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The Wingham Times, 1888-11-02, Page 64a' c n inh ai1iEi me k IfiUUDAY, NOV. 2, 1S S. 9 the ingenuous youth of this natinn air pl of mut, ^Rr with the choicest thoughts of a dist r g� 1 tiuguislsed and high minded Diving It' UM y w,2* �P+` 9 autitor.�--Winnie, ?'it tired to death ten gunleae--#Ivo hundred numbered I aE keeping, he thought, with the wide stepiee tally printed, sand issued to oaten st in:ease encs the puuotilione suuscribers upon conditione which. • EIiztzbethanisnt of tho eminent Arad - May be learnt ou Application tit ell teat's fawado anti, ceilings, Winifred, o at Lnwevor, launlzedl his marital xemon• libraries --to the school selection , b intetz ec to familiarise strances to utter scorn, She hated lacshttiar prices, d 1 u t sterer's house, she said, all furniebed alike from end to end with servile adherence to historical correct- ness. Such ptaritanioal purism was meant for slaves, Why pretend to be living in Elizabethan England or Louis Quinn ii raneo, when we're really vegetating, as we all know, in the marshy wilds of nineteetzth eentury Suffoik$ Let your house reflect your own eeleotieistn—a very ;coal phrase plaited up from a modish handbook of domestic decoration. She liked a littlo individuality and lawlessness of purpoee, "Your views, you know, Hugh, she cried with the ea; cathedra conviction of a woman laying down the law in her own household, "are just the least little bit in the world pedantic, Yon tend your architect want a stiff museum of Elizabethan art. It may be silly of me, but I prefer thyself a house to live in.' The drawing -room does look so perfectly lovely, you remember..,' 1•Iugh quoted quietly from her own letters, Wove done it up exactly its you recommended, with the sage -green plush for the old mantle piece, and a red Japanese table in the dark corner; and 1 really think, now I see the effect yourtaste's simply exquisite. 13ut than, you know, what else can you expect from a distinguished poet! Yon always do everything beautifully! Clan you recollect, Airs. Messinger, dovru the dim abyss of twelve or eighteen months, who wrote those touching words, and to -whom elle addressed them?' tilt, 'that was very fine then,' Winifred answered with a pout, arrant; in; Hugh's Satsuma jars with Japanesque irregularity outiie diu'ug- room overmante!, " But you see that was before I'd been about tench in London, and noticed bow other people smarten up their rooms,ancd formed my own taste in the matter of decoration. I was then in the i:raukly unsophisti- cated state, l'd studied tie models. I'd never seen anything beautiful to jtidne .by. Yon were then Miss Meysey, her husband answered, with a distantly cold iuilectiou of voice. You're now Mrs. Hugh de Carteret Messinger. It's that makes all the difference, you know. The reason there are so many discordant marriage., says Dean Swift with more truth than politeness, is because young women are so much more occupied in weaving nets than in making cages. I never wove nets for you, Winifred cried angrily. Nor made pages either, it seems, Hugh answered with provot ing calm- ness, as he sauntered off by himself, cigar in hand, into a new . smoking - room. Their intercourse nowadays gene- rally ended in such little amenities. 'They were beginning to conjugate with alarming frequency that verb to nag, which often succeeds in becoming at lust the dominant part of speech in conjugal conversation. One portion of the house at least, Elugh succeeded in remodelling entire- ly to his own taste, and that was the bedroom which was once Elsie's. 13y throwing out a large round bay win- dow, mullioned and decorated out of all rceognition, and by papering, painting end refurnishing throughout with ostentatious novelty of design and of honing people any when int intro- duced to them : "Oh, Mr,. Massineer, 1've wanted to ash, are you descended from the poet 11•lassingeil" 1 mean the time to arrive before long when I can answer thein plainly with a bold face ; "No, my dear sir, no mations, ant not; but 1 am the poet Messinger, if you Bare to be told so." --When that time comes, we'll pay off the mortgages and build a eastle—in Spain or elsewhere OE suNsI INE nasi SHADE. OIIAPTER, X -XT IT,---(coNrieunn.} "Poor T' Ilugli answored, in one of his heroically sauguitie mode, as ho sac in the dining rumu with his back to the window end the hated poplar,andhis •Face to the ground -plans and estimates upon the Wile before him. "I mean to eo up to town for the season always ,_,-with the balance of our fortune. and to Beep up my journelistic conned- t meanwhile, we have always the satts, no! on time in a general --ay , and tri trate, faetiotz of ldsaaw !knowing that rsothiug doubt, I shall begin to get work, aat the 1 earth could he more correct or squire - bar also. I shall make friends assid- 'archical in its way than a genuine uoaely with what a playful phrase a mortgafo.' aLsuxdlycla'..cribes as'+the lower branch' I'm not so sure as I once was, of the proftession;' I shall talk my t Hugh that you'll ever make much out nicest to every dull solicitor's stupid' of your kind of poetry.' wife and plain daughters. I'll fetch , Of course not, my child ; because theta ices at other people's At Homes, now I happen to be only your husband. and shower on then tickets for all the A 'prophet, we know on the best private views we don't care about, and authority, is not without honor, et all the first nights at unieterestiug cast©ra, et cetera. But I mean to theatres, That's the way to advance make my mark yet for all that ; ay, in the procession. Sooner or later, and to mars money out of it, too, into 1'11 get on at the bar. Meanwhile, as the bargain.' the estate's fortunately unencumbered So, .in the end, Winifred's objections end there's noise of that precious were overruled—sines this was not a . i:onseuse about entail, or remainders, matter upon which that young lady or settlements, or so forth, we can felt strongly—and the money for "im- raise the immediate cash for our pre. proving and developing the estate" . sent need on short mortgages.' having been. duly raised by the aid, •"I hate the very name of inortgages," assistance, instrumentality, • or media - Winifred cried impatiently. "They tion of that fine specimen of convey- su.gge st brokers' men and bankruptcy aucers' Euglish aforesaid, to which and Leary." • Hugh had so touchingly and profes "A.nd everything else that begins sionally alluded, a fashionable archi- with B," Hugh coutimied, smiling tt tett was invited down from town at Placid smile to himself, Anil vaguely once to inspect the Hall and to draw reminiseenti.£ "Alio inWenderland," up plans for its renovation as a resi "SVhy .with a B? Alice said tnusingli: dentiad utausion of the most modern —"Why neer said the 'March Bare:-- pattern. .Alice was silent.--"aiow for my own The fashionable architect, after- bis par:, 1 confess, en the contrary, kind, performed his work well --and Winifred., to a ecrtaie sentimental expensively. He spaced no pains and likiug for the mortgage as such, view- .Hugo no money on rendering the Hall ed in the abstract. It's' a document a perfect exatnp!e on a small scale et intimately connected with the lauded the best Elizabcthaa domestic arclii- intereste and the feudal classes; it tecture. He -destroyed ruthlessly and savours to my mind of broad • estates repaired lavishly. He put mullions to and haughty aristocrats, and Iordly the windows and pillars to the porch, rett'roik and a baronial ancestry. 1 and moulded ceilings to the reception - will adelit that should feel a peculiar rooms, and oaken. balustrades to either pride in my eanuec'ion with White' side of the wide old retraining; Tudor strand if 1 Mt I had got it really with staircase. ..'rte rebuilt whatever. i nigo a m,rt:tge on it. How proud a mom- had defaced, and pulled down what- , nt; to be seized of a mortgage? The ever of vile and snap -less Geor:sinn .poop•, the abject, the lowly, and the contractors had stoliuiy added. He landless don't go in heavily for the "restored" the building to -what it had luxury of mortgages. They pawn never before been: a flue squat old their wateb, or raise to precarious fashioned country mansion to the low •sl.iiling or two upon the temporary wind-swept East Anglian type, a' security of Sunday suits, kitchen House Beautiful everywhere, without and hand lint irons. But a mortgage and within, and as unlike as possible is tai eminently gentlemanly forth of to theclingy Hall that Muga Messinger itiipec::ttionity, Like gout and then had seen and ueental'y discountenanced lord lit:ntrnancv of your shire, it's on the oecaeirau of his his first visit to . incidental to birth and greatness: Whitestrand, ' You give an architect Upon stay word, 1 ui not really certain, ineney enough,' says Colonel Silas Wharfe, now 1 oeme to think upon it, Lapham in the ;greatest romance ---bar. that a gentieetuav's house is ever quite one in the English language, " and complete, without a history of Eng- he'll build you n fine house every laud, a billiard table and a mortgage. tithe," Hugh Messinger gave bis 17nencturibered estates suggest Bram• architect money enough --which comes inagent ; they Les -peek the vulgar at first to the same thing ---and he got . filoeuce of tho atvurc'eu ?'lane, who a fine house, as far as the means at his keeps untold gold lying idle at disposal went, on that ugly. corner of bis be.nkcrs 021 Porti"80 to spite tilt flat sandy waste at forsaken White - political econatntists. But a loan of strand. a few ties+nsands, invested with all the When the building was done and tilar,:moor of &visited title deeds, fore- sIo ilietee'itgr08sedl parchlne'nt,and an ex- trennely l,eautiful and elaborate specie meet of that charming dialect, convey - encore' English, carries with it an air of .anti,lne respeetal,ility and county iinpattance that I should, be, loth to forage, even if I happened to have the .cash in baudl otherwise available, for .carrying.; out the. accessary improve- ment.' 'But how shall we ever pay it lraclt8' Winfred asked, with native feminine "autiwni, V Hugh waved his hands expansively .,open. When he went in for the sanguine, he aid it thorou:;hly. "One thing at a time 1ny child,' he laurnsur- ed low, ' First borrow; then set your wits to work to look around for a :means of repayment.—In the desk at lionie in. Loudon tide very mortems Hes an immortal epic, worth ten thousand hounds if it's -m ottle a penny end cheap at the price to a discerning purchaser. Ormuz aitd Ind are perfect East Ends to it, it teems with Golc,steda& and Big 13onatnzas. In time the s ow world motild most surely discover that this England ,of oars still eucheies a great live poet. :'.Glee Mind Land battling utUstopen their yee end look at Iastr placidly about them. They'll ;lett a on the Ieft of the parol:, 11 gh planted A fast growing newfangled Atnpolopsis, warranted gniokly teed rape and mantle the raw stouts surfaews, and still farther tnotatnporphose the front of the Hall from what it , had once been—when dead Elsie lived there, Alt was changed, without and multi;i, The Beall was now tit for a gentleman to dwell in, Only ane eyesore still remained to grieve and annoy him, Tito White- strand poplar yet faced and. confronted hint wherever he looked. It turned. him sick. It poisoned Suffolk for hint. The poplar must go I Ile could never endure it. Life indeed would be a living death, in v sight for ever it that detested and grinning memorial. Por it grinned at hien often from bile gnarled, and hollow 'hunk, A human : Ince seemed to,'' laugh out upon ltine,from its shaptifess boles --,a human fact, fiendish in its joy, with a carbuncled nose and grinning mouth. He hated to .,,sae it, it grinned so hideously, So he sot his wits to rorlc to deviseet way for getting rid of the popular, root and branch, without uuneoessarily angering �Vini: frod, the papering, finished, the set about the furnishing; proper. And here, detail, he so completely Ytltered the Winfred's taste began to clash with appearance of that hateful room that er 'woman, though she be could hardly know it again Himself Fiunh s .for every „ may eschew grouts. -plana, elevations, for the same original sgaare chamber, and estimates, has at least distinct Moreover that ho might prover have to ideas of her own on the important outer it, he turned it into the ;harried question of internal decoration. The Guest's 13rdroom, There was the new Squire was all for oriental hang- Prophet's Chamber on the Wall for the Ings, Turkey r ttrpots, Indian durrees, bachelor visitors --a pretty little Attie and Persian tiling. But Mrs. Mass- nudeu the low naves, furnished, like inner wouldhave none of these heathen the Shunaminite's, with a bed, and a illi gewgaws, she solemnly declered ; table, and a stool and a candlestick ; Iter tastes by no means took a and there was the Maiden's Bower on Saracenic turn. 14tr, Hartherley and the first floor, for the young girls, with the Cheyne Row men would make fun its dainty pale green wardrobe and of her, and cul; her house Liberty Morris cabinet ; and there was the Hall, if she furui:,lted it throughout Blue Doom for the prospective heir, with sueh Mussuhnan absurdities. For whenever that hypothetical young her own part, the renouneecl Liberty gentleman from parts unknown and all his works : she eschewed proceedr d to realize himself in actual everything east of longitude thirty humanity; so Hugh ventured to erect degrees : inlaid coffee -tables were an the remodeled chatnber ne+,;t to his own abomination in her eyes; pierced, into a .harried Guest's Room, where Arabie lamps roused no latent enthus• he Himself need never go to vex his Tama; the only real tieing in decoration soul with unholy rominiseenees. was Morris; and on Morris she pinned When he could look up at the Ball her faith unreservedly. She would with a bad facts from the grass plot in be utterly utter. She .rad a Morris front, and see no lodger that detested carpet and tddorris e;urtzains ; while square window with the wistaria ivory paint adorned hot lopsided festooning itself to luxuriantly round overtnntities, and red De Morgan ware the corners, be folt he might really with opalescent hues ranged in long ' perhaps after all live at �'hitestrand. t• ,1'1 'el t' be glad to bay fifty : straight rows upon her pigeon -hole. For the wistaria, too, that grated old c'elitiaun of that dl:vintt strain, varying enbittetar. To Ilugh's poetical mud climber, with its thick stem, Was 411 character Vote the large I,tapet: this was all tog plagcy modern 1 nut) ruthlesslyaaorlAccd; and in its place fl:'1.3 el. Hutu; 14 . t',1'2C St.'Li'r1 at being?? Did Nature zn/auld our limbs to net rind. move, But owe ser Jago chance endow our eyes with .aeeing, Our nervus with feeling, :end .our hearts with love? Sines all ta`b" e• we stand, alone discerning Sorrow "•. t joy, self from the things witdivti i td tt • tram les au the s irit's While blind p p yearning, And hoods our souls with doubt. This very tree, whose- life ie our 1 sister, We know not if the iolior in her v ins Thrill with fierce joy whim April de a have kissed Iter, e Or shrink iu anguial). from Oetober rains; We search the mighty world above and under, Yet nowhero find the soul we fain would, find; Speech in the hollow rumbling of the thunder, Words iu the whispering wind. CHAPTER XXVI1I.—Reneettsle. Meitnwhile, when the house was all finished and decorated throughout, Hugh turned his thoughts once more, on fame iuteat, to hie great forthcom- ing volume sif verses. Since he mar- ried Winfred, he had published. little, eschewing; journalised and such small a:. sexy, We yearn for brotherhood with lake and mountain, Our cousoicns soul seeks conscious sym- pathy ; Nymphs in the coppice, Natiade in the fountain, Gods on the craggy height or roaring sett, We find but soulless sequences of matter, Feet licked to feet in adamantine rods; l terual bounds of former sense and latter; Dead laws for living gods. There, Winifred,what do you say to that now ? Isn't that calculated. to take the wind out of some of these pretentious fellows' sails ? What do you think of it ? `l'binlc ! Winifred answered, pursing up his lips into an expression of the utmost professional connoisseurship, 1 think granite does;1't i vlznze in the tasks as unworthy the dignity of ac- Etierlish lttrsgutL�,e with planet ; ant. complislzed rquiredotn ; but ho .tad• consider sentience is ,a horrible prosiac been working hard from tune to tn'ne woad of its sort to introduce into seri. at polishing and repolishing his mag- num opus, A Le'e's Philnscphy—a lengthy poem in to metre of his own out poetry.—What's that stuff about liquor too ? t; o know nut if the liquor in hc:r• sour tiling. I dont like ly,r:aur, more or less novel, and embodying a Its not ;goad , barroom Lnglislt, only • number of moral reflections, more or fit for the publielzouse production. less trite, on youth, adolescence,matur- 1 didn't s y liquor, Hugh cried in • - ity, and decrepitude of the human dignautly. I • said io,aur which of exactlysuited Mr. Maat- sut,'ect. It 3,, course is a very different matter. We thew Arnold sa well-known dentition, know not if the .ichor' ice her veins. being, in fact, •an eidlsauetrve criticism of life, as llugh Messinger Ltiti,sel£had funned it. He meant to priut it in time for the autumn book -season: It was the rarest stake of his ,life, and he was confident of -success. He had worked it up with ceaseless toil to what Deemed to himself the highest possible pitch of artistic handicraft ; and he rolled his own sonorous ryltmes over and over again with infinite sat• isfaetion upon his literary palette, 'pro- nouncing tiaein all, on impartial sur- vey, of most excellent flavor. Nothing in life, indeed; can he more deceptive than the poetaster's confidence in his own productions, Iie mistakes famil- iarity for smoothness of ring, and a practised hand for genius end original- ity. It is fate always to find Inc own .sues absolutely perfect ; in which cheerful personal creed the rest of the. World mostly fails altogether to agree with hire. In such a self-congmata]atory and hopeful mood, Hugh sat one morning in the new drawing room holding •a quire of closely written sermon -paper stitched together izt his hand, and gazing; affectionately with parental pride at his last -born stanzas. Winni- fred bad only returned yesterday from a shopping expedition up to• town and was idling away a day in rest and repair After her unwonted exertion among the crowded bazaars of the modern Bagdad. So Hugh leaned back in his chair at his ease, and, seized with the sudden thirst for an audience, began to pour forth in her ear in his rotund manner the final finished introductory prelude to his Lien's .Pliilosoplhy.. His wife, propped up on the pillows of the sofa and lolling carelessly, listened and smiled as he read and read, with somewhat sceptical though polite indifference. Let me see, where bad I got to ? llu„ h went on once, after her frequent and trying critical interruptions, You put the out so, Winnie, with your constant fault-finding l I can't recede tact how far I'd road to you. Begotteu unawares; now go ahead, Winifred answered carelessly as though it were some other fellow's poems he had been pouring forth to her. Or bastard offspring of unconscious nature, begotten unawares, Heigh xc- pe ated pompously, looking back with a loving eye at bis eieueh admired tnanuecript. Now listen to the next good bit. Winifred ; it's really impres- sive: Ielzor's the blood lef the ;ode of Homer. - That's the worst of reading these things to women : olaesical allusion's an utter blank to them.—If you've get nothing trotter than to object, have the 3iindness, please, not. to inter: rapt laic. Wi'ieredcloced her lips with a sharp snap while Hugh went en, nothing abaslied, with his sonorous metre - marked mouthing. • ' They caro not any whit for pain or plea- suro That seem to mon the sum And end of • all. Dumb foreo and barren number are their XXxrI, 'When chaos slowly sot on sun or planet, Anel molten ntaas%s hardened into earth; When priteeval force wrought out on sea and granite The wondrous Miracle of living birth,: Did mightier x,find, in clouds or air ridden, Breathe power through its limits and linaav, Or sentience spring. spontanooes awl un,. bidden, With feeble stops tone slow? xxxiii. Aro setae and thought but p.raaites of measure ; What can be, shall be, though the great world faal1. They dike no .teed of man, or man'ir. deserving, .heck not whet happy lives they make, or mar, Work out thele Esta,. will, unawerved, un, swerving, And know not that they are. Now, what do you say to that, Winifred i isn't ,it just hunky '1 1 dont like interrupting, - Winifred snapped out savllac-ly. You told me not to interrupt," except for a good and sufficient reason, Well, dont be nasty, Hugh, put in, This is business, you lztiow—a matter of public appreciation—and I want your criticism : -it all means money. Criticism from any hotly, no matter whom, is alwaays worth at least something,. • Oh thank you, to •much. That is polite of yon. Thou if you want criticism, no tatter from whom, I should say I fait to porceive, myself the precise difference yon mean to - suggest between • tho two adjectives• u,iszrare,i and unswerving. To the untutored intelligence of. a more woman to whom olaseical °Modens en titter • blank, they sewn to say exactly the sante tiring; twice over, No, no 1-1agh answered, . getting warm in self-tlefc nee, 'Unswerved is passive; unswerving is active, or at least middle ; the one means that they swerve thetnoelves; the other, that somebody or soiwthing else swerves them. Yon do violence to the genius of the English language, Winifred remarked curtly. 1 may not be acquainted with Latin and Greek, but I talk at least my mother tongue. Aro you going to print nothing but this great, Iong, dreary, incomprehensible Life ?bile*. sophy in your new volunnet I shall Make it up mainly with that, Hugh answered, rrestwfallen, at so obvious a failure favorably to impress. the domestic critic. But 1 shall aalsef eke out the titi.ipiee,e with a lot of stray occasional verses -the Funeral Odofor Gembetta, foie example, and • pldsuty tf others that I haven't read you. Some of theta seem to me tolerably successful, tie was grow- ing row ing modest before the false of her unflinching criticiser, eta Bit tronriarauo,a 1}