Alpheratz

ELLA D’ARCY: Irremediable (1894)

“….thickly powdered with stars, and as he turned westward Alpherat hung for a moment ‘comme le point sur un i,’ over the slender spire of St John’s.”

No wonder the young man Willoughby sought out a fateful second meeting with Esther Stables in Orton, a place name that autocorrected for me into Orion….
Starting with aspects of class and gender mœurs in Ella D’Arcy’s era, this tells of Willoughby being scarred by a previous woman in his life, but now on idyllic ‘idle’ holiday from banking, he meets beautiful Esther (a common tailoress) at a country stile, and she eventually entraps him (by weeping in floods) after tempting him into ‘flirting’ with her, as she eyes him as a husbandly prospect and later betrays his sardonyx ring and ‘mistaken chivalry’.
SPOILER:
It is only later that we realise he writes stories for magazines. I wonder if he wrote this well-written, poignant weighing in the balance of love and hatred in the hope of easing his pangs of regret by monetary means. Or did he write for the sort of magazine that travelling-to-other-galaxies stories would appeal as a different route (in mind or body) to escape from domestic dramas where boiled eggs are smashed on plates.
Whatever the ‘idea’ that annuls Pain best!

“At the table in the centre of the room sat his wife, leaning upon her elbows…”

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Full context of above review: https://elizabethbowensite.wordpress.com/2022/04/26/penguin-books-of-british-short-stories-2/