Frank Frankfort Moore

“ He was not, however, much worse than the general run of people. Like them he knew only enough of Shakespeare to be able to misquote him now and again; and, like them, he believed that. Darwinism meant nothing more than that men had once been monkeys.
Harold looked at Archie, and felt that Mrs. Mowbray was a fortunate woman in having met with him. The monument was being raised, Harold felt; and he was right. The management of the Legitimate-Theatre was a memorial to Vanity working heart, and soul with Ignorance to the praise and glory of Shakespeare. ”

“ If Edmund Airey, who, at first, had merely been attracted to Beatrice with a view of furthering what Helen Craven believed to be her interests, had come to regard her differently—as he, Harold, assumed that he had—might it not be possible, he asked himself, that Beatrice, who had just admitted that she had always had some sort of admiration for Edmund Airey, would———-
“Never, never, never!” he cried. “She is all that is good and true and faithful. She is mine—altogether mine!” ”

“ Durdan, who seemed to think that the remark was in logical sequence with Harold’s story.
Beatrice looked wonderingly at the speaker; it was some moments before she found an echo in the expression on Harold’s face to what she felt.
The man who could think of such things as the breaking up of a government, when floating in thirty fathoms of green sea, beneath the shadow of such cliffs as the boat was approaching, was a mystery to the girl, though she was the daughter of one of the nineteenth century historians, to whom nothing is a mystery. ”

“ The organ voice of the lough only filled up the intervals between the tremendous roar of the lion-throated waves that sprang with an appalling force half way up the black faces of the sheer cliffs, and broke in mid-air. All day long and all night long those inexhaustible billows come rushing upon that coast; and watching them and listening to them one feels how mean are contemporary politics as well as other things.
“That’s the Irish question,” remarked Lord Innisfail, who was steering his own cutter.
He nodded in the direction of the waves that were clambering up the headlands. ”

“ It is quite unlikely that Miss Avon and I shall be under the same roof again, but if we should be, I shall, you may be certain, find out from her whether or not an understanding exists between her and Harold. But what understanding could it be?”
Miss Craven smiled. Was this the man who had made such a reputation for cleverness, she asked herself—a man who placed a limit on the opportunities of lovers, and then inquired what possible understanding could be come to between a penniless man and a girl with “a gray eye or so.” ”

“ It was the constant attempt to answer this question that gave the stag his chance of life when, on the afternoon of the third day, Harold was commanded by his masters the gillies to fire into that thickening in the mist which he was given to understand by an unmistakable pantomime, was the stag.
While the gillies were exchanging their remarks in Gaelic, flavouring them with very smoky whiskey, he was thinking, not of the escape of the stag, but of what possible end there could be to the love that existed between Beatrice and himself. ”

“ Why shouldn’t Archie be one of the party? There are a number of decent men going, and decent women also. None of the men will try to get the better of him.”
“And the women will not try to make a fool of him?”
“I won’t promise that—the world can’t cease to revolve on its axis because Archie Brown has a tendency to giddiness.”
Mr. Playdell was grave. Then he said, thoughtfully, “Whatever the women may be, they can’t be of the stamp of Mrs. Mowbray.”
“You may trust my sister for that. You may also trust her to see that they are less beautiful than Mrs. Mowbray,” remarked Harold. ”

“ He could not love with that blind, unreasoning, uncalculating love—that love which knows only heaven and hell, not earth. That perfect love, which casteth out distrust, was not the love of his world.
And thus it was that he walked to his rooms, thinking by what means he could bind that girl to him, so that she should be bound beyond the possibility of chance, or craft, or worldliness coming between them. ”

“ Never mind Edmund Airey. You, yourself, can see, Beatrice, how impossible it would be for any man with the least sense of honour, situated as I am, to ask you to wait—to wait for something indefinite.”
“You did not ask me to wait for anything. You did not ask me to wait for your love—you gave it to me at once. There is nothing indefinite in love.” ”

“ Yes, some poet or other had written something or other on the subject of the great charm of a life of domesticity, and Lord Fotheringay assured Lady Innisfail in confidence that that poet was right.
Lady Innisfail sighed and said that the Home—the English Home—with its simple pleasures and innocent mirth, was where the Heart—the English Heart—was born. What happiness was within the reach of all if they would only be content with the Home! Society might be all very well in its way. There were duties to be discharged—every rank in life carried its duties with it ”

“ Airey was not in earnest—that he had simply been told off by Miss Craven to amuse himself with the young person, in order to induce her to take her beautiful eyes off—off—someone else, and to turn them admiringly upon Mr. Airey.”
“That was the most amusing part of the comedy, of course,” said Harold.
“What fools some girls are!” laughed Mrs. Mowbray. It was well known that she disliked the society of women.
“It’s a wise provision of nature that the fools should be the girls.”
“Oh, I have known a fool or two among men,” said Mrs. Mowbray, with another laugh. ”

“ Achille was an artist, the Sauterne was Chateau Coutet of 1861, and the champagne was, as Archie had promised it should be, Heidsieck of 1884. The electric light was artfully toned down, and the middle-aged butler understood his business.
“This is the family trough,” said Archie. “I say, Harry, isn’t it one better than the oatmeal porridge of our dads—I mean of my dad; yours, I know, was always one of us; my dad wasn’t, God bless him! If he had been we shouldn’t be here now. He’d have died a pauper.” ”

“ As she said good-night to him, she seemed, Edmund Airey thought, to be a trifle fascinated as well as fascinating. He felt that he had had a delightful hour—it was far more delightful than the half hour which he had passed on the settee at the rear of the skeleton elk.
His feeling in this matter simply meant that it was far more agreeable to him to see a young woman admiring his cleverness than it was to admire the cleverness of another young woman. ”

“ Mowbray come to hear how Edmund Airey had plotted with Helen Craven, he asked himself. He began to wonder how she could have heard about the gray eyes of Beatrice, to which she had alluded more than once, with such excellent effect from the standpoint of art. From whom could she have heard so much?
She certainly did not hear it from Mr. Durdan, even if she was acquainted with him, which was doubtful; for Mr. Durdan was discreet. Besides, Mr. Durdan was rarely eloquent on any social subject. ”

“ Harold so far forgot himself as to say, “Doesn’t Carlyle remark somewhere that it’s the fathers who work that the sons—ah, never mind.”
“Carlyle? What Carlyle was that? Do I know him?” asked Archie.
“No,” said Harold, shaking his head.
“He isn’t a tarty chip, eh?”
“Tart, not tarty.”
“Oh. Don’t neglect this jelly. It’s the best thing that Achille does. It’s the only thing that he ever repeats himself in. He came to me boasting that he could give me three hundred and sixty-five different dinners in the year. ”

“ If the people of your so-called British Islands wish to throw Shakespeare overboard, just let them say so. But if they threw him over, the responsibility would rest with them; Mrs. Mowbray would still be the handsomest woman in England. At any rate, “Cymbeline” at the Legitimate would be a monument.
“As a lighthouse is a monument,” said Harold, coming back from the Irish lough to Piccadilly.
“I knew you’d agree with me,” said Archie. “You know that I’ve always had a great respect for your opinion, Harry. I don’t object so much as some tarty chips to your dad. I wish he’d see Mrs. Mowbray. ”

“ Harold had more to think about, as well as more capacity of thinking, than his father. He was puzzled at the attitude of his friend and counsellor, Edmund Airey. What on earth could he have meant by appropriating Beatrice Avon, Harold wondered. He assumed that Airey had some object in doing what he had done. He knew that his friend was not the man to do anything without having an object in view. Previously he had been discreet to an extraordinary degree in his attitude toward women. He had never even made love to those matrons to whom it is discreet to make love. ”

“ Yes, he tried to bring himself to believe that all that he had done was for the benefit of his friend Harold and for his friend Beatrice—to say nothing of his friend Helen as well. After a time he did almost force himself to believe that there was nothing that was not strictly honourable in the endeavour that he had made, at Helen’s suggestion, to induce Beatrice Avon to perceive the possibility of her obtaining a proposal of marriage from a rich and distinguished man, if she were only to decline to afford the impecunious son of a dissolute peer an opportunity of telling her that he loved her. ”

“ He believed that he was equal to an act of heroic self-sacrifice for the sake of the girl—that was how he put the matter to himself when being soaked on the Scotch mountain. Yes, he would go to her and tell her that the conclusion to which he had come was that they must forget one another—that only unhappiness could result from the relationship that existed between them. He knew that there is no more unsatisfactory relationship between a man and a woman than that which has love for a basis, but with no prospect of marriage ”

“ Playdell,” said Harold, shaking his head, “if there’s no fool like the old fool, there’s no ass like the young ass. Now, I can assure you, on the authority of a man of the world—you know what such an authority is worth—that to try and detach Archie from his theatre nonsense just now by means of a lecture, would be as impossible as to detach a limpet from a rock by a sermon on—let us say—the flexibility of the marriage bond.” ”

“ But when the other girl is listening to what another man is saying to her, Harold Wynne’s face is a study. He is as clearly in love with the other girl as anything can be. That, old reprobate—his father—has his aims too—horrid old creature! Mr. Durdan has ceased to study the Irish question with a deep-sea cast of hooks in his hand: he spends some hours every morning devising plans for spending as many minutes by the side of Beatrice. ”

“ Harold gave her his arm.
When at the point of entering the room—it was daintily furnished with old English oak and old English silver—Mrs. Mowbray said, in the most casual way possible, “I hope you will tell me all that may be told about that charming White Lady of the Cave. How amusing it must have been to watch the chagrin of Lord Fotheringay, when Mr. Airey gave him to understand that he meant to make love to that young person with the wonderful eyes.” ”

“ That has always been his weakness—marrying tarty chips that he had no right to marry.”
“If I don’t mistake, Mr. Playdell, it was this little weakness that brought you to grief,” said Harold.
“It was the only point that the bishop could lay hold of, Mr. Wynne,” said Playdell. “I held, and I still hold, that the ceremony of marriage may be performed by any person who has been ordained—that the question of a licence is not one that should come forward upon any occasion. Those who hold other opinions are those who would degrade the ordinance into a mere civil act.” ”

“ He was quite astounded to hear from his sister that Edmund Airey had taken so extreme a step as to beg of her to call upon Beatrice, and invite her to join the Abbeylands party. Whether or not he had approached Mrs. Lampson in confidence on this matter, the fact of his having approached her was, in some degree, compromising to himself, and no one was better aware of this fact than Edmund Airey. He was not an eager boy to give way to a passion without counting the cost. There was no more subtle calculator of costs than Edmund Airey, and Harold knew it. ”

“ Harold, after some further persuasion, got into the hansom which Archie had hailed, and was soon driving down Piccadilly to the spacious rooms of the latter—rooms furnished in a wonderful fashion. As a panorama of styles the sitting-room, which was about thirty feet square, with a greenhouse in the rear, would have been worth much to a lecturer on the progress or decadence of art—any average lecturer could make the furniture bear out his views, whether they took one direction or the other. ”

“ Wynne, I merely wished to explain my position to you,” said Playdell. “I’m on the side of the angels in this question, as a great statesman but a poor scientist said of another question.”
“Pass the statesman as well,” cried Archie.
“What do tarty chips like us care for politics or other fads? He told me the other day, Harry, that instead of introducing a bill for the admission of ladies as members of Parliament, it would soon be necessary to introduce a bill for the admission of gentlemen as members—yes, you said that. You can’t deny it.” ”

“ On the third day that he had been trying to circumvent the stag, Harold felt despondent—not about the stag, for he had long ago ceased to take any interest in the brute—but about his own future.
It is to be regretted (sometimes) that an exchange of sentiments on the subject of love between lovers does not bring with it a change of circumstances, making possible the realization of a scheme of life in which those sentiments shall play an active part—or at least as active a part as sentiments can play. ”

“ Playdell, if I were to suggest to Archie that he is making an ass of himself over this particular matter, I should never have another chance of exercising my influence over him for good or bad. I have always known that Mrs. Mowbray is one of the most expensive tastes in England. But when the beauty of Mrs. Mowbray is to be exploited with the beauty of the poetry of Shakespeare, and when these gems are enclosed in so elaborate a setting as the Legitimate Theatre—well, I suppose Archie’s millions will hold out. There’s a deal of spending in three millions, Mr. Playdell. ”

“ The course adopted by his friend Edmund Airey had astonished him. He could not believe that Airey had fallen in love with her. It was not consistent with Airey’s nature to fall in love with anyone, he believed. But he knew that in the matter of falling in love, people do not always act consistently with their character; so that, after all, Airey might be only waiting an opportunity to tell her that he had fallen in love with her. ”

“ Lady Innisfail was anxious that her guests should carry away certain definite impressions of their sojourn at the Connaught castle beyond those that may be acquired at any country-house, which everyone knows may be comprised in a very few words. A big shoot, and an incipient scandal usually constitute the record of a country-house entertainment. Now, it was not that Lady Innisfail objected to a big shoot or an incipient scandal—she admitted that both were excellent in their own way—but she hoped to do a great deal better for her guests. ”