Old Maids' Club — The Idyl of Trepolpen

THE IDYL OF TREPOLPEN.

"No, we can't have Diana," the President said, when Lord Silverdale reported the matter.

"That is, not if the _Moon_-man breaks off the engagement.

According to the rules, the candidate must have herself discarded an advantageous marriage, and that Miss Diana will give up Mr. Wilkins is extremely questionable."

"Like everything connected with the _Moon_-man's bride.

However, my aerial expedition has not been fruitless; if I have not brought you a member from the clouds, at least we know how right I was to pluck Clorinda Bell."

"Yes, and how right I was to appoint you Honorary Trier!"

said Lillie.

"I have several more candidates for you, chosen from my last batch of applications.

While you were in the clouds, I was working.

I have already interviewed them.

They fulfil all the conditions.

It only remains for you to do your part."

"Have they given good reasons for their refusal to marry their lovers?"

"Excellent reasons.

Reasons so strange as to bear the stamp of truth.

Here is the first reduced to writing.

It is compounded of what Miss Ellaline Rand said to me and of what she left unsaid.

Read it, while I put another of these love stories into shape.

I am so glad I founded the Old Maids' Club.

It has enlarged my experience incalculably."

Lord Silverdale took the manuscript and read.

* * * * * When John Beveridge went to nurse his misanthropy in the obscure fishing village of Trepolpen, he had not bargained for the presence of Ellaline Rand.

And yet there she was, living in a queer little cottage on the very top of the steep hill which constituted Trepolpen, and sloped down to a pebbly beach where the dark nets dried and the trawl boats were drawn up.

The people she was staying with were children of the soil and the sea--the man, a rugged old fish-dealer who had been a smuggler in his time; the woman, a chirpy grandame whose eyes were still good enough to allow her to weave lace by lamplight.

The season was early June, and the glittering smile on the broad face of the Atlantic made the roar of the breakers sound like stentorian laughter.

There was always a whiff of fish--a blend of mackerel and crabs and mullet--striking up from the beach, but the salt in the air kept the odoriferous atoms fairly fresh.

Everything in Trepolpen was delightfully archaic, and even the far-away suggestions of antiquity about the prevailing piscine flavor seemed in poetic keeping with the spirit of the primitive little spot.

In a village of one street it is impossible not to live in it, unless you are a coastguard, and then you don't live in the village.

This was why John Beveridge was a neighbor of Ellaline's. He lived much lower down, where the laugh of the Atlantic was louder and the scent of the fish was stronger, and before he knew of Ellaline's existence he used to go down hill (which is easy), smoke his pipe and chat with the trawlers, and lie on his back in the sun.

After they had met, he grew less lazy and used to take exercise by walking up to the top of the hill.

Probably by this time the sea-breezes had given him strength.

Sometimes he met Ellaline coming down; which was accident.

Then he would turn and walk down with her; which was design.

The manner of their first meeting was novel, but in such a place it could not be long delayed.

Beveridge had obeyed a call from the boatmen to come and help them drag in the seine.

He was tugging with all his might at the section of the netting, for the fishers seemed to be in luck and the fish unfortunate.

Suddenly he heard the pit-pat of light feet running down the hill, and the next moment two little white hands peeping out of white cuffs were gripping the net at the side of his own fleshy brown ones.

For some thirty seconds he was content to divine the apparition from the hands.

There was a flutter of sweet expectation about his heart, a stirring of the sense of romance.

The day was divine.

The sky was a brooding blue; the sea was a rippling play of light on which the seine-boat danced lightly.

One little brown sail was visible far out in the bay, the sea-gulls hovering about it.

It seemed to Beveridge that the scene had only been waiting for those gentle little hands, whose assistance in the operation of landing the spoil was such a delicious farce.

They could be no native lass's, these soft fingers with their pink little nails like pretty sea-pearls.

They were fingers that spoke (in their mute digital dialect) of the crayon and the violin-bow, rather than of the local harmonium.

There was something, too, about the coquettish cuffs, irresistibly at variance with the village Wesleyanism.

Gradually, as the net came in, Beveridge let his eyes steal towards her face.

The prevision of romance became a certainty.

It was a charming little face, as symmetrically proportioned to the hands as the face of a watch is.

The nose was retroussé and piquant, but the eyes contradicted it, being demure and dreamy.

There was a little Cupid's bow of a mouth, and between the half-parted rosy lips a gleam of white teeth clenched with the exertion of hauling in the seine.

A simple sailor's hat crowned a fluff of flaxen hair, and her dress was of airy muslin.

She was so absorbed in the glee of hauling in the fish that it was some moments before she seemed to notice that her neighbor's eyes were fixed upon her, and that they were not set in the rugged tan of the local masculine face.

A little blush leapt into the rather pale cheeks and went out again like a tiny spurt of rosy flame.

Then she strained more desperately than ever at the net.

It was soon ashore, with its wild and whirling mixture of mackerel, soles, dabs, squids, turbot--John Beveridge was not certain but what his heart was already among the things fluttering there in the net at her feet.

While the trawlers were sorting out the fish, spreading some on the beach and packing the mackerel in baskets, Ellaline looked on, patently interested in everything but her fellow amateur.

After all, despite his shaggy coat and the clay pipe in his mouth, he was of the town, towny;

some solicitor, artist, stockbroker, doctor, on a holiday; perhaps, considering the time of year, only a clerk.

What she had come to Trepolpen for was something more primitive.

And he!

Surely he had seen and loved pretty women enough, not to stir an inch nearer this dainty vision.

For what but to forget the wiles and treacheries of women of the town had he buried himself here?

And yet was it the unexpectedness, was it that while bringing back the atmosphere of great cities she yet seemed a creature of the woods and waters, he felt himself drawn to her?

He wanted to talk to her, to learn who she was and what she was doing here, but he did not know how to begin, though he had the gift of many tongues.

Not that he deemed an introduction necessary--in Trepolpen, where not to give everybody you met "good-morning" was to court a reputation for surliness.

And it would have been easy enough to open on the weather, or the marine harvest they had both helped to gather in.

But somehow John Beveridge learnt embarrassment in the presence of this muslined mermaiden, who seemed half of the world and half of the sea.

And so, amid the bustle of the beach, the minutes slipped away, and Beveridge spoke no word but leaned against the cliff, content to drowse in the light of the sun and Ellaline.

The dealers came down to the beach--men and women--among them a hale, grizzly old fellow who clasped Ellaline's hand in his huge, gnarled fist.

The auction began.

John Beveridge joined the crowd at a point behind the strangely assorted couple.

Of a sudden Ellaline turned to him with her great limpid eyes looking candidly into his, and said, "Some of those poor mackerel are not quite dead yet--I wonder if they suffer."

John Beveridge was taken aback.

The last vestiges of his wonted assurance were swept away before her sweet simplicity.

"I--I--really--I don't know--I've never thought about it," he stammered.

"Men never do," said Ellaline with a gentle reproachful look.

"They think only of their own pain.

I do hope fish have no feelings."

"They are cold-blooded," he reminded her, beginning to recover himself.

"Ah!"

she said musingly.

"But what right have we to take away their lives?

They must be--oh so happy!

--in the beautiful wide ocean!

I am sorry I had a hand in destroying them.

I shall never do it again."

"You have very little to reproach yourself with," he said, smiling.

"Ah!

now you are laughing at me.

I know I'm not big and strong, and that my muscles could have been dispensed with.

But the will was there, the intention was there," she said with her serious air.

"Oh, of course, you are a piscicide in intention," he admitted.

"But you will enjoy the mackerel all the same."

"No, I won't," she said with a charming little shake of the head, "I won't eat any."

"What!

you will nevermore eat fish?"

"Never," she said emphatically.

"I love fish, but I won't eat 'em!

only tinned things, like sardines.

Oh, what a little stupid I am!

Don't laugh at me again, please.

I forgot the sardines must be caught first, before they are tinned, mustn't they?"

"Not necessarily," he said.

"It often suffices if sprats are caught."

She laughed.

Her laugh was a low musical ripple, like one of the little sunlit waves translated into sound.

"Twenty-two shillings!"

cried the owner of a lot.

"I'll give 'ee eleven!"

said Ellaline's companion, and the girl turned her head to listen to the violent chaffering that ensued, and when she went away she only gave John Beveridge a nod and a smile.

But he followed her with his eyes as she toiled up the hill, growing ever smaller and daintier against the horizon.

The second time he met her was at the Cove, a little way from the village, where great foliage-crowned cliffs came crescent-wise round a space of shining sand, girdled at its outer margin by tumbling green, foam-crested surges.

Huge mammoth-like boulders stood about, bathing their feet in the incoming tide, the cormorants perching cautiously down the precipitous half-worn path that led to the sands.

There was a point at which the landward margin of the shore beneath first revealed itself to the descending pedestrian, and it was a point so slippery that it was thoughtless of Fate to have included Ellaline in the area of vision.

She was lying, sheltered by a blue sunshade, on the golden sand, with her head on the base of the cliff, abstractedly tearing a long serpentine weed to dark green ribbons, and gazing out dreamily into the throbbing depths of sea and sky.

There was an open book before her, but she did not seem to be reading.

John Beveridge saved himself by grasping a stinging bush, and he stole down gently towards her, forgetting to swear.

He came to her with footsteps muffled by the soft sand, and stood looking down at her, admiring the beauty of the delicate flushed young face and the flaxen hair against the sober background of the aged cliff with its mellow subtly-fused tints.

"Thinking of the little fishes--or of the gods?"

he said at last in a loud pleasant voice.

Ellaline gave a little shriek.

"Oh, where did you spring from?"

she said, half raising herself.

"Not from the clouds," he said.

"Of course not.

I was _not_ thinking of the gods," said Ellaline.

He laughed.

"I am not even a Perseus," he said, "for the tide though coming in is not yet dangerous enough to be likened to the sea-monster, though you might very well pass for Andromeda."

Ellaline blushed and rose to her feet, adjusting a wrap round her shoulders.

"I do not know," she said with dignity, "what I have done to encourage such a comparison."

John Beveridge saw he had slipped.

This time there was not even a stinging bush to cling to.

"You are beautiful, that is all I meant," he said apologetically.

"Is it worth while saying such commonplace things?"

she said a little mollified.

It was an ambiguous remark.

From her it could only mean that he had been guilty of compliment.

"I am very sorry.

A thousand pardons.

But, pray, do not let me drive you away.

You seemed so happy here.

I will go back."

He made a half turn.

"Yes, I was happy," she said simply.

"In my foolish little way I thought I had discovered this spot--as if anything so beautiful could have escaped the attention of those who have been near it all their lives."

Her words caused him a sudden pang of anxious jealousy.

Must they not be true of herself?

"And you, too, seemed to have discovered it," she went on.

"Doubtless you know all the coast well, for you were here before me.

Do you know," she said, looking up at his face with her candid gray eyes, "this is the first time in my life I have seen the sea, so you must not laugh if I seem ignorant, but oh!

how I love to lie and hear it roar, tossing its mane like some great wild animal that I have tamed and that will not harm me."

"There are other wild animals that you may tame, here by the sea," he said.

She considered for a moment gravely.

"That is rather pretty," she announced.

"I shall re-remember that.

But please do not tell me again I am beautiful."

She sat down on the sand, with her back to the cliff, re-adjusting her parasol.

"Very well.

I sit reproved," he replied, taking up his position by her side.

"What book is that you are reading?"

She handed him the little paper-covered, airily-printed volume, suggesting summer in every leaf.

"Ah, it is _The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft_!"

he said, with a shade of superciliousness blent with amusement.

"Yes, have you read it?"

she asked.

"No," he said, "I have heard of it.

It's by that new woman who came out last year and calls herself Andrew Dibdin, isn't it?"

"Yes," said Ellaline.

"It's made an enormous hit, don't you know."

"Oh, yes, I know," he said, laughing.

"It's a lot of sentimental rot, isn't it?

Do you like it?"

"I think it is sweetly pretty," she said, a teardrop of vexation gathering on her eyelid.

"If you haven't read it, why should you abuse it?"

"Oh, one can't read everything," he said.

"But one gets to pick up enough about a book to know whether he cares to read it.

Of course, I am aware it is about a little baby on board a ship that makes charming inarticulate orations and is worshipped by everybody, from the captain to the little stowaway, and is regarded by the sailors as the sweet little cherub that sits up aloft, etc. , and that there is a sensational description of a storm at sea--which is Clarke Russell and water, or rather Clarke Russell and more water."

"Ah, I see you're a cynic," said Ellaline.

"I don't like cynics."

"No, indeed, I am not," he pleaded.

"It is false, not true, sentiment I object to."

"And how do you know this is false sentiment?"

she asked in honest indignation.

"When you haven't read it?"

"What does it matter?"

he murmured, overwhelmed by her sense of duty.

She was evidently unaccustomed to the light flippancies of elegant conversation.

"Oh, nothing.

To some people nothing matters.

Will you promise to read the book if I lend it you?"

"Of course I will," he said, delighted at the establishment of so permanent a link.

"Only I don't want to deprive you of it--I can wait till you have finished with it."

"I have finished.

I have read it over and over again.

Take it."

She handed it to him.

Their finger-tips met.

"I recant already," he said.

"It must have something pure and good in it to take captive a soul like yours."

And indeed the glamour of Ellaline was over every page of it.

As he read, he found tears of tenderness in his eyes, when otherwise they might have sprung from laughter.

He adored the little cherub who sat up aloft on the officers' table and softened these crusty sea-dogs whose hearts were become as ship's-biscuits.

He could not tell what had come over himself, that his own sere heart should be so quick again to the beauties of homely virtue and duty, to the engaging simplicity and pathos of childhood, to the purity of womanhood.

Was it that Ellaline was all these things incarnate?

He avowed his error and his conversion, and gradually they came to meet often in the solitary creek, as was but right for the only two intellectual people in Trepolpen.

Sometimes, too, they wandered further afield, amid the ferny lanes.

But the Cove was their favorite trysting place, and there lying with his head in her lap, he would talk to her of books and men and one woman.

[Illustration: Talked to her of books and men and one woman.

] He found her tastes were not limited to _The Cherub That Sits Up Aloft_, for she liked Meredith.

"Really," he said, "if you had not been yourself, I should have doubted whether your admiration was genuine."

"Yes, his women are so real.

But I do not pretend to care for the style."

"Style!"

he said, "I call it a five-barred fence.

To me style is everything.

Style alone is literature, whether it be the man or not."

"Oh, then you are of the school of Addiper?"

"Ah, have you heard of that?

I am.

I admire Addiper and agree with him.

Form is everything--literature is only a matter of form.

And a book is only a form of matter."

"I see," she said, smiling.

"But I adore Addiper myself, though I regret the future seems likely to be his.

I have read all he has written.

Every line is so lucid.

The form is exquisite.

But as for the matter----!"

"No matter!"

summed up John Beveridge, laughing heartily.

"I am so glad you agree with me sometimes," said Ellaline.

"Because it shows you don't think I am so very stupid after all."

"Of course I don't--except when you get so enthusiastic about literary people and rave about Dibdin and Addiper and Blackwin and the rest.

If you mixed with them, my little girl, as I have done, you would soon lose your rosy illusions.

Although perhaps you are better with them."

"Ah, then you're not a novelist yourself?"

she said anxiously.

"No, I am not.

What makes you ask?"

"Nothing.

Only sometimes, from your conversation, I suspected you might be."

"Thank you, Ellaline," he said, "for a very dubious compliment.

No, I am afraid I must forego that claim upon your admiration.

Unless I tell a lie and become a novelist by doing so.

But then wouldn't it be the truth?"

"Are you, then, a painter or a musician?"

He shook his head.

"No, I do not get my living by art."

"Not of any kind?"

"Not of any kind."

"How _do_ you get it?"

she asked simply, a candid light shining in the great gray eyes.

"My father was a successful saddle-maker.

He is dead."

"Oh!"

she said.

"Leather has made me, from childhood up--it has chastised, supported, educated me, and given me the _entrée_ everywhere.

So you see I cannot hold a candle to your demigods."

"Ah, but there is nothing like leather," said Ellaline, and stroked the head in her lap reassuringly.

The assurance permeated John Beveridge's frame like a pleasant cordial.

All that was hard and leathery in him seemed to be soaked soft.

Here, at last, was a woman who loved him for himself--an innocent, trusting woman in whose weakness a man might find strength.

Her pure lips were like the wayside well at which the wearied wanderer from great stony cities might drink and be refreshed.

And yet, delightful as her love would be in his droughty life, he felt that his could not prove less delightful to her.

That he, John Beveridge, with the roses thrusting themselves into his eyes, should stoop to pick the simple little daisy at his feet, could not fail to fill her with an admiring gratitude that would add the last charm to her passion for him.

But it was not till a week afterwards that the formal proposal, so long impending, broke.

They were resting in a lane and discussing everything they didn't want to discuss, the unspoken playing with subtle sweetness about the spoken.

"Have you read Mr. Gladstone's latest?"

she asked at last.

"No," he said; "has Mr. Gladstone ever a latest?"

"Oh, yes, take him day by day, like an evening paper.

I'm referring to his article on 'Ancient Beliefs in a Future State.'

" "What's that--the belief of old maids that they'll get married?"

"Now you are blasphemous," she cried with a pretty pout.

"How?

Are old maids a sacred subject?"

"Everything old should be sacred to us," she said simply.

"But you know that is not what I mean."

"Then why do you say it?"

he asked.

"Oh, what a tease you are!"

she cried.

"I shan't be sorry to be quit of you.

Your flippancy is quite dreadful."

"Why, do you believe in a future state?"

he said.

"Of course I do.

If we had only one life, it would not be worth living."

"But nine times one life _would_ be worth living.

Is that the logic?

If so, happy cats!

I wonder," he added irrelevantly, "why the number nine always goes with cats--nine lives, nine tails, nine muses?"

Ellaline made a _moue_ and shrank petulantly away from him.

"I will not discuss our future state, unless you are prepared to do it seriously," she said.

"I am," he replied with sudden determination.

"Let us enter it together.

I am tired of the life I've been leading, and I love you."

"What!"