PREFACE.

Conciseness, as distinguished from mere brevity, is a literary virtue; and the novelist who can and will pack his stories into the smallest space compatible with the adequate development of his idea, deserves especially well of his readers. For he has a twofold temptation to do otherwise. In the first place, diffuseness is easy to the writer; it relieves him from the strain of too closely fixing his attention upon the matter in hand; he may approach it gradually and tentatively, and, as it were, teach himself what he wants to say by talking about it. In the second place, the existing conditions of publication and remuneration render it inadvisable, from a business point of view, to aim at compactness; on the contrary, immediate profit is best consulted by inflexibly diluting whatever idea may present itself, into the largest bulk consistent with its remaining a recognisable idea at all—or even, at a pinch, a little beyond this limit. Nor are these the only objections that might be urged against short stories. That novelist must be empty-headed indeed, who, in the course of a

thousand pages, does not occasionally generate something poignant and effective; whereas, if he confine himself to fifty or a hundred, he may conceivably escape the utterance of a single word worth listening to. Again, the ordinary novel-reader, accustomed, in view of the shortness of human life, to glance only at the heads and tails of paragraphs, and to take the rest as read, may chance inadvertently to observe the same practice with the short story; the consequence of which would be that the most conscientiously condensed tale would appear the most vacuous and insignificant.

Nevertheless, short story writing is a branch of the literary art worth cultivating, if only to confirm the fact that many stories which now appear long, would, if honestly written, turn out as short as the shortest. It is not too much to say that nine-tenths of the three-volume novels now published, if stripped of matter purely superfluous and impertinent, would shrink into less than one-tenth their present dimensions. The best hope for modern fictitious literature, especially that written in the English language, lies in the incontinent and unsparing application of the pruning-knife; not only to relieve the increasing mental dyspepsia of readers, but to discover to writers what their work is worth, when extricated from its voluminous conventional wrappings.

The five stories comprised in the following pages were written, some long ago, some recently, as the lack of homogeneity in their style and conception sufficiently indicates. No writer who values his art will permit himself to produce work which (at the time at least) he would desire to see forgotten. As his mind grows, however, and his experience widens, he constantly detects imperfections in that which he had before deemed passable, and the impulse arises in him to blot out or ignore everything anterior to what he now regards as his best period. My critics would doubtless spare me the trouble of saying that little harm would have resulted, in the present instance, had that impulse been yielded to. But an author may, in some measure, justify his soft-heartedness towards his offspring by pleading, first, that he is not always the person best qualified to pronounce judgment on the comparative merits of this or that child of his brain; and secondly, that there is a faculty of youth as well as a faculty of maturity, and

that the former may occasionally evolve something which, though crude in form, shall in substance be sounder than the products of later years. It may furthermore be remarked that stories contributed (as all of the present collection have been) to magazines, are liable, except in special cases, to pass out of the author's control; whence it can happen that material which he himself might feel inclined to reject, may nevertheless make its appearance upon the responsibility of other judges. It only remains for him in that case to hope that the public will not see with his eyes.

London: August, 1880.

ELLICE QUENTIN.

I.

A man about thirty-four years of age was sitting a few years ago in his bachelor rooms in one of the inns of court. It was a spring afternoon, warm for the season; the window was open, and above the high-shouldered brick buildings a glimpse of eastern sky appeared, with a pinkish flush upon it, reflected from the sunset clouds in the opposite quarter of the heavens. Through the window were also visible the boughs of a tree upon which the bright green buds were beginning to unfold; and a couple of sparrows were chirping to one another as they fluttered from twig to twig. A muffled hush was in the air, peculiar to these London enclosures, into which horses and vehicles seldom enter; the roar of the great thoroughfare, though only a few rods distant, being almost inaudible to the occupant of this quiet chamber; while the light ticking of the clock upon the mantelpiece, and the twittering of the birds, were both perceptible to him.

He sat heavily and motionlessly in his chair—a tall, powerfully-built man with gloomy brow and a thick dark beard. In his right hand he held an envelope, which had been torn open; but, after reading the enclosure, he had mechanically put it back. The envelope bore the name of Geoffrey Herne, in a woman's handwriting, and the London postmark. About half an hour had gone by since Herne read the letter, during which time he had been sitting as he was now, plunged in thought. His meditations had not, however, been occupied all that time with the subject of the letter; but certain passages in his past life had been passing in review before his mind: passages in which Ellice Quentin was the central figure. She was a slender girl when he first knew her, looking taller than she was, with strange grey-green eyes, and a clear but bright colour in her cheeks. Her face was very attractive to some people, though it had no pretensions to regular beauty; the features were delicately but oddly formed, indicating a refined and talented but

wayward and unaccountable nature. In her ordinary home life, and also when she was in the company of those she did not like, she was silent, repellent, and cold; but she not seldom in favouring circumstances kindled into brilliance of talk and action; and there was a vein of passion in her which was itself the secret of her frequent coldness. Her lips, red as blood, were gracefully moulded and were perfectly under her control; by subtle modulations she could render them expressive of any emotion. Her figure was slight at this time, and scarcely as fully developed as that of most girls of her age; but she never made an ungainly movement, or fell into an awkward position; and she had such a genius for costume that whatever she put on straightway seemed to become an organic part of her. Her wrists were slender and long, and her fingers tapered almost to a point: Geoffrey Herne had felt their touch upon his face as soft as the thrill of delight that at the same moment swept his heart. But that was not until many months after their first meeting, which was unromantic enough; Mr. Quentin

having invited him to dinner to discuss some professional business (Herne was a barrister). Ellice had treated him on this occasion with undisguised superciliousness, somewhat to Herne's amusement at first; for Mr. Quentin—an obese and ineffective elderly gentleman—though he boasted of blue blood somewhere in his veins, was far from being in a prosperous or dignified worldly condition; was very poor, in fact, and thought of nothing but obtaining possession of some property to which he had a very questionable claim. Meanwhile tradesmen used to present their bills with annotations at the bottom, intimating a desire more or less urgent to have them settled at once. Hereupon poor Mr. Quentin would wince and splutter; but Ellice, leaning back in her chair, with her hands folded on her lap, would meet his eye coldly and narrowly, with a sarcastic smile curling one side of her lips. Mr. Quentin would rather face a score of insolent creditors than that little smile of his daughter's. For Ellice was a natural aristocrat

far more than an hereditary one—she was born for a life of luxury and fastidious refinement, and her father could not help recollecting, at these moments, that he had thrown away eighty thousand pounds of money which should have been hers upon the turf; nor had he the consolation of reflecting that Ellice was ignorant of this fact. Ignorant of it! He sometimes shuddered to think how many facts discreditable to him that cold, silent girl probably knew. She was not always silent either; she could utter agonising remarks in a semi-jocose way. But let us do the young lady justice. It was within Mr. Quentin's memory that once, when he had returned home late at night, after a miserably unsuccessful interview with his lawyers, and had let himself into the house noiselessly with his latch-key, dreading to encounter Ellice's unsympathetic look, he had suddenly felt two slender arms drawn tightly about his neck in the darkness, and a hot and wet cheek pressed against his own. At that the unfortunate man had broken into sobs; Ellice had

tried to soothe him, and sitting on his knee, with her head against his shoulder, had spoken to him such words as he had not heard since he and his dead wife were young. But after awhile she had fallen silent, and in the midst of an incoherent monologue of his on the subject of his wrongs and misadventures, she had risen abruptly and left him, with only a curt good-night. She was a strange girl.

Geoffrey Herne's first impression of Ellice had not been particularly favourable, and if she had behaved as most young ladies would have done under the circumstances, he might probably have never bestowed a second thought upon her. But her gratuitous arrogance, after amusing him for awhile, began to pique him; and being possessed of an exceedingly keen tongue and wit of his own, he was tempted to enter into conversation with her. The dialogue which followed was probably worthy of a listener more intelligent than Mr. Quentin; the upshot of it being (so far as Herne was concerned) that he found it would require all his wit, and more than all his temper, to hold his own fairly against this oblique-eyed young lady, with her curving scarlet lips. They parted that night on terms of almost open hostility, and Herne, as he went homewards, more than once found his brows drawing together and his lips compressed at the recollection of the things she had said to him. 'She is a lady, though—confound her impudence!' was the sum of his

mental comments. Her image was very vivid in his memory—unpleasantly so, indeed; not only that, but the intonation of her voice—her way of lifting back her head with a kind of haughty surprise when he addressed her; the gesture of her hands and shoulders—all were present to him. Moreover he recalled one or two instances in which she had unmistakably had the better of him in the duel of words, and his face grew hot anew with a really disproportionate vexation. He would rather have made a fool of himself before the Lord Chief Justice of England than before that slender girl of twenty. He then resolved that he would avoid seeing her for the future; but he finally modified his determination so far as to tell himself that he would first give her such evidence of his superior qualities as should make her regret ever having had the temerity to provoke him.

As it turned out, this was a much longer and more arduous enterprise than he had anticipated; insomuch that after several months had gone by he did not seem much nearer the consummation than at first. The antagonism between him and Ellice had been—superficially, at least—constant and unrelenting; but meanwhile he had incidentally come to know her well, and he was too clear-sighted a man not to perceive that she was beginning to be indispensable to him. The discovery occasioned him much anxiety and inward struggle. His predilections had for years been against marriage, and he certainly had little encouragement to think that Ellice would ever dream of marrying him. One day, however, after a peculiarly bitter passage-at-arms, he rose and took up his hat to depart. He had something to say first, though, which had been on his mind for a week or two past.

'You are going?' she said indifferently, or, rather, with an air as of relief.

'Yes, I am going; and, as I shall probably not see you again, I will say good-bye.'

'Oh! You have had enough of it at last?'

'I am going to Australia.'

She looked slowly up at him as he stood near her chair, and looked slowly down again, while the colour gradually deepened in her cheeks. 'This is really the most entertaining thing I have heard from you in a long time,' she said lightly after awhile.

'It is the part of wisdom not to outstay one's best witticism,' returned Geoffrey in the same tone; 'so I'll be off at once. Good-bye.' He held out his hand.

'Good-bye,' she answered coldly. But she did not look up, or move her own hand.

'You won't shake hands?'

'What is the use, since we are never to meet again? If you are going, you can go without that.'

'Well, I suppose I can,' said he; and after standing a moment, during which she made no sign except to draw one deep breath, he turned and walked with a heavy tread to the door.

'Mr. Herne!' he heard her say as he laid his hand upon the latch. He looked round without speaking. She beckoned him to her with a movement of the head and hand.

'Excuse me,' she said, 'but I think you—you have left something. Will you come back here a moment?' There was a vibration in her voice that was new to Geoffrey. He came back.

'You were going away without shaking hands,' she said, looking up at him with a curious smile.

'You said that——'

'Oh, well, don't let us quarrel any more; I am tired of it. Here is my hand.'

Geoffrey took it. How soft it was—and how cold! It lay lightly in the embrace of his fingers, but he could perceive a slight tremulousness in it, which seemed also to pervade her whole body.

'You spoke of my having left something——' he began at length.

Her hand suddenly became alive in his, and grasped it tightly. She drew it to her cheek, that was as smooth as the petal of a lily; then slowly turned her face until her lips rested on it. All the blood flew tumultuously through Geoffrey's veins and sang in his ears. He was on his knee beside her, and looking in her eyes, which met his for a moment, and then sank.

'Now go to Australia!' she said in a whisper.

'Ellice—Ellice! Were you the thing I was leaving behind, my dear?' he said, bending forwards till his lips touched hers.... After that there could be no more misunderstandings.

Geoffrey Herne did not go to Australia, either alone, as he had arranged to do, or with Ellice as his wife, as he perhaps might have done; for at this time she would have followed him anywhere in the world—or out of it. But it was decided that they should remain in England, where Geoffrey had good practice as a barrister, in addition to his settled income of six hundred pounds, and be married in May—that is, in about six months. Mr. Quentin put on a portentous aspect when he was first informed of the affair, protruding his under lip and rubbing slowly behind his ear with his middle finger. He sighed and muttered something about having once anticipated a 'more brilliant future—no offence to you, Herne, of course—for his dear Ellice.' But as a matter of fact he was by no means averse to the match, if he had not actually done what he could to promote it. There is apt to be a good deal of humbug inwoven in the characters of elderly men who have seen better days and are not resigned to worse ones. Geoffrey perceived that Mr. Quentin desired to make a merit of doing what really was

pleasing to him; and it was not in an expectant son-in-law's heart to object to that. So matters on that side went smoothly.

To make the same remark regarding his relations with Ellice would be a triumph of understatement. These two found heaven in each other. 'I was made to love and to be loved,' she once said to him, as they sat together in the little parlour on Christmas Eve. 'Be sure you make me love you enough!'

'If you had told me to be sure to love you enough——'

She smiled and said, 'Never mind about that: that will be my affair. But I must love so as to forget everything!' He was sitting on a low stool at her feet, his head leaning against her side. She let one arm fall about his neck, and her soft hand caressed his bearded cheek. 'As I love you at this moment,' she continued, in a tender murmur.

He took her hand in his and kissed the soft palm. 'What is it you wish to forget?' he asked presently.

'To tell you would be to remember.'

'But I wish to know.'

'I am not your wife yet: I shall not tell you.... I wish to forget that I have only three dresses, and that you are not the eldest son of an earl.'

Geoffrey leant back his head till he could see her face, and laughed.

'Don't! Worse things have happened,' she said quickly.

'Worse than what?'

'Nothing. Do you think me beautiful?'

'I love you too much to know whether you are beautiful or not. I used to think you were beautiful some time ago, I believe.'

'You do not know what I can be yet. Loving you will make me seem beautiful—even to you!'

'Is that why you want to love me?'

'I don't know. It suits me. I wanted it. I wanted many things, but that most—at least now. Don't you sometimes think it would be wise to die?'

'I haven't thought so since I thought of going to Australia.'

'That isn't what I meant. This is a heavenly happiness; there cannot be another so good; and yet I ... we might try others. Sometimes I feel as if all the world would be too little for me.'

'I shall never want any other kind of happiness; I shall only want more of this kind,' remarked Geoffrey, who did not know that Ellice was opening to him deeper glimpses of her inner self than anyone—than even she herself—had ever before been in the way of getting. He did not know, and therefore, in the security of his well-being, he did not look. But long afterwards he understood.

The weeks and the months went by, and the lives of the lovers grew to be more than ever one delicious life. Ellice's prophecy proved true: she did become more beautiful, in every way. Her moods, her silences, her coldness, were gone; she was even-tempered, blithe and tender; her singular eyes glowed with luxurious light; the curving of her lips was eloquent of refined enticement.

'Did any woman ever love as I do?' she sometimes asked. 'Do I overflow your heart?'

Geoffrey could have but one answer to such questions; and then she would add, 'This is my world, darling; keep me in it!' When they parted in the evening she would whisper to him, 'I do not like to have you leave me; something might happen....' And Geoffrey, as he made his nightly way back to London from the little Putney villa, would image his coming married life in bright colours upon the darkness, and smile to himself at what he took to be Ellice's wayward or superstitious forebodings. 'I am not going to be one of those sentimental dastards who are afraid of their own good luck,' he said comfortably to himself. 'Ellice is in the unsubstantial idealism of love as yet; when we really come together she will forget her premonitions. Earthquakes do not seek people out merely because they are happy; and it would be more reasonable to suppose that those persons attract the lightning into whose souls the iron has already entered. Ha! that is rather a neat figure. I think that would be a good subject for a sonnet.'