A SENTIMENTALIST

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1686, 22 June 1904, Page 10

A SENTIMENTALIST

(By F. Macaulay Brown.)

“The Editor regrets that he cannot avail himself of the enclosed contribution, for the kind offer of which —-—” so read Jim Marlow lazily. A tiny clock musically proclaimed tho hour of six. He lay back reposefully in a roomy lounge, and closed bis eyes. For more than a month he had written not a line. Frequent communications and perilously impatient requests from various sources had inspired—nothing. But about this polite letter there was something delightfully suggestive of liis earliest efforts in literature, which rather pleased him. It gave an acutely dramatic colouring to his present surroundings and an added comfort to the lounge, producing in him a subtle sensation of tragic repose. He had anticipated this letter all day, and had steadily gloated over the indisputable fact that no ideas would come to a brain satiated with happiness. Jim Marlow was essentially a modern young man —a sort of sign of the times. His soul loved situations, effects!.- A beautiful room, the perfect blending of colours, a strange' expression on the face of a passer-by, or the fierce gusts of misery and passion to which his temperament made him liable, all these had invariably inspired his beet “eopy.”' One day a friend spoke a kindly truth to him, but so bluntly that for several days he absolutely disappeared literally swept into privacy—suffering from the sheets of practical commonsense. But he had composed a tale meanwhile which had been immediately accepted. Jim Marlow was well aware of this peculiarity. He had often iniblicly and. privately analysed has complicated character, and as he lay there, luxuriously conscious of the comfort around him, his versatile mind was rapidly devising a scheme whereby there would be no further disappointment to those wlm had a right to expect good work from him. u x have been too happy,” he concluded. "That is the mistake.” They had been married six weeks, and were passionately devoted to each other, but Jim Marlow had never written a sentccn.C'©* The door opened softly. There was a

gentle frou-frou, and a most delicate Suggestion of perfume. Jim Marlow .smiled, and. drew his breath. “Why, Jim, you lazy boy! Milly wishes us to come before all the others to-night," said a beautiful girl as she came and knelt down beside the lounge-, where he lay. . A second's silence. u “I am afraid—you must excuse me to- • night, ’Em.—dear. I'm going to be. busy," he Said. •“Jim!” “Ye®?’ “What do you mean ! Yomoan't let me go alone———" “And why, pray ? -Is it not usual for ladies to go about without their husbands "

“Don't, Jim. We are not like other people. You are not like other husbands. You have often said— " “I have said many things that I regret," said Jim Marlow. He looked up steadily into two bright eves as he spoke, and the amazement and pain he saw there and in the dear face so near to. his own ‘sent an answering pain through his own heart. - This would make splendid “copy," though it broke his heart —and another’s. “Jim, dearest, what is wrong?" she said. “An hour ago you were not like that. Have I hurt you? You know, dear, I had to be away. I have so much to do for —■" “I have been lying here thinking," he said, very slowly, ‘‘and ———" “Ah, Jim, I know, I know,"-she burst in: “you have a great future and I cannot share it, because I am so stupid and useless to you. Women always are, I think, but oh, Jim, I love you," she said fervently, putting her hand rather timidly into his. “Only show me how to begin." Jim Marlow roused himself and sat up, shaking the soft hand away roughly. “Enough of this nonsense," he said. “We are a pair of babies. We do not know what love is—neither of us —and we ■—ought—never—to —have—been married." Deadly silence. He did not dare to look at her. “I wish I had never met yon,” he said. Still- silence, and then he dared —but there was a look on' her face that he had never seen there before —pale, scared, and wild, with trembling lips, but proud withal. “You mean it P" she asked,, rising with a swift movement to her feet. “Look, Jim, look at me—tell me you mean it." “I mean every word of it," he replied coldly. He thought what a curious blending this was of pain and pleasure. For a moment she covered her face with her hands, without a sound. Then she dropped them. “You have taken all the pleasure from my life," she said. “You have let me see things as I had not imagined it possible. I shall go to Milly's to-night, but will never come back to you. I hate you for your falseness." Jim Marlow did not speak. He only listened. A rustle, a slow movement, and he was left alone. A few minutes later ho heard the sharp click of a carriage door. He ran forward hastily, but he only heard the quick tro-t of horses’ feet in the distance. Later, he wrote long into the night—< wrote as he had never written before, and one editor was not disappointed when he next heard from Jim Marlow. * _ * * * “Mr Marlow's work is a great surprise, as -well as a great pleasure."—‘‘The Laurel." <*> “We cannot praise Mr Marlow’s newbook sufficiently. It shows a depth and refinement of feeling rarely found in the present day literature/' “The Ash Loaf." “From the earlier portion of the book one is hardly prepared for the sublimely pathetic and powerful finish." —“The Oak." .Tim Marlow sat alone reading those criticisms three weeks later. He had. changed in that time. His face had lost its look of life,- its appearance of boyishness. He seemed like a strong man sinking under some stupendous sorrow. There was an air of hopelessness in all ho did. He read them over and over again, and groaned. Then he slipped his hand into an inner pocket, and brought forth a much-crumpled letter. It was dated the day after his wife had left him, and said—“l feel that I can never forgive you. I, too, deeply regret that we are mar- - ried." “'Em,” he groaned in anguish, as he pressed the letter to his lips, “and it was for this that I gave you up." Ho took up his pen, then laid it down again, lost in thought. His desk wa-s littered with letters of congratulation and editorial requests such as once his sdul ■would have loved. But now he did not care. Then another scheme came into his head. “She never wishes to see me again," he thought, “but she can’t pro- - vent my writing to her in book form," so he sat down, and goaded by the pain in his heart, wrote a full confession to his -wife —in book form. It took him many days to weave the story, weave it in such a way as she could read its meaning alright and see the depth of his misery, and in due time the book appeared. Jim MarloW waited. Friendly congrar tulations he laid carefully aside with the calmness born of utter indifference. What did he care, for them while the world was empty ? Criticisms he barely read. Only on the words of “The Oak" “Mr Marlow's latest book," it said, ‘ “fulfils the promise of his previous work. Mr Marlow's hero—if, indeed, he can be called such— deliberately and cruelly quarrels with his wife, whom, we are told, he loves devoutedly, trusting that the'misery and pain which he knows he Will afterwards endure, will inspire him to write. It is impossible to ignore the -covert reference to many of the present-day writers, and much of the present-day literature. For such writers and literature we feel that Mr Marlow has, and justly so, an utterable contempt." He read it over and over again, and groaned. It was horrible. It Wfts he ,

who had wrongfully obtained a coveted place. Every word hurt him deeply, because they condemned himself. And in the silences a pale, startled face would come up before him, and trembling lips would say. “Look, Jim; look at me; tell me. you 'mean it." And he • always heard the answer, “I .mean every word of it.” Had ever man spoken a- more t>whd lie? In a passion of remorse --and despair and self-hatred he swept the nilr-s of letters from the table, and as they fell fluttering to the ground lie flung himself down on his knees where he had said so much that was untrue.

\ “Oh, my love, my life, greatest of all good," lie cried aloud, “ trifled with the most precious thing in the world. 'Em, 'Em, only come back to me.” There was a faint rustle, a light touch, and he was not alone any more. “Can you ever forgive me?" he said later.

“Can you ask?" And Jim Marlow was happy, and editors know him not.

A UTILE WHITE BOS

(By Mary El. Mann.)

“There!” Efdmxr cried. “Now, how could you be 1 so careless-, Ted?" “The blessed thing must _ have jumped of its own accord off the chimneypiece," Ted said. He looked down at liis wife on her knees beside him ruefullv collecting tine fragments! o-f the broken, vase. “I wasn't so much as' looking at it, Nell. “No ! If ,you'd! nnlv had the sense to look at it!" Nell sighed'. “But you will stand with your heels on the fender, and yo-u pn~h those great shoulders of yours agaii.nsk the chimney-board, and smash go a.ll my ornament-' and a lot you care! However, something had to break to‘-day, and it might have been worse.” “How do you mean ‘had to’ “That great awkward Emily threw down a soup-platei last night, and I " “No* not you, surely. Nell?" “It wasn’t my fault, of course. I was lifting th'e hand-glassi from my dressingtable as carefully as carefully, and it just dropped out of my hands! ‘That is the second,’ I said to myself: ‘now I wonder what the third will be.’ ”

“And why 'did you say anything so silly ?" “Have you actually grown to your enormous age and notrdcnoAvn that when one tiling’ is broken in a hourae three are nruken? We’ll, you have had an ineffectual sort of education!” “You don’t believe such rotten rubbish?" “Don’t you? When T tell you of the soup plate, the hand mirror, and now this vase, you can’t call it nonsense, because there it is. A proof .before your very eyes. You might as well say it isn’t unlucky to see a single crow ——" “I’d sooner see on© of the mischievous brutes any day than fifty." “——That you may expect tilings to go pleasantly on the day you put your petticoat the wrong side out " “I should expect them to take a comic turn on the day I did that, certainly!" “What a ribald boy! Now, listen, Ted; be very attentive, and I will tell you a true, true story. You mustn't laugh the tiniest titter—ah, now, Ted, you won’t laugh, will you?" They were very young married people, and were not yet disposed to sit quietly apart and talk to each other. She seized him by the lapels of his coat now, and shook him to attention, while he, looking down upon her with the hardly yet familiar pride of possession in his boyish eyes, swayed his big frame in her grasp, flatteringV yielding! to her email efforts . “Are you going to attend, sir? Well, then.: Thera was once a young man " “Who met a small vixen called Nell, and she fell in Oove with him. and made hi/m marry her.” “Ah now, Ted, do listen! —A yo-ung mau, and his mother told him never to walk under a ladder." “And he did, naughty youth,-* and a bricklayer fell on him, and he died.'' She pleaded with him: “Seriously, Ted; no nonesense!” So he grasped her by the elbows and looked gravely in her face. “It was mother’s cousin Harold —really and truly—not a make-up." ■, “Hurry up, darling. "I’m swallowing every word, and it’s most awfully interesting." “And 110 didn’t believe that kind of thing-—-jurat like you, you know—ladder®, and croivs, and petticoats, and things. And he was going out to the West Indies to an awfully good appointment—hundreds a year. And his mother w'ent for a watk with him on the last day. And they were building a row of houses—" “Cousin Harold and his mother ?" “No. You know. And liis mother said, ‘Don't go under the ladder, dear'—and he did/" ' “Naughty boy! Naughty cousin, Harold!" “You're laughing! Very well, just wait. To tease her he would. Now, look here, lie said, ‘every ladder I come to I mean to go under twice. And he did. And his mother couldn’t stop him. and she cried. And —that’s all " “All? But where's the point?" “I didn't say there was a point. You know about mother’s cousin Harold." “I’m hanged if I do." “He never, never came back!" “Goodness!" “He never even got there." “Break it gentry, Nell." “The ship he went in sank, and no one escaped to tell the dreadful tale." “And. supposing he hadn't Avaiked under ladders, but was alive in the West Indie®, what relation would he be to you and me?" CHAPTEE 11. She was proceeding to tell him in all good faith, but he stopped l her. “And now"," ho said. “I will tell you a tale. But first, as my feelings have been considerably Harassed, I will solace myself with a pipe." She was being taught to fill his pipe, and to light it, and on this occasion Avas madfl to take a couple of draw® to prove to herself that she had not properly clean-

ed it with the hairpin, according to- instructions given lzst night. So that the story wais long delayed, and when at length it came it did not amount to. much. “There Avas once an old main avlio gave a dinner-party." “That was Daddy," Elinor said from the arm of the chair Avhere slie AV'as now sitting with her shoulder against lust. “It Ava.s on the occasion of the marriage of liis only daughter fco a handsome and agreeable young man, the most eligible parld of the neighbourhood." “That Avas you ands me," Nell explained contentedly. “Weill, you are a vain old boy 1"

“No interruptions, please." Ted went on, pulling at his pipe. “Although the occasion ivas one of rejoicing there was one melancholy circumstance connected with it which oast a shadow over the other Aviso sunshiny—’m—sunshine of the scene." “You’re as bad as a newspaper. Go on softly, or you'll never keep it up. I can’t think of Avhat's coming,/’ “The guests sat down thirteen to table' —• —” “Weill, so they did!" Nell recalled. "Now, that is really very clever of you, Ted.. I'd quite forgotten. I Avas horribly frightened then—but I'd as clean as clean forgotten.!” “Well, there you are!” Ted ea,id. “There’s your moral l ." > “Where? Where?" “Why, here AVe are, all alive and well and kicking; you and mo, your daddy and mummy, your uncle and your cousins and; your aunts." “But supposing one of us Avasn’t?" Nell remarked sagely, “When you ask your thirteen to dinner and one dies it must be horrid, and I should think your guests might—might bring an action against you."

CHAPTER 111. Site AVa.s holding the hand lie had just put up to meet heirs, Avhich Avas round liis neck noiv, and a thought suddenly struck lieu*. “But the year isn't up yet, Ted," she said. The dinner had been an epoch in their young lives, they both remembered the date was the eighteenth of October. He pointed to the silver calendar on the chimney-piece to Avbicli the parlourmaid ait tend ell. “This is the'enghteemth again," Ted said. “There aren't two eighteenths of October in one year," Elinor was back in memories of the events. “Do you remember Aunt Carrie, and liow ill she wav? At the very verge of tlio grave. And how afraid mummy was she should notice there Avere thirteen? Noav, here she is a.s well as any of us, and going to get married again. Ah! What are you doing, Ted ?" “No, T’ed! Oil, no, please! My hair will come down!’’ “I’m getting another hairpin."

It Avas such pretty hair, lio Avas always pleaeed to see it hanging about her ears, as had been it® .fashion Avlien he had first met her —not so long ago. So ' lie fought) her for the hairpin while she

clucked hex- head and threw it backwards, and laughed, and struggled in his grasp: to submit, of course, at last, to yield up the hairpin, to roast it, red hot in. the fire, to 1 watch it burn its malodorous passage through, hts pipe. That oerremony over, she got him his boots, and would liave laced them for him., and kissed them, too, if he would have let her, and did grovel at his feet to arrange the roll of his stockings for him.

“You have got nice calves, Ted!" she toild him. “I don't think I could love .you if you had l sticks of things like Bobert. A listen's." £< (>h, Bob's' legs 'll do all right," Tod said, loyally. He stamped a foot into the second boot, and in doing 00 ground som/ei of the broken vase beneath his heel. He filliped her cheek, then, smiling into her eyes: “You and your old) woman’s superstitious!’’ ha said 1 . ‘Perhaps you don’t know I’ve a —what dtyou call it?—a portent in my own family—or had when I had a family,” he told her, bending again over his boot. 'Well, I have, then !” “And what's a poi-tent, silly? I dare* say ifs nothing to boast of." 1 . “IPs a little'—white—DOG!" He barked the last word at her, loud - and sharp, his face suddenly proj eete-d into hers. She fell backwards and sat on, har heels. “Ted ! How horrid of you! What tft>e@ it do ?" . “I haven’t the faintest notion." * “Are you malring it up?" “Not I. They all made it up. My father and iu,y grandfather and the whole tribe. They stuck it into each other, and tried to stick it into me, that whenever one of us is going to die lie sees this beastly little hound." “Ted!” she was clinging to the calf she admired now, in an agreeable ecstasy of shuddering. ‘‘l wish I had a ghost, too." “You shall have mine, with pleasure." “But why didn't you tell me before?".. “I clean forgot in till this minute. My father told me about it when I was quite a little chap.” “But is it true, Ted?" “Of course it isn’t." “And dicl they really see it?" “They said they did. You may bet your life ihey didn't." When h 1 was ready to waik round the , little douviin he had inherited from, his father, It Aor accompanied him to the gate. “I rPmldn't have a little white dog for a gliosp,' she said to him, slightingly, as they parted. 'Anyone could have as good a ghost as that if they tided!" “Everyone couldn't have an ancestor \'ho had tortured one to death to spit© h.is wife!” he said. “You can sea a dozen little white dog* ary day,” she taunted him. “I. saw one more than I wanted yesterday when I was out with my gun," he admitted. “That new little beast of Anstey's ran in front of me into every field and frightened the birds. I hardly had * a shot." , .... ‘ *

“Tell Bob to keep it at home.” advised Nell '

. “I must.” Ted acquiesced, and went. In. the course of the morning' Bob Anbtey, -who always appeared some time daring' each day, came in. Elinor found him, standing up by the chimney-piece manipulating the silver calendar. '‘You're a day too previous in your calcuflation,” he said. “This isn't the eighteenth, hut the seventeenth, madame." “Well, how funnyl" Elinor cried. “Now I wonder how Aunt Carrie is 1 I shall have to tell Ted the year isn’t up l , after eill."

To Anstey that was rather a cryptic utterance, but he ashed for no explanation. These two were full of little jokes, of allusions, of reminiscences, interesting to them, in which he hald no part, close friends as they were. “Oacu you spare Ted! to me for an hour Or two this afternoon?" he asked. v She “could not," eke said, smiling; she “could! never spare Tedi.” “Then come along with us yourself, madam©. I want Ted's opinion of that mare I've got my eye on at Wendetrling. Your ladyship’s opinion would be of value, too.”

CHAPTER IV, “Ted has nothing to ride. Bid you hear that his horse had wrenched its shoulder yesterday? A wretch of a little dog ran out of a cottage and got mixed up with Starlight's feet. Ted jerked the horse round to .spare the dog— and Starlight is as lam© as a tree." They would bicycle them, he decided. The roads were good. They would get into Wenderling iu time for tea, and take it easy coming home in the dusk. They must remember to take lamps. They would start at three. She agreed to all arrangements, swaying herself idly in the rocking chair Ted had bought for her; a pretty slip of a girl with a happy, almost childish face. Anstey little thought as he looked a,t her how often and often through all his life he would see her with his mind's eye so again! As he was going through the door she called a laughing reproach to him: “Your abominable dog spoilt my husband's sport yesterday, Mr Anstey. Why do you keep such a wretch ?’’

“Which! dog?’’ he asked, pulling up, smiling at her. “Your horrid little white dog." . “I haven't got a little white dog,” lie Said, and laughed, and went away. After all, Elinor did not share the expedition to Wenderling; for at lunch time it came on to rain and Ted would not let her get wet. He was proud of seeing her rough it sometimes; he delighted to take hea* hunting on days when no other lady was iu the fb-ld, to see her face, rosy and eager, he r bright hair darkened with the wet, the raindrops hanging on her hat. He kept her beside liim, standing silent and patient in a certain soppy, sodden spot by the river, waiting for the chance of a wild duck flying homeward above the low-lying mists of the fens. What did not hurt ham could 1 not harm her, in her ,youth and strength and spirit, he thought. “She has the pluck and staying power of a man," he was proud to tell Anstey; but was proud, too, now and again, to exercise his maw prerogative of taking care of the wife who was such a recent, dear possession. Quit© unexpectedly, he would veto some proceeding she proposed. “I won't have you doing it.,’’ he would say with dignity. And she was equally proud to obey. “Ted says I muism't,” oil “Ted says I may.” What, in those golden hours, did it matter which? She walked with him. bareheaded, through the drizzling rain ta the house where the bicycles weire kept, and felt the tyres with him and rubba’d a spot < Of rust off the handle bar, and walked beside him again, he pushing the machine, down the drive to thel road.

CHAPTER V. “IPs a beastly day,” Ted said with, an eye cooked at tlx© low-liari ging, steelooloured clouds, “If Bob wasn’t so keen on xny seeing this l horse I’d chuck it and staj? ■With you.” "Come home soon,” she begged him, and;, “You may be sure I shall com© as soon as I pbssibly can/’ he promised her. *Tt wasn’t Bob’s dog that bothered you the other day,” she told him ais he stood ready to mount, his foot on the pedal. "Bob hasn’t got a little white dog.” "It muit hawe been that brute that ran out from Barker’s under Starlight’s feet the other day, them,” he called', and was off.

dSTell stood) by the gate and watched him till he joined his friend, and, in spit© of the faster falling rain, she watched him still. Before they reached, the bend of the road Ted turned his head; she waved a gay hand to him, and he. - hesitating for a moment, wheeled round and bicycled back. “Bid you caili mie, Neill P” he said. Of course she had' not called. “Bob knew you hadn’t, but I thought I beard you call; and then you held up your hand and beckoned me.” “Nonsense! Nothing of the sort'!” she laughed. “Be off, Ted. I shall 1 never get,you home again if you don’t start.” “You’lll have me home in a twinkling/’ he promised. And in a? flash was gone. She turned aind ran back, with head bent beneath the downpouring rain, lighthearted, to her home, not knowing, never guessing that on that handsome, smiling, healthv facet of her young husband she had looked her last.

; For when.-, al couple of hours later, borne on men’s shoulders, he was carried to his home), he was so crushed and mangled out of his likeness ais 'his wife ■ had known him that even by force they prevented her from looking upon him. When- time had elapsed—Elinor, for gome part of it mercifully numbed or unconscious, could not have told if hours, days, or weeks—Bob Anstey, at. her request, was brought to her. He-had been jn waiting, knowing that, sooner or later, that meeting, if they did not die with the pain of it, must be lived through. He) had expected to seei her lying helpl- - and strengthless with hidden face, ©he Was -standing up against the darkened windows at the- end of the long room farthest from the door. He started l , walk-

ed eOowly, almost as if lie was groping his way among the familiar chairs unci tables in her direction. But when half the space was traversed, and she still stood _ thei’C, uttering no word, duly watching him, his courage failed, aind 1 hie stopped! short. It was the sight of Ted's chair.' his pipes on the bracket beside it, the picture of him, smiling, in the silver frame on the mantel-piece which unmanned him:. He had prayed that hie might have strength to support the girlwidow in this interview, and he found, himself suddenly giving way before her, sobbing like a child, while Elinor looked on fearlessly., from afar, dangling the tassel of the window-blind in her hand. When a,t length he somewhat mastered his grief and looked up, she had come quite close to him., but she did not speak. “I thought you might like to hear,” Anstey said in ai sorrow-muffled voice; and she nodded her head for him to go on. “He —'talked of you nearly all the way,” he began. “He said how ” She stopped him: “Not that,” she said, “Not yet. The other—the other l” By some instinct he knew what she meant: “It was going down the Wenderlmg hill,” he said, “just as we got into the town. You know that sheepish, hill? Half-way down was a brewer’s waggon. We were going at a good stroke, not saying anything for the moment. We got up to the waggon: ‘There’s that infernal white dog again; he said. And I heard him call loudly, 'Get out of the way, you brut© !’ He swerved violently on one side, as if the dog were in his path—l don’t know how it happened! God knows why it happened —he was flung right under the wheels. He —thank Godi—be did not suffer, Nell, or know a moment’s terror or regret. He died instantly.” Elinor was silent for a long time. She sat, with brow clasped tightly in both hands, looking intently upon the carpet au his feet, trying, he thought, to understand, to get into a mind too confused to work receptively what he was saying to her. Presently, still tightly holding her head, but with more comprehension in her face, ©he looked up: “And the dog?” she whispered. “The little white dog ?” “It's a strange thing about th© dog,” he told her slowly. “There wasn’t one!"