I could easily tell you a lie, Frank, and say that you were, but I should never forgive myself if I were to do such a thing. In my opinion, sir, you are not liable at all.’, ‘Not liable!’ Frank felt as if his heart had turned suddenly from a round-shot to an air-balloon. Shall I not have all eternity to rest in!’ That serene plaster face down yonder gave force to the brave words. Half a dozen little buffer states would have kept them at peace. I can’t repeat it—everything that is nice.’, ‘Do you know, Frank, I really believe that in a quiet, secret, retiring sort of way she has been fond of you herself.’, ‘O Maude, what funny ideas you get sometimes! How can it be? But the last part, you see, is all about wills, and bequests, and homeopathy, and things of that kind. “’Oo’s Pepys?” “The Diarist,” says I. With a curious double current of feeling, she was pleased and disappointed at the same time, but more pleased than disappointed, so she kissed the marrer of her plots. Dear Maude,—All the little two-oared boats which put out into the great ocean have need of some chart which will show them how to lay their course. There was a hole in the door, and the man put his head through the hole, and the barber on the other side powdered him out of the flour-dredger.’. The lady could take particularly good care of herself, I believe. ‘I’m sorry about this business, Mr. Crosse,’ said he. But I’ll let ’im see as I knows it. If her things should be late, they will come in very usefully afterwards. It is a delightful thing to snuggle up in, is a hansom; but in order to be really trim and comfortable one has to put one’s arm round one’s companion’s waist. You call’t think how hard I am with other people. I knew that my own passion for you was the very essence of my soul—oh, how hard it is to put the extreme of emotion into the terms of human speech!—but I did not dare to hope that your feelings were as deep. It is not the comfort but the attention which he values. At the bottom lay an old smoke-stained church with a square tower, and a small open churchyard beside it. He passed through it, unlocked the front door, and received Maude into his open arms. Go in alone and draw the money.’. Just that one word PART seemed to be written in letters of fire right across the page, to the exclusion of everything else. I used to think that babies were stupid and indifferent—and perhaps other babies are—but he is never indifferent. We can never go back upon the past. I don’t know what it is, but the feeling is quite overpowering.’, ‘Is that why you married a man with flaxen hair?’, ‘Well, I couldn’t expect to find every quality in my husband, could I? Dear Maude,—All the little two-oared boats which put out into the great ocean have need of some chart which will show them how to lay their course. You must. Shall we go to a matinée to counteract it?’, ‘I don’t think, Frank, that I was ever more impressed, or learned more in so short a time, in my life. ‘It is right that you should think so,’ the other answered, with the same irritating laugh. And you said how lonely it was when we were the only visitors at the Swiss hotel.’, ‘That was an inspiration. Mr. Selby, with his red face and fluffy side-whiskers, had Maude upon his arm. ‘I felt sure that we should have an argument over this. ‘My word, it will be no laughing matter for Mrs. Watson if she cannot give a good reason for it,’ said he. Over it all, to their right, towered those glorious Houses of Parliament, the very sight of which made Frank repent his bitter words about English architecture. The same idea, it seemed, had occurred to Mrs. Beecher, fortified by a remark from the Lady’s Journal that an internal intellectual life was the surest method by which a woman could preserve her youth. You can’t buy ’em, you have to breed ’em. Now, sit there on the footstool at my feet, and I will read to you.’, ‘Sit quiet, then, and be good. Remember the plain women. The most stately of ancient English buildings was contrasted with the most beautiful of modern ones. She sat for a little with her face quite cold and set. Shall we propose Tennyson next week?’, ‘But Tennyson is quite simple, is he not?’, ‘Then why should we meet to discuss him if there is nothing to discuss?’, ‘You mean that we might as well each read him for herself.’. ‘I could never see any harm in them,’ said Mrs. Beecher. Her idea of a happy holiday set them both laughing. That I, the daughter of the house, should be married in my old black and white tennis-dress, which I wore at the Arlingtons’ to save my nice one! I am sure that white dress with the black stripe—the one you were playing tennis with at the Arlingtons’—would do splendidly. There is a picture of his Highlanders going up to the battle along the winding path which leads from Wolfe’s Cove. The woman weighs half a ton, and the bedrooms are at the top of the house. She guessed in some extraordinary way what my secret feelings were about it. London Bridge, King William Street, Abchurch Lane, the narrow stair, the office with the almanacs and the shining desks, it has all become glorified, tinged with a golden haze. No, thank you, I’ve just had some tea. I think that we shall go to evening-service next week. As long as a woman gets on very well with a man, she is apt, at the back of her soul, to suspect him of weakness. Oh yes, you can, miss! There is something tragic in it. Go into the Abbey and think, and as the nation’s past is borne in upon you, you will have no fear for its future. There was knowledge and authority behind the words of this unaccountable woman. ‘One shilling each—thank you, sir. And they clattered downstairs for their golf-clubs. I hope your wife does not read your letters, or this will rather give her fits.—Yours as ever. Crosse. Now and again their sweet calm would be broken by a ring at the bell, when some friend of Frank’s would come round to pay them an evening visit. They stood among the memorials of all those great people, marvelling at the mysteries of their own small lives. It was in the roomy dining-room of the Hotel Metropole at Brighton. and they come quite regardless of how I wish to be, or even of how I have cause to be. ‘I can’t be angry with you,’ said she. There would be no more cricket that day. No such house for beautiful thrift, quiet, spontaneous, nay, as it were, unconscious minimum of money reconciled to human comfort and human dignity, have I anywhere looked upon where I have been.” Now, Maude, did that man appreciate his wife?’, ‘Yes, but words with the ring of truth in them. Some little confusion of ideas.’. Only the dressy people wore wigs. Be a good boy and do exactly what you are told. Nothing to speak of, but just a little.’, ‘Don’t you think Dr. Jordan had better give you something for it.’, ‘Do you think so? ‘There’s a good girl!’ said he. It is time we went to the church.’, ‘Fall in for the church!’ cried Jack. You see it will not be far from the station. How, ‘Well, they can’t go down. He stood near the door and waited. That is how I love you, but I do prefer you with your body on all the same. His tastes were healthy and obvious without being fine. He was born somewhere in sixteen hundred and something or other, and I forget what his father was.’, ‘I must try to remember what you tell me.’, ‘Well, it all amounts to this, that he got on very well in the world, that he became at last a high official of the navy in the time of Charles the Second, and that he died in fairly good circumstances, and left his library, which was a fine one, to one of the universities, I can’t remember which.’, ‘There is an accuracy about your information, Frank—’, ‘I know, dear, but it really does not matter. A good deal of it is, I believe, quite impossible. ‘This is the tomb of Wolfe, who died upon the Heights of Abraham,’ said the guide. Right oh! Merely as a friend it would not be disagreeable to see her again. Besides, you really are very pretty. Fancy your imagining that you had come into my life in order to darken it. Frank dropped his pipe and stood staring at this apparition. ‘Here you are!’ gasped Frank. ‘No, dear. You wanted two hundred El Dorados, did you not?’, ‘Four and ninepence! ‘Put “The cord which is held tight is the easiest to snap.” That will be all right. It was all so new and solemn and all-important to them, that they had expected something mystic and overpowering in the function, and yet here was this brisk little man, with an obvious cold in his head, tying them up in as business-like a fashion as a grocer uniting two parcels. And then, just as we looked at ’im, ’e crumbled in, as you might say, across ’is breast bone, an’ just quietly settled down into a ’uddle of dust. But now the narrow walls seem in an instant to have fallen, and a boundless horizon stretches around me. The tight cord is the easiest to snap. ‘Well, we’ve ’ad the Lord Mayor ’ere at least once a year, an’ ’e never found it stuffy. ‘I am very sorry to disappoint you,’ he said, ‘but the matter is more serious than I thought. It was very simple and plain—an old man in a dressing-gown, with homely wornout boots, a book upon his knee, his eyes and thoughts far away. You will remember that I had not seen you at the time.’, ‘I will tell you a single experience. It is, “thinketh he dwelleth in the cold of the moon.”’. Even that drive through the streaming streets, with the rain pattering upon the top of their four-wheeler, could not depress him any longer. These are the beginnings of some of the letters which they wrote about that time. There could be no doubt either as to the woman or the sleep. I beg you to have confidence in me, and tell me some of your experiences.’. It was well that they should decide it before they separated, so as to start fair upon the next Wednesday. If you will bring her to the doorstep, I will be answerable for her removal.’, ‘She’s in the dining-room. Then one eye is half opened, as if he were looking round to see if it were safe to open the other one, and then he gives a long, sorrowful wail as he realises that his bottle is not where he left it when he went to sleep. Is it not a sin that we young Englishmen should be familiar with every music-hall in London and should know so little of this which is the centre of the British race, the most august and tremendous monument that ever a nation owned. The side-door was open, and they passed into its dim-lit interior, with high carved pews, and rich, old, stained glass. For example, I have not time to write a book explaining to every one how nice Frank Crosse is; but if he were nasty my life would be empty, and so of course I should write my book.’, ‘I feel such a fraud when you talk like that.’, ‘Why, Frank, what is the matter with you to-day?’, ‘No, I am sure that you are not. But if he thought it best to get behind his own lawyers and come down here, then he must have some doubts about going into court. ‘Because they ’ave been goin’ on most owdacious before’and. I have something very grave to tell you. They sat down at the table, the accountant in the centre, Farintosh on the right, and Frank on the left. And yet, if Mrs. Beeton knew it, one feels that one ought to know it also. No, the most venal rag in the city.’, ‘Well, you know, we bought some shares to-day, and it calls our mine a preposterous one.’, ‘Oh, is that all. On the contrary, I wish you could come every day. The success of, ‘She was so proud of it, Maude. The meeting was to be at three o’clock, and at ten minutes to the hour Mrs. Hunt Mortimer arrived with two large brown volumes under her arm. She was a little too eager, unnaturally so, and I saw through her game. ‘That is capital. If the bottle is not instantly forthcoming he will howl loudly, and beat the air with his fists until he gets it. He often at night took his friends down into the kitchen.’, ‘Well, the habit of smoking was looked upon much less charitably at that time.’, ‘And besides, he smoked clay pipes,’ said the matron. One could guess where Henry the Eighth got his masterful temper. ‘There is just time for nine holes at golf before it is dark, if you wilt come exactly as you are. Mrs. Hunt Mortimer continued. Perhaps he would be willing to consider some compromise.’. His face was tanned brown, in spite of his City hours, but his hair and slight moustache were flaxen, and his eyes, which were his best features, were of a delicate blue, and could vary in expression from something very tender to something particularly hard. But deep down in my soul I knew that I should marry you.’, ‘I knew that I should marry you, Frank, or else that I should never marry at all.’, ‘There now! The whole place is perfectly charming.’. We have warned Mr. Farintosh that his books will be inspected to-day. In an instant Maude was by her side, the tears running down her cheeks, for the sight of grief was always grief to her, and her nerves were weakened by this singular interview. A brass plate, outside a small brick house, marked it out from the line of other small brick houses. Frank had brought home the Life of Carlyle, and Maude had been dipping into it in the few spare half-hours which the many duties of a young housekeeper left her. No, it’s all right. And then suddenly she realised that it was too late. ‘Do you remember the wording of the bond, Mr. Crosse?’, ‘Well, sir, I should advise you to get your lawyer to read it. I know. Oh, I am so sorry! He looks so sweet and innocent, and at the same time so humorous and wicked, that his foolish mother wants to laugh at him and to weep over him at the same time. ‘Frankie, you have not kissed me yet.’. That should satisfy you, Mrs. Crosse. ‘This is Gorgonzola, main,’ said the waiter, with a severe manner. Never both be cross at the same time. The buckle of her brown leather belt just gleamed over the edge of the table-cloth. ‘Yes,’ she said slowly, as one who weighs her words. I only saw. Mr. or Miss Crosse to Mr. or Miss Selby. ‘Well, at any rate,’ said Frank, ‘it means that in eight days it will all be over.’, ‘It means,’ said he, ‘that in eight days we must promise that at some future date we will begin to make preparations for something to happen in the future. Then the waiter knows! There are currents and eddies, low sand-banks and sunken reefs, and happy the crews who see them ahead, and trim their course to avoid them. And now they had finished the rooms, but the matron, catching a glow from these enthusiastic pilgrims, had yet other things to show them. Maude sat aghast at the depths of his depravity. But you have some plan in your head, Frank. That well-remembered sweet, subtle scent of hers rose to his nostrils. ‘Don’t you think, Frank, that I had better go?’, ‘No, I don’t. He was a new waiter, and so mistook every one for a new customer, which is an error which runs through life. Don’t you love yours?’, ‘Oh, never mind mine. And she is such a saint, Harrison—such an absolutely unselfish saint! And perhaps for once, Instinct may have been better than Conscience. Only a headache, but she is not to be disturbed. I know my enemy now. It was an aquiline face, very different from any picture which they had seen, sunken cheeks, an old man’s toothless mouth, a hawk nose, a hollow eye—the gaunt timbers of what had once been a goodly house. With the slight flush upon her cheeks and the light in her eyes, she seemed the personification of youth, and life, and love. He was the more profound thinker, but music and form are essential also.’, ‘It is a bust to Longfellow, the American.’ They read the inscription. That is caresses. She, ‘Here’s the first letter, in which she is talking about how they first moved into the house at Cheyne Row. Mrs. Beecher stooped and picked an invisible hairpin out of the rug. So when you were gone I sent Jemima round and borrowed it, and I have read it right through to see if there was anything about our mine in it—, Mariani’s is a quiet restaurant, famous for its, It is always a mystery to the City man how his wife puts in the seven hours a day of loneliness while the E.C. ‘There’s a dog or something in the room.’. ‘It all rings false—statue, inscription, everything,’ said Frank. ‘But there should be two other people, the cook and the housemaid. Come in here and smoke a pipe with me. Now what shall we buy?’, ‘Government stock, Frank—if you think it is safe.’, ‘Oh, it is safe enough. ‘What rot it is! Amateur dressmaking is always going on at The Lindens, and Frank has become more careful in his caresses since he found one evening that his wife had a row of pins between her lips—which is not a pleasant discovery to make with your own. It is the early part that I want to learn now—but it is so hard.’, ‘Because I want you to be as happy as Mr. Beeton.’, ‘No, no, you can’t be, Frank. Shakespeare—’. That is the worst of it.’, ‘But surely your own office would not be so hard upon you?’, ‘It is not my own office. It is easy to understand if one will only put it into ordinary language. Well, she seemed to me a very soft-spoken, obligin’ young lady.’, ‘So she may be, but they’re a queer couple, I tell you. When he got outside, in the privacy of their hansom, he was convulsed with the sense of his own achievements. But how is a man with a capital of fifty pounds going to be philosophic when he is fighting an opponent whose assets, as a certain hoarding near Clapham Junction told him every morning, exceeded three millions of pounds. He had not said, ‘O Maude!’ because he could not. You imagine me to be a hero, and a genius, and all sorts of things, while I, ‘Not at all. It was a bright and yet a mellow light, falling in patches of vivid colour upon the brown woodwork and the grey floors. Above he heard the shuffling of feet, the murmur of voices, and then amid it all those thin glutinous cries, ‘It is very singular that you should say with such confidence that you know that our baby is a splendid one, and further on you say that in some ways it differs from any other baby. And that is the pen with which he wrote, ‘Oh look, Maude,’ he cried. P.S.—Papa gave us such a fright, for he came in just now and said that the window-cleaner and all his family were very ill. Six hundred years ago the English looked upon it as their holiest and most national shrine, and since then our kings and our warriors and our thinkers and our poets have all been laid there, until there is such an accumulation that the huge Abbey has hardly space for another monument. Like a gentleman, or a Christian, or any other ideal, it is but a poor approximation which is commonly attained. My own sweetest Maude,—I do want you to come up to town on Saturday morning. I’ll tell you where ’e really lies, if you’ll promise you won’t pick another chunk off that. They were one, never more to part until the coffin-lid closed over one or the other. She had chased the other maid out of the house, and then, while Mrs. Watson rushed for the police, she had drunk herself into the stupor in which she had been found. It must be that heavy-footed Jemima. You will have this in the morning, and I should have my answer by the evening post. A conservatory, if you please, dining-room and drawing-room. “I hope you are not a very good player, Mr. Crosse!”—“No, Miss Selby, but I shall be happy to make one in a set.” That’s how we began. He loved a lady. At first it struck her as dry, but from the moment that she understood that this was, among other things, an account of the inner life of a husband and a wife, she became keenly interested, and a passionate and unreasonable partisan. I can’t imagine how you came to think it! ‘I reckon,’ remarked the father, ‘that if any one went through as much as that lady did, it would not tend to improve her beauty. Jack was a horsy, slangy young sportsman who cared nothing about Frank’s worldly prospects, but had given the match his absolute approval from the moment that he realised that his future brother had played for the Surrey Second. Beeton is all right, but I will not be lectured by Dr. Johnson. ‘O Frank, we must learn to be economical. Dear girlie, give me your hand! And to think that I should have kept the paper as a surprise for you!’, ‘Well, the print is a little slurred, and it was a very natural mistake. You say that you do it to please me, but that would not please me. Then I will see you home to St. Albans in the evening, and we shall have another dear delightful week end. A cup of tea and a departure. It is such a very cheap way of doing things. I shall never, never forget it! I’ll resign in her favour. ‘I thought that would please you. ‘Hullo, you there!’. You old Bluebeard! And so, quietly and soberly, they rolled away upon their first journey—the journey which was the opening of that life’s journey, the goal of which no man may see. (The rest is irrelevant. They may correct it by experience, and improve it by use, but it is good enough to guide them safely out to sea. ‘You won’t be late to-day, Frank,’ said Maude at last, peeping round the tall coffee-pot. He was engaged, but Mr. The success of Sartor Resartus encouraged them to the step. The hour was just striking when Frank, with his well-brushed top-hat and immaculate business frock-coat, came rushing from the direction of King William Street. When he had finished, the matron had gone down to open the door, and they were alone. They are down at four pound fifteen now.’, ‘Why on earth could the paper not say so?’, ‘When a fraction is used, it always means a fraction of a pound.’, ‘Good heavens! Contradictory, incalculable, whimsical life! He would allow that they were extraordinarily quick in assimilating another person’s views, but that was all. We both had it. It is all very well just now, when I am young and you think that I am pretty. Then I looked at you between my fingers, and there you were sitting quite cool and cheerful, as if you rather liked it. They stood in an aimless way before the altar rails. I can’t bear it. He had a few very good points about him.’, ‘He has a trick of saying, “my wife, poor wretch!”’, ‘Impertinent! ‘I was just thinking that my nose was. How he had loved that writing once, how his heart had warmed and quickened at the sight of it, how eagerly he had read it—and now a viper coiled upon the white table-cloth would hardly have given him a greater shock. It justifies me in aspiring to you. So come! There’s his stick in the corner. We shall see it through together.’. I’ll put that Times before ’im to-night at dinner as sure as my name’s John.’, ‘And a good lesson to them, too! ‘Of course that would be your impression,’ said she. oh, how I am longing for Saturday, when I shall see you again! They might call you Selby, but you would continue to feel Crosse. Wasn’t it horrid of him? What’s this?—“I hereby guarantee to you—” What’s this? ‘You’ll ring if you want me, sir,’ said he, and shut the door with ostentatious completeness. Their steps clattered and reverberated through the empty church as they passed up the aisle. Next train, the man says.’. ‘I will stay for another hour to check these figures,’ said Wingfield. ‘Six hundred years ago,’ said Frank, as they paused and looked up, ‘that old stone cross was completed, with heralds and armoured knights around it to honour her whose memory was honoured by the king. But the visitor did not respond to the pretty gesture of welcome, nor did her handsome face return that sympathetic smile. But her skirts had hardly ceased to rustle in the passage before the Browning Society had been dissolved by a two-thirds’ vote of the total membership. And yet he thought it wiser to tell. No please, Frank, if I am cook, you must be scullery-maid. Ill-humour passes and hurts nobody. Frank stood by the window and smoked a cigarette. O Maude, how could you have the heart?’, ‘And how jealous you were! The first class must be splendid. Frank Crosse’s face grew whiter and his eyes larger as he stared at it. ’E’s an upstandin’ young man with a good sperrit in ’im.’, ‘It’s a matter of opinion,’ said the waiter. You speak as if our love were a thing which we might change or suppress. I know his poems so well,’ said Maude. A pair of black list slippers explained the silence of his approach. She had snatched it from his lips and thrown it into the grate. I don’t suppose you were aware of it, but there was a time when I could very easily have made you marry me, in spite of all you may know about my trivial life and adventures, but I thought it all over very carefully, and I came to the conclusion that it was not good enough. Her cheek was wet with his tears. Frank flung himself down into an armchair, and muttered about absurd conventions. (Extract from a letter to the Author from Mrs. Frank Crosse.). I want every year to draw me closer and closer, until we really are as nearly the same person as it is possible to be upon earth.’. Though they lose from this moment onwards the sympathy of every sentimental reader, the truth must be told that they were thoroughly enjoying their lunch. It’s ’ad its day, I’ll allow. Certainly not, any more than she has a right to read his without his permission. I hardly dare think, Maude, what would have happened to me if you had refused me.’, ‘How sweet it is to hear you say so! Eleven o’clock, sir, sharp. Under its shelter they brushed themselves dry before they entered. Everything which life could offer was yours. He was a very good man, and yet he caused a civil war. Ring? The greatest effects are the simplest effects, and so it always was and so it always will be. It ran in this way—, (Subject to the Specific Rules and Regulations of the Stock Exchange.). He laid his hat upon the floor, and crept humbly towards the chair which Frank pushed towards him. To know as much as Mrs. Beeton. He is always hunting for his bottle, and will seize my finger, or a bit of my dress, or anything, and carry it to his mouth, and when he finds it isn’t what he wants, he throws it away very angrily. ‘I always thought that people on their honeymoon lived on love.’, ‘Yes, isn’t it dreadful, Frank? And then the new cook had proved to be a violent, intermittent drunkard.

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