"'To be or not to be--that is the _question_,' said Hamlet:
'To be is not to be--that is the _answer_,' said Hegel."
Dr Phippeny Piecraft invented this couplet one night for his own
edification, as, inert in body and despondent in mind, he lay back in
the arm-chair of his consulting-room. "There is more point," he went on,
"in Hamlet's 'question' than in Hegel's 'answer.' But the gospel is not
in either. Both are futile as physic. At all events, neither of them
brings any consolation to me."
Dr Piecraft was reflecting on the hardness of his lot. Ten years had
elapsed since he first mounted his brass plate, and he was still
virtually without a practice. He earned just enough from casual
patients to pay his rent and keep body and soul together. To be sure,
his father had left him a hundred a year; but Piecraft had given the old
man a promise "that he would look after Jim." Now Jim was a
half-brother, many years younger than himself; and he was also the one
being in the world whom Piecraft loved with an undivided heart. So the
whole of his income from that source was ear-marked for the boy's
education; not for worlds would the doctor have spent a penny of it on
himself. He even denied himself cigars, of which he was exceedingly
fond, restricting himself to the cheapest of tobacco, in order that Jim
might have plenty of pocket-money; and whenever the question arose as to
who was to have a new suit of clothes, Jim or the doctor, it was always
Jim who went smart and the doctor who went shabby.
He was over forty years of age, and, in his own eyes, a failure. Yet no
man could have done more to deserve success. His medical qualifications
were of the widest and highest; diplomas of all sorts covered the walls
of his consulting-room; a gold medal for cerebral pathology lay in a
glass case on his writing-table. He was actively abreast of advancing
medical science; he had run into debt that he might keep himself
supplied with the best literature of his profession, and he was prepared
at a moment's notice to treat a difficult case in the light of the
latest discoveries at Paris, St Petersburg, or New York. Moreover, he
had led a clean life, and was known among his friends as a man of
irreproachable honour. But somehow the patients seemed to avoid him, and
only once in two years had he been summoned to a consultation.
To account for Piecraft's failure as a medical man several theories were
in circulation, and it is probable that each of them contained an
element of truth. Some persons would set it down to the shabbiness of
his appearance, or to the brusqueness of his manners, or to the fact
that his consulting-room often reeked with the fumes of cheap tobacco.
Others would say that Piecraft was constitutionally unable to practise
those "intelligent hesitations" so often needed in the application of
medical principles. They would remind you of his fatal tendency to
determine diagnosis on a sudden impulse, which Piecraft called
"psychological intuition," and in illustration of this they would tell
you a story: how once, when the vicar's wife had brought her petted
daughter to be treated for hysteria, the fit happening to come on in the
consulting-room, Piecraft had cured the young lady on the spot by
soundly boxing her ears. Concerning this incident he had been taken
severely to task by an intimate friend of his, an old practitioner of
standing. "It will be time enough to adopt those methods of treatment,"
the friend had said to him, "when you are earning five thousand a year.
At the present stage of your career it is almost fatal. Learn so to
treat a patient that the story of the cure when subsequently related
after dinner may have the characteristics of High Tragedy, or at all
events may reflect some credit on the sufferer. Help him to create a
drama, and see to it that he comes out ultimately as its hero. Don't
you see that in the present instance you have spoilt a moving story,
than which nothing gives greater offence, turning the whole situation
into Low Comedy and making the patient a laughing-stock? People will
never stand that, Piecraft. It is idle to insist that the cure was
efficacious and permanent. So no doubt it was. A better remedy for that
type of hysteria could not be devised. But reflect on the fact that you
have deprived the vicar's family of a legitimate opportunity for
dramatic expression and dethroned the vicar's daughter from her place as
heroine. In short, you have committed an outrage on the artistic rights
of medicine, and, mark my words, you will have to pay for it. Always
remember, Piecraft, that in medicine, as in many other things, it is not
the act alone which ensures success, but the gesture with which the act
is accompanied."
Moreover, Piecraft held a theory which he never took the least pains to
conceal, though it was extremely provoking to his patients both rich
and poor. His theory was that more than half the ailments of the human
body are best treated by leaving them alone. For example, a certain old
gentleman having consulted him about some senile malady, the doctor had
dismissed him with the following remark: "My dear sir, the best remedy
for the troubles of old age is to grow still older. The matter is in
your own hands." Many suchlike epigrams were reported of him, and often
they constituted the sole return which the patients received for the two
guineas deposited on the table of the consulting-room. Obviously this
kind of thing could not go on. As most of his patients consulted
Piecraft because they wished to be extensively interfered with, and
objected to nothing so much as being left alone, with or without an
epigram to console them, it followed of course that they seldom
consulted him a second time.
But beneath these peripheral causes of irritation there lay a deeper
offence. The truth is that Piecraft had made himself highly obnoxious to
the members of his own profession, and had acquired--though I doubt if
he fully deserved it--the reputation of a traitor. "Futile as physic"
was a phrase constantly on his lips; and the words, offensive as they
were, were only the foam that broke forth from the deeper waters of his
treachery. He had gone so far as to embark on a propaganda for what he
called "the Simplification of Medical Practice," publicly proposing that
a Society should be founded for that object; and in pursuance of this
proposal he had published a series of articles in which he had argued
that the healing art is still dominated by the spirit of Magic and
encumbered with a mass of dogmatic assumptions and superstitious
observances. "The Seat of Authority in Therapeutics," "Medicine without
Priest and without Ritual," "Big Words and Little Bottles," were the
titles of some of these abominable essays. The last-named especially had
aroused great indignation, not only by the excessively vehement language
in which Piecraft pleaded for "simple and rational" principles, but far
more by a caustic parallel he had drawn between the doings of a
successful London practitioner and the ritual of a medicine-man among
the Australian aborigines. The offence went deep, and the matter became
the more serious for Piecraft because the indignation extended from the
doctors to the theologians, who suspected--though the suspicion was
utterly unfounded--that under the cover of an attack on orthodox
medicine he was really engaged in putting a knife, from the back, into
official religion; a suspicion which deprived the unfortunate doctor of
every one of his clerical patients, including their wives and daughters,
at a single stroke.
The combined effect of all these causes was, of course, disastrous. If,
for example, you happened to be suffering from a severe pain in the
head--_le mal des beaux esprits_--which your family doctor had failed to
cure, and suggested to the latter that Piecraft, as a distinguished
cerebral pathologist, should be summoned to a consultation, you were
pretty certain to be met with this rejoinder: "Yes, Piecraft has beyond
all question an unrivalled knowledge of the human brain. But please
understand that if you call him in I shall have to retire from the
case." And if you pressed for further explanation you would at first be
put off with airs of mystery which would gradually consolidate into some
such statement as this: "Well, in the profession we don't regard
Piecraft as a medical man in the strict sense of the term. He is really
a literary man who has mistaken his vocation"; or, "Nature intended
Piecraft for a popular agitator"; or, "Piecraft's forte is journalism";
or, "Piecraft's title of 'doctor' should always be written in inverted
commas"; or, "Piecraft is trying to live in two worlds, the world of
imagination and the world of pure science; he will come to grief in both
of them." And once the prophetic remark was made: "Piecraft's proper
role is that of a character in the Arabian Nights." I have been told,
too, that one day the Senior Physician of the hospital where Piecraft
held a minor appointment overheard him muttering his favourite phrase by
the bedside of a patient, "Futile as physic! futile as physic!"
Whereupon the Senior Physician stepped up to him and, laying his hand on
his shoulder in the kindest possible manner, whispered in his ear,
"Resign, Piecraft; resign!"
* * * * *
Dr Phippeny Piecraft had no belief in the immortality of the soul: his
studies in cerebral pathology had disposed of that question long ago.
"What a philosopher most requires," he used to reflect, "is not so much
a big brain of his own as a little knowledge of the brains of other
people. Hamlet, for example, if he had studied Yorick's brain instead of
sentimentalising over his skull, might have framed his question
differently. And as to Hegel--well, that thing knocked all the Hegelism
out of me," and he glanced at the gold medal in the glass case.
But, like many another man who disbelieves in the future life, Dr
Piecraft was not a little curious as to what might happen to him after
death. He was indulging that curiosity on the very evening we first
encounter him. "There is a pill in that little bottle," he was
thinking, "which would end the whole wretched business in something less
than thirty seconds. I wonder I don't swallow it. I should do it if it
were not for Jim. But no, I shouldn't! Hamlet, old boy, you were quite
right. I'm as big a coward as the rest of them. There's just a chance
that if I were to swallow that pill I should find myself in hell-fire in
half a minute--and I'm not fool enough, or not hero enough, to run it.
Of course, there's just a chance of heaven too; for, after all, I've
been a decent sort of chap, and, as Stevenson says, there's an ultimate
decency in the Universe. _Heaven!_--my stars, heaven doesn't attract me!
I've never yet heard a description of heaven which doesn't make it
almost as bad as the other place. Extraordinary, that when people try to
conceive a better world than this they almost invariably picture
something infinitely worse! Mahomet knew that: 'cute fellow, Mahomet.
And yet he was no more successful than the rest."
Piecraft's reflections, once started on that line, plunged further. "I
wonder what sort of heaven _would_ attract me," he thought. "Let me see.
Why, yes! If I could be sure of going to a place where I should be
professionally busy all day long, plenty of interesting and difficult
cases, and no need to worry about Jim's education and his future--I'd
swallow the pill this instant. _By heaven_, I would! I'd do harder
things than that. I'd stick it out in this wretched hole for another ten
years, I'd give up smoking shag, I'd give up everything, except Jim--if
only at the end of the time I could go to some heaven where the stream
of patients would never cease! I really don't think I could accept
salvation on any other terms. But wait! Yes, there is just one other
offer I would look at. If only they'd let me go back to the old home in
Gower Street, if they'd make the old street _look_ as it did in those
days, and _smell_ as it did, and give tobacco the same taste it had
then, and show me Dad standing at the window with Jim in his arms, and
let me be in love again with that nice girl at the Slade School--yes,
and if they'd let me go into the shilling seats at the Lyceum to see
Mary Anderson as Perdita--by Gad, I'd take the pill for that, indeed I
would!"
He was pursuing these reflections when his housekeeper entered the room
with three or four letters. He looked them over, and his face brightened
when he saw that one of them was from his half-brother Jim. A pipe was
instantly filled and Piecraft re-settled himself in his arm-chair with
the open letter in his hand. Jim's letter was dated from Harrow and ran
as follows:--
"DEAR PHIP,--Many thanks for your congratulations on my
eighteenth birthday and for the enclosure of two pounds. Don't
be angry, old chap, when I tell you how I spent them. I got
leave at once to go down town, and bought you a silk hat, a
pair of gloves, some collars, and a couple of ties. You will
get them all to-morrow, and I hope the hat and gloves are the
right size. I am pretty sure they are. I was half inclined to
buy you a box of cigars, but I thought you needed the other
things more.
"The fact of the case is, Phip, I have definitely made up my
mind to be a burden on you no longer. True, I might get a
scholarship at the 'Varsity, as I got one at Harrow. But you
would still have to pinch to maintain me; and when I remember
how long you have done it already, I feel a perfect beast. I am
old enough now to understand what it means, and I tell you,
Phip, that nothing will induce me to come back to Harrow after
the present term. So please give notice at once. I mean to go
out to the Colonies with a man from the Modern Side, and I
shall earn my living somehow--as a labourer if need be, for I
am big and strong enough. Indeed, I would rather enlist than go
on with this.
"Have you ever thought of trying to make a bit _by writing_,
Phip? I believe you could write a novel. Don't you remember
what bully stories you used to tell me when I was a kid? Have a
shot at it, old boy. There's a person here in the Sixth who
has a knack that way, and he made a hundred pounds by a thing
he wrote. He got the tip for it out of a book on the art of
novel-writing, the advertisement of which I have cut out of the
_Daily Mail_ and send you enclosed. I would have sent you the
book itself had there been enough left out of the two pounds.
But there was only fourpence.
"The Head preached a capital sermon last night on the text, 'Of
such is the Kingdom of Heaven.' The instant he gave out the
words I thought of you, old Phip. And I went on thinking of you
till he had done. That's how I know the sermon was a good one,
though I didn't listen to another word. Anything that makes me
think of you _must_ be good. Phip, _you are a dead cert. for
heaven when you die_. But don't die yet, there's a good chap.
For if you go, I shall go too.--Ever yours, JIM.
"_P.S._--Don't forget to give notice that I am leaving this
term."
When Dr Piecraft laid down the letter his eyes were full of tears. "The
only bit of heaven that's left me," he said aloud, "is going to be
taken away. There's one person in the world, anyhow, who doesn't think
me a failure. If you go to the Colonies, Jim, I shall take the pill,
come what may. You're a warm-hearted boy, Jim, but cruel too. I'd rather
spend a hundred a year on you and go threadbare in consequence, than
earn ten thousand a year and not have you to spend it on. At the same
time, my only chance of making you relent is to earn some money.--What
the deuce is all this about novel-writing?"
He took up the advertisement which had fallen in his lap, and read as
follows: "How to Write Novels--a Guide to Fortune in Literature.
Containing Practical Instructions for Amateurs, whereby Success is
assured. By an Old Hand."
* * * * *
Next morning Piecraft bought the book. As no patients came that day he
had ample leisure to read it. "Easy as lying," he said to himself when
he had finished. "I see the trick of it. And, by George, I'll make the
first attempt this very night. I have half a dozen ideas already.
Cerebral pathology is no bad training for a novelist."
So he sat down to work, and by two in the morning had written the first
chapter of a very promising novel. In ten days more the novel was
complete.
Reading over his manuscript, and severely criticising himself by the
rules of his Manual, he found that he had put in too much scenery, had
undercoloured the beauty of the heroine, had forgotten to describe her
dress, and had introduced no action to break the tedious sentiment of
the love-dialogues. These errors he at once set himself to correct,
pruning down the excesses and making good the defects. Then, reviewing
the whole, he satisfied himself that he had done well. The plot turned
on a love affair, and was easily intelligible. The sexes were evenly
balanced, and every character had its foil. There was plenty of incident
and continuous action. And the whole was unified by a single purpose or
controlling idea.
This last gave Piecraft peculiar satisfaction. He had feared when he
began that unity of purpose would be of all the rules the most difficult
to satisfy. In the purpose of his life he had failed; was it likely, he
asked himself, that he would do any better in romance? Judge, then, of
his pleasure on discovering that a clear thread of intention ran through
the novel from the first sentence to the last, and came to adequate
fulfilment in the final catastrophe. "Purpose," he reflected, "is going
to be my strongest point. I shall score heavily on that."
He sent his manuscript to a publisher, and was rejoiced to hear of its
acceptance within a week. In the six months that followed, having little
else to do, he produced two more novels. Each of them had a Purpose. The
publisher bought the manuscripts outright for fifty pounds apiece.
"It's the Purpose that pays," thought Piecraft. "It's the Purpose that
works the oracle. It's the Purpose the public like. Next time I'll
introduce more Purpose and stand out for better terms with the
publisher."
Meanwhile he had been compelled, much against his will, to give notice
of Jim's withdrawal from school. In spite of the brightening of his
prospects the half-brother had proved inexorable. "I will borrow from
you," wrote Jim, "enough to pay my third-class fare across the ocean and
leave me with a pound or two on landing. After that, not another penny."
"All right, Jim; have it your own way," was Phippeny's answer. "I shall
work away until I have saved L500, and then, my boy, _I'll join you on
the other side and life will begin again for both of us_. Meanwhile, I'm
growing uncommonly prolific in the way of pot-boilers. But I'm not
exactly in love with it, and shall abandon my new profession without a
sigh. I wish I could produce something really good. Perhaps when I join
you I shall get a new inspiration. I believe one can find a pen and ink
in the Colonies."--Thus the matter was arranged.
* * * * *
Dr Phippeny Piecraft was not in the habit of going to church, but one
Sunday evening, shortly after these events, he found himself there by
accident and heard a sermon, some sentences of which caught his
attention. It happened that just then he was gravelled for lack of
matter; and he was busy during the service in vainly attempting to
construct a plot in which a gamekeeper's daughter was to be betrayed by
a young lord under circumstances of excruciating novelty. In spite of
the novelty of the circumstances he could not help recognising that the
main theme was a trifle stale; and as they were singing the hymn before
the sermon he confessed to himself that the plot was not worth
elaboration, and began to think about other things.
Piecraft's mind, indeed, was just then in a state of extreme confusion.
Now he would be listening to the words of the preacher, now giving way
to anxieties about Jim, now returning to the plot of his novel like a
moth to a candle-light, and now reflecting, with the acute discomfort of
a double consciousness, on his inability to concentrate his thoughts.
"There is nothing," he mused, "which sooner demoralises a man's
intelligence than the discovery that he can make money by following the
demand of a degenerate public taste. It leads to mental incoherence and
to the most extraordinary self-deception. I am afraid that that cursed
Manual has undone me. It seems to have resurrected another personality
who belongs to a lower order of being than my true and proper self.
Having failed to earn my living by being the man I am, I am now in a way
to make money by being the man I am not. What business have I to be
constructing these ridiculous plots? And how is it that, once started on
that line, I am unable to prevent myself going further? I had thought
that a scientific training was the best safeguard against obsession. But
I perceive it is no such thing. Is it possible that I am so far like
Frate Alberigo--my proper soul expelled to another world, and perhaps
practising medicine there, while a demon holds possession of my body and
writes third-rate novels in this?"
A moment later he was thinking about Jim.
"I hope the boy won't forget to send me a cable when he reaches the
port; somehow I feel unaccountably anxious about him." Then he turned to
wondering how much he would be able to screw out of the publishers for
the next novel, and how everything would depend on the breadth of the
Purpose.
Suddenly a sentence of the sermon caught his ear: "_Illusion is an
integral part of Reality_."
"Tip-top," thought Piecraft. "So it is." And in a moment his imagination
began to cast about for a reality of which three parts should be
illusion. But he could think of nothing that answered the description,
and again he said to himself, "I am not in a normal condition to-day.
One should never force a reluctant brain. And I can't help being anxious
about Jim. I had better turn my attention to the sermon."
"For example," the preacher was just then saying, "many a man who has
determined to abandon the pursuit of happiness has subsequently realised
that he was still pursuing happiness in another form. Others have found
that actions which they thought they were doing for the love of God were
really done out of hatred of the devil.... Nor can we ever be sure that
we are the authors of our own acts. No doubt we usually think we are.
But if the testimony of holy men--and of bad men too--counts for
anything, we shall be forced to the conclusion that many acts which we
think _we_ have performed have really been performed by some person who
is not ourselves, or by some force or motivation whose source is not in
our own souls. This, my friends, applies to our bad actions as well as
to our good ones. Thus we see how of all reality, even of moral reality,
illusion is an integral part."
Dr Phippeny Piecraft did not trouble himself for one instant about the
truth or error of these doctrines. An idea suddenly leaped into his mind
as he heard them, and the preacher had hardly concluded the last period
before the novelist saw himself secure of at least eighty pounds for his
next manuscript. Such are the strange reactions which the best-meant
sermons often provoke in the minds of the hearers, especially when there
is genius in the congregation.
The title of his new novel was the first thing that came into Piecraft's
head. It was to be called _Dual Personality_, and cerebral pathology was
to supply the atmosphere. The plot came next--at least the outline of
it. The main actors were to be two young lords, or something of that
sort, the one as good as they make them and the other as bad. Each of
these young lords was to play the part of motivating force to the
actions of the other. "We'll call them A and B," reflected Phippeny. "A,
the good young lord, shall intend nothing but good and do nothing but
evil. B, the bad one, shall intend nothing but evil and do nothing but
good: that is, A's actions shall represent B's character, and _vice
versa_. Each, of course, must be exhibited as under the influence of the
other; and this mutual influence must be so strong that A's virtues are
converted by B's influence into vices, and B's vices by A's influence
into virtues. Thus each of them shall be the author, not of his own
actions, but of the actions of his friend. A splendid idea, and one that
has never yet occurred to any novelist living or dead! It is certain to
lead to some tremendous situations."
Before the sermon concluded the pot was beginning to simmer. Several
situations had been rapidly sketched by way of experiment: a trial trip,
so to say, had been taken. For example: Scene, a labyrinthine wood.
Time, the dead of night. An intermittent moonlight, and a gale causing
strange voices in the tree-tops. The bad young lord, on his way to the
gamekeeper's daughter, is stealing among the trees. Suddenly a figure
steps into his path. It is the good young lord. Conversation:
upshot--the bad young lord resolves to take Holy Orders. Takes them, but
becomes a worse villain than before; psychology to be arranged later.
Second situation: good young lord now leader of Labour movement: the bad
young lord (in Orders) persuades the other, by casuistry, to misapply
trust funds to support coal-strike. And so on and so on. End:
Archbishopric for villain, penal servitude for hero. Reader all the time
kept in doubt as to which is villain and which hero; and sometimes led
to think, by cerebral pathology, that the two men are one
personality--the two halves of one brain. Counter-plot for the
women--each lord in love with the woman who is matched to the other.
Keynote of whole--tragic irony.
Piecraft had advanced thus far when his mind received another jostle.
His attention was again caught by the words of the sermon. "I have
heard," the preacher was saying, "of a distinguished author who, on
reading one of his own books ten years after it was written, entirely
failed to recognise it as his own work, and insisted that it had been
written by somebody else. Such is the force of illusion."
"The fellow's an idiot," thought Piecraft, "to believe such a story. The
thing couldn't happen. At least, I'm pretty sure it will never happen to
_me_. None the less, it might be worked in for a literary effect." And
again he fell to musing.
The preacher was now coming to the end of his sermon. He had been saying
something about the relations of St Paul to the older apostles, and
about the various illusions current at the time; and then, after
alluding to St Paul's sojourn in the wilderness of Arabia, was winding
up a period with the following questions: "But meanwhile, my brethren,
where is Peter? Where is John? Where is James? And what are they doing?"
"_Where is James?_" These, and what followed them, were the only words
that penetrated to Piecraft's intelligence, and they struck so sharply
into the current of his thoughts that he almost forgot himself. He sat
bolt upright, opened his mouth, and was on the point of shouting an
answer to the question, when he suddenly remembered where he was and
checked himself in time. The answer he had on the tip of his tongue was
this: "_James, so far as I can judge, is just getting into wireless
touch with New York, but I would to God I knew what he was doing!_"
A moment later he was thinking, "I'm getting light-headed, and shall be
making an ass of myself if I'm not careful. I'm certainly not in my
usual health. What the deuce is the matter with me? When, I wonder,
shall I have news of Jim's arrival?"
When Piecraft left the church he was in a state of acute depression and
distress. His pulse was throbbing and his head aching, and it seemed to
him as he paced the streets that the preacher was following close behind
him, and constantly repeating the question, "Where is James, where is
James?" Sometimes the voice would sound like a distant echo, sometimes
like a mocking cry.
On reaching home he said to his housekeeper: "Mrs Avory, I shall be glad
if you will sit up till you hear me go to bed. For the first time in my
life I am afraid of being left alone. I can't imagine what has come over
me."
He tried to read the paper, to write a letter, to play the piano; paced
the floor; wandered into the housekeeper's sitting-room; went out for a
walk and came back after going twenty yards. Then he took up a volume of
his favourite _Arabian Nights_ and found, after reading a page, that he
had not understood a sentence of the print. Towards midnight his
agitation was so great that he could bear it no longer. He rang the
bell.
"Mrs Avory," he said, "something has gone wrong with me--or with
somebody else. I can't help thinking about James--and fancying all sorts
of things. I believe I am going mad. In heaven's name, what am I to do?"
"Well, sir," said the woman, "you are a doctor and should know better
than I. But if I were you, sir, I'd take a sleeping draught and go to
bed."
In despair Piecraft took the woman's advice. As a doctor he avoided the
use of every kind of drug on principle, and was terrified when he
realised how much morphia he had put into the draught. "Now indeed I am
mad," he thought, "for the smallest dose of morphia was always enough
to give me the horrors."
His fears were not ungrounded. There is no record of what he saw,
fancied, or suffered during the night and the following day; but when he
entered his dining-room late next evening, Mrs Avory started as though
she had seen a ghost. "Give me the newspaper," he cried, and before she
could prevent him he snatched it out of her hand.
"_'Titanic' sinks after collision with iceberg. Enormous loss of
life_"--were the first words he read.
"I knew it!" he exclaimed.
* * * * *
Those who saw the tragic throng of men and women who for the next few
days hung round the doors of the White Star offices in London will not
have forgotten that poor fellow who was beside himself--how he would
walk among the crowd accosting this person and that, and how he would
then take off his hat, or his gloves, or pull at his tie and say, "Look
at this hat, sir; look at those gloves; look at that tie! Jim gave me
those, sir. He bought them with two pounds I gave him to spend on
himself. What do you think of that for a noble act? And I tell you that
Jim's lying at this moment fathoms deep in the ocean. He's among the
lost, sir; by God, I know it. A mere boy in years, madam, only eighteen
last birthday; but a man in character. Loyal to the core! And take my
word for one thing. Jim played the man at the last, sir; you bet your
stars he did! He didn't wear a lifebelt; not he--that is, if there was a
woman around who hadn't got one! A man who would spend his money as he
spent those two pounds wouldn't keep a lifebelt for himself. Would he,
now? Look at this hat! Look at these gloves! Look at that tie!...."
For two whole days Piecraft maintained this requiem. On the evening of
the second day some kind-hearted fellow-sufferer persuaded him to go
home, and volunteered to bear him company. It was a long hour's journey
to the other end of London. A telegraph boy arrived at the house at the
same moment as the two men and handed Piecraft a telegram. He broke it
open and read. Then he suddenly tore off his hat, and, handing it with a
quick movement to his companion, staggered forward and collapsed on the
doorstep.
* * * * *
When he came to himself he was lying on the sofa in his study. In the
room were several people who, as soon as Piecraft opened his eyes, gazed
upon him attentively for a few moments and then, nodding to each other,
as though to say "all right," quietly withdrew.
The novelist looked round him. Yes, he was assuredly in his own familiar
room. But one thing struck him as strange. The room was usually in a
state of extreme disorder--dust everywhere, books and papers lying about
in confusion, hats, sticks, pipes, photographs and golf-balls mingling
in the chaos. Now everything was neat and orderly. The furniture had
been polished, the carpet cleaned, the hearth swept up and the
fire-irons in their place. On the table, too, was a vase of flowers.
"There must have been a spring cleaning," he thought.
He felt remarkably well. "I believe that I fell asleep during a sermon.
Well, the sleep has done me good and cleared my brain. But who on earth
brought me here? Strange: but I'll think it out when I have time. Just
now I want to write. That was a capital idea for my new novel. I must
work it out at once while the inspiration is still active; for I never
felt keener and fitter in my life. Let me see.--Yes, _Dual Personality_
was to be the title." These were his first reflections.
Then without more ado he sat down to the table; lit his pipe; ruminated
for five minutes, and began to write.
He wrote rapidly and continuously for many hours, and midnight had
passed when Piecraft flung down the last sheet on the floor and uttered
a triumphant "Done!"
"I thought," he said aloud, "that it would run to at least 100,000
words. But I don't believe there's a fifth that number. The thing has
come out a Short Story. Never mind, I'm safe for a twenty-pound note
anyhow. Not so bad for one day's work. I'll read it over in the
morning." Then, feeling hungry, he rang the bell.
To his great surprise there entered not the fussy old lady who usually
waited on him, but a girl neatly dressed and with a remarkably
intelligent face.
"Are you the new servant?" said he.
The girl made no reply, but, having placed food on the table, withdrew.
"As modest as she is pretty," thought Piecraft as he ate his meal.
"Well, I'll give her no cause to complain of me. And I hope she'll
continue to wait on me. For in all my life I never knew bread and wine
to taste so delicious."
On the following morning he had barely finished his breakfast, supplied
him in the same silent manner, when a tap came at the door and a young
man stepped into the room. "Is there anything I can do for you, sir?"
said he.
"Who are you?" said Piecraft. "I have never seen you before."
"Oh," said the young man, "I'm a messenger. Your friends have sent me to
look after you."
"It's the first time they have ever done such a thing," returned the
other, "and I'm much obliged to them. Anyhow, you came at the right
time. There _is_ something you can do for me; at least I think so. Can
you read aloud?"
"I like nothing better," said the young man.
"Well, then, you are the very man I want. It so happens that I wrote a
story for the press last night, and I was just wishing that I had a kind
friend who would do me the service of reading it aloud. There's nothing
that gives an author a better idea of the effect of his work than to
hear it read aloud."
"I will read it with the greatest pleasure," said the youth.
"Then let us get to work at once," said Piecraft--and he handed his
manuscript across the table.
The young man settled himself in a good light and began to read. The
first sentence ran as follows:
"_For the fourth time that day, Abdulla, the water-seller of Damascus,
had come to the river's bank to fill his water-skin._"
"Stop!" cried Piecraft. "I never wrote that! I must have given you the
wrong manuscript. What is the title on the outside?"
"_The Hole in the Water-skin_," answered the reader.
"It's not the title of my story," said Piecraft. "Here, hand the papers
over to me and let me look at them. Extraordinary! Where did this thing
come from? I presume you're attempting some kind of practical joke. What
have you done with the manuscript I gave you?"
"The confusion will soon pass," said the other.
"Confusion, indeed!" answered Piecraft, as his eye glanced over the
sheets. "You've hit the right word this time, my boy. For the odd thing
is that the whole piece is written in my hand and on my paper, and is, I
could swear, the identical bundle of sheets I laid away last night. And
yet there is not a word in it I can recognise as my own. But
wait--what's this on page 32? I see something about 'dual personality.'
That was the title of my story. But no! The words are scratched out.
Yes, a whole page--two pages--more pages--are deleted at that point.
What on earth does it all mean?"
"Perhaps," said the young man, "if you allow me to read the whole to
you, your connection with the story will gradually become clear."
"You had better do so," answered Piecraft. "At all events, read on till
I stop you. For, from what I see, I don't like the fellow's style, and
may soon grow tired of it. And make a point of reading the portions that
are scratched out."
"I shall remember your wishes," said the other; "and as to not liking
the fellow's style, I think you may find that it is to some extent
founded on your own."
"I don't believe it," said Piecraft. "Anyhow, if he hasn't been copying
my style, he has been stealing my ideas. The passage about 'dual
personality' proves it. But go ahead, and let us hear what it's all
about."
The young man again settled himself in a good light and read as
follows.