Page:The Yellow Book - 06.djvu/27

to be impertinent to me without incurring the reproach of a bad wife.

Limbert's novels appeared to have brought him no money; they had only brought him, so far as I could then make out, tributes that took up his time. These indeed brought him, from several quarters, some other things, and on my part, at the end of three months, The Blackport Beacon. I don't to-day remember how I obtained for him the London correspondence of the great northern organ, unless it was through somebody's having obtained it for myself. I seem to recall that I got rid of it in Limbert's interest, persuaded the editor that he was much the better man. The better man was naturally the man who had pledged himself to support a charming wife. We were neither of us good, as the event proved, but he had a rarer kind of badness. The Blackport Beacon had two London correspondents—one a supposed haunter of political circles, the other a votary of questions sketchily classified as literary. They were both expected to be lively, and what was held out to each was that it was honourably open to him to be livelier than the other. I recollect the political correspondent of that period, and that what it was reducible to was that Ray Limbert was to try to be livelier than Pat Moyle. He had not yet seemed to me so can did as when he undertook this exploit, which brought matters to a head with Mrs. Stannace, inasmuch as her opposition to the marriage now logically fell to the ground. It's all tears and laughter as I look back upon that admirable time, in which nothing was so romantic as our intense vision of the real. No fool's paradise ever rustled such a cradle-song. It was anything but Bohemia—it was the very temple of Mrs. Grundy. We knew we were too critical, and that made us sublimely indulgent; we believed we did our duty, or wanted to, and that made us free to dream. But we dreamed over the multiplication-table; we werenothing