It was twenty-five minutes past eight, and a fine October morning, when
Mr. Wolff Mason, the popular novelist and editor of _Mayfair_, emerged
from the dressing-room of his house in Kensington and came downstairs
dabbing his chin with his clean pocket-handkerchief. The day had begun
badly with the man of letters, whose boast it was that he had shaved
for upwards of forty years without cutting himself anything like forty
times. He entered the dining-room with a comically rueful expression on
his kindly humorous face, and with a twitching behind the spectacles
which would have led those who knew him best to prick their ears for
one of the delightful things which the novelist was continually saying
at his own expense. His face fell, however, when he found no one in the
room but the maid who was lighting the wick beneath the plated kettle
on the breakfast table.
"Has Miss Ida not come down yet?"
"Not that I know of, sir. Shall I go and see?"
"Oh, never mind, never mind," said the novelist, cursorily examining
the letters on his plate, and opening none of them. "Well, upon my
word, I don't know what has come over Ida," he added to himself, as
he undid the fastenings of the French window which led down iron steps
into the little London garden behind the house. "Yesterday morning
she ran it pretty fine. The day before she was a good minute late. Of
course she may be in time yet, but I do wish I could teach her to be
five minutes early for everything, as I am. Ida is worse than either
of her sisters in this respect; and she began by being the best of the
three."
Wolff Mason sighed as he thought of his daughters. The two elder ones
were married and settled, very comfortably, it is true; but if Ida
followed their example, what on earth was to become of her unfortunate
father? Who was to typewrite his manuscript, and correct his proofs,
and peel the stamps from the enclosed envelopes of the people who wrote
for the novelist's autograph? No, he could not do without Ida at any
price; and Mr. Mason shook his head as he passed out into the fresh
air and down the iron steps into the garden. He did more: he shook his
daughters, and all creatures of mere flesh and blood, quite out of his
mind.
For it was Wolff Mason's habit to spend five minutes in the garden,
every morning before breakfast, when it was fine; and when it was not,
to walk round the breakfast table four-and-twenty times. That filled
the five minutes which he always spent in the exclusive company of the
characters of his current novel. He had been heard to say that he did
his day's work in those five minutes; that at the office, where he
worked at his novel all the morning, he had only to sit with his pen
in his hand for three hours, and fifteen hundred words of fiction was
the inevitable result. That part was purely mechanical, the novelist
said. He had really written it in the five minutes before breakfast. It
is not generally known, however, how curiously Wolff Mason delighted
in humorous depreciation of his own work and methods. One would have
liked his critics to hear him on the subject; they took his writings so
very much more seriously than he did himself, that they little dreamt
how highly their clever elaborate reviews entertained the philosophic
object of their censure. It was an open secret that Wolff Mason
professed a wholesome and unaffected disregard for posterity and the
critics; but if the books that delighted two generations are forgotten
by a third, their writer will certainly be remembered as the most
charming talker, the kindest-hearted editor, and the most methodical
man of letters of his day.
To method and to habit, indeed, the novelist had been a slave all
his literary life. This he admitted quite freely. On the other hand,
he argued that as his habits were all good ones in themselves (with
the possible exception of that ounce of tobacco which he managed to
consume daily), while his methods produced a not wholly unsuccessful
result, the slavery suited him very well. Certainly it was good to be
five minutes early for everything, and to start most things as the
clocks were striking. The dining-room clock struck the half-hour after
eight as Mr. Mason re-entered and shut the French window behind him.
He had thought out the half-chapter for that day with even more than
his customary minute prevision. This was all very good indeed. It was
bad, however, that he should find himself now quite alone in the room,
with the hot plates and the bacon growing cold, the kettle steaming
furiously over the thin blue flame, and no Ida to make the tea.
Mr. Mason took up his position with an elbow on the mantel-piece and
one foot to the fire, and stared solemnly at the clock. It was a worse
case than yesterday. Two, three, four minutes passed. Then there was
a rustle in the hall; light, quick footsteps ran across the room,
and a nervous little hand was laid upon the novelist's shoulder. In
another instant he was looking down into great dark eyes filled with
the liveliest contrition, and making a mental note of the little black
crescents underneath.
"Dear father, can you forgive me?"
"I'll try to, my dear, since you look so--penitent."
He had been about to say "pale." As he kissed the girl's cheek, its
pallor was indeed conspicuous. As a rule she had the loveliest colour,
which harmonised charmingly with the sweet clear brown of her eyes and
hair. Ida Mason was in fact a very beautiful and graceful girl, but
lately she had grown thin and quiet, and the salt was gone out of her
in many subtle ways which did not escape the spectacles of that trained
observer, her father. Mr. Mason glanced over the _Times_ while his tea
was being made, and knew all that was in it before his cup was poured
out, the bacon on his plate, and the toast-rack set within easy reach
of his hand.
"A singularly dull paper," said he, as he flung it aside and Ida sat
down.
"Yes?"
"It is absolutely free from news. At this time of year there's more fun
in the papers that lend themselves to egregious contributions from the
public. I see, however, that Professor Palliser died last night----"
"How dreadful!"
"In his ninety-third year," added Mr. Mason, dryly, to his own sentence.
"I'm afraid I was thinking of someone else," said Ida lamely.
"Of me, my dear? Then I _will_ take another piece of sugar, if you
don't object. The fact is, you didn't give me any at all. No, that's
the salt!"
Ida laughed nervously. "I am so stupid this morning! Please forgive me,
dear father."
"I hope there is nothing the matter?"
"Nothing at all."
"That's right. I fear that the religious novel is to have a most
undesirable vogue. The _Times_ reviews three in one column. We have to
thank 'Robert Elsmere' for this."
"And 'Humphry Ward, Preacher,'" suggested Ida.
The novelist arched his eyebrows and bent forward over his plate.
"Exactly," said he, after a slight pause. He did not look at his
daughter. Otherwise he would have seen that she was eating nothing,
and that her eyes were full of tears. It was plain to him, however,
that for some reason or other, into which it was not his business to
inquire, it would be unkind to press further conversation upon Ida,
whom he merely thanked more affectionately than usual for moving his
plate and for pouring out his second cup of tea. Over breakfast the
novelist always took half an hour precisely. The clock was striking
nine when he rose from the table and went upstairs to take leave of his
wife.
Mrs. Mason was a sweet, frail woman of sixty, who for years had
breakfasted in her own room. Without being actually an invalid, she
owed it to her quiet mornings upstairs that she was still able to see
her friends in the afternoon, and to dine out at moderate intervals.
For five-and-thirty years his wife had been Wolff Mason's guardian
angel. On her wedding-day she had been just as proud of her unknown
bridegroom as she was now of the celebrated _littérateur_, and had
loved the stalwart young fellow of eight-and-twenty only less dearly
than the white old man of sixty-three. He found her with her tea and
toast growing cold on the bed-table at her side; she was reading Ida's
typewritten copy of the novel upon which he himself was then engaged.
"My dear Wolff," Mrs. Mason exclaimed, greeting her husband with
the enthusiastic smile which had inspired and consoled him in the
composition of so many works of fiction, "I am delighted with these
last chapters! You have never done better: you might have written the
love scenes thirty years ago. But you look put out, dear Wolff. Have
they been stupid downstairs?"
"We are all stupid to-day, including my dear wife if she really thinks
much of my love scenes. I cut myself shaving, to begin with. Then Ida
was late for breakfast--four long minutes late--and for the third time
this week. I _am_ put out, and it's about Ida. It is not only that she
is late, but there are rings under her eyes, and she forgets the sugar
in your tea, and when you ask for it hands you the salt, and when you
speak to her she answers inanely. She pulled a long face when I told
her that Professor Palliser died last night, though the poor dear old
gentleman has been on a public death-bed these eighteen months. She
came a fearful howler over a book which she herself has read, to my
knowledge, within the last fortnight. For the life of me I can't think
what ails her."
"Can you not?"
Mrs. Mason had put down the typewritten sheets, and lay gazing at her
husband with gentle shrewdness in her kind eyes.
"No, I cannot," said the novelist, defiantly.
"Have you quite forgotten Saltburn-by-the-Sea?"
"I am certainly doing my best to forget it, my dear; a deadlier
fortnight I never spent in my life. Not a decent library in the place,
nor a man in the hotel who knew more than the mere alphabet of whist!
Why remind me of it, my love?"
"Because that's what ails Ida. She is suffering from the effects of
Saltburn-by-the-Sea."
"My dear Margaret, I simply don't believe it!"
"But I know it, Wolff. Do listen to reason. Dear Ida has told me
everything, and I am sorry to say she is very sadly in love."
"In love with whom?" cried the novelist, who had been pacing up and
down the room, after the manner of his kind, but who stopped now at the
foot of the bed, to spread his hands out eloquently. "With that young
Overton?"
"With that young Over_man_. You were so short and sharp with him, you
see, that you never even mastered his name."
"I was naturally short and sharp with a young fellow whom she had only
seen two or three times in her life--once on the pier, once in the
gardens, once or twice about the hotel. It was a piece of confounded
presumption! We didn't even know who or what the fellow was!"
"He put you in the way of finding out, and you said you didn't want to
know."
"No more I did," said Wolff Mason.
"You liked him well enough before he proposed to Ida."
"That may be. He had more idea of whist than any of the others, which
is saying precious little. But his proposal was a piece of infernal
impertinence, and I told him so."
"I am sorry you told him so, Wolff," said Mrs. Mason softly. "However,
the affair is quite a thing of the past. You put a stop to it pretty
effectually, and I daresay it was for the best. Only it is right you
should know that young Overman and Ida met in Oxford Street yesterday,
and that she has not slept all night for thinking about him."
"The villain!" cried Wolff Mason, excitedly. "I suppose he asked her to
run away with him?"
"They did not speak. I was with Ida," said his wife. "It was the purest
accident. Ida bowed--indeed, so did I--and he took off his hat, but
no one stopped or spoke. Ida is troubled because he looked extremely
wretched; even I can see his eyes now as they looked when we passed
him. However, as I say, you put a stop to the matter, and they must
both get over it as best they can. I have never blamed you, I think. It
_was_ very premature, I grant you. My only feeling has been that, as a
writer of romance all your days, you showed remarkably little sympathy
with a pair of sufficiently romantic young lovers!"
"My dear, I choose to keep romance in its proper place--between the
covers of my books. I have more than enough of it there, I can assure
you, if I could afford to consult my own taste."
"You can't put in too much of it to suit mine. Your love-story has been
the strong point in all your novels, Wolff, and it is still. This new
one is of your very best in that respect. I foresee a sweet scene in
the boat-house."
"I am in the middle of it now," the novelist said, complacently.
"I have visions of the old general turning up when she is in his arms.
I do hope you won't let him, Wolff."
"How well you know my work, my love! The general came in and caught
them just before I wiped my pen yesterday. It ended the chapter very
nicely. I was in good form at lunch."
"And what is going to happen to-day?"
"Can you ask? The general blusters. George behaves like a gentleman,
and scores all down the line, for the time being."
"But surely she is allowed to marry him in the end?"
"She always is, my dear, in my books."
Mrs. Mason cast upon her husband a fixed look which turned slowly
into a sweet, grave smile. He was still standing at the foot of the
bed, but now he was leaning on the brass rail, with his hands folded
quietly, and a good-humoured twinkle in his eyes.
Whatever he might say about his own books at the club, he enjoyed
chatting them over with his wife as keenly as in the dear early days
when his first book and their eldest daughter appeared simultaneously.
He had forgotten Ida for the moment, and the pleasant though impossible
young man at the sea-side; but Mrs. Mason did not mean that moment to
be prolonged.
"Ah," said she, "in your books! Twice you have allowed the heroine to
marry the hero in your life too."
"I was under the impression, my dear, that we were talking about my
books."
"But I am thinking about Ida. You needn't look at the clock, Wolff. You
know very well that you never leave the house before ten minutes past,
and it isn't five past yet. You may look at your watch if you like, but
you will see that my clock is, if anything, fast. I say that you raised
no opposition in the case of either Laura or Hetty."
"Didn't I?" exclaimed the novelist with a grim chuckle. "By Jove, I did
my worst! If that wasn't very bad you must remember that we knew all
about Charles and Macfarlane. It wasn't like young Overton. By Jove,
no!"
"Young Overman's is better romance," murmured Mrs. Mason.
"Therefore, it is worse real life. I do wish you would see with me that
the two things clash if you try to bring them together. Frankly, my
dear, I wish you wouldn't try. I make a point of never doing so--that's
why I don't live over the shop."
"Wolff, Wolff, say that sort of thing at your club! With me you can
afford to be sincere. Why, you have put Ida's hair and eyes into every
book you have written since she grew up. The things don't clash. If you
borrow from Ida for your books, I think you ought to be prepared to
pay her back out of your books too, and allow her to live happily ever
after, like all the rest of your heroines."
There were moments when Wolff Mason realised that the one-sided game
of letters has a bad effect on the argumentative side of a man's mind.
The present was one. He looked again at his watch, and replaced it very
hurriedly in his waistcoat pocket.
"My dear, I really must be going."
"One minute more--just one," pleaded Mrs. Mason, and her voice was as
soft as ever it had been thirty years ago. "I want your hand, Wolff!"
The novelist came round to the bedside and sat down for a few moments
on the edge. During those few moments two frail, worn, thin hands were
joined together, and Wolff Mason's spectacles showed him a moisture in
his wife's eyes--not tears, but a shining film which only made them
more lovely and sweet and kind. That film had come over them in the
old days when they were both young and he had told her of his love. On
very rare occasions he had described it in the eyes of his dark-eyed
heroines, and never without a hotness in his own. He rose suddenly. His
hand was pressed.
"You will reconsider it, Wolff?"
"My dear, she is our last."
"My love, we have each other!"
Some moments later, when Wolff Mason had closed the door behind him,
he had to open it again to hear what it was that his wife was calling
after him.
"Mind you don't make the general _too_ inhuman, Wolff, or I shall be so
disappointed in you both!"
The novelist laughed. So did his wife. The secret of their complete
happiness was not love alone. It was love and laughter.
Nevertheless, Wolff Mason drove to the office of the _Mayfair Magazine_
in a less literary frame of mind than he either liked or was addicted
to at this early hour of the day. It is not true that the novelist
constructed all his stories in the hansom which deposited him in
Paternoster Row at a quarter to ten every morning, and in front of his
own door at a quarter-past seven in the evening. That was the invention
of the lady journalists who wrote paragraphs about Wolff Mason for the
evening papers--those paragraphs his old-world soul abhorred. It is a
fact, however, that he liked to get out of his hansom with more ideas
than he had taken into it. He made it a rule to think only of his work
on the drive in.
But this morning he was breaking all his rules: he had cut himself
with his razor; he had left the house five minutes late, owing to a
series of little domestic scenes of which his head was still full. And
how he hated scenes outside his books! He treated the psychological
moments in his own life as lightly, indeed, as in his novels, but the
former worried him. This morning he had kissed Mrs. Mason with all the
exuberance of a young man, and on coming downstairs, and finding Ida
waiting for him with his tall hat and overcoat nicely brushed, and his
gloves warmed on both sides, he had kissed her too, and so fondly as
to bring out the same film on her sweet eyes as he had produced a few
minutes before in those of her mother.
To begin the day by making people cry was peculiarly odious to the
kind-hearted gentleman who held it the whole duty of a novelist to make
people laugh; and those two pairs of dear eyes, so like each other in
every look, duly accompanied him to the orderly, tobacco-scented room,
where he edited _Mayfair_ and wrote his own books. The clock on the
chimney-piece stood at ten minutes to ten. He was five minutes late at
this end also.
On a little table under the window lay the long envelopes and the
cylinders of manuscript which had arrived since the day before. Wolff
Mason lit a cigarette, and examined the packets without opening them.
Thus he invariably began his official day, tossing aside the less
interesting-looking missives for his weekly "clean sweep," and leaving
on the little table work enough for the afternoon, mostly the work of
previously accepted contributors, whose handwriting was familiar to the
editor. These were the people who gave the trouble, the people who had
sent in a good thing once. Not all of them did it twice.
The editor recognised this morning on one of the long envelopes the
superscription of a most promising contributor who had done it thrice,
but who had lately failed as many times in succession. Wolff Mason had
never known a valued contributor go to the bad at such a pace; but this
one had done such merry work in the beginning that there was hope for
him still. At all events he could write, and must therefore be read
carefully. The editor would have read him there and then, in the hope
of a laugh, which he felt he needed, had he not been five minutes late
as it was. At three minutes to ten he loaded four brier-wood pipes out
of a stone tobacco-jar, set three of them in a row on his desk, and lit
the fourth. When the hour struck the ink stood thick on certain symbols
at the top of a clean sheet of unlined foolscap, and Wolff Mason was
glancing over his previous morning's work.
The clock on the chimney-piece had a quiet, inoffensive tick, but
this, and an occasional squeal from the novelist's pipe, which was
exceedingly foul, were the only sounds within the editorial sanctum
between ten and half-past that morning. The ink had dried upon the
pen of as ready a writer as ever told agreeable stories in good
English; at the half-hour all that had been written was the heading
of the new chapter, and the number of the page (with a ring round
it) in the right-hand top corner. Some ten minutes later Wolff Mason
took up his second pipe, lit it, and began to write. He wrote for
an hour, more rapidly and less gracefully than was his wont. Then
he flung down his pen, lit the third pipe, and blew clouds of smoke
against the square of blue framed by the upper sashes of the double
window on his right. The novelist was in trouble. The best character
in his book, the old general, was failing him sadly in the hour of
need. It was necessary to the plot that this hearty, weather-beaten
warrior should make a complete brute of himself in the boat-house on
discovering his only daughter in the embrace of the young poet who
inhabited cheap chambers in Mitre Court when he was at home. But the
general had treated the poet as his own son hitherto, had taken his
daughter to tea at the Mitre Court chambers, had himself invited their
interesting tenant down to his country house for change of air; and he
refused to be so inconsistent. It was a case of inventing something
disreputable (afterwards to be disproved) against the poet; the general
must only now have heard of it to justify his ordering his guest
off the premises as the plot demanded. It was necessary and easy,
but undeniably conventional, and it distressed the novelist, because
he had not foreseen this contingency in the garden before breakfast.
Moreover, for some reason or other, he felt his inventive faculty to be
at its lowest vitality to-day. He did not ask himself what the reason
was. He had at least got back to the world of fiction, and whatever
their effects, the domestic scenes of the early morning were entirely
forgotten.
He was aware, however, that this morning he was breaking all his rules.
He was about to invent in the room where it was his practice only to
write down what he had invented elsewhere. He got up and paced the room
in order to do so, and this was another rule broken, for he very seldom
stirred from his chair between ten o'clock and one. And now, as he
walked, Wolff Mason's eye was caught by the packet from that promising
contributor who could write so amusingly when he liked; the creative
portion of his brain gave sudden way to the editorial; and the editor
informed himself, with a characteristic chuckle of self-depreciation,
that the new man's story would in any case amuse him more than his own
was doing at the moment. At all events he would try it. He had broken
so many rules already that he caught up the interesting envelope with
a certain recklessness, and having lighted his fourth pipe, sat down
to read manuscript as calmly as though it were three o'clock in the
afternoon instead of the middle of his sacred working morning.
The story, which was quite short, was accompanied by the unpresuming
business-like note which this contributor always forwarded with his
literary offerings. It was called "A Good Father," which was not a
very good title, but the editor prepared to give it his "careful
consideration," in accordance with the pledge embodied in his printed
notice to contributors. He pushed his spectacles on to his forehead
and began to read with the manuscript held close to his nose. Over the
third leaf his fine, thoughtful forehead became scored with furrows;
on the fifth he exclaimed "Ha!" Half way through the story he muttered
"Upon my word!" and a little later, "A most remarkable coincidence."
Then his face lost its interested look under the gathering clouds of
disappointment, and he finished reading with a brow awry.
"Not free from merit--anything but free--yet it won't do! This is a
young man with a naturally sweet sense of humour, but something has
embittered him since he first began to send me his stories. I wish I
knew what! He is the most disappointing person I have had to deal with
for many a day; a writer after my own heart, which he is half breaking
with his accursed childish cynicism!"
The genuine character of the editor's regrets was obvious (to himself)
from the fact that all his observations were made aloud. He very
seldom caught himself in the act of soliloquy; it was yet another of
the several irregularities which were destined to stamp this day in
the memory of one who notoriously lived and worked by routine. The
matter of the unacceptable story, however, suggested an entry in the
commonplace book in which he was accustomed to accumulate raw material
for future use. He felt happier when he had jotted down a note or two
anent the cynicism of the modern young author and his lamentable liking
for unhappy endings. The story he had just read ended shockingly,
and all owing to the unnatural obduracy of an impossible parent, the
"Good Father" of the cynical title. Otherwise it was a very good story
indeed. The coincidence, however, was quite remarkable. Paternal
opposition was the rock on which Wolff Mason's own pen had split that
morning. But his old general was not going to run him into an unhappy
ending--not he! He turned to that irate personage with positive relief,
and saw his way more clearly after the ten minutes he had spent in the
company of a much more terrible specimen of the same class. What he
did not see was the full force of the coincidence which had caused him
to exclaim aloud. It was a double one; but the man of letters lived
a double life, and in the atmosphere of fiction had forgotten those
unpleasant facts which had compelled his attention earlier in the day.
Another matter worried the writer when the clock struck one, and he
found himself mechanically wiping the pen that had inscribed some
twelve hundred and fifty words only instead of the regulation fifteen
hundred. He felt humbled by a sense of failure most mortifying at his
age, and though he put away his papers and went off to the club as
usual, he was not in his customary spirits, and the younger novelists
who listened for his good things, in order to repeat them to their
friends, heard nothing worth taking home with them that day. One of
the latter, indeed, broached very deftly the subject of Wolff Mason's
books; but the veteran treated the subject with unnatural seriousness,
was aware of the unnaturalness himself, and left the club before his
time in an evil humour. And evil humours were the greatest rarity of
all with the editor of the _Mayfair_, whom common consent credited with
the most charming personality in literary London.
By two-thirty he was back in the editorial chair; the first of a
newly-loaded set of pipes was in full blast under his nose, and the
remaining contents of the little table under the window were being
dealt with carefully and in turn. Not one of them proved to be of any
use at all. In each case this kind-hearted man felt it his duty to
pen a considerate little letter explaining the reason of rejection in
the present instance, and encouraging the unsuccessful contributor to
further effort. It is amazing, indeed, and little known, what a talent
Wolff Mason had for the composition of kindly little notes of this
nature; he made even the rejected love him, for his heartening words,
and for the sympathy and humour with which he tempered disappointment
to his tender young contributors.
Last of all this afternoon he returned to "A Good Father," and glanced
over it again with a sigh. Then he took a sheet of _Mayfair Magazine_
note-paper, and scrawled the date and "Dear Sir." There he stopped.
After a few moments' hesitation, the spoilt sheet was dropped into the
waste-paper basket, and a new note begun with "My" thrown in before the
"Dear Sir." But the editor paused again.
"Confound the fellow," he cried at last, "I'll treat him as a friend!
The chances are he'll turn and rend me; but here goes."