Short Stories

SHORT STORIES BY GEORGE MEREDITH WESTMINSTER ARCHIBALD CONSTABLE CO LTD a WHITEHALL GARDENS 1902 COPYRIGHT 1898 BY GEORGE MEREDITH CONTENTS PAG8 THE TALE OF CHLOE 3 THE HOUSE ON TliE BEACH 69 FARINA 159 THE CASE OF GENERAL OPLE AND LADY CAMPER . . . 261 THE TALE OP CHLOE AN EPISODE IN THE HISTORY OF BEAU BEAMISH THE TALE OF CHLOE Fair Chloe, we toasted of old, As the Queen of our festival meeting Now Chloe is lifeless and cold You must go to the grave for her gre ting. Her beauty and talents were framed, To enkindle the proudest to win her Then let not the memry be blamed Of the purest that eer was a sinner Captain Chanters Collection. CHAPTER I A PROPER tenderness for the Peerage will continue to pass current the illustrious gentleman who was inflamed by Oupids darts to espouse the milkmaid, or dairymaid, under his ballad title of Duke of Dewlap nor was it the smallest of the services rendered him by Beau Beamish, that he clapped the name upon her rustic Grace, the young duchess, the very first day of her arrival at the Wells. This happy inspiration of a wit never failing at a pinch Has rescued one of our princeliest houses from the assaults of the vulgar, who are ever too rejoiced to bespatter and disfigure a brilliant coat-of-arms insomuch that the ballad, to wliich we are indebted for the narrative of the meeting and marriage of the ducal pair, speaks of Dewlap in good faith the ninth Duke of Dewlap I am, Susie dear without a hint of a domino title. So likewise the picjorjft historian is merry over Dewlap alliances in his descrjp 4 THE TALE OF CHLOE tion of the society of that period. He has read the ballad, but disregarded the memoirs of the beau. Writers of pretension would seemto have an animus against individuals of the character of Mr. Beamish. They will treat of the habits and manners of highwaymen, and quote obscure broadsheets and songs of the people to colour their story, yet decline to bestow more than a passing remark upon our domestic kings because they are not hereditary, we may suppose. The ballad of The Duke and the Dairymaid ascribed with questionable authority to the pen of Mr. Beamish himself in a freak of his gaiety, was once popular enough to provoke the moralist to animadversions upon an order of composition Chat tempted every bouncing country lass to sidle an eye in a blowsy cheek in expectation of a coronet for her piins and a wet ditch as the result We may doubt it to have been such an occasion of mischief. But that mischief may have been done by it to a nobility loving people, even to the love of our nobility among the people, must be granted and for the particular reason, that the hero of the ballad behaved so handsomely. We perceive a susceptibility to adulteration in their worship at the si gift of one of their number, a young maid, sud denly snatched up to the gaping heights of Luxury and Fashion through sheer good looks. Remembering that they are accustomed to a totally reverse effect from c, hat possession, it is very perceptible how a breach in their reverence may come of the change. Otherwise the ballad is innocent certainly it is c mno cent in design. A fresher national song of a beautiful incident of our country life has never been written. The sentiments are natural, the imagery is apt and redolent of the soil, the music of the verse appeals to the dullest ear. It has no smell of the lamp, nothing foreign and far-fetched aboutit, but is just what it pretends to be, th carol of the native bird...