The Certain Hour. Dizain des Poëtes

something…' Paul Vanderhoffen shrugged, and continued, in tones more animated: 'There will be no talk of any grand-duke. Instead, there will be columns of denunciation and tittle-tattle in every newspaper-quite as if you, a baronet's daughter, had run away with a footman. And you will very often think wistfully of Lord Brudenel's fine house when your only title is-well, Princess of Grub Street, and your realm is a garret. And for a while even to-morrow's breakfast will be a problematical affair. It is true Lord Lansdowne has promised me a registrarship in the Admiralty Court, and I do not think he will fail me. But that will give us barely enough to live on-with strict economy, which is a virtue that neither of us knows anything about. I beg you to remember that-you who have been used to every luxury! you who really were devised that you might stand beside an emperor and set tasks for him. In fine, you know-'

And Mildred Claridge said, 'I know that, quite as I observed, man proposes-when he has been sufficiently prodded by some one who, because she is an idiot-And that is why I am not blushing-very much-'

'Your coloring is not-repellent.' His high-pitched pleasant voice, in spite of him, shook now with more than its habitual suggestion of a stutter. 'What have you done to me, my dear?' he said. 'Why can't I jest at this… as I have always done at everything-?'

'Boy, boy!' she said; 'laughter is excellent. And wisdom too is excellent. Only I think that you have laughed too much, and I have been too shrewd-But now I know that it is better to be a princess in Grub Street than to figure at Ranelagh as a good-hearted fool's latest purchase. For Lord Brudenel is really very good-natured,' she argued, 'and I did like him, and mother was so set upon it-and he was rich-and I honestly thought-'

'And now?' he said.

'And now I know,' she answered happily.

They looked at each other for a little while. Then he took her hand, prepared in turn for self-denial.

'The Household Review wants me to 'do' a series on famous English bishops,' he reported, humbly. 'I had meant to refuse, because it would all have to be dull High-Church twaddle. And the English Gentleman wants some rather outrageous lying done in defense of the Corn Laws. You would not despise me too much-would you, Mildred?-if I undertook it now. I really have no choice. And there is plenty of hackwork of that sort available to keep us going until more solvent days, when I shall have opportunity to write something quite worthy of you.'

'For the present, dear, it would be much more sensible, I think, to 'do' the bishops and the Corn Laws. You see, that kind of thing pays very well, and is read by the best people; whereas poetry, of course- But you can always come back to the verse-making, you know-'

'If you ever let me,' he said, with a flash of prescience. 'And I don't believe you mean to let me. You are your mother's daughter, after all! Nefarious woman, you are planning, already, to make a responsible member of society out of me! and you will do it, ruthlessly! Such is to be Prince Fribble's actual burial-in his own private carriage, with a receipted tax-bill in his pocket!'

'What nonsense you poets talk!' the girl observed. But to him, forebodingly, that familiar statement seemed to lack present application.

THE LADY OF ALL OUR DREAMS

'In JOHN CHARTERIS appeared a man with an inborn sense of the supreme interest and the overwhelming emotional and spiritual relevancy of human life as it is actually and obscurely lived; a man with unmistakable creative impulses and potentialities; a man who, had he lived in a more mature and less self-deluding community-a community that did not so rigorously confine its interest in facts to business, and limit its demands upon art to the supplying of illusions-might humbly and patiently have schooled his gifts to the service of his vision… As it was, he accepted defeat and compromised half-heartedly with commercialism.'

And men unborn will read of Heloise,
And Ruth, and Rosamond, and Semele,
When none remembers your name's melody
Or rhymes your name, enregistered with these.
And will my name wake moods as amorous
As that of Abelard or Launcelot
Arouses? be recalled when Pyramus
And Tristram are unrhymed of and forgot?-
Time's laughter answers, who accords to us
More gracious fields, wherein we harvest-what?

JOHN CHARTERIS. Torrismond's Envoi, in Ashtaroth's Lackey.

'Our distinguished alumnus,' after being duly presented as such, had with vivacity delivered much the usual sort of Commencement Address. Yet John Charteris was in reality a trifle fagged.

The afternoon train had been vexatiously late. The little novelist had found it tedious to interchange inanities with the committee awaiting him at the Pullman steps. Nor had it amused him to huddle into evening-dress, and hasten through a perfunctory supper in order to reassure his audience at half-past eight precisely as to the unmitigated delight of which he was now conscious.

Nevertheless, he alluded with enthusiasm to the arena of life, to the dependence of America's destiny upon the younger generation, to the enviable part King's College had without exception played in history, and he depicted to Fairhaven the many glories of Fairhaven-past, present and approaching-in superlatives that would hardly have seemed inadequate if applied to Paradise. His oration, in short, was of a piece with the amiable bombast that the college students and Fairhaven at large were accustomed to applaud at every Finals-the sort of linguistic debauch that John Charteris himself remembered to have applauded as an undergraduate more years ago than he cared to acknowledge.

Pauline Romeyne had sat beside him then-yonder, upon the fourth bench from the front, where now another boy with painstakingly plastered hair was clapping hands. There was a girl on the right of this boy, too. There naturally would be. Mr. Charteris as he sat down was wondering if Pauline was within reach of his voice? and if she were, what was her surname nowadays?

Then presently the exercises were concluded, and the released auditors arose with an outwelling noise of multitudinous chatter, of shuffling feet, of rustling programs. Many of Mr. Charteris' audience, though, were contending against the general human outflow and pushing toward the platform, for Fairhaven was proud of John Charteris now that his colorful tales had risen, from the semi-oblivion of being cherished merely by people who cared seriously for beautiful things, to the distinction of being purchasable in railway stations; so that, in consequence, Fairhaven wished both to congratulate him and to renew acquaintanceship.

He, standing there, alert and quizzical, found it odd to note how unfamiliar beaming faces climbed out of the hurly-burly of retreating backs, to say, 'Don't you remember me? I'm so-and-so.' These were the people whom he had lived among once, and some of these had once been people whom he loved. Now there was hardly any one whom at a glance he would have recognized.

Nobody guessed as much. He was adjudged to be delightful, cordial, 'and not a bit stuck-up, not spoiled at all, you know.' To appear this was the talisman with which he banteringly encountered the universe.

But John Charteris, as has been said, was in reality a trifle fagged. When everybody had removed to the Gymnasium, where the dancing was to be, and he had been delightful there, too, for a whole half-hour, he grasped