Syringa

Front matter

SYRINGA a BY THE SAME AUTHOR. At all Libraries and Booksellers in Town and Country. IN SIN OR FOLLY? In One Volume, Crown 8vo, Cloth Price 6s. A FEW OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. "'In Sin or Folly ? ' is one of those novels which one cannot peruse and lay down without a feeling of pain, after one has derived a great deal of pleasure. A cleverly written tale Filled with incidents that nejter fail to interest. Told with remarkable skill, and with a liter&ry pq.vef, that at once arrests attention and merits high commend£,titw>f'fQ-„?7a- Scotsman. " 'In Sin or Folly ?'• is a trt$' story. One may dip into the book with a frequent latAgg/SJjhe^somewhat forced smartness of the author But the story is not to be dismissed with a few light laughs — it takes hold of the rea,der In a word, it is original enough to be read." — Athenæum.

" It is clever." — The Yorkshire Post. " A decidedly clever psychological study." — The Star. " An exceptionally curious novel The book is a most interesting one." — The Liverpool Mercury. " The book is distinctly clever." — The Liverpool Post. LONDON: DIGBY, LONG & CO., Publishers, 18 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.C. A Complete Catalogue of Novels, Travels, Biographies, Poems, &c, Free by Post on Application. SYRINGA BY ARTHUR NESTORIEN Author of 'in sin or folly?' % o n 5 o it DIGBY, LONG & CO., PUBLISHERS 18 BOUVERIE STREET, FLEET STREET, E.C. THE STANDARD WORK ON AUTHORSHIP The Author's Manual A Complete, Practical Guide to all Branches of Journalism, Literary Work generally, and Book-producing, with Special Advice in Reference to Imaginative Literature. By Perct Russell. Crown 8vo, cloth, 5s. (Fifth Edition, New and Revised.)

SPECIAL NOTICE. The New and Revised Edition contains Prefatory Remarks by the RIGHT HON. W. E. GLADSTONE, M.P., who has read and approved the volume. "The aspirant to literature may certainly read Mr Russell's book with profit. '—Spectator. " Mr. Russell has got up his subject with much care, and supplies a great deal of useful information. His advice and suggestions are sound and to the point." — Graphic. " Cordially recommending Mr Russell's vade meeumS'— Literary World. MiBB M. E. Braddon writes:— "Your counsel both to the journalist and the imaginative writer is full of wisdom." LONDON : DIGBY, LONG & CO., 18 Bouverie Street, Fleet Street, E.C. ' The righteous perisheth, and no man layeth it to heart : and merciful men are taken away, none considering that the righteous is taken away from the evil to come.' — Isaiah lvii. i. CONTENTS.

Chapter I

'A SCRIBE'S WORK WRIT AWRY. ' Are you ready, Margaret ? ' ' In a moment, Gran.' ' Make haste, then.' ' Let me just finish my story. In one minute. And she went on writing : — ' And then there came that evening on which they two were pledged to meet with no word but farewell, to disguise the sigh that choked them, if they could, and then to separate. It was the beginning of their regret reached all too soon, a storm of clinging kisses and good-bye. Here was the first day of an autumn full of tears for rain, the old leaves of their mischief, passion-sered, shed over them in a melancholy fall. And soon the winter of despair would supervene, a whirl and A SYRINGA. wail of sorrowful winds; the voices of their woe. The season of their nefarious delight was at an end. And he, he went away ; but she remained ; he journeyed afar ; she stayed ; he was surrounded with new things ; she with the old ones still, her woman's lot the sadder.

But both alike were downcast. The summer of their love was done with, gone down past its meridian, flying with swift wings out of sight. They parted. This pair, to each of whom it had seemed that they would cease to move, if only the other ceased to be near, discovered then that there is not a thing worth having in the world, that it must not be abandoned at some time either for the sake of honour or for shame, or else for the sake of other men that these may profit also with the greater share in it. They learnt also that there is not a pleasure upon earth that shall not be ultimately paid for with some proportionate repentance ; for a little joy a little grief, for a great delight the throes of a great regret, felt in that measure and proportion which is meet, along all the scale of punishments accordingly, from a single sob, from a single twinge of transient pain to that incessant agony of . . .' ' Margaret !

Do come to dinner.' ' Yes, Gran ; I'm coming.' ' But Julius can't wait any longer.' ' Begin without me. I don't want any soup.' 'of hearts that go near to breaking. Such satisfaction as theirs had been, was fittest for a complete disaster. And so the crisis had arrived, had taken them unawares, and, in a few brief days, had altered their whole lives and hopes. There was the discovery, the husband, the attempted explanation, the failure of it, the desperate resolve to do well at last, if possible, towards him who, outraged, was yet ready to forgive them. They took counsel in one breath ; they resolved, made haste, parted. And, though unhappy, they were perhaps, in some measure, victorious also ; for, after all, as has been truly said, " the only victory in love is flight." They never met each other again ; but each grieved separately.

Each wondered often whether the other grieved ; and even, sometimes, each hoped that this was so ; but yet they were ashamed of hoping it. Still, each trusted that the other found, perhaps, some consolation in the thought that they had done their best to repair their evil. But, in effect, neither of them found one atom of such solace. They endeavoured to accomplish one thing justly ; they ceased to see or hear of one another. For this there was no reward of any kind at all ; and how great was the pain their resolution cost them none could imagine, but SYRINGA. they themselves. The most virtuous thing they had ever done was their eventual distress, their only distress. . . .' ' Margaret' ' Yes, Gran.' ' Are you coming for the fish ? ' ' What fish is there ? ' ' Turbos ' What sauce ? ' ' Prawn sauce.' ' Put some on one side for me, will you ? ' ' For on account of what had happened previously they did not once repine.

Because they were certain that in the midst of malice, and jealousy, and convention, and contention of every kind, if there be one thing pardonable it is assur edly the love, lawful or unlawful, of anyone for any other, no matter the mere way that it may come, or the mere guise that it may freakishly assume. They supposed that, out of all those occurrences which are made to appear unpleasant, the least assailable of any is that which has for its defence some sympathy, and some affection. To the end, however, they adhered to their purpose of renunciation, for the sake of him who, the friend of one, the husband of the other, yet came with forgiveness when he might have come with venge ance. For him alone and for his peace was the effort of their final separation, then, perpetuated in such penance.

For when, in the watches of the night, the old scenes and words came back into their minds, or when in the daytime all the old memory was re-quickened by, perhaps, the smell of a flower or by some little thing, tempting them to be faithless to their resolve, then they considered that he also must be respected, who had pardoned where men were, usually, vindictive. So that both then and thereafter they strove to save his peace from fresh destruction at their hands ; they re spected his rights, and held his future happiness inviolate. And thus grief, the ebb of love's wild tide, draws down the rose-red shells of pleasure, and whelms them, empty, in a sea of tears. ' Syringa.' ' Now I'm ready, Gran. I'm sorry to have been so long,' said she who had just signed ' Syringa,' as she left her writing-table with a sigh of relief.

And she hurried into the opposite room where her brother Julius and the old lady, whom she had called Gran, were in the middle of eating the dinner to which she herself had hitherto been in effectively summoned. She explained, — SYRINGA. ' I was obliged to stop and finish that story, you know. It was to be ready to-day for the Mercury Magazine! * Another of your namby-pamby tales, I pre sume,' said her brother in the pitying voice of a walking gentleman talking about the speaking parts of the play. ' Yes, Julius ; another of my namby-pamby tales. Rather more namby-pamby than usual, I'm afraid. When I heard you were having turbot in here while I was still scribbling — you know how fond I am of turbot — with prawn sauce — I couldn't attend to my rigmarole any more. I got quite sentimental, thinking of my fish.

And so — pass me the cayenne, will you ? — thanks — and so my people behaved even more foolishly than usual.' ' That were not possible.' 'No?' Gran smiled. She asked, — ' And what's your story about, child ? ' Pray say rather : " And concerning what is your story?"' interrupted Julius again. His academical ears ached when they heard the words of a phrase so cruelly disposed. ' Concerning what is your story?' the old lady accordingly inquired anew, feeling reproved and quite ashamed. 'Oh, about nothing fresh, Gran. About love and people's frocks and despair and the regula tion sunset and all that. You know the usual style.' ' But the plot ? Is there any plot ? ' ' Oh, of course, Gran, there's a little.' ' Tell me.' Julius was silent, because his mouth was full of meat and vegetables. Nevertheless, his fiery glance was full of grammatical reproof, and meant most evidently : ' Pray say, rather : " Recount the intrigue of it to me." ' But when Margaret an swered, — ' No, Gran ; it isn't worth telling,' he sat a little higher in his chair, like a man whose presence is both feared and reverenced ; and he smiled com placent approval until a stream of gravy ran out down his delicately chiselled chin.

To his disgust, however, he found that he had smiled condescend ingly too soon. For the unfortunate Gran, already forgetful of her recent errors and of the stern cor rection which they had evoked, persisted again, ' Yes ; tell me,' to such an extent that Margaret was obliged to run through her plot. ' It was very simple and very old, you see ; so that it was not worth talking about at all. A woman was fond of a man who was not her husband, and he was fond of her. And then the husband found out all about it, and, instead of being angry, he forgave them both. So then they parted from one another, she SYRINGA. and the lover, and never met any more, but grieved always because they might not meet.' ' And the husband ? ' ' I suppose he lived happily ever after. I didn't put any more about him, you see.

It was because of your turbot and prawn sauce. The husband had to be done out of his end.' Whilst this was being told, Julius affected to pay no attention. His countenance was as that of a man whose ethereal concerns are far away be yond these worms of earth who love and wriggle and struggle until they are trodden to death, wounded by the feet of fate. His thoughts, it seemed, were removed in unconscious majesty too far beyond these petty trifles for him to heed them in any way. And yet, from time to time, he frowned austerely at the frivolous flies who flew about the ceil ing and walked on it upside down ; and two or three times he tapped sharp peevish taps with his napkin ring upon the table. Although Margaret's exposition of her plot did not occupy a couple of minutes, it was evident before the end of it, that her brother, in spite of his apparent inattention to a thing so base, was expiring to speak, gasping with eagerness to take up his parable, and set forth his theme, convinced that he alone could competently reason about plots and puppets, as he alone could reason upon every subject upon earth, from political economy down to poetry.

He began, — ' Pray, do you suppose, Margaret, that that is the manner in which enlightened persons are wont to behave ? This loving and whining and forgiving ! The solitariest instance of such workings even of the sub-mind is quite'refuted by dialectics and by the superior hierarchies of intelligence. How long, how long will you obscure whatever atom of capa bility you may possess, by this adherence to obsolete creeds ? For these creeds of yours. . . .' ' Creeds ! of mine? ' ' For these miserable creeds of yours are as obsolete as courtesy itself; they, however, fortun ately ; the latter, regretably. They are things of a century ago, and must, indeed, be classified with the manifold errors of romanticism. But I may assure you that in the latter scientific development of the within-man, such paltriness cannot find a place.

You will not discover in the works of the great philosophic modern masters any passage to justify your allegiance to these insipid methods, by which your personages maunder, if I may so say, through the fallacies of incorrect assumption, and through their insipid virtues to the exclusion of that essence of — of suitable vitiosity that intensates the soul's emotion.' ' Really, Julius, you grow more intense and so on every day,' she answered. ' Oh, look ! how ex- SYRINGA. traordinary ! the cat's washing her face with her hind feet.' But her brother had not finished. ' It is doubtful,' he went on, ' whether, at the present intellectual epoch of emancipated discern ment, these loves and pardons and these your parodoxes are not the outcome of an incapacity for serious perception. For, by more intimate re search, it is discovered that these are considerations of pure futility.

Your fallacy is a priori. From the data which we have I derive proof of your conception that individuals may behave in the manner which I am now discussing. Endeavour to follow me. I, I should not behave in that manner. What you write then. . . .' 'But, my poor boy, as long as people read my rubbish, you know I don't care a straw how rubbishing it is.' ' I proceed. I advance additional criteria. I do not love more than is convenient for my intel lectual welfare. Learn, then, that the mere affec tions must be ever subordinate to the subtler developments of the reason-soul. And this leads me to explain to you the relationship which exists between the sensibilities of the flesh and the neurological systems.' ' Have some more tart, will you ? Pass him the cream, Gran.' But he continued : ' Let us, therefore, be con cerned with the corpuluscarian section of philosophy.

What, now, is philosophy ? ' and he explained to them at great length what it was, and proceeded : ' Allow me to postpone for a moment its classifi cation into various ancient and modern schools of which I may profitably enumerate two hundred and sixty-three. At present let us inquire further. What is a philosopher ? A philosopher is one who — by a supremacy of mind, no doubt incomprehensible to you — opposes reason to usage, his conscientiousness to opinion, his judgment to error. And the philosopher Antisthenes refuted the ad missibility of pleasure, or, in other words, this excessive affection of yours.' ' But I can't help what people thought in about B.C. 1000.' ' B.C. ! Pray say : In such or such a year of an Olympiad, mentioning the number of your Olym piad. Now, my refutation of your logic is further fortified by reference to the Hegelian science of the Absolute.

I proceed ; I accumulate fresh criteria. What you write — ' ' Is silly. I know. If you like. What does it matter ? It's the fashion now, the snivelling kind, like that. To-morrow we shall go back again to adventures, and the day after, to heroics or any thing you will. Why not ? You don't laugh at a SYRINGA. woman for changing the style of her back hair. Do you think all this book stuff is a bit more im portant ? By the way, how do you like this new way for one's hair — done up in a bunch behind ? Look ; not bad, don't you think ? ' He frowned, looking anywhere except at her head. He answered, — ' You abase the spirit which endeavours to soar.' There was a pause. Again, — ' It is ignominious. There was another pause. Again, — ' I despair of your work.' ' Yes ? ' ' Unless you submit it for revision to a person of superior perceptive force, who would be able to convert some of your stories, at present worthless, into brief studies in psychology.' ' I'm afraid the stories would disappear alto gether.' ' You are aware that, although I am deeply engaged in my own researches, I have offered to examine your manuscript.

I will sacrifice a few hours, therefore, and devote them to its suitable revision. And, doubtless, Mr Mooton also — ' ' Oh, your friend Mooton ! By the way, I bought half-a-dozen of his epigrams from him the other day at five shillings a-piece. I bought them for one of my villains ; but they didn't suit his style of infamy. So I fitted them on to a hair dresser who went bankrupt — you remember the character? — all the customers forsook his shop.' Julius affected not to have heard. In reality, he was disgusted ; for out of the people amongst whom he was cruelly compelled to live, Mr Mooton was the only one upon whom he did not scowL They were held by each other reciprocally, these two, in a sort of tolerant esteem, placing them selves somewhat upon an equal footing. And now, here it was said that Mr Mooton's epigrams were bought and sold like vulgar merchandise ; the precious thoughts, distilled from the innermost recesses of his grey brain-cells, coarsely turned into a traffic and sold like extract of beef.

And at such a price, moreover ! For five shillings a-piece ! It was an astonishing thing, too. For Julius's nearest approach to a friend was Mooton ; and he supposed that he was Mooton's nearest approach to a friend. To Mooton he confided at least one tenth of his yearnings and discernments ; and yet this traffic had been kept secret from him. The fact was, that Mooton had not thought it necessary to mention the transaction. Reflecting upon his own insight into the characters of all men and all women, he had counted upon a sort of ashamed secrecy on the purchaser's part when he sold his SYRINGA. six epigrams. He had said to himself as he pocketed the thirty shillings, — ' She will never say that she got the epigrams from me. I perceive of what nature women are. She will prefer to let people believe them to be of her own invention.' While Julius was thinking about this transaction, Margaret was rejoicing that at last she had found some subject to occupy him for a time, there by making him discontinue one of his lectures.

She lolled back in her chair with relief. She took her tobacco and her packet of tarred papers, and rolled up a cigarette. Presently, blowing a cloud of smoke, she said, — ' Listen, Gran." 'What?' The old lady returned to the immediate situation. She had no part in the literary dissertations which took place so frequently. And while this last one was proceeding, she had been mentally adjusting her week's housekeeping accounts, long procedures in addition and subtraction, making rows of figures now and then with the end of her desert-fork on the tablecloth. ' Gran, what shall I call my story ? I can't think of a name for it.' Julius frowned again. To think that he was not asked to advise ! He ! But that an old woman with commonplace, foolish ideas should be consuited in his stead ! Could that be ?

No, indeed. He was obliged to interpose. ' Pardon ! Let me counsel you upon its appella tion. Let it be entitled : A consideration of the theory that a thing which co-exists with another thing, with which other a third thing does not co exist, is not co-existent with that third thing.' ' What does that mean ? ' Gran asked. ' It means : Oh, do ask me to explain,' Margaret answered. And, turning to her brother, she laughed in his indignant face. ' Pooh, Julius, don't look so cross.' And taking up a piece of bread as she passed the sideboard, she flipped it at him, and then went away by herself into the garden to puff her cigarette smoke on to the little green beasts that ate up the rose-trees, and to kill them there in hundreds with mouthfuls of her smoke. But Julius was resuming his discourse. He was inquiring again, — ' What, now, is philosophy ? ' and adding, ' I proceed ; I advance additional criteria.'

Chapter II. The Fruits Of Philosophy

William Julius Le Normand had thrown his opportunities away. Endowed with the power of plodding, with considerable industry, with an ex cellent memory, with health, with infinite conceit, with little consideration for the long-suffering of anybody, and, perhaps, with not much less than an ordinary amount of intelligence, he might have been, if he had wished, a successful piano player or a novelist. But he would not. For, as he himself supposed, he was one of those persons who, while in their earliest youth, are chosen out for some in explicable manifestation of ability, sent direct from heaven. And this to such an extent that, at twenty-five years of age, having been brought up as a child, with the care usually betowed upon orphan girls, having never known the fiendishness of upper servants and the forsaken nursery on the garret floor, having been humoured, consulted, having left the shelter of home simply to go away, carefully tended, to school, and afterwards to college, he was nevertheless convinced gfhat he possessed in a lump, perhaps, by some mysterious gift, the knowledge and experience of things that other men pick up here and there by atoms in the battle-wrack of life, where others have fallen and left them scattered.

What knowledge he had not come by in this gift, he had got out of many books carefully read, and out of the lecturing of industrious schoolmen. And this knowledge he valued very much. He reproduced it upon every occasion possible. The greater number of his remarks were quotations which he had learnt by heart, and which he only altered a little as the circumstances required. But, like a true scholar, he did not suppose that it was becoming to make a confession to that effect, until such time as some person might happen to discover it for himself, when he would admit : ' Yes ; it is true that Demosthenes was of the same opinion as myself.' For many a Regius Professor had shown him how to avoid a difficulty here, and to explain the matter nicely in this way. Now, his family, established in the ages of feu dalism, once opulent and locally mighty, had, in its prosperous days, ranked high amongst the most ancient houses of Normandy.

But, exiled long ago for political offences, its chateau ruined and B SYRINGA. estates confiscated, it had taken refuge first in Ireland, and had subsequently withdrawn to Jersey, where, completely impoverished by these antagon istic events, it had lived ever since, eking out the tiny remains of its income by courageous and unrelaxing economies. Then, in the last generation, one, Alfred Le Normand, had completed their financial ruin by his personal extravagance ; and, having lived in England in a pronounced and pro fligate manner as long as he had anything left to live upon, he eventually returned, an excellent beggar, with a constitution undermined, to his birthplace, Jersey. There he married a young and delicate girl of the island, whose modest portion he, in a few years, reduced by three-quarters.

Then he died. And the widow was left with his two children, Margaret and William, to bring up in whatsoever manner she could. For a year or two she struggled bravely enough with her penury, but, at last, suffering from a natural fragility of con stitution, her strength and courage failing her, worn out with the strife, she sank. And because she had no heart left to hope that life would ever be kind to her again, as soon as she was ill enough to die, she died. Notwithstanding, the two children were not left to the casual mercy of strangers. For, just before the end of their mother's life, when they had been called away from their toys and games, and were standing hand in hand, astonished, at the side of the death-bed, both suddenly transformed too soon from naughty noisy babies into the grave watchers that wait in a sick-room for the end to come, then had appeared there, almost at the last moment, an elderly woman with a kind face worn and furrowed with sorrow.

And her cheeks were wet with tears then, when she saw the wasted form of the young widow dying, so greatly overcome by the stress of disastrous things, her last breath so near at hand. Then those children were confided to her charge. She had said : ' I will undertake the charge of them if you will trust me. I will take care of them ; I.' And ever since, she had been more than faithful to her word. But it had never been told in the house, whence she came, or what her previous history had been. The children only knew that she was called Mrs Hall, and that to them she was ' Gran ' always, to whom they might go running with every childish grievance, and who for them filled up the place their mother had left empty. Then she, little by little, had parted with her few possessions in order to keep up their home there in Jersey just as it was, and to provide for the girl and the boy alike the best education that they could have.

She thought that thus she would SYRINGA. 20 give them something more serviceable in the future than the poor little sum that her savings would otherwise have made for them. And in this matter she calculated, apparently, with judgment. The boy William, instructed carefully by the old vicar of their parish, proved himself to be an ardent pupil ; he could read Latin and Greek nicely when other urchins of his age were still making grimy thumb-marks on their declensions. Quite early he knew all about Cicero and Xenophon and the other standard authors who perplex little lads- They were not at all difficult for him. Very soon he was master of all those things for which scholar ships are awarded at schools ; and so he gained a scholarship accordingly, with great ease, passing high above all those who went thither to compete with him.

For his memory was, as the vicar said from the first, remarkable. He remembered all that he read, and he read a great deal, being fonder of his studies than of playing games. Again, nearly grown up, when he was nine teen, he was awarded another scholarship at the University. He seemed to be much more clever than his sister was ; for it was not until some years later that she, having precociously evinced some taste for writing, had, after several and repeated failures, eventually succeeded in getting her tales printed and paid for. But she did succeed at last. And thus it came to pass that she was able to earn enough money for all their requirements when Mrs Hall's resources had been exhausted to the utmost farthing. This happened when Julius left College ; for, after many years of educational and other expenses in excess of her means, the old lady had only just enough left her then to provide him with the funds that he needed to supplement his scholarship at the University.

And that was the last of her worldly goods. So that from that time forth, in fact, it was upon Margaret alone the existence of the home for all three of them depended. For Julius earned nothing. When this state of things was, sometimes Gran asked herself whether after all she had really acted for the best ; whether after all she had fulfilled the promise made at the hour of death, to the mother of those two whom she had grown to love so well, or whether it might have been possible for her to do something better and worthier for them, and more to their advantage. Sometimes she wondered if. now that she had nothing at all left to her, she were not rather a burden on their backs after all, a hin drance even to their happiness, a misfortune in their road. Now and then, when the sovereigns SYRINGA. 22 fell low in the exchequer, she thought regretfully of what her own cost was in their house, and how large a share of what was theirs was used upon herself.