put that down.”
“It is certainly not very material,” admitted the philosopher, and he crossed out ‘handsome’; ‘clever’ he left.
“And the girl is most awfully—she admires him tremendously; she thinks him just the greatest man that ever lived, you know. And she—she—” The girl paused.
“I’m following,” said the philosopher, with pencil poised.
“She’d think it better than the whole world if—if she could be anything to him, you know.”
“You mean become his wife?”
“Well, of course I do—at least, I suppose I do.”
“You spoke rather vaguely, you know.”
The girl cast one glance at the philosopher as she replied:
“Well, yes; I did mean become his wife.”
“Yes. Well?”
“But,” continued the girl, starting on another tuft of grass, “he doesn’t think much about those things. He likes her. I think he likes her-”
“Well, doesn’t dislike her?” suggested the philosopher. “Shall we call him indifferent?”
“I don’t know. Yes, rather indifferent. I don’t think he thinks about it, you know. But she—she’s pretty. You needn’t put that down.”
“I was not about to do so,” observed the philosopher.
“She thinks life with him would be just heaven; and-and she thinks she would make him awfully happy. She would-would be so proud of him, you see.”
“I see. Yes?”
“And—I don’t know how to put it, quite—she thinks that if he ever thought about it at all he might care for her; because he doesn’t care for anybody else, and she’s pretty—”
“You said that before.”
“Oh dear, I dare say I did. And most men care for somebody, don’t they? Some girl, I mean.”
“Most men, no doubt,” conceded the philosopher.
“Well then, what ought she to do? It’s not a real thing, you know, Mr. Jerningham. It’s in—in a novel I was reading.” She said this hastily, and blushed as she spoke.
“Dear me! And it’s quite an interesting case! Yes, I see. The question is, Will she act most wisely in accepting the offer of the man who loves her exceedingly, but for whom she entertains only a moderate affection—”
“Yes; just a liking. He’s just a friend.”
“Exactly. Or in marrying the other whom she loves ex—”
“That’s not it. How can she marry him? He hasn’t—he hasn’t asked her, you see.”
“True; I forgot. Let us assume, though, for the moment, that he has asked her. She would then have to consider which marriage would probably be productive of the greater sum total of—”
“Oh, but you needn’t consider that.”
“But it seems the best logical order. We can afterward make allowance for the element of uncertainty caused by—”
“Oh no; I don’t want it like that. I know perfectly well which she’d do if he-the other man you know-asked her.”
“You apprehend that—”
“Never mind what I ‘apprehend’. Take it as I told you.”
“Very good. A has asked her hand, B has not.”
“Yes.”
“May I take it that, but for the disturbing influence of B, A would be a satisfactory—er—candidate?”
“Ye—es; I think so.”
“She therefore enjoys a certainty of considerable happiness if she marries A?”
“Ye—es; not perfect, because of—B, you know.”
“Quite so, quite so; but still a fair amount of happiness. Is it not so?”
“I don’t—well, perhaps.”
“On the other hand, if B did ask her, we are to postulate a higher degree of happiness for her?”
“Yes, please, Mr. Jerningham—much higher.”
“For both of them?”
“For her. Never mind him.”
“Very well. That again simplifies the problem. But his asking her is a contingency only?”
“Yes, that’s all.”
The philosopher spread out his hands.
“My dear young lady,” he said, “it becomes a question of degree. How probable or improbable is it?”
“I don’t know; not very probable—unless—”
“Well?”
“Unless he did happen to notice, you know.”
“Ah, yes; we supposed that, if he thought of it, he would probably take the desired step-at least, that he might be led to do so. Could she not—er—indicate her preference?”
“She might try—no, she couldn’t do much. You see, he—he doesn’t think about such things.”
“I understand precisely. And it seems to me, Miss May, that in that very fact we find our solution.”
“Do we?” she asked.
“I think so. He has evidently no natural inclination toward her—perhaps not toward marriage at all. Any feeling aroused in him would be necessarily shallow and, in a measure, artificial, and in all likelihood purely temporary. Moreover, if she took steps to arouse his attention one of two things would be likely to happen. Are you following me?”
“Yes, Mr. Jerningham.”
“Either he would be repelled by her overtures, which you must admit is not improbable, and then the position would be unpleasant, and even degrading, for her; or, on the other hand, he might, through a misplaced feeling of gallantry—”
“Through what?”
“Through a mistaken idea of politeness, or a mistaken view of what was kind, allow himself to be drawn into a connection for which he had no genuine liking. You agree with me that one or other of these things would be likely?”
“Yes, I suppose they would, unless he did come to care for her.”
“Ah, you return to that hypothesis. I think it’s an extremely fanciful one. No, she need not marry A, but she must let B alone.”
The philosopher closed his book, took off his glasses, wiped them, replaced them, and leaned back against the trunk of the apple-tree. The girl picked a dandelion in pieces. After a long pause she asked:
“You think B’s feelings wouldn’t be at all likely to—to change?”
“That depends on the sort of man he is. But if he is an able man, with intellectual interests which engross him-a man who has chosen his path in life—a man to whom women’s society is not a necessity—”
“He’s just like that,” said the girl, and she bit the head off a daisy.
“Then,” said the philosopher, “I see not the least reason for supposing that his feelings will change.”
“And would you advise her to marry the other—A?”
“Well, on the whole, I should. A is a good fellow (I think we made A a good fellow), he is a suitable match, his love for her is true and genuine—”
“It’s tremendous!”
“Yes—and—er—extreme. She likes him. There is every reason to hope that her liking will develop into a sufficiently deep and stable affection. She will get rid of her folly about B, and make A a good wife. Yes, Miss May, if I were the author of your novel I should make her marry A, and I should call that a happy ending.”
A silence followed. It was broken by the philosopher.
“Is that all you wanted my opinion about, Miss May?” he asked, with his finger between the leaves of the treatise on ontology.
“Yes, I think so. I hope I haven’t bored you?”
“I’ve enjoyed the discussion extremely. I had no idea that novels raised points of such psychological interest. I must find time to read one.”
The girl had shifted her position till, instead of her full face, her profile was turned toward him. Looking away toward the paddock that lay brilliant in sunshine on the skirts of the apple orchard, she asked in low slow tones, twisting her hands in her lap:
“Don’t you think that perhaps if B found out afterward-when she had married A, you know—that she had cared for him so very, very much, he might be a little sorry?”
“If he were a gentleman he would regret it deeply.”
“I mean—sorry on his own account; that—that he had thrown away all that, you know?”
The philosopher looked meditative.
“I think,” he pronounced, “that it is very possible he would. I can well imagine it.”
“He might never find anybody to love him like that again,” she said, gazing on the gleaming paddock.
“He probably would not,” agreed the philosopher.
“And—and most people like being loved, don’t they?”
“To crave for love is an almost universal instinct, Miss May.”
“Yes, almost,” she said, with a dreary little smile. “You see, he’ll get old, and-and have no one to look after him.”
“He will.”
“And no home.”
“Well, in a sense, none,” corrected the philosopher, smiling. “But really you’ll frighten me. I’m a bachelor myself, you know, Miss May.”
“Yes,” she whispered, just audibly.
“And all your terrors are before me.”
“Well, unless—”
“Oh, we needn’t have that ‘unless’,” laughed the philosopher, cheerfully. “There’s no ‘unless’ about it, Miss May.”
The girl jumped to her feet; for an instant she looked at the philosopher. She opened her lips as if to speak, and at the thought of what lay at her tongue’s tip her face grew red. But the philosopher was gazing past her, and his eyes rested in calm contemplation on the gleaming paddock.
“A beautiful thing, sunshine, to be sure,” said he.
Her blush faded away into paleness; her lips closed. Without speaking, she turned and walked slowly away, her head drooping. The philosopher heard the rustle of her skirt in the long grass of the orchard; he watched her for a few moments.
“A pretty, graceful creature,” said he, with a smile. Then he opened his book, took his pencil in his hand, and slipped in a careful forefinger to mark the fly-leaf.
The sun had passed mid-heaven and began to decline westward before he finished the book. Then he stretched himself and looked at his watch.
“Good gracious, two o’clock! I shall be late for lunch!” and he hurried to his feet.
He was very late for lunch.
“Everything’s cold,” wailed his hostess. “Where have you been, Mr. Jerningham?”
“Only in the orchard—reading.”
“And you’ve missed May!”
“Missed Miss May? How do you mean? I had a long talk with her this morning-a most interesting talk.”
“But you weren’t here to say good-by. Now you don’t mean to say that you forgot that she was leaving by the two-o’clock train? What a man you are!”
“Dear me! To think of my forgetting it!” said the philosopher, shamefacedly.
“She told me to say good-bye to you for her.”
“She’s very kind. I can’t forgive myself.”
His hostess looked at him for a moment; then she sighed, and smiled, and sighed again.
“Have you everything you want?” she asked.
“Everything, thank you,” said he, sitting down opposite the cheese, and propping his book (he thought he would just run through the last chapter again) against the loaf; “everything in the world that I want, thanks.”
His hostess did not tell him that the girl had come in from the apple orchard and run hastily upstairs, lest her friend should see what her friend did see in her eyes. So that he had no suspicion at all that he had received an offer of marriage-and refused it. And he did not refer to anything of that sort when he paused once in his reading and exclaimed:
“I’m really sorry I missed Miss May. That was an interesting case of hers. But I gave the right answer; the girl ought to marry A.”
And so the girl did.