Holidays were brief at the firm of Leslie Campbell; September meant
strenuous preparation for the rush of autumn publications. "Piccadilly"
had just gone into its shilling edition; and Ran Wyman had written a
novel which was hastily, and quite rightly, banned by the libraries;
this involved a tremendous amount of heated correspondence with the
papers; the first number of the "White Review" would be issued the
following month. And though the fortunate of the earth were still
dallying by sea or mountain, the staff of Leslie Campbell could afford
to do without ordinary people's relaxations--so argued Guy Burnett in
his enthusiasm, and sadly the Heart-breaker assented.
But the turmoil and clatter at the office, the brilliant never-ending
jargon of intellect, the exaggerated importance these Pioneers of the
Future attached to their own and one another's brain-products, all this
no longer affected Gareth in the same melancholy sense of being forever
a mere looker-on. His book, till the present loved for itself and the
treasures he put into it, now that he was back in London, twinkled into
being as the key which was by and by to admit him to the fellowship of
"Campbell's Young Men."
One of Them!--did ever a youthful squire yearning to sit at Arthur's
Round Table of Knights, regard his hard-won spurs with half the
reverent incredulity, as Gareth the book which was to procure him
a place at the literary round table. There lurked no pain now in
watching their impatience of outsiders, their splendid overwhelming
swank. They did not lord it on false pretences; not one but had
by some intellectual achievement earned a seat at the board; by
some achievement.... Gareth fumbled for the consciousness of his
half-finished book. He felt swelling up within him vast possibilities
of swank, delicious new sensation which had hitherto been entirely
foreign to his nature. How patronizingly he would encourage Guy
Burnett: "Finished your 'Episode of a Navvy' yet, my lad? O you young
pessimists...." With what a careless air would he accept Campbell's
invitations to dine, and (seated at his host's right hand) how
eloquently hold forth on his lately discovered philosophy of Attainment
in Denial. Then the ease with which he would slip into his niche at
gatherings in Mona Gurney's delightful Sussex cottage, Ran Wyman's
eccentric suite of apartments in the Adelphi; Gareth had heard these
spoken of; knew too that Graham Carr had a cherished abode in Devon,
where the elect could at any time walk in with their portmanteaux:
"I've run down to hammer out my new theme with you, Carr." "You're
welcome, Temple, old man"--and the long intimate talks lasting far
into the night. The insolence of the Heart-breaker would naturally
have dissolved by then into the profoundest respect. And a suppressed
dislike for the junior partner could at last find vent in speech: "I
don't agree with you at all on that point, Alexander," swinging his
legs from the desk in the inner room.
Mere childishness, perhaps, all this. Toys of fancy not fit for a grown
man, for a man of forty years. The main miracle of the future was to be
possessor of the creative gift; to walk on the shoulders of the rest
of the world, pealing your message from the silver trumpet at your
lips. Ah! but Gareth wanted the little human things as well--he had
done without for so long; so long been overlooked and shoved aside;
despised or pitied; a cipher, a negative quantity wherever he chanced
to be; a failure--he desired the trivial tangible circumstances of
success, or he could never believe it had really and actually come to
him, to him, Gareth Temple, reader of other people's books. Whenever,
late evenings and Sundays, he slackened at his labour of writing, and
glancing round the ugly little dining-room, would think despondently
of the sea and the attic window, then he had only to murmur the magic
catch-phrase "One of Them" to be spurred to fresh bouts of toil. Of
the success of the book finished, he had not the slightest doubt; this
was not conceit, but rather judgment made fine and discriminating
through long years of practice; not blind conceit, but a marvelling
humility at the strange good fortune which had at length befallen him,
permitting him to stumble on an idea above all things new, new and
arresting. His style had always been faultless; slightly over-ornate,
perhaps; something quaint and scholarly in the formal phrases that
grouped themselves around an incident, like the rich blue and red and
gold decorations on medieval parchment margins. But that would contrast
well with the vigorous stripped sentences of the realistic school. No
doubts then, as to ultimate triumph. Where Gareth did experience a few
uncertain twinges was as to his moral capacities for the leg-swinging
act, even when the right to swing was his own. Suppose--suppose
after all he decided not to place his work with Leslie Campbell for
publication, but send it rather to the Booke-Shoppe, an old-fashioned
firm existing since the declining years of the nineteenth century;
which continued to publish for the most part essays and belles-lettres,
slender volumes of poetry and costly illustrated folios; a firm of
book epicures, somewhat _précieux_ in their handlings as delicately
contemptuous of Campbell's strong red meat, as were "Campbell's Young
Men" superior on the score of caviare and _hors d'œuvres_ contributed
by the Booke-Shoppe to the general feast of literature.
Gareth went once to have a look at the Booke-Shoppe, stealing a
twilight half-hour from the day's drudgery with Leslie Campbell. Thus
the quest held a guilty pang of disloyalty not altogether unpleasant.
He also knew that he would again be late for dinner; likewise that the
gazing upon the outer walls of a publisher's sanctum was the sheerest
folly, with the book lying scarcely more than half completed in his
desk at home. Guilt and folly and a secret quest were good companions
for a mellow September evening; the sunset powdering all the roofs
of London with gold; Bloomsbury Church lifting a dazzling spire into
the tender fading blue of the sky-strip that tented Holborn; and a
blind man's fiddle scattering its melody, now plaintive, now a mere
scraping jig, among the rapid swell of footsteps on the pavement. The
Booke-Shoppe revealed itself in a tiny by-street, where the houses
leant a little towards one another, as though in gossiping indignation
at the incongruous glaring picture-palace, newly erected at the
corner. And here was the Booke-Shoppe's dangling sign, that jutted
over the wrought-iron lantern in the porch; latticed windows bulging
oddly into the street; behind them a sense of dimness ... this was
indeed the Perfect Publisher, from whose shrine one could imagine,
without any shrinkings of distaste, the issue of all one's cherished
favourites. Gareth fancied himself summoned to the octagonal chamber
he was sure lingered behind those squares of thick glass; a chamber
at once fragrant and frowsy with cobwebs and the aroma of lingering
hopes; everywhere books; books piled and tumbled and tottering on
floor and shelf; folios and quartos and duodecimos; classics and lyric
poets and Elizabethan drama; rare gems of modern verse and prose. At a
table likewise heaped, a wizened figure sitting in a round circle of
lamplight; a little smoky old man, with spectacles pushed high up among
a bush of untidy white hair, and kindly short-sighted brown eyes that
mused absently on who might be the stranger at the door. Then Gareth
would declare his name, and be greeted by a flood of gentle enthusiasm,
and an exquisite comprehension of all he had put into "The Round
Adventure."
"A somewhat fantastic title, Mr. Temple, but we'll keep it, oh, we'll
keep it. My dear lad--you must permit me to call you so--I can't be too
proud that you brought your delightful wares to the Booke-Shoppe!"...
Discussion of contract, terms, advertisement?--perhaps! It was
manifestly absurd for Gareth, sixteen years a reader, to hover and hope
and dream impossible dreams of publishers; dream as he did in front of
that iron swinging sign, on a mellow September evening; dream as might
have done the veriest novice in the realm of letters. Gareth should
have known better. Besides which, it made him late for dinner.
As it happened, Kathleen was later even than he. But in the parlour of
Pacific Villa he found Trixie Worley awaiting him. The apparition was
less of a shock than it might have been, had not her spiritual presence
already formed a habit of straying into his realm of imagination; he
knew just exactly what she was going to say, and how she would say
it....
"_Mr._ Temple. A _word_ with you. _Privately._"
"Certainly, Mrs. Worley. Won't you sit down?" She was mauver even than
he remembered her. Much mauver....
She shut her eyes, gasped two or three times--then suddenly raised her
eyebrows till they shot out of sight; and proceeded to issue a series
of disjointed galvanic shocks.
"_Mr._ Temple. I'm a _moral_ woman."
She stopped dead. And he hastened to assure her that he believed this
to be the case ... and wondered what he could have said to lead to
the question being raised. "Won't you sit down?"... Surely this had
not been interpreted in any wrong sense? Her next contribution to the
interview seemed to hint the contrary:
"And I believe in the _sanctity_ of the marriage law."
"Oh, quite; yes, indeed...." A horrible suspicion flashed through
him, that her visit might be the result of a guilty attachment formed
for himself; and that these references to holy wedlock were merely
preliminary.
"And however much _Fred_ admires him, he _has_ got a _wife_."
Gareth gave it up. "Who has?"
"_Mr._ Kirby."
Then the object of her affection was that little Maori with the
slanting yellow eyes. Gareth felt relieved. But why had he been chosen
for father confessor?
"He has--yes--certainly ... a very beautiful woman!"
("Oh, Lord--perhaps I ought to have left that unsaid!")
"And _you_ have a _wife_."
"And you have a husband," ... he was convinced now that it was a comic
game they were playing, in which he had to fulfil his due share....
"Then why doesn't she look _after_ him?"
This apparently referred to Kathleen and Fred Worley--an improbable
conjunction. Cautiously Gareth waited for more.
"Since _you_ seem quite unable to look after _her_."
"Kathleen?"
"It's _against_ Fred's express wish that I am here. Even though I've
left _two_ of his cards outside. With mine."
But these did not seem to her bewildered host very adequate aids to
respectability, since the enigma was now meandering backwards to what
was from his point of view its most undesirable solution--namely, that
Kathleen should console Fred for Trixie's desertion to himself. He did
not at all like to be closeted with Trixie against Fred's express wish.
And he cursed his own innate courtesy which would not permit him to do
other than make a visitor appear welcome in his house.
"Do let me get you a glass of lemonade--or some cake?"
She wagged her head in solemn refusal. "The affair is _bound_ to
lead----" interminable pause in which the plot thickened like gravy
exposed to the chill air ... "to the _Cream_-Pashionel. They always
_do_."
"Look here, Mrs. Worley," Temple crossed to the fireplace, and standing
with his back to the grate, faced her with good-humoured determination
to break through that awful barrier of mystery, "I honestly haven't the
faintest idea what you are so kindly trying to tell me. I'm not clever
at guessing things, you know. Won't you explain?"
"I'm _breaking_ it to you. _Gently_," said Trixie, still stolidly
obscure. And indeed, by the time Gareth had groped through the
enmeshing glooms to the heart of the riddle, that Kathleen and Napier
Kirby were engaged in a surreptitious love-affair, it scarcely came any
more as a reeling shock to his senses....
"_Fred_ knows. And _I_ know. I should suppose _poor_ Grace knows. And
everybody except _you_. They have been seen motoring. Embracing. In
the neighbourhood. _Mr._ Temple. You have been blind, _indeed_. You
must _do_ something. Words cannot express my sorrow. And disgust. That
such a thing should start under my very roof. Fred _still_ admires him,
though I say all day: '_Fred._ _Don't_ admire him!'"
She rose to go.
"You must take action at once. _Stern_ action. Appeal to her sense of
shame. Tell her she's too _old_." Pregnant interval of silence during
the glove-buttoning process.... "Can you?--thanks ... or are you _too_
upset?... Thanks. And tell her--she's above all--a _wife_."
And Mrs. Worley departed, immensely inflated with the consciousness of
having impressively performed an unpleasant duty to her neighbour.
Gareth, left alone with the revelation that Kathleen was all this while
deceiving him, that "people were beginning to talk," and "God knows how
far the business has gone," Gareth ought no doubt to have aged visibly
beneath the deadly blow, and sat quite, quite still for many hours,
with hair turning slowly white.
Gareth experienced a momentary shock, certainly; the Songs his Mother
Taught Him were responsible for that: honour and plighted troth,
and--perhaps this was his fault; he should have shielded the woman--he
had been neglecting her shamefully for the book ... the book! he had
his secret love, why should she not have had hers the while? They
needed something--at their age they needed something, when there were
no children. He speculated on the personality of Napier Kirby. He had
barely come in contact with him, at Rapparee House. Had they been very
happy, the guilty pair? Rather, were they at present very happy? since
no explanation now was required for Kathleen's unpunctuality. He wished
she would come in and tell him all about it; where Kirby had taken her,
and what he had said--but Gareth knew that would not do. He must either
continue in ignorance, or display the qualities moral decency decreed
should in these cases be displayed: indignation, jealousy, insulted
honour, "you-shall-not-quit-my-roof,"--Gareth hunted about for these
tendencies, desperately alarmed to find as substitute a gentle rosy
glow of benevolence towards the erring couple, mild curiosity, and a
purely whimsical desire to inform Mrs. Worley of the line he intended
to take up in the matter.
It would have to be blindness, foolish complacent blindness to what
was happening beneath his very eyes. An attitude rather damaging to
his vanity, certainly, but he had failed to make Kathleen happy, and
had no right, no right whatever, to rob her of the happiness she had
gathered elsewhere. They had dragged on each other long enough; each
should now enjoy the last topsy-turvy parcels they each had drawn from
the bran-pie of youthful adventure. Gareth knew that before this year's
summer he could not have been guilty of such incredible coolness in the
face of disaster; but the madness of their holiday time, and then his
book ... he had neglected Kathleen and must pay the price in silence.
Oh, let him at least be frank! Gareth replaced on the mantelpiece
a black china cat with glassy yellow stare, which he had been
hypnotically regarding, and threw himself in the arm-chair, shading his
eyes with his hand. Let him be frank with himself! It was no question
of payment--it was deliverance. It was a well-nigh sobbing relief.
She was going. After all these hot aching years of strain, fortune in
a wild fervour of generosity was tossing him one gift after another,
culminating with this: that without any effort of action on his part,
he was to be left alone; alone to live his life, and write his books,
and ... dream his dreams of another girl; one who came in a breath
of wind as fragrant and as cool, as Kathleen's presence had been a
nightmare of harassed tightly puckered misery. The ethereal mist-maid
of his visions had been so much with him of late, slipping in and out
of the pages of the book, that he would not have been at all surprised
to see her materialize like any Galatea. She had flitted through so
many fanciful love-scenes, that Kathleen by his side at nights gave
him an uneasy sense of treachery. If Kathleen were gone, then no one
need ever step between him and the love he might have found, once, in
youth. Perhaps even now, if he were alone--he half stretched forth his
arms, "Oh, my dear, my dear" ... in a great rush of gratitude for his
impending release. He had been so tired, with that patient tiredness
which is worst of all; and himself would never have jerked off the
yoke; he was the man, the bread-winner--Songs his Mother Taught Him ...
no, Gareth would have kept faith with Kathleen, though it wore away his
very life in fretted atoms. But now--he had only not to see.
When Kathleen entered, flushed, and with a certain vibrant quality
to tone and gesture, he asked no questions, pretended to be deeply
immersed in work; "Extra rush; autumn season." He had never told
her about the book; this dream should not be damaged by too close
handling. Perhaps, if she went before it appeared in print--it was
still more than a third removed from completion--perhaps then he need
never tell her. Gareth had dreaded that telling; dreaded her quick
practical comments; dreaded the interest she would surely display. He
wondered when she and Kirby were planning to make definite escape,
and wished--again with a flicker of amusement at the thought of Mrs.
Worley--that it would not be such manifest bad form to ask.
The book was not running as swiftly as it had done in Ilfracombe. He
believed he might complete it by the end of the year--if he were alone.
September tiptoed so mildly into October, that in London, where berries
do not redden in the hedges, the end of summer came as scarcely a
shock. The skies were still blue, and the leaves still green; and if
the sun rose an hour or two later, who can tell across London roofs and
through London windows? If the sun dipped an hour or two earlier, so
much the better for London lovers, who await longingly the shadows in a
city where there is no solitude.
Napier and Kathleen were content to dawdle through the days, curiously
heedless whether their intimacy were apparent to all eyes. Napier,
indeed, was willing enough that Grace should hear rumours of his
errantry ... he never lost sight of his resentful love for Grace
and her provocative indifference, except in very rare moments when
Kathleen's veritable monsoons of passion--hot wind from out of the
desert--swept away all angry fidelity. Misunderstanding the woman
as he did, misunderstanding the esoteric causes for the brilliance
and beauty of this her last leap towards the sun, he approved of her
extreme recklessness as to discovery, setting it down to a capacity
lightly to enjoy a light flirtation, to revel bountifully in the fun
which the passing moment yields to its devotees; her stormier moods he
attributed to the devastating power of his own fascination. Naïve glee
at his ability to inspire such genuine emotion, mingled with a somewhat
unpleasant, perhaps even racial desire that he could all the while
shout to Grace: "There you are! _There_ you are!" ... making her a
present of Kathleen's body and soul, in order that Grace might better
appreciate him, the recipient of these.
He owned, quite apart from the large house in Hamilton Terrace where
his official family life was spent, a set of bachelor chambers off
Jermyn Street, and here Kathleen and he often passed their evenings.
The furniture of these rooms was amusing to her critical faculty:
perfect unobtrusive taste of an English gentleman; every article
expensive with the careless air of costing next to nothing; yet here
and there, where Napier's secret preferences had willy-nilly broken
through his layer of acquired good form, were spurts of gaudy colour: a
bead-embroidered cushion ... scarlet and gold piano-cover he had draped
with much pride and festooned with a large tinsel rose ... a couple of
gold-framed pictures of very pink-and-white nudes with plenty of
hair ... things that cost next to nothing with a shrieking air of being
expensive.
But Kathleen loved just those awful pictures and the tinsel rose,
with the same tenderness she had once poured on to Gareth's smaller
failings--before these failings had become her daily companions.
And it was good to lie on the couch with her head on the satin
cushion--his cushion--while he sang to her ... jumble of opera, and
crooning lullaby, and those husky bitter-sweet melodies that never
sound quite human, but rather as the plaint of love itself, or wail of
exile....
Then he would stop singing, and laugh, and soothe her with his
kisses ... cuddle her as if she were a silly child, and pet her ...
who had ever before shown the temerity to pet Kathleen? And how she
worshipped him for it ... worshipped his feline caresses.
On a certain Sunday of mid-October, Napier took her for a day's
motoring in the country lanes of Surrey. He was in excellent humour,
in anticipation of a trip to Spain, where he was entered for the great
International Automobile Race to be held within a fortnight. Napier
had little doubt but that he would come out victor in the contest; and
Kathleen, noting his marvellous handling of the car, adjustment so
swift and delicate as to be well-nigh instinctive to every emergency of
road and traffic, Kathleen shared his confidence, and exulted in the
man who was master of his job. For the time being, in the exhilaration
of their rush out of London into a world that was bright and ruddy and
clear-edged, nature's last abundant fling of colour and warmth before
the closing-in, she succeeded in forgetting his impending departure.
They lunched sumptuously at Dorking, and then leapt on again, eating
up the curl of the road with incredible speed.... Napier's golden eyes
were fixed straight ahead of him--his mouth smiled--and he hummed a
tune that throbbed with a queer barbaric dissonance....
"What is it?" asked Kathleen, fascinated.
"Moorish. I picked it up when I was touring in Spain. Did I ever tell
you, Kathleen, that I'd been a chauffeur for five months?"
And he related, with infinite zest at recollection, how some people had
wished to hire from him a car and chauffeur for an exhaustive trip
through Spain, during his first struggling years in the motor business;
all the men in his service already booked, he yet had not dared to
refuse so advantageous an offer, and had boldly undertaken the job
himself, with all its attendant duties of guide and bottle-washer--"And
Lordy! how that country twisted itself round the very core of my heart!"
So thus was explained his sudden thrilling inflection when, during
their first conversation at Ilfracombe, he had spoken of Granada, and
the hill called The Last Sigh of the Moor.... "I'd like to stand with
you just there, and look down on the Alhambra...."
Why not, then? Why not? Throughout the rest of the afternoon she was
strung to vibrant expectation of his: "Come with me, Kathleen!"...
Perhaps now he would say it; now, in the mellow inn-garden where they
had tea, and watched the sun drop, a spinning red globe, through the
opalescent October mists.
But though Napier talked excitedly, incessantly, of his vagabondage
in Spain; fluent description of just what had attracted him: the lazy
Southern people with their courtly ways--the clear rich colours--the
voluptuous sunshine--over all, a sense of dignified repose, quiescent
to the memory of past greatness in history; though he talked so much
and so long that by the time they started for home, the chill of
evening had crept up dankly over the landscape; yet he did not say:
"Come with me, Kathleen...."
A moaning breeze rustled the foliage that clung faithfully to the
boughs, reminding them that the day's generous flare of crimson and
wine-colour and topaz had been the merest bravado ... and that winter
was coming soon, very soon--Kathleen shivered a little, and drew her
cloak tightly round her; the cushioned seats of the car felt soggy,
and some withered leaves had blown in.... And still Napier talked of
Spain, and the Moors in Spain, and castles in Spain, and himself in
Spain--with never a word of her in Spain; never a word....
"I've got to go home to dinner to-night, darling; shall I put you down
near Hammersmith or----"
She did not want to go home. The panic she was just succeeding in
holding at arm's length, would surely find her at Pacific Villa.
She could easily fashion some careless lie to explain her absence to
Gareth; the same lie she always used to cover those long evenings
at the flat: she was going to the Worleys; they were teaching her
bridge; would Gareth care to come too?--she risked the danger of an
affirmative, knowing how busy he was of late, how he disliked bridge,
how he disliked Trixie. Anyway, he appeared curiously apathetic towards
her doings since their summer holiday.
"I don't want any dinner, Nap. Drop me at the flat, and join me later
on, can you?"
He assented; but half-heartedly. It was wonderful to be going to
Spain; wonderful to win the Cup Race--for he fully intended to win
it by dexterous combinations of skill, recklessness, and foul play;
wonderful that the feat was one which could be performed showily in
sight of the multitude. Nothing was wanting to his anticipations
of glory, save a special audience of his wife. Yes, Grace must be
persuaded to come with him next week. He planned for a reconciliation
to take place between them this very evening.... And afterwards he
would sit blissfully with her beautiful auburn head against his knee,
and make plans for their second honeymoon, along the Guadal-quiver....
And he would describe to her just how splendid she would feel, seeing
him outrival all competitors in the great race.
Yes, Grace must come with him to Spain. He wanted it. Usually he got
what he wanted. He drove to Hamilton Terrace and dressed for dinner, in
a riot of triumphant anticipation....
A couple of hours later saw him, ominously silent, and with a curious
glint under his heavy eyelids, letting himself into the flat where
Kathleen awaited him. Grace had refused his request, quite calmly and
good-temperedly; had said it would bore her....
And here was a dark woman with arms strangling his neck ...
overwhelming him in a tide of words ... pleading, pleading that when he
went to Spain, she might not be left behind. Pleading, as one pleads
who for two solitary hours has been in desperate battle with the
spectre of an old dread.
"I won't stay here--I won't. Napier, you promised, if ever you went
South.... You said: 'One day we'll go together.' And this is 'one
day,' isn't it? isn't it? Let me see you race and win. Take me along.
Napier, you promised ... and I love you.... I won't face the grey days,
and the white days, and the thick yellow days. You were so long coming
this evening ... and it was cold and dark--my hands are numb with
cold.... A hateful ballad-singer started croaking outside: 'Failin'
leaf and fadin' tree----'.... She did, Napier, she did! and I couldn't
bear it.... I wanted to kill her. Take me with you to Spain ... to see
you win!"
For through all her stammering anguish was sufficient acumen left to
strike again and again that final note, as the surest means of reaching
his ear.
He bent back her head, so that her mouth lay beneath his. And she felt
rather than saw his smile ... evil flash of smile, white in a dusky
face....
("Dear old Nap, it would bore me stiff; I hate travelling.")
"Yes. You shall come with me," he assured Kathleen softly.
* * * * *
Kathleen was afire with excitement when that evening she alighted
from the Hammersmith omnibus. Over and done with now, the strain
and pretence and irritation of life with Gareth. Humdrum day
succeeding day; monotony that his futile comings and goings were
powerless to dispel. Panic-peopled realms of thought: winter-fear,
birthday-dread--realm that she could not even claim as solely hers,
since instinctively he was familiar with every shape therein--all over
and done with. Warm land, warm love; her old tormented nature cast like
the garment of a snake. In ten days' time. Morality, humour, common
sense, stubbornly thrust under, lest they should reveal flaws and
dangers in this glory of the future towards which doggedly she thrust
her indomitable will. Nine more evenings to walk up that hideous front
garden, to unlock that blistered door, look in the dining-room to see
if Gareth were still up--her lip curved scornfully at the reflection
that never once had he betrayed sufficient intelligence to note her
altered demeanour.
She opened the dining-room door. The lamp was smoking badly. She
attempted with smarting eyes to pierce the fog.
Gareth was sitting at the table, his head propped on his hands;
staring, staring straight in front of him, with the look of a man to
whom has just happened the worst thing of all. Before him in a pile
stood the usual array of brown-paper-bound manuscripts which he brought
back from the office; one lay strewn on the floor, white patches on the
dingy carpet. Somebody must have thrown it there.
"Has anything happened, Gareth? Aren't you feeling well?"
He gazed at and through her, as if she were not there.
"Gareth, did you hear me? Has anything happened?"
After a long pause, her presence seemed to penetrate to him, as a
buzzing element of which he must at all costs be quit.
"Go to bed, Kathleen. I'm quite all right." His voice was dull and
toneless.
She could not be bothered with him that night of nights; he, of the old
order of things.... Kathleen closed the door; went happily upstairs.
And Gareth was left with his pile of other people's books, and the one
among them that contained his idea.
"The Reverse of the Medal," by Pat O'Neill.
Who was Pat O'Neill? He neither knew nor cared. Obviously a new writer,
since the name was unfamiliar. For that reason, Gareth had selected
it for reading first of the number, in the hope of striking something
original.... Well, he had succeeded; Gareth had long since been
convinced of the originality of his own inspiration.
The perusal of the opening chapters evoked a keen scholarly pleasure in
the masterly handling of phrases, for the unmistakable genius displayed
in character and thought.... And all the while, a curious unreal
sensation, as if he were being dragged along unfamiliar paths towards a
spot of which he was perfectly cognizant, would recognize the instant
he set eyes on it; only the way thither was not known to him.... The
nightmare feeling grew and grew--he was stifling truth in a blurred
rapid horror of leading--on and on--unmistakably aware now to what
summit of inspiration each phrase, each situation, was leading....
A last effort of frantic unconvinced self-persuasion that he was
mistaken, the next page would show him so--well then, the next chapter;
he had his own book so much on his mind, that it infected absurdly
everything he read; this other, this Pat O'Neill, was labouring towards
an entirely different issue; funny that in places it should appear so
like.
Half-way through the manuscript, no more possibility of doubt. It was
then that the white staring pages found their scattered resting-place
on the carpet.
His idea.
In his official capacity, he would have to compose a report to send
up to Leslie Campbell, who would probably publish the book. An
astoundingly good piece of work, he would have to report well on it.
His idea.
Not for an instant could he accuse the unknown author of deliberate
plagiarism. No; these brainwaves occurred at times. He had heard
several cases of two books or two plays each founded on the same theme,
evolved at the same period by their totally unconscious creators. In
this case, the other man would get in first, that was all. And it
mattered so intensely to Gareth.
Drearily he stared at the black china cat with yellow eyes, who
occupied the centre of the mantelpiece, just where the faded red velvet
with its brownish fringe was looped up with a nail.
"What am I to do?"
The cat leered evilly: "You might give the book a bad report; then the
Heart-breaker would tie it up in a parcel, and, whistling, carry it to
the post."
"Another firm will publish it if Campbell doesn't. There's a good two
months' work in mine still. 'The Reverse of the Medal' is bound to get
in first."
"Then keep back the manuscript," counselled the black china cat, who
had presided so long on that shelf in that room, that it must in
witnessing, have sucked into its unaired soul all of the bickerings and
heart-burnings of the two dwelling in Pacific Villa, and all of the
things unsaid that hung thickly in the air long after the dining-room
was empty of occupants. A nasty little cheap black cat, meagre and
dusty.
"Then keep back the manuscript."
"Keep it back?"
"Well, why not?"
It did occasionally last a couple of months before the reader sent up
his report of a book. Not often; Gareth was regular in the discharge of
his duties. Moreover, every manuscript received at the office was of
course duly notified with date and title. But it might easily happen
that in this case the copy should be accidentally mislaid, mislaid for
quite a length of time.
And in the meanwhile he would work; work feverishly at his own book.
Finish it in six weeks. Finish it, and submit it to a publisher, any
publisher, so only that it got in first.
Why not?
"It's--mean," said Gareth to the black china cat.
"I don't care one way or another," the latter retorted indifferently.
"Go back to the old routine, day after day, and nothing ahead to look
forward to. Dreams smashed. Career in atoms. Shoved on one side by
'Campbell's Young Men.' Just tolerated by Campbell himself----"
"Ah, no--I can't!" The man buried his head on his arms, while a great
bitterness drained his soul. Forty years, and nothing to show for
them--and now to have success snatched away when it dangled within
grasping reach. "I can't!"
... Gareth looked too long into the shallow eyes of the black china
cat....
"Pat O'Neill must pay for pitching on the same idea as mine," he said
at last, slowly. And slowly gathered up the scattered manuscript, sheet
by sheet. Slowly crossed to the desk, and opened the lowest drawer, and
thrust in the untidy parcel; crushed it down, and shut the drawer, and
locked it.
When he mounted the creaking stairway to the room he shared with
Kathleen, there were ugly lines around his mouth, a hard glitter in his
eyes. And he was vexed to see her smiling in her sleep.