For Maimie's Sake. A tale of love and dynamite

Front matter

NOVELS BY GRANT ALLEN. Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 3s. 6d. PH ILISTI A. ' A book of remarkable strength.' — Whitehall Review. '"Philistia" is a novel of considerable promise. The author may be congratulated on giving proof of many of the qualities that make the successful novelist. He writes brightly and well. Readers of " Philistia " will not regret the time they devote to its perusal.' — Scotsman. ' A very clever, well written novel, full of freshness and originality.' — St. James's Gazette. ( A book displaying considerable cleverness. . . .Very readable and clever.' — Academy. '"Philistia" is distinctly clever, and much may be learned from its perusal.' — Morning Post. ' This story marks the advent of a new writer of remarkable ability. . . .A work which has a deeper and more enduring value than any novel which has issued from the press for a long time. — Bradford Observer.

Crown 8vo, cloth extra, 6s. STRANGE STORIES. WITH A FRONTISPIECE BY GEORGE DU MAURIER. ' The stories are exceedingly interesting, and several of them have a humorous tendency. Although in the preface Mr. Allen professes that he is a "scientific journeyman " rather than a writer of fiction, he has given us what many successful novelists have failed to do — a very read able volume of short stories.' — Literary World. 1 Mr. Grant Allen has fully established his claim to be heard henceforth as a story-teller.' — Academy. ' No one will be able to say that the stories are dull. The lighter stories can be read with pleasure by everybody, and the book can be dipped into anywhere without disappointment. One and all the stories are told with a delightful ease and with an abundance of lively humour.'— Athenæum. ' Almost all the stories are good, coming nearer to the weird power of Poe than any that we remember to have seen.' — Pall Mall Gazette. ' Perhaps the best fiction of the year is "Strange Stories."

Mr. Grant Allen certainly took his friends by surprise when he burst forth as the author of the stories which had appeared in the Cornhill, Belgravia, and Longmans, under the signature of J. Arbuthnot Wilson. He was known to us all as one of the most able of the rising men of the evolution school, his contributions to modern science being of considerable value. Few suspected him of such levity as telling light stories. The volume is distinctly good.'— County Gentleman. Crown Svo, cloth extra, 3s. 6d. BABYLON WITH TWELVE ILLUSTRATIONS BY P. MACNAB. 'The book justifies itself amply. It is fresh, entertaining, and pleasant from beginning to end The author has kept in check his peculiar power of weird and fantastic realism, but he has proved himself equally at home in the observation of common-place character, and the reproduc tion of everyday life.'— Pall Mall Gazette. 'This clever novel, which is full of graphic descriptions of men and things Altogether " Babylon" is an excellent story, showing original and well-expressed thought.

Chapter I. Enter Maimie

Jocelyn Cipriani lay sunning himself idly on his back on the shelving shingle beach at King's Silbury. It was a beautiful cloudless August day, and Jocelyn Cipriani did not belie his Italian ancestry in his basking love of bright sunshine or of the placid idleness so dear to the souls of Southern Europeans. ' AVhat a glorious morning, Hetty !' he said, with an upward glance at his pretty little wife, sitting close beside him with her library novel. 'And what creatures you women really are, too ! Fancy your holding up a parasol to shade you on a day like to-day, now ! Why, it seems to me, the whole point of the seaside in summer is just this — that it's the only place in England where the sun ever manages to shine for three whole hours uninterruptedly together.' And he went on flinging pebbles into the unruffled sea just beyond the steep bank of shingle where the tide halted, without even so much as listing his head to see where they fell with ever-widening circles on the calm surface of the glistening water.

Hetty looked up from her book for a minute at the glassy bay and the long sweep of circling hills beyond it, and then murmured, with a half-sigh of regret, as she scanned the pretty picture hastily with her eyes : 'I often wish, do you know, Jocelyn, that you painted landscape instead of figure ! How nice it would be for you, now, to be always working at a place like this, instead of in your own great heavy studio in nasty, dirty, smoky old London.' Jocelyn twisted himself a fresh cigarette in his white fingers with quick inherited Southern dexterity. ' No, no, Hetty,' he answered, stroking his pointed brown Vandyke beard ; ' landscape is not the line for the man who would make his name famous on the first roll of art, I tell you, little woman. Landscape is all well enough in its way, to be sure, for the small men of the second order — for Wilkins, and Smart, and MacTavish, and O'Grady ; but the human figure, the human face divine, the human emotions and passions and aspirations, those are the stock-in trade and the raw material of the great geniuses who move the centuries ; in every art — in every art, Hetty.

If a man were to watch the birds, and the flowers, and the trees, and the rivers, all his life long, do you think he'd make as great a writer in the end as Shakespeare, or Goethe, or Æschylus, or Cervantes 1 Not a bit of it ; he never could do it. Man is the head and crown of all things ; aud the artist in whatever material, who wishes to reach the summit of his art, must take man for the foundation and the basis of his special handicraft.' And he blew out two or three short white puffs from his tiny cigarette with the easy air of a person very well satis fied with himself, his wife, the rest of the human race, the constitution of things, and the universe generally. There was a short silence for a few minutes, during which Jocelyn continued to smoke meditatively and throw pebbles at intervals with a splash into the sea, while Hetty went on uninterruptedly with the perusal of her old and much thumbed novel.

By-and-by Jocelyn roused himself with sudden energy, and cried out eagerly : 'There she is! There she is again, Hetty ! Now this time I'm quite determined you shall really see her.' 'Who:' Hetty asked, looking up from her book for a second with languid interest. ' Who ? Why, her,' Jocelyn answered, regardless of prim grammatical niceties. ' The pretty girl, you know, Hetty — that is to say, the rather pretty girl, who would be really pretty if she weren't quite so fresh and plump and rosy. She lacks the fashionable pre-Raffaelite morbidit}'. Burne Jones would consider her disgustingly healthy. The wise man, you see, little woman, never calls any other girl pretty to his own wife without at least adding some saving clause in the shape of a but or a qualification. He abstains from unmixed and unqualified approval of alien loveliness.' ' Then you can't be a wise man, I'm sure, Jocelyn, for you're always raving to me about the extraordinary beauty of this wonderful girl of yours.

Let me see her. Which is she ? Oh, that one over there in the print dress with the roses on it ! Well, yes, if you insist upon it, she's certainly pretty — very pretty, I must admit, Jocelyn.' ' Would be,' Jocelyn corrected gravely, ' were it not for those inevitable redundancies or deficiencies which are always to be observed in all other women, save and except you only, Hetty.' And he 2Mnched the lobe of her ear teasingly between his delicate thumb and finger. ' I wish I could get to know that girl, somehow,' the painter went on reflectively, after a moment's pause. ' Why V the pretty little wife asked, with a careless glance across at the bright young figure he had pointed out to her. ' Why, I should immensely like her to sit to me, Hetty, for a picture I've had more or less in my mind ever since I came here : a picture that's been growing up bodily before me, and that she's just the exact model, of all girls in the world, to realize its perfection.

It's Guido falling in love with Beatrice Cenci as she lies in prison. That girl's got the very face for a Beatrice. I'd give fifty pounds to get her to sit for it to me, I tell you.' ' Probably the fifty pounds would be quite superfluous,' Hetty answered, smiling. ' As a rule, young girls in a country place are only too glad to let anyone paint them. They take it as a graceful compliment to their personal appearance. I remember when I first knew you myself, Jocelyn, I should have been awfully flattered if you'd offered to paint me.' 1—2 ' You're not so much flattered by it nowadays, Hetty. You've got too used to ringing the changes on Juliet, Olivia, and the Roman Empresses. And, besides, it's such a bore, I know, sitting stuck up there stiff, as the wife of Caractacus, in the dull old studio.

But this is going to be such a splendid picture, I tell you, little woman — a perfect masterpiece, an afflatus, an inspiration, a thing to make Comyns Carr's mouth water. See here ; it's to be just like this, look you. Guido there, grave and solemn, with a beautiful countenance : Sydney Chevenix shall sit for Guido. There's a face for you — Sydney Chevenix's — just imagine him with a tinge of first love upon those clear-cut features ; we must manage to make him fall in love off-hand with somebody or other just on purpose. He sits so' — pencil and paper out at once, artist fashion, and a few stray lines made to do duty sketchily for a rough idea of the imaginary picture — ' brush in hand like this, and such a splendid expression of dawning love suggested in the very pose of his neck and shoulders.

Then Beatrice — here she is, you see, innocent, smiling, unconscious, guileless, never even aware in her spotless soul of her coming execution • too childlike to realize it ; an infantile Beatrice, all in gold and yellow — you catch the composition ! Isn't that grand now?' And as he spoke, he sketched in lightly the face and figure of his ideal Beatrice from the girl who stood, parasol in hand, unconscious of his notice, waiting carelessly by a wooden bench on the little rustic parade behind them. A beautiful creature she was, undeniably — small or of medium height, but full and mature in bust aud figure, though still very childish of face and expression • a ripe girl of twenty, with such exquisitely dainty and delicate softness of baby-like outline that only an artist of rare power could ever have hit off aright the melting contours of her innocent little mouth and features.

She was decidedly plump, yet not too plump; and tbe scarcely visible dimples upon her cheeks and chin, which deepened when she smiled, redeemed the plumpness from the verv faintest suspicion of coarseness or excess. Her complexion was perfect, a pearly pinky-white, like the inside of a shell, on the ground-work of her face, relieved by just as much blush-rose as was quite becoming in the centre of either cheek and on the full red lips that nestled between them. By no means a poetical or ethereal creature certainly, but a winning, sweet, flesh-and-blood woman, so beautiful that Hetty herself — susceptible, like an artist's wife, to the charms of beauty — -fell in love with her almost immediately on first sight, as truly as her husband had done before her. ' Jocelyn,' she said, regarding the unconscious girl with intense interest, ' you must really get to know her somehow or other.

I should like you to paint her. You're quite right — she'd make a lovely picture ; and, besides, I want to make her acquaintance on my own account. She's just the sort of girl I should love to be friendly with. We haven't got enough young girl friends now; they all go off and marry the wrong men, somehow, the silly creatures ! I wish they'd only have the good sense always to let me choose their husbands for them.' ' Judging by your own distinguished success in that de partment,' Jocelyn replied, with a slight twinkle in his eye, ' I should say they couldn't possibly put the selection into better hands than yours, Hetty. However, we shall get to know the pretty girl in good time ; and I shall paint her, and you shall make friends with her, and we shall both join wits to select a suitable husband for her.

So, having settled that important point to our own entire satisfaction, let's proceed to discover practically who she is and where she comes from.' As the painter spoke, an old fisherman, with his hands in his pockets, passed in front of the girl, and, with a respectful nod of friendly recognition, asked in a loud, sea faring voice : 'Want a boat this morning, miss? Lovely day for a row. Glad to take you out for a bit on the water, if so be you'd be so kind as to let me. Beautiful weather ! beautiful weather !' The pretty girl nodded back to him, and answered, with a peculiarly sunny smile : ' Thank, you, Sam ; it's awfully kind of you. I should like it immensely, if I could spare the time ; but I don't want to go out sailing this morning, thanks. The fact is, I'm waiting for somebody.' The old sailor touched his hat with respectful kindliness, and strolled along the beach in a careless fashion, saying as he went : ' No offence meant, miss ; thought you might a' liked it.

God bless her dear pretty little face ! She's a good un, she is. Everybody do love her.' ' Who is the young lady V Hetty ventured to ask curiously, as the man passed just in front of her. The sailor looked sideways somewhat grumpily, and answered, without turning his head : ' Why, bless you, that's Miss Maimie, that young lady is. Everybody at Silbury do know Miss Maimie. God bless her pretty little face !' ' Surnames don't pass current in these parts, it seems,' Jocelyn Cipriani said, smiling. ' You're no nearer what you want to get at now than you ever were, I fancy, Hetty.' At that exact moment, a handsome man of thirty-five or thereabouts, in a light tweed suit, and a straw hat with a college ribbon on it, strolled up carelessly from the hotel on the Parade towards the pretty girl, and began to talk to her in a listless fashion for a few minutes.

As he approached, the pretty girl's face coloured up at once, till it looked more exquisitely beautiful than ever, with a certain unmistak able glow of feminine satisfaction ; and her parasol ceased immediately from describing its vague circles on the dusty ground in a way that told Jocelyn Cipriani's practised eye, without possibility of error, the person she was waiting for had really arrived. ' Why, Mr. Pym knows her !' Hetty cried in surprise, as the man in the tweed suit lifted his hat gracefully to the pretty stranger. ' Mr. Pym knows her,' Jocelyn Cipriani repeated care lessly ; ' and what's more, Hetty, the pretty girl's in love with Pym, too.' ' How do you know V Hetty asked quickly. ' Oh, you don't take a painter in about these small matters, I can tell you, little woman. It's my trade, you know ; my shop, my business.

If I wasn't always watching and noting these minute shades of passing expression in men and women, I could never paint the sort of things I do now, Hetty. The pretty girl's in love with Pym, I'll bet you a sovereign.' 'Well, that's a good thing, anyhow, I'm sure, Jocelyn ; for now we shall probably get to know her.' ' That's a good thing as far as it goes, no doubt, for us, Hetty ; but ' ' But what V ' Well, I don't know whether it's quite such a good thing for the pretty girl, you see, somehow.' ' Why, Jocelyn, surely Mr. Pym's a very nice man, and a fellow and tutor of an Oxford college. I should think he was an excellent match for almost anybody — below the rank of a baronet's daughter.' ' An excellent match, indeed — within the limits you men tion — if only she can catch him. But they do say, Hetty — well, I forget the long and the short of it in all the details ; but I remember, when Pym and I were at Oriel together, there was some story or other about a barmaid ; and though for the life of me I can't recollect it now, I've an impression — a vague impression, the merest impression — I may be mistaken — I speak, like the French newspapers, under all reserves — that Pym didn't come altogether well out of it with flying colours.

Indeed, I won't swear that he ever even got out of it at all in any way worth speaking of. The pretty girl had better take care. Flirting is a game where the man stakes nothing, and the woman everything. If the pretty girl's wise, she'll be very cautious how she flirts with such a man as Adrian Pym without full inquiry.' ' Pretty girls never are wise,' Hetty answered, pulling lazily at the flower of a horned sea-poppy ; ' and if they were, you know, you men wouldn't like them half as well as you do at present, Jocelyn. Intellect in a woman is absolutely fatal. But here's Mr. Pym coming over to us, I declare ; now we shall learn all about who the pretty girl is.' The man in the tweed suit strolled across the road towards them in the regular Oxford lounging manner. 'Good-morning, Cipriani,' he said, as he raised his straw hat with careless gracefulness to Hetty. ' Lovely day, isn't it, Mrs. Cipriani?

Jocelyn was making a sketch just now, I think, wasn't he? Not going to take to landscape at your time of life, are you, Cipriani V ' No,' the painter answered, ' not if I can help it ; though Hetty here has just been telling me I ought to go in for it ; and I am well known to be the most obedient and sub missive of husbands. But it wasn't landscape I was twid dling my pencil at ; I was putting your pretty little friend there into an imaginary picture— my Academy picture for next year, in fact — and I thought she'd make a charming Beatrice. There's the sketch, if you care to look at it ; a mere outline — three strokes of a pencil; yet I dare say you'd recognise her, even if you don't recognise the remarkable merit of a very neat and dexterous study.' Adrian Pym took the little scrap of paper from the painter's hand with an awkward and constrained air, as if he didn't quite like the particular turn the conversation had taken. ' Yes,' he answered, with some slight hesitation, ' it is like her ; undoubtedly like her.

You've hit her off very well at first sight, my dear fellow.' ' How very beautiful she is, Mr. Pym !' Hetty cried en thusiastically. ' I've quite fallen in love witli her the moment I've seen her. As to Jocelyn, he's watched her up and down several times before, here ; and he always calls her categorically " the pretty girl," just as if there were no other pretty girls anywhere else in all creation.' ' Which is an obvious fallacy,' Jocelyn interrupted gravely, with a mock bow towards his pretty little wife's neat small figure. ' Well, she is pretty, certainly,' Adrian Pym assented, with that grudging acquiescence under which a man in love always vainly tries to hide the marks of his profoundest admiration ; ' she is pretty, Mrs. Cipriani, and I'm not at all astonished that Jocelyn and you should have been so much struck by her.

She's the prettiest girl in all Silbury.' ' We're not the only ones to be struck, Adrian,' the painter said significantly. ' But you needn't blush about it. Bigger places than Silbury might well be proud of her. You've hit upon a very good thing, and deserve to be con gratulated upon your good fortune. Tell us who she is, and all about her. I want to get her for myself, you know — professionally, I mean — no idea of turning Mahommedan, my dear Hetty — to sit for me, that is to say, in my new picture that I'm now painting — internally, in imagination.' ' Well,' Adrian Pym answered slowly, with some reluctance, 'her name's Maimie, and she's a sort of second cousin or so of one of my pupils. I've brought a reading-party down here, you know, for several years running now, and Maimie and I are old chums by this time ; quite a long standing friendship, in fact, Mrs. Cipriani.' ' But hasn't she got any other name besides Maimie V Hetty inquired, with a smile of quiet amusement. ' People don't generally go about the world nowadays like Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, and so on, with only oue name tacked on to their personality, and that one a pet name into the bargain.' The Oxford tutor blushed almost imperceptibly. ' It isn't a pet name, indeed,' he said, with apologetic promptness. 'She's got no other, except her surname.

She was christened Maimie, I believe — Maimie only. No body ever calls her anything but Maimie ; she's Miss Maimie alone, even to the fisher-people. Or, rather, she wasn't ever christened at all, if it comes to that : for her father's eccentric—very eccentric ; an old naval officer with ideas of his own, compounded, I believe, from Tom Paine and the Admiralty Sailing Directions ; and he would never allow her to undergo any form of religious ceremony, except re peating some prayer he composed himself to the Spirit of Reason or some similar abstraction. He has a rabid objection to the clergy — the black brigade aud the devil dodgers, he calls them ; and the sight of a white tie looming in the distance drives him positively frantic for ten minutes. He's quite a character, the old captain is.' ' No doubt,' Jocelyn answered mercilessly ; ' but, for a teacher of logic, Pym, you betray a most reprehensible in ability to stick close to tho point at issue.

You will perhaps remember that we asked you for particulars — not about Maimie's papa or Maimie's mamma, or Maimie's uncles and aunts and cousins, but about the actual and individual Maimie herself inproprid persond. You admit incidentally that the young lady is seized of a surname — I hope I speak with legal accuracy : what is it V ' Oh, her surname ?' Adrian Pym replied, with some show of awkward confusion. 'Her surname? Maimie's sur name? Well, her surname, I believe, Jocelyn— her sur name's Llewellyn.' ' Oh, you believe so, Mr. Pym V Hetty echoed maliciously. Adrian Pym looked positively embarrassed. ' Yes, I believe so,' he answered, seating himself cross legged on the shingle beside them. ' In fact, I know it. I've known Maimie now for several years — ever since she was only as high as that, Mrs. Cipriani !' ' How very nice !' Hetty put in, banteriugly. ' It's well to begin an acquaintance with a pretty girl early in life.

She learns then betimes not to be afraid of you.' The tutor took no notice of her meaning look, but pre ferred to turn aside with a faint blush to her husband, and said rather shortly : ' I can introduce you to her if you'd really like to know her, Cipriani.' ' Thanks : do. It would exactly suit me. I must make her come up to London and stop with us, and let me im mortalize her face in my Academy picture — such a picture, Adrian ! The very finest I've ever painted. I mean to make a perfect masterpiece of it. In after-years, Hetty, when the pretty girl's a wrinkled old woman, people will point her out, like the Maid of Athens or Goethe's Bettina, and say, " That's the person who sat to Jocelyn Cipriani, the celebrated painter, for his great picture of Beatrice Cenci." ' ' You conceited man !' Hetty cried, laughing. ' Not at all,' Adrian Pym answered, with friendly warmth. ' When an artist has painted the things that Jocelyn has done, it would be sheer affectation, and worse, on his part to pretend he didn't know himself how much the world thinks of them and values them.

But why can't you paint Maimie down here, as she is — eh, Cipriani !' ' My dear fellow ! And lose my holiday ! No, no, Pym; that would never do, I tell you. Your pretty Arcadian must come up to London and be painted in a drear-nighted December by London gas-light, to give the full effect, you know, of Italian sunshine. For Italy, nothing in England, I declare, equal to fog and gaslight. Does she live here ? Is she a native — she and her pagan papa — or are they only visitors V ' A native,' Adrian Pym answered lightly. ' Never been anywhere in her life, almost, away from Silbury. In fact, she's lived a sort of Paul et Virginie existence, don't you know — with the part of Paul left out, of course.' (Hetty coughed drily.) ' Her father, old Captain Llewellyn, is quite a madman in his own way — a Welsh Druid, I be lieve, or something of the kind — a disbeliever in everything on earth, except the Triads and the Triumph of Reason ; and he's brought Maimie up in primæval innocence — an amiable heathen — not even allowing her to read the Bible.

He's a dear, wild, well-meaning, insane old man ; and he has his own ideas about education and so forth. He's taught Maimie to shoot and fence, to read and write, and to tell the truth, he says, like the Persians in Herodotus ; and he's not taught her anything else in particular, except to ride barebacked, and play cricket like a boy, and row a boat as well as a sailor.' ' But isn't she a dreadful tomboy, with such a queer education ?' Hetty asked curiously. ' She looks such a gentle, timid, womanly little thing, one would never think she'd been brought up in such a shocking heathenish fashion.' ' So she is,' Adrian Pym answered, with unguarded warmth. 'As gentle a little thing as ever was born, I assure you, Mrs. Cipriani. She's too womanly altogether by nature ever to have been much altered even by her father's funny teaching.

He has only kept her from learning the conventional nonsense most other women learn, so that she says what she thinks, innocent little soul, and means no harm by it ; but he hasn't succeeded in making her into anything but a real woman, as childish and simple as ever you could find one. She reminds me always of something between Galatea and Miranda — a child in innocence, and yet a per fect woman in maturity of feeling.' Jocelyn Cipriani yawned. ' How very enthusiastic we're getting, Pym,' he answered lazily. ' We must certainly be introduced to this child of nature, this prodigy of ingenuousness. What a perfect Beatrice she ought to make, if only she comes up to the highly coloured description, Hetty ! But when a man has reached Pym's unfortunate condition, I've often observed that his opinions at large are apt to be painfully warped and distorted by the emotional medium, which seems, like Iceland spar, to exercise a double refractive rainbow-making influence.

I understand they call the state " falling in love," Adrian.' AdrianPym drewhimself up upon the shingle alittle stiffly. ' The fellow of a college,' he answered, with some chilli ness in his tone, 'has no opportunities for indulging himself in such expensive luxuries. It's all very well for artists like you, Cipriani, who can coin money with the wave of a paint-brush ; but as for me, you know, my dear fellow, my income depends absolutely and entirely upon my strict ob servance of the most monastic celibacy.'

Chapter II. First Love

That same afternoon, shortly after lunch, Adrian Pym left his noisy party of ten undergraduates, and turned by him self to climb the heather-clad hill that overhangs the west side of King's Silbury. Near the top of the cliff path, in a little combe, where a seat stood back a yard or two from the edge, he came suddenly upon Maimie Llewellyn. It was clear that Maimie was not there by accident. She jumped up as he came, like one who expects another, and took his hand in hers with childish frankness. ' So there you are, Adrian,' she said in a soft clear voice, exquisitely pure and musical and delicate. ' I've been waiting for you here for half an hour. I really thought you were never coming.' Adrian Pym smiled a quiet smile of half-cynical amuse ment, not unmixed with the selfish pleasure of conscious appreciation. ' How delightfully natural young people are !' he said, relaxing her hand that seemed loth to leave his. ' I'm punctual to the minute, Maimie — punctual to the minute ; whence the acute arithmetician might obviously infer that you had come here full half an hour too early.