OF THE PROFESSIONS THAT CHOOSE, AND
MIKE LAFLIN
However we may hint at its explanation by theories of inheritance, it
still remains curious with what unerring instinct a child of character
will from the first, and when it is so evidently ignorant of the field
of choice, select, out of all life's occupations and distinctions, one
special work it hungers to do, one special distinction that to it seems
the most desirable of earthly honours. That Mary Mesurier loved poetry,
and James Mesurier sermons, in face of the fact that so many mothers and
fathers have done the same with no such result, hardly seems adequate to
account for the peculiar glamour which, almost before he could read,
there was for Henry Mesurier in any form of print. While books were
still being read to him, there had already come into his mind,
unaccountably, as by outside suggestion, that there could be nothing so
splendid in the world as to write a book for one's self. To be either a
soldier, a sailor, an architect, or an engineer, would, doubtless, have
its fascinations as well; but to make a real printed book, with your
name in gilt letters outside, was real romance.
At that early day, and for a long while after, the boy had no preference
for any particular kind of book. It was an entirely abstract passion for
print and paper. To have been the author of "The Iliad" or of Beeton's
"Book of Household Recipes" would have given him almost the same
exaltation of authorship; and the thrill of worship which came over him
when, one early day, a man who had actually had an article on the sugar
bounties accepted by a commercial magazine was pointed out to him in the
street, was one he never forgot; nor in after years did he ever
encounter that transfigured contributor without an involuntary
recurrence of that old feeling of awe. No subsequent acquaintance with
editorial rooms ever led him into materialistic explanations of that
enchanted piece of work--a newspaper. The editors might do their
best--and succeed surprisingly--in looking like ordinary mortals, you
might even know the leader-writers, and, with the very public, gaze
through gratings into the subterranean printing-rooms,--the mystery none
the less remained. No exposure of editorial staffs or other machinery
could destroy the sense of enchantment, as no amount of anatomy or
biology can destroy the mystery of the human miracle.
So I suppose Nature first makes us in love with the tools we are to use,
long before we have a thought upon what we shall use them. Perhaps the
first desire of the born writer is to be a compositor. Out of the love
of mere type quickly evolves a love of mere words for their own sake;
but whether we shall make use of them as a historian, novelist,
philosopher, or poet, is a secondary consideration, a mere afterthought.
To Henry Mesurier had already come the time when the face of life began
to Wear a certain aspect, the peculiar attraction of which for himself
he longed to fix, a certain mystical importance attaching to the
commonest every-day objects and circumstances, a certain ecstatic
quality in the simplest experiences; but even so far as it had been
revealed, this dawning vision of the world seemed only to have come to
him, not so much to find expression, as to mock him with his childish
incapacity adequately to use the very tools he loved. He would hang for
hours over some scene in nature, caught in a woodland spell, like a
nympholept of old; but when he tried to put in words what he had seen,
what a poor piece of ornamental gardening the thing was! There were
trees and birds and grass, to be sure; but there was nothing of that
meaning look which they had worn, that look of being tiptoe with
revelation which is one of the most fascinating tricks of the visible
world, and which even a harsh town full of chimneys can sometimes take
on when seen in given moments and lights. And it was astonishing to see
into what lifeless imitative verse his most original and passionate
moments could be transformed.
Still some unreasonably indulgent spirit of the air, that had evidently
not read his manuscripts, whispered him to be of good cheer: the
lifeless words would not always be lifeless, some day the birds would
sing in his verses too. This sense of failure did not, it must be said,
immediately follow composition; for, for a little while the original
expression of the thing seen reinforced with reflected significance its
pale copy. It was only some weeks after, when the written copy was left
to do all the work itself, that its foolish inadequacy was exposed.
"However, there is one consolation, they are not worse than Keats and
Shelley wrote at the same age," he said to himself, as he looked through
a bundle of the poor things the evening before his room was to be
dismantled. "Indeed, they couldn't be," he added, with a smile.
Fortunately he was but nineteen as yet; would he venture on a like
comparison were he twenty-five?
Yes, his little room was to be dismantled on the morrow,--this first
little private chapel of his spirit. This fair order of shelves, this
external harmony answering to an inner harmony of his spirit, were to be
broken up for ever. Often as he had sat in the folioed lamplit nook
which was, as it were, the very chancel of the little church, and gazed
in an ecstasy at the books, each with a great shining name of fame upon
its cover, it had seemed as though he had put his very soul outside him,
externalised it in this little corner of books and pictures. His soul
shivered, as one who must go houseless awhile, at the thought that
to-morrow its home would be no more. When and how would be its
reincarnation? More magnificent, maybe, but never this again. It was
sacrilege,--was it not ingratitude too? When once more the books and the
pictures began to form into a new harmony, there would be no mother's
love to help the work go on....
But as he mused in this no doubt sentimental fashion, the door opened
and the little red-headed Mike entered. His was a little Flibbertigibbet
of a face, already lined with the practice of mimicry; and there was in
it a very attractive blending of tenderness and humour. Mike was also
one of those whom life at the beginning had impressed with the delight
of one kind of work and no other. When a mere imp of a boy, the
heartless tormentor of a large and sententious stepmother, the despair
of schoolmasters, the most ingenious of truants, a humorous ragamuffin
invulnerable to punishment, it was already revealed to him that his
mission in life was to be the observation and reproduction of human
character, particularly in its humorous aspects. To this end Nature had
gifted him with a face that was capable of every form of transformation,
and at an early age he hastened to put it in training. All day long he
was pulling faces. As an artist will sketch everything he comes across,
so Mike would endeavour to imitate any characteristic expression or
attitude, animate or inanimate, in the world around him. Dogs, little
boys, and grotesque old men were his special delight, and of all his
elders he had, it goes without saying, a private gallery of irreverently
faithful portraits.
In addition to his plastic face, Nature had given him a larynx which was
capable of imitating every human and inhuman sound. To squeak like a
pig, bark like a dog, low like a cow, and crow like a cock, were the
veriest juvenilia of his attainments; and he could imitate the buzzing
of a fly so cunningly that flies themselves have often been deceived. It
was this delight in imitation for its own sake, and not so much that he
had been caught by the usual allurements of the theatre, that he looked
upon the career of an actor as his natural and ultimate calling. It was
already privately whispered in the little circle that Mike would some
day go on the stage. But don't tell that as yet to old Mr. Laflin,
whatever you do.
There was a good deal more in Mike than pulling faces, as Esther
recently, and Henry before her, had discovered. His acting was some day
to stir the hearts of audiences, because he had instincts for knowing
human nature inside as well as out, knew the secret springs of tears, as
well as the open secrets of laughter; and it was rather on this common
ground of a rich "many-veined humanity" that these two had met and
become friends, rather than on any real community of tastes and ideas.
Yet Mike loved books too, and had an excellent taste in them, though
perhaps he had hardly loved them, had not Henry and Esther loved them
first, and it is quite certain, and quite proper, that he never found a
page of any book so fascinating as the face of some lined and battered
human being. Over that writing he was never found asleep.
There was one other literary matter on which he held a very personal and
unshakable opinion,--Henry Mesurier's future as a poet; and on this he
came just in the nick of time to cheer him this evening.
"The next move will be to London, old fellow," he said; "and then you'll
soon see my prophecies come true. My opinion mayn't be worth much, but
you know what it is. You'll be a great writer some day, never fear."
"Thank you, dear old boy. And you know what I think about your acting,
don't you?"
Then it was that Esther appeared, and Henry made some transparent excuse
to leave them awhile together.
"You dear old thing," said Esther, kissing him, "now don't stay away too
long."