"THAT BOOK"
ADRIAN GRANT had gone away to Sardinia, but he had left Henry urged to
the point of writing "that book." At first Henry approached the task
with but little taste, for he had the good sense to doubt whether his
talent lay in the direction of creative work, as the writing of fiction
is so comically miscalled. But the thing had to be done, and as well now
as again. At first progress was slow, as book-reviewing for the
_Watchman_ kept him busy most nights at home, while sub-editorial duties
filled out all too amply his office hours. There was agony of mind in
the writing of the early chapters, and he had not gone far when the
rupture with Flo came to disturb his thoughts and to agitate his
feelings. But it had the effect of setting him almost savagely to his
novel again, and gloomy was the atmosphere he created in his chapters.
It was a romance of town and country life, and was entitled
provisionally, "Grey Life."
For a while after Flo's exit from his life the book went ahead rapidly;
then he set it aside almost afraid to go on after reading what he had
written; it was so savage, so unlike anything he had ever hoped to
write. If at that time he could have been impersonal enough in his
criticism, he would have seen at a glance that Adrian Grant was not only
responsible for his having essayed the task, but that he had projected
something of his pessimism into the mind of the writer.
The unfolding young editor, who had meant to write such a scathing
review of "Ashes," would have been as incensed by the unhealthy gloom,
the wintry sadness, of "Grey Life." Of course, it is to be remembered
that the said young editor had never delivered the terrible slating he
intended to devote to Adrian Grant's popular work, but he had at least
thought it, and believed it would have been justified, even after he had
written something different. Though the morbidity of sex was entirely
absent from "Grey Life," it contained a good deal that was as deserving
of ban as anything in "Ashes."
When Mr. P. returned in the late autumn of the year from his sojourn in
the South, he asked to be shown the manuscript, incomplete as it was;
and pronounced it good.
"You've stuck almost in sight of the end," he said.
"Wrecked in port," replied Henry, laughing.
"Not quite wrecked, but floating rudderless. There's no reason why this
shouldn't hit--if you want to make a hit. But it's generally books that
are published without intent to 'boom' that stumble into success. At
least, it's been so with mine."
"But I'm uneasy about it all. Don't you think the picture intolerably
grey?"
"None too grey, my lad--grey is the colour of life," said the man who
had just come back from cloudless blue skies and gorgeous sunsets.
"Somehow I felt like that when writing, but when I read it I have an
inkling that life is brighter than I have shown it to be; that it's
worth while living both in country and in town."
"It's not for me to advise one who has done so well off his own bat, but
I would suggest that you work the thing out to its bitter end, keeping
true to the artistic impulse which will settle each of the characters
for you, and without you, if you but let it have its sway."
"But it would be a bitter end for two of them."
"Precisely. For all of them, probably. It is for most of us."
"There I don't agree with you. Don't you think the bitter end is at the
beginning? The book ends bitterly at the start, so to speak."
"I do, and I don't object to that in the least. The fact is, you have
subordinated your Philistine nature most wonderfully, and are in a fair
way to produce a work of art, but here the Philistine part of you comes
uppermost at a critical moment, and has its usual fit of remorse at a
piece of genuine art. I would not have credited you with the capacity to
produce such a work as this manuscript contains. That is frank, isn't
it?"
"And I ought to be flattered, I suppose. But I'm not. I've been
disillusioned all along the line, but surely when the illusions fall
away life is not merely a corner for moping in. Besides, is it a worthy
work to disillusionise others?"
"It is. It is the business of sane men to expose for what they are the
fools' paradises of the world."
"Surely not. Let the fools find it out themselves; and if they never do,
the better for them."
"Look here, my young friend, your best plan is to take a holiday at once
and go down home for two or three weeks, to get over this mood of
contrariness. I'm surprised that you've been slogging away in London all
through the stifling summer. It was mere madness. You're suffering from
mental clog. Shake free of Fleet Street for a week or two, and the book
will finish, never fear. Whatever you do, don't have one of those
maudlin, barley-sugar ends. Be true to life, and let all else go.
Perhaps a visit home would supply the contrast necessary to re-start the
mind."
"I've been thinking of that this very day."
"Then my advice is: Go. You're not looking well. London is a hard
task-master, and the slave who runs to the eternal crack of his whip is
by way of being untimely worn out."
The idea of spending an autumn holiday at home had been with Henry for
some time, even to the exclusion of plans for a visit to the Continent,
and it was evidence of the influence this strange friend had over him,
that so soon as he suggested it the project was distinctly forwarded.
In another week he was to be homeward-bound: heart-free, but
disappointed. Successful in a sense, and a failure in the light of his
inner desires. London had not brought him peace of mind, and Hampton, he
feared, would only bore him into accepting the life of the City as the
lesser of two evils.
If Henry could have looked inward then he would have seen that all his
uneasiness came from the dragging of the old anchor of faith which began
long ago at Laysford on his first meeting with Mr. Puddephatt. That, and
naught else. Edward John believed in the Bible _verbatim et litteratim_;
worshipped it with the superstitious awe wherewith a sentimental woman
bobs to tuppenceworth of stucco and a penn'orth of paint fashioned into
a Bambino; would have believed it implicitly had the story ran that
Jonah swallowed the whale; and often, indeed, expressed his readiness
for that supreme test of faith.
To Henry, as to every young man who thinks, came the inevitable
collision between inherited belief and acquired knowledge. Also the
inevitable wreckage. Many thousands had gone his road before him, and
more will follow. To the father the roads of Knowledge and of Faith ran
neatly parallel, the one narrow and the other broad; but as the son
laboured at the widening of the former, the road of Faith, trodden less
and less, was dwindling into a crooked and uncertain footway. It's an
old, old story--why say more than that the miraculous basis of belief is
a mere quicksand when Knowledge attempts to stand upon it?
But Edward John was as much a man as his son would ever be, and Henry
could see that his father was as important a unit in the Kingdom of
Heaven as he could hope to become. Was Ignorance, then, the kindest
friend? No, there must be a way for the cultured as for the unlettered;
but was it a different way?
Thus and so forth went the unrestful soul of the young man, who was
even then writing his undecided mind into a novel, and by that token
giving evidence of an ignorance as essential as his father's, different
in kind but not in degree.