The Ingenue of Fiction

New Zealand Mail, Issue 932, 10 January 1890, Page 4

The Ingenue of Fiction

A very pretty girl, with soft dark hair and a graceful figure, was sitting on the gate immediately before me, with a hook in her hands, I knew her at once. I knew that her ear resembled a delicate pink sea-she 1. I knew that her eyelashes must inevitably be long. She was the charming, innocent type. The hero finds her thus in her guileless village simplicity, reading some harmless story, in her inexpensive white dress with the knot of common or garden geranium at the neck. He startles her as he passes, and she drops her book, and he picks it up. It is thus that the intimacy begins. She is the daughter of the poor vicar, and he is THE SCION OF A NOBLE HOUSE. He has come to the village for the sake of rest, or fishing, or sketching. Whichever it is, he does it rather better than anyone else. It is a way these heroes have. The poor, old, grey-headed v.car goes pottering about his garden, and never sees that a train for a three-volume novel is being laid under his very nose. He is devoted, of course, to his only daughter, and his blindness proceeds partly from the child-like simplicity which is natural to these sylvan haunts, but also because he must be aware by this time that the Rtory could not possibly get on without it. So THE HERO M4.KES LOVE TO HER, because he is not in the least in love with her and she does not make love to him, because she is very much in love with him. In this sinful world the heroes get most of the undercut. As a rule he kisses her on the eyes and mouth alone-; but the nose and back-hair are the only parts of a girl’s head whioh the hero npver kisses. He leaves the village and marries someone else. Then comes the breakfast table scene, which we all know and hate so well. She takes up the newspaper with a merry laugh, and suddenly seea the advertisement of THE hero’s MARRIAGE. She turns deadly pale, grasps the table to save herself from falling, and, murmuring that the heat is too much for her and that she will be better presently, staggers from the room. The complacency and bland ness with which this excuse is always received ia simply maddening. ‘Poor child!’ the vicar murmurs pensively, as he sips his last cup of tea, and then goes out to play the fool among the azaleas without givng the matter another thought. If the book is to be sad, she pines and dies ; if it is to be cheerful, THE CURATE, who has all the time adored her in secret, now comes to the fore, kisses over the same old ground, and finally marries her. As I looked at her, I felt sorry for her. I determined to give her a little variety in her monotonous existence. So I stepped softly up to her, took her by the hair, and kissed the tip of her nose. There was a whirr and a click as of machinery set in motion. Then she gave a little frightened cry and fluttered like a bird. I might have known it—a kiss is as certain to produce this effect on the innocent and automatic doll of fiction as the placing of a penny in the slot is to procure fusees when you want wax vestas. —From Cornhill Magazine.