In the autumn of that year Audrey woke and found herself the classic of
the hour, a literary queen without a rival. Wyndham's great work was
finished, and it stood alone. Not another heroine of fiction could lift
her head beside Laura, the leading character of "An Idyll of
Piccadilly." He himself owned, almost with emotion, that it was the best
thing he had ever done. He had not touched the surface this time; he had
gone deep down to the springs of human nature. He had not merely
analysed the woman till her character lay in ruins around him, but he
had built her up again out of the psychic atoms, and Laura was alive.
She showed the hand of the master by her own nullity. In her splendid
vanity she was like some piece of elaborate golden fretwork, from which
the substance had been refined by excess of workmanship.
The voice of criticism was one voice; there arose a unanimous hymn of
praise from every literary "organ" in the country. It was Mr. Langley
Wyndham's masterpiece, a work that left the excellence of "London
Legends" far behind it on a lower plane. Though there was no falling off
in point of style, the author had found something better to do this
time than to cultivate the flowers of perfect speech. "Laura" was a
triumph of intimate characterisation. And the brutal touches that
disfigured his former work were absent from this; he had shown us that
the boldest, most inflexible realism is compatible with a delicacy
worthy of the daintiest of esoteric ideals.
The book, dedicated "To my Wife," appeared early in October. By November
the question of the sources was opened out, and it began to be whispered
(a whisper that could be traced to the private utterances of Miss Gladys
Armstrong) that the prototype of Laura was a Miss Audrey Craven. In the
person of her ubiquitous double, Miss Audrey Craven became a leading
figure in London society. Then bit by bit the news got into the papers,
and Wyndham's _succes d'estime_ was followed by _succes de scandale_
which promised to treble his editions.
Thus Audrey, unable to achieve greatness, had greatness thrust upon her;
and the weight of it bowed her to the earth. The earth? As she read on,
the earth seemed to crumble away from under her feet, leaving her
baseless and alone before that terrifying apocalypse. Wyndham had
trained her intelligence till it could appreciate the force of every
chapter in his book of revelations. At last she saw herself as she was.
And yet--could that be she? That mixture of vanity, stupidity, and
passion? To be sure, he had been careful to give her brown hair instead
of tell-tale red, and skillfully to alter the plot of her life with all
details of time and place; but--what had he said? "Light as air, fluent
as water, a being mingled of fire and a little earth; fickle as the wind
that blew her in a wavering line across the surface of things." "Modern,
and of stuff so fine that it chafed under the very breath of
disapproval; and yet with a little malleable heart in it compounded of
the most primeval of affections." She turned over the pages; everywhere
she came upon the same thing. Now the phrases were spun out fine, they
were subtle, they seemed to cling round her and stifle her; now they
were short and keen, and they cut like knives. "Women may be divided
into three classes--the virtuous, the flirtuous, and the non-virtuous.
The middle class is by far the largest. It shades off finely into the
two extremes. Laura belonged to it." "The moon was up, and Diana, divine
sportswoman, was abroad, hunting big game." "Laura had made a virtue of
necessity. She said that proved the necessity of virtue."
Oh, the cruelty of it! Would Ted, would Vincent, have done this if they
had had it in their power? True, they had reproached her; but it was to
her face, alone in her own drawing-room, where she had a chance of
defending herself. _They_ would not have held her up to public scorn.
And they had some right to blame her,--she saw that now. But what had
she done to deserve this from Langley? How had he found it in his heart
to speak against her? She had loved him. Yes, she had known many a
passing pain, but she had never really suffered until now. That was a
part of her education that had been neglected hitherto. Only an
accomplished student of human nature could have coached her through the
highest branches of it.
Having set the scandal successfully afloat, the society papers began to
utter a feeble protest against it--thus increasing their own reputation
for a refined morality. But they had no power to turn the tide, and the
scandal floated on. In society itself judgment was divided. Whether
"Laura" was or was not a work of the highest art, was a question you
might have heard discussed at every other dinner-table. Perhaps the
criticism that was most to the point was that of Miss Gladys Armstrong,
who proclaimed publicly that Langley Wyndham laboured under the
disadvantage of not being a woman, and having no imagination to make up
for it. Meanwhile the tone of the larger reviews remained unchanged. The
reviewers, to a man, had committed themselves to the position that the
book was Wyndham's masterpiece; and nobody could be found to go back on
that opinion.
But in all that concert of adulation one voice was silent--the only
voice that Wyndham cared to hear, that of Percival Knowles. The others
might howl in chorus, and it would not be worth his while even to
listen; he was looking forward to Knowles's long impressive solo. But
that solo never came, neither could the note of Knowles be detected in
the intricate chorus. It was strange. Knowles had been the high priest
of the new Wyndham worship, and to him the eminent novelist had looked
for sympathy and appreciation. But Knowles had made no sign. They had
avoided the subject whenever they met; Wyndham was not so hardened by
authorship as to have lost the instinctive delicacy felt by the creator
at the birth of his book. Knowles seemed only too much inclined to
respect that delicacy. Finally, Wyndham resolved to go and see his
friend alone, and tentatively sound him on the subject of "Laura." He
proposed to himself a pleasant evening's chat, in which that lady would
be discussed in all her bearings, and he would enjoy a foretaste of the
praise ere long to be dealt out to him before an admiring public. On his
way to Knowles's rooms he heard in fancy the congratulation, the
temperate flattery, the fine discriminating phrase.
He found Knowles amusing himself with a blue pencil and Miss Armstrong's
last novel. "Laura: An Idyll of Piccadilly" lay on the table beside him,
its pages cut, but with none of those slips of paper between them which
marked the other books put aside for review. Knowles greeted his friend
with an embarrassed laugh, and they fell to discussing every question of
the hour except the burning one for Wyndham. By the rapidity of his
conversational manoeuvres, it was evident that the critic wanted to
steer clear of that topic. Wyndham, however, after ambling round and
round it for some time with no effect, suddenly brought up straight in
front of it with--
"By-the-bye, have you condescended to read my last fairy-tale?"
"What, the Mayfairy tale?" said Knowles, with deft pleasantry. "Yes, of
course I've read it."
"What do you think of it?"
Knowles suddenly looked grave. "Well, at the moment, I had much rather
not tell you."
"Really? Well, I suppose I shall know some day."
Knowles looked as if he were struggling with an unpleasant duty, and it
were getting the better of him.
"Not from me, I'm afraid. It will be the first work of yours I have left
unnoticed. As I can't review it favourably, I prefer not to notice it at
all."
"You surely don't suppose that I came here to fish for a review?"
"I do not."
"Thanks. I don't deny that I should have appreciated the public
expression of your opinion, favourable or unfavourable. But I respect
your scruples as far as I understand them. The only thing is----"
He paused; it was his turn to feel uncomfortable.
"Is what?"
"Well, after the way you've delivered yourself on my other books, which
are feebleness itself compared with this one, I must say your present
attitude astonishes me."
"I've given you my reasons for it."
"No; that's what you've not done. Surely we've known each other too long
for this foolishness. Of course, it's considerate of you not to damn me
for the entertainment of the British public; but you know you're the
only man in England whose judgment I care about, and I confess I'd like
to have your private opinion--the usual honest and candid thing, you
know. I'm not talking of gods, men, and columns."
Knowles sat silent, frowning.
"Oh, well, of course, if you'd rather not, there's nothing more to be
said."
"Not much."
But Wyndham's palpitating egoism was martyred by this silence beyond
endurance, and he burst out in spite of himself--
"But it's inconceivable to me, after the way you've treated my first
crude work. You must have set up some new canons of art since then.
Otherwise I should say you were inconsistent."
But Knowles was not to be drawn out, if he could possibly help it.
"Do you mind telling me one thing--have you anything to say against its
form?"
"Not a word. I admit that in form it's about as perfect as it well could
be. I--er--" (he was beginning to feel that he could not help it)
"object to your use of your matter."
"What on earth do you mean?"
"I mean what I say."
"Please explain."
"Very well. Since you so earnestly desire my honest and candid opinion,
you shall have it. You remind me that I praised your earlier work, and
suggest my inconsistency in not approving of your latest. My praise was
sincere. I thought, and I have never changed my opinion, that the
originality of your first books amounted to genius. Your last, however
great its other qualities, has not that merit. It is, _I_ think,
conspicuously destitute of imagination."
"Do you deny its vitality--its faithfulness to nature?"
"Certainly not. I object to it as a barefaced plagiarism from nature."
"Then at least you'll admit that my heroine lives?"
"She does, unfortunately. Wouldn't it have been better taste to wait
till she was decently dead?"
"Oh--I see. You mean _that_."
"Yes; I mean that. If you had no respect for your own reputation, you
might have thought of Miss Craven's."
"Excuse me, this is simply irrelevant nonsense, and most unworthy of
you. Miss Craven, as you perfectly well know, is one manifestation of
the eternal flirt. I seized on the type she belongs to, and
individualised it."
"You did nothing of the sort. You seized on the individual and put her
into type--a very different thing. Do you imagine that life will ever be
the same to that poor woman again? I never liked Miss Craven, but she
was harmless, even nice, before you got hold of her and spoilt her, by
making her think herself clever. Isn't that what happens to Laura?"
"That--among other things."
"Other things, also slavishly copied from Miss Craven. I recognise the
faithfulness of your portraiture in all its details; so does she and
everybody else."
"Knowles, you talk like the lay fool. Surely you know how all fiction,
worthy of the name, is made? I took what lay nearest at hand, as
hundreds of novelists have done before me; though as for that, there's
not an incident in the book that is not the purest fiction. You don't
give me credit--I won't say for originality, but--for ordinary
reconstructive ability."
"I give you credit for having made the most of quite exceptional
advantages. You best know how you obtained them."
Wyndham reflected a moment, then looked Knowles in the face.
"I assure you solemnly there was never any question of Miss Craven's
honour."
Knowles raised his eyebrows. "I didn't suppose for a moment there was.
How about your own, though? Your notions of honour strike me as being
quaintly original--rather more original than your Piccadyllic heroine."
Knowles was not bad-tempered, but he was a frequent cause of bad temper
in other people. It was with the utmost difficulty that Wyndham
controlled himself for a final effort to evade the personal, and set the
question at large on general grounds.
"Then I suppose you would deny the right of any artist to make use of
living material?"
Knowles yawned. "I don't attempt to deny anything. I'm debating another
question."
"What is that?" Wyndham smiled an uneasy muscular smile.
"Whether it isn't my duty to kick you, or rather to _try_ to kick you,
out of this room."
"Really; and what for? For the crime of writing a successful story?"
"For the perpetration of the most consummate piece of literary
scoundrelism on record."
As that statement was accompanied by a nervous twitching of the lips
which Wyndham was at liberty to take for a smile, he held out his hand
to Knowles before saying good-night.
"My dear Knowles, if _your_ notions of literary honour held good, there
would be an end of realism."
"The end of realism, my dear Wyndham, is the thing of all others I most
desire to see."
They had shaken hands; but Wyndham understood his friend, and he knew
as certainly as if Knowles had told him so that Audrey Craven, the woman
whom neither of them loved, had avenged herself. She had struck, through
Laura, at the friendship of his life. He was also informed of one or two
facts about himself which had not as yet come within the range of his
observation. He consoled himself with the reflection that the
temptations of genius are not those of other men. And perhaps he was
right.
Knowles sat down to his review of Miss Armstrong's book with unruffled
urbanity. He wrote: "This authoress belongs to a select but rapidly
increasing band of thinkers. There may be schisms in the new school with
regard to details, but on the whole it is a united one. The members are
unanimous in their fearless optimism. One and all they preach the same
hopeful doctrine, that the attainment of a high standard of immodesty by
woman will in time make morality possible for man."
He went to bed vowing that of all professions that chosen by the man of
letters is the most detestable.