How the picture spoke again. Abstract metaphysical questions,
and no answers. How the Picture's memory was sharpened,
and how Mr. Pelly woke up. Mr. Stebbings and Mrs. Buckmaster.
The actule fax. Jack's resurrection, without an
arm. Full particulars. All fair in love. How Mr. Pelly
knew the picture could see all, and how Madeline had not
gone to bed. Captain Maclagan's family. Fuller
particulars. General Fordyce and the Bart, not wanted.
What the picture must have seen and may have thought.
Good-bye to the story. Mere postscript.
It is scarcely fair play to make a merit of
patience--isn't cricket, as folk say nowadays--when you
are in a comfortable armchair before a warm fire,
and are feeling drowsy. But, then, Mr. Pelly was
under an entirely wrong impression on this point,
and had scheduled himself as wakeful, but content
to bide his time. Yet he might reasonably have
suspected himself of drowsiness when James, the
young man, coming to wind up the contents of the
room, and revise the shutters, retreated with
apologies. For had he been really awake, he would
certainly have said, "All right, James! Come in.
Never mind me!" As it was, he deferred doing so
a fraction of a second, and the consequences were
fatal. He remained wide awake, no doubt--people
always do. But he had not the slightest idea that
James had gone, closing the door gently, when the
picture said to him from the chimneypiece, in
exactly the voice he had heard before, "Is it all true?"
Mr. Pelly found that, mysteriously, he took it as
a matter of course that this should be so. "I
presume," he said, "that you are alluding to the
substance of the manuscript we have just read. I am
scarcely in a position to form an opinion."
"Why not?" said the picture. At least, she
said "_perche_" and this translates "Why not?" in
English.
"Because I am conscious of a strong bias towards
accepting it as true, occasioned by the details of
your own Italian experience, which you were so
kind as to give me--perhaps you will remember?--some
while since--let me see?--before I went away
to see that niece of mine married at Cowcester.
Now, this narrative of yours--so my Reason
tells me; and I may add that I have already
committed myself to this opinion when awake--can
only be regarded as a figment of my own imagination,
based on a partial perusal of the manuscript
you have just heard--that is to say, _would have_
just heard had you been objective. I am borrowing
a phrase from my friend, Professor Schrudengesser.
I do not see that any harm can come of my speaking
plainly, as if you happen to have an independent
existence you will appreciate the difficulties of the
position, and if you haven't, I don't see that it
matters."
"Mr. Pelly," said the picture impressively, "I
should like, if you will allow me, to say a serious word
to you on this subject. I refer to the reality of
our existence, a subject to which the most frivolous
amongst us cannot afford to be indifferent. Have
you never considered that the only person of whose
existence we have _absolute_ certainty is _ourself_?
Outside and beyond it, are we not painfully
dependent on the evidence of our senses? What is our
dearest friend to us but a series of impressions on
our sight, touch, and hearing, _plus_ the conclusion
we draw--possibly unsound--that what we touch
is also what we see, and that what we hear proceeds
from both? Have you attached due weight to...?"
Mr. Pelly interrupted the voice. "You will
excuse me," he said, "but in view of the fact that
I may wake at any moment, is it not rather a
tempting of Providence to discuss abstract metaphysical
questions? No one would be more interested than
myself in such discussions under circumstances of
guaranteed continuity. But..." Mr. Pelly paused,
and the voice laughed. The picture itself remained
unmoved.
"Circumstances of guaranteed continuity," it
repeated mockingly. "When have you ever had
a guarantee of continuity, and from whom? If you
were suddenly to find yourself extinct, at any
moment, could you logically--could you
reasonably--express surprise?--you who had actually passed
through an infinity of nonentity before you, at
any rate, became a member of Society! Why
should not your nonentity come back again? What
has been, may be."
Mr. Pelly's mind felt referred to sudden death,
but his reply was, "Guaranteed continuity of
communication was what I meant." Then he reflected
that perhaps sudden death might be only suspension
of communication--however, he had had no experience
of it himself, and could only guess. The
picture continued sadly:
"That makes me think how hard it is that you
should wake to live in the great world I cannot join
in; to move about and be free, while I must needs
be speechless! Give me a thought sometimes, even
as the disembodied spirit, as some hold, may give
a thought to one he leaves behind. Yet even that
one is better off than I; for may not he or she
rejoin those that have gone before? While I must
grow fainter and fainter, and be at last unseen and
forgotten; or even worse, restored! Rather than
that, let me peel and be relined, or sold at Christie's
with several others as a job lot."
Mr. Pelly endeavoured to console the speaker.
"You need not be apprehensive," he said. "You
are covered with glass, and in a warm and dry place.
Nothing is more improbable than change, in any
form, at Surley Stakes. Indeed, the first baronet,
over two hundred and fifty years ago, is said to have
accepted his new dignity with reluctance, on the
score of its novelty. This library is three hundred
years old."
"And I," said the voice, "was over one hundred
years old when it was built. But tell me--tell
me--was it not all true, the story? You know it was!"
"It rests on the intrinsic evidence of the
manuscript. There is nothing to confirm it. And, as
I have pointed out to you, your own narrative may
be a mere figment of _my_ imagination--you must
at least admit the possibility----"
"I will if you insist upon it; it is of small
importance to me what others think, so long as I may hang
here undisturbed, and dream over the happy days
I must have passed, in the person of my original,
four hundred years ago. But oh, to think of that
hateful time of bondage, with my darling hidden in
the darkness underground, sore with manacles and
starved for want of food! Think of my joy when
I could see and feel his own dear face, all clammy
though it was with the dungeon damps from below!
Think of my exultation at his returning life--life
to be lived for me! And believe me--for this I
can know, for I _was_ Maddalena, and now it comes,
like a dim memory--that I shuddered when they
told me that the sodden old horror that had been
my owner was well started on his flight to Hell,
sent by the swift little knife-spike of my Marta. Oh
how often have I seen that little knife itself in the
long girth that could but just span the bloated carcass
of the Ferretti!--for _he_ is a clear memory to me.
And to think that that knife--_that knife_--was
to..."
Mr. Pelly felt constrained to interrupt. "Pardon
me," he said, "if I venture to recall to you that the
duty of Christians, of all denominations, is to
forgive; and besides, entirely apart from that, all this
occurred such a very long time ago."
"How long is needed, think you"--and as the
voice said this, it almost grew cruel in its
earnestness--"how long, for a girl, to forgive the utmost
wrong God in His wisdom has put it in the power
of Man to inflict on Woman? Still, I did shudder--have
I not said it?--at what they told me; though
they showed me not the knife, and that was well.
I _did_ shudder, it is true; but now, as you say, it
is best forgotten. Better for me to think of our days
that must have been, of the babes that were born to
us that I never saw, of how we watched them growing
in the happy passing hours, in the little old Castello
in the hills. Better for me to know, as I know now,
that I, while this thing that I am now--this thing
of paint and canvas--lay hid in a garret, even I
could be to him, my love, a slight half-solace for his
ruined hand. How slight, who can tell who does
not know what a lost right hand means to the artist
whose life is in his craft?..."
It seemed then to Mr. Pelly that the voice
continued, though he heard it less distinctly, always
dwelling on the life of its prototype, as revealed to
it by the manuscript, in a manner that the
dream-machinery of his mind failed to account for. His
impression was that it continued thus for a very
long time--some hours--during the last half of
which it changed its character, becoming slowly
merged in that of another voice, familiar to Mr. Pelly,
which ended by saying with perfect distinctness,
"The Captain wished his arm to be broke gradual
to his family. 'Ence what I say!" And then
Mr. Pelly was suddenly aware that he had dropped
asleep for five minutes, and had been spoiling his
night's rest. Also that he was now quite awake,
and that Mr. Stebbings the butler had spoken the
last words to Mrs. Buckmaster the housekeeper;
and that both were unaware that he was on the other
side of the large armchair-back--and, indeed, it was
large enough to conceal something bigger than
Mr. Pelly. He abstained from making his presence
known, however; more, perhaps, because he thought
he was scarcely awake enough for words than to
hear what should come next. He fancied the
crushed hand incident of the dream had mixed itself
into Mr. Stebbings' last speech, and made nonsense
of it. But then, how about the sequel?
"'His arm broke gradual,' Mr. Stebbings?"
Mrs. Buckmaster repeated. And her perception of
the oddity of the speech reassured Mr. Pelly, who
began to suspect he might be awake. But he waited
for the reply.
"Quite so, Mrs. Buckmaster. Broke gradual.
From consideration for family feeling. And that,
if an amanuensis, suspicion would attach, and, in
consequence, divulge."
Mr. Stebbings's style assumed that if he used the
right words, somewhere, it didn't matter what order
they came in. It didn't really matter; his
respectability seemed more than a makeweight for
slighted syntax.
Mrs. Buckmaster was a venerable and sweet
institution of forty years standing, that spoke to
every member of the household as "my dear";
and conveyed an impression, always, of having in
her hands a key with which she had just locked a
store-room, or was going to unlock one. Or, rather,
not so much a key, as a flavour of a key.
Mrs. Buckmaster was a sort of amateur mother of several
county families, whose components all but acknowledged
her, and paid her visits in her private apartments
when they came to call at the Stakes. Her
reply to Mr. Stebbings now was, "Merciful Heaven!
And the girl nursed him. And she a Dutch woman!"
Mr. Pelly roused himself. His sensitive conscience
recoiled from further eavesdropping. "What's all
that, Stebbings? What's all that, Mrs. Buckmaster?"
he said, becoming manifest, and evoking
apologies. Mr. Stebbings had had no idear!
Mrs. Buckmaster said: "Well, now--to think of
that!" then, collecting herself, added, "Tell
Mr. Pelly, Thomas, what you know. Thomas will tell
you, sir, what he knows."
Thomas perceived distinction ahead, and braced
himself for an effort. "Respecting the actule fax,
sir, they are soon told. After the lamentable
disaster to both armies at Stroomsdrift, accompanied
with unparalleled 'eroism on both sides, the Captain's
horse became restive, and ensued. No longer under
the Captain's control, having received a bullet
through the upper arm--unfortunately the right,
but, nevertheless, in the service of his country.
Wonderful to relate, he retained his presence of
mind"--Mr. Stebbings's pride in this passage was
indescribable--"and arrived without further
disaster, though unconscious...." It was perhaps as
well that the Baronet called Mr. Stebbings away at
this point, as Mrs. Buckmaster knew the whole
story.
"Why on earth couldn't Stebbings begin at the
beginning?" said Mr. Pelly rather irritably. "Is
Captain Calverley alive or dead?--that's what _I_
want to know. And who's that outside, talking to
Sir Stopleigh and the General?"
"It's the Captain himself, sir," said Mrs. Buckmaster.
"Looking that well--only no arm! His
right, too." And then she cleared matters up, by
telling how, after the battle, the young soldier,
badly wounded in more places than one, had, nevertheless,
contrived to keep his seat on a half-runaway
horse he could scarcely guide, which carried him
away in a semi-conscious state to a lonely farm on
the veldt, tenanted only by a Dutch mother and
daughter. These two, hating _roineks_ in theory,
but softening to a young and handsome one in
practice, had kept the wounded man and nursed him
round, but could get no surgical help advanced
enough to save his arm, which he had been obliged
to leave in South Africa. The daughter had
evidently regarded the Captain as her property--a fair
prisoner of war--and had done her best to retain
him, writing letters to his friends for him at his
dictation, which were never despatched in spite of
promises made, and heading off search-parties
that appeared in the neighbourhood. Mrs. Buckmaster
condemned this conduct on principle, but
said: "Ah, poor girl--only think of it," in
practice.
That was really the whole of the story, so far.
But like a continuous frieze, it would bear any
quantity of repetition, as the Captain's reappearance
always suggested his first departure, five months
ago, and led to a new recital. The frieze, however,
was not to remain unbroken; for Mrs. Buckmaster
was balked of her fourth _da capo_ by the reappearance
of the Baronet, with General Fordyce, both of them
also knee-deep in recapitulations. Sir Stopleigh was
in a state of high bewilderment.
"Just listen to this. Uncle Kit.... Oh, you
know--Mrs. Buckmaster's told you. Never mind,
General, tell us again how it happened--it has been
queer! Tell Mr. Pelly how you came to hear
of it."
"It was like this," said the General, who was
collected. "A month ago I was knocked over by
receiving this telegram. Here it is." He produced
it from a pocket-book and read: "'Am alive and
well if news that am marrying Dutch girl contradict
otherwise keep silent till I come Jack.' Well,
George, I saw nothing for it but to bottle up, and
I assure you I was pretty well put to it to keep my
own counsel. However, I really hadn't any choice.
Very well, then! That goes on till ten days ago,
when another wire comes from Madeira, 'Passenger
by _Briton_ in London this day week Jack.' And
sure enough my young friend bursts into my
chambers four days ago, with, 'Tell me about Madeline--is
she engaged?' 'Not that I know of, my dear
boy,' said I. 'And I think I should know if she
were.' Then says he, 'Oh, what a selfish beast I
am! But you'll forgive me, General, when you
know.' However, I didn't want to know, but forgave
him right off."
"And then I suppose he told you all he's been
telling us downstairs--about the Dutch girl and the
farmhouse on the veldt?"
"Yes, he seems to have known very little from
the moment he was struck until his senses came
back to him at the farm. I must say they seem to
have behaved wonderfully well to him...."
"I can't say I think burning his letters and cutting
him off from all communications was exactly good
behaviour." Thus the Baronet. But the General
seemed doubtful.
"We-e-ell!--I don't know. I shouldn't quite
say that. Remember it was only this poor girl that
did it, and one sees her motive. No--no! All's
fair in love, George. I'm sorry for her, with all my
heart."
Mrs. Buckmaster murmured under her breath:
"What was I saying to Mr. Christopher?" and
thereon Mr. Pelly felt in honour bound to testify
to her truthfulness. "Yes--Mrs. Buckmaster
thought so." Nobody was very definite.
"But did he come here with you, General?"
asked Mr. Pelly, who was gradually toning down to
sane inquiry-point. Mixed replies said that the
Captain had not been long in the house. Lady
Upwell was interviewing him--they were, in fact,
audible in the distance. The General supplied
further information.
"You see," he said, "Master Jack and I had just
arranged it all beautifully. I was to come here to
let it out gently and not frighten Miss Upwell, and
also to find how the land lay. Because, you see
after all, they were not engaged...."
"Oh no! They were not _engaged_." This was
a kind of chorus; after which the General continued:
"Anyhow, Miss Upwell might have picked up
with some other young fellow. However, she
hasn't. Well!--I was to come here and take the
soundings, and his ship was to follow on; he
meanwhile going down to inflict a full dramatic surprise
on his own family at Granchester Towers. He said
their nerves were strong enough, and it would do
them good. He was to come on as soon as he could,
unless he heard to the contrary. And then, as he
was riding through Sampford Pagnell on his way
here, what must be come upon but a man of his own
company, who had been invalided home after
enteritis, who had been drinking and got into a row.
He stopped to see him out of his difficulties--had
to go bail for him--and then came on here. But
it made him late. And I should have been here
sooner myself, only something went wrong with the
trains. It made me so late that I almost made up
my mind, if Jack wasn't here, to go back to the inn
at Grewceham, so as not to frighten you all out of
your wits."
"There's my wife coming up. I wonder what
they've settled." Thus the Baronet.
Then her Ladyship came in, and following her,
in tiptoe silence, the young soldier himself. But
alas!--it was all true about the arm. There was the
loose right sleeve, looped up to his coat. But its
survivor was still in evidence, and Mr. Pelly, as
he took the hand that was left in his own, wondered
if he was not still dreaming, so full was his mind of
the story of that other hand, lost four hundred years
ago. He could not dismiss the picture from his
thoughts; and as he stood there talking with the
young soldier, in whom he could see the saddening
of his terrible experience through all the joy of his
return, he was always conscious of its presence,
conscious of its eyes fixed on all that passed before
it--conscious of its comparison between the lot of
its original, and Madeline's. And it made the old
gentleman feel quite eerie and uncomfortable. So
he resolved to say good-night, and did so as soon as
a pause came in an earnest conversation aside
between the Baronet and his Lady, who seemed
to be enforcing a view by argument. Mr. Pelly
heard the last words:
"I have told this dear, silly fellow Mad must
speak for herself. I won't say anything....
No--not to-morrow; she had better be told and come
down now." Here a subcolloquy. "Wouldn't she
have gone to bed? Oh no, Eliza said not. Besides,
she could slip something on." And then the
mainstream again. "You must give me a little time to
tell her, you know. One o'clock, isn't it? That
doesn't matter. Just think if it was a party!
You'll find I'm right, George." For when Lady
Upwell is pleased and excited she calls her husband
by his Christian name without the Sir.
When she had departed the General went back
on a previous conversation. "But we can't make
out yet, Jack, how we came not to get any wire
about it--as soon as it was known you were alive.
It ought to have been in the papers a month ago."
"Nobody knows out there yet, except Head
Quarters. Don't you see? As soon as I was fit
to get on a horse, I rode all night across the veldt,
and reported myself in the early morning. I begged
them to keep me dark for a bit, and old Pipeclay
said he could manage it...."
"But why did you want it kept dark?"
"I'll tell you directly. When I had settled that,
I made a rush for Port Elizabeth, and just caught
the _Briton_. Do you know, I was so anxious nobody
should know anything about it till I knew about
Madeline that I travelled as Captain Maclagan.
And when I got to Southampton there was a
Mrs. Maclagan and two grown-up daughters inquiring
for me! So really no one knew anything at all
about me till you did."
Then the Baronet would know more of Jack's
two months of nursing at the Dutch farm. He
thought he could understand about the girl; and
he wouldn't ask any questions. But why had Jack
thought Madeline was engaged to Sir Doyley
Chauncey? _He_ was engaged to another girl? Yes,
he was; but that was just it! It _was_ another
girl, of the same name--another Madeline. Master
Jack coloured and was rather reserved. Then he
spoke:
"I'll tell you if you like. I told the General." Who
nodded. "But you mustn't blame poor Chris.
Remember she was brought up a Boer, though she
had some English education. It was a newspaper
notice--Court and Fashionable game--'A marriage
is arranged between Sir Doyley Chauncey of Limp
Court, Gloucestershire, and Miss Madeline...' and
there the paper was carefully cut away between the
lines with scissors--one can always tell a scissor cut.
I was sure poor Chris had done it, for her own reasons.
I had told her all about Mad. There was no humbugging
at all."
"But you silly boy," said the General, "don't
you see what I told you is true? If she had seen
the name Upwell, on the next line, she _wouldn't_
have cut it. Of course, she wouldn't leave the name
Farrant--it's Lina Farrant, George; old Farrant's
daughter at Kneversley--man thinks Bacon wrote
Shakespeare----"
"Of course not! I see that all now. But one
isn't so cool as one might be sometimes. I got
quite upside down with never hearing, and, of course,
I couldn't write myself. I was quite dependent on
poor Chris. But I was going to tell why I wanted
to keep it dark that I was alive. You see, if Mad
_had_ got engaged--to _anyone_--well, I don't exactly
see how to tell it...." He hesitated a good deal.
"Well, then..."
"Well, then what?"
"Do you know, I think I would almost soonest
not try to talk about it. But there was nothing
_wrong_, you know, anywhere."
"Oh no! Nothing wrong. We quite understand."
"Only when a girl has nursed you like that--even if..."
"Even if you don't love her--is that it?"
Jack was relieved. "Yes--that's about it! All
the same, if Madeline _had_ been engaged, I _might_
have gone back and married her--to do the poor
girl a good turn."
"In spite of her squelching your letters?" said
Sir Stopleigh.
"Why, ye-es! Look at why she did it!"
"There, they are coming down," said the General.
"Come along, George! We aren't wanted here.
Good-night, Jack!"
And then off they go, leaving the young man
alone, pacing backwards and forwards between
the door and the picture. There is but one lamp
left burning, on a small table near, and it is going
out. He picks it up and holds it nearer to see
the picture. But his hand shakes; one can hear
it by the tinkle in its socket of the ring that
carries an opal globe that screens the light. And
he does not see much, for he can hear, a long way
off, Madeline's voice and her mother's--a mere
murmur. Then the murmur flashes up a little
louder for a moment, and the voices of the Baronet
and the old General are bidding each other good-night,
a long way off. Then a girl's footstep on
the stair.
The tinkle of the lamp stops as the young soldier
puts it back on its table. That lamp will go out
very soon. But a log on the fire, that seemed dead,
breaks out in a blaze, and all the shadows it makes
on the walls leap and dance in its flicker. For the
lamp is making haste to die.
That is a timid touch upon the handle of the door.
The young soldier's face of expectation is a sight to
see, a sight to remember. His one hand is bearing
on the table where he placed the lamp--almost as
though he were for the moment dizzy. Then, in the
wavering light he can see the loose, many-flowered
robe of Madeline, such a one as she wears for the
toilette, and her white face, and her cloud of beautiful
hair that is all undone. They are all there in the
leaping light of the fire, and he hears her voice that
says, "Oh Jack---oh Jack---oh Jack!" and can
say no more. And he, for his part, cannot speak,
but must needs grieve--oh, how bitterly!--for the
loss of the one strong arm that is gone. How he
would have drawn her to him! But he still has one,
and it is round her. And her two white arms are
round his neck as their lips meet, even as those arms
in the picture must have met round the neck of
_her_ beloved, even as their lips must have met, when
the dungeon closed again on the dead gaoler and
its prisoners, in that castle in the Apennines, four
hundred years ago!
The picture still hangs over the chimney-shelf in
the library at Surley Stakes, and you may see it
any time if you are in the neighbourhood.
Mr. Stebbings will show it to you, and give you an
abstract of the _cinquecento_ in Italy. But he
sometimes is a little obscure; so our recommendation to
you is, to ask for Mrs. Buckmaster, who can never
tire of talking about it, and who will strike you as
being the living image of Mrs. Rouncewell in "Bleak
House." Make her talk freely, and she will tell you
how whenever "our young lady," otherwise Lady
Calverley--for our friend Jack unexpectedly came
to the inheritance of Granchester Towers two years
since--visits the Stakes she always goes straight to
the picture and looks at it before anything else.
And how she tells little Madeline, her eldest girl,
who is old enough to understand, that pictures can
really see and hear; and, indeed, has told her the
story of the picture long ago. Of which the crown
and summit of delight to this little maid of four
seems to have been its richness in murder. Chiefest
of all, the impalement of the old Raimondi on
Marta's knife. You will gather that requests are
made for a recital of this part of the story at untimely
moments--coming home from church on Sunday,
and so on. She is going to tell it to Baby herself
as soon as he is old enough. But he isn't one yet;
he has to be reckoned in months. To think of the
joys there are before him!
Mrs. Buckmaster will tell you too--if you work
her up enough--of the Dutch girl, and the miles
of veldt Sir John bought and gave her as a wedding
present. But to get at all this you must first get
her out of the library, for while she is there she can
talk of little but the picture.
"I always _do_ have the thought," she will very
likely say, as she has said it to us, "that the picture
can as good as hear us speak, for all the world as if
it was a Christian, and not an inanimate object.
Because its eyes keep looking--looking. Like
reading into your mind, whatever Mr. Stebbings
may say! We must all think otherwise, now and
again, and Mr. Stebbings's qualifications as a butler
none can doubt." Mrs. Buckmaster will then tell
you of the three different Artists three separate
eminent critics have ascribed it to. But there can
be no doubt that the family incline to Boldrini, on
the strength of Mr. Pelly's dream. To be sure,
no such artist is known to have existed. But is
not the same true of the _nipote del fratello di latte
del Bronzino_, whom the Coryphæus of these Art
Critics invented to father it on?
Anyhow, there hangs the picture, night and day.
If it sees, it sees its owners growing older, year by
year. It sees their new grandchildren appear
mysteriously, and each one behave as if it was the
first new child in human experience. It sees a
one-armed soldier keen on organization of territorial
forces, and a beautiful wife who thinks him
the greatest of mankind. And it sees, too, now
and again, a very old, old gentleman whom Death
seems to overlook because he is so small and dry;
whom you may see too, by-the-by, if you look out
sharp at Sotheby's, or Wilkinson's, or Puttick's,
or Simpson's, or Quaritch's, or the Museum Reading
Room. Some believe Mr. Pelly immortal.
If it hears, it hears the few sounds the silent
north has to show against the music and the voices
of the south. It can listen to the endless torrent
of song from its little brown-bird outside above the
meadow, poised in the misty blue of a coming day,
or the scanty measure of the pleading of the
nightingale, heard from a thousand throats among the
Apennines in years gone by, welcome now as a
memory that brings them back. It can hear the
great wind roar in the chimney at its back through
the winter nights, and the avalanches in miniature
that come falling from the roof above when the
world awakes to fight against its shroud of snow.
But there is one thing it heard in our story it may
listen for in vain--the bark of the great dog Cæsar.
For Cæsar died of old age at eighteen, the age at
which many of us fancy we begin to live, and the
great bark shakes the Universe no more. Other
dogs eat small sweet biscuits now from the hand of
the mistress who loved him, with precisely the same
previous examination of them, with the identical
appearance of condescension in taking them at all.
But Cæsar lies--his mortal part--in a good-sized
grave behind the lawn, where it can be pointed out
from the library, and his _hospis comesque corporis_
may be among the shades, may have met for anything
we know the liberated soul of Marta's poodle,
and they may have considered each other
sententiously, and parted company on the worst of
terms. Cæsar never could have stood that poodle,
on this side.
But the picture is there still, for those who are
curious to see it. Whether it would not hang more
fitly in the little Castello in the hills, if it could be
identified, is matter for discussion. If pictures could
really speak, what would this one say?
THE END
AN APOLOGY IN CONFIDENCE
_The present writer has a weight upon his conscience. But he has no
desire to disburden himself at the expense of the future reader of his
works. This is addressed solely to those whom he has acquired the
right to apostrophize as "My readers"; and, indeed, properly
speaking, only to such of them as were misled by a too generous
appreciation of his first four novels, into purchasing his fifth. For
he cannot free himself from a haunting sense that he was guilty of
a gross neglect in not giving them fuller warning that the said fifth
volume was not Early Victorian, either in style or substance._
_It is well understood nowadays--and it is not for so humble an
individual as the P. W. aforesaid to call in question the judgments
of everybody else--that each living author, whether he be painter or
writer, shall produce at suitable intervals, preferably of twelve
months, a picture or volume on all fours with the work from his
hand which has first attracted public attention. And the
P. W. cannot conceal from himself that in publishing, without a solemn
warning addressed to possible purchasers, such a novel as his last
("An Affair of Dishonour": Heinemann), he has run the risk of
incurring the execration or forgiveness--the upshot is the same--of
many of his most tolerant and patient readers, to remain on good
terms with whom is, and always will be, his literary ambition._
_For the "Affair" is certainly not an Early Victorian story in
the ordinary sense of the words. A certain latitude has been
claimed by some critics in the choice of names for the periods treated
of in the other humble performances of its author; but so far no
commentator has called its epoch--that of Charles II.--"Early
Victorian." It has been spoken of freely as sixteenth and
eighteenth century; but that is immaterial. In fact, it is difficult to
resist the conviction that in what may be called sporting chronology--a
system which seems to have a certain vogue of its own--so long
as the writer says "century," one number does as well as another
to make the sentence ring. The expression "Early Victorian,"
however, is embarrassingly circumscribed in its meaning. If
cannot be applied at random to any period whatever, without
danger of the Sciolist, or the Merest Tyro, going to the British
Museum and getting at Haydn's "Dictionary of Dates," and
catching you out. Still, it does not do to be too positive; seeing that
the P. W. has here--and can show it you in the house--what seems
a description of the Restoration as "Pre-Cromwellian." There
it is, before him, as he presently writes, on the shiniest paper that
ever made an old fogy wish he had been born fifty years earlier._[#]
[#] _I will be just and generous to this writer simultaneously. The
Protector was born in 1599. Pre-Cromwellian days were the sixteenth
century, clearly. In the sixteenth century St. James's and Piccadilly
would not be includable in residential quarters, because the latter was
not born or thought of. If by Pre-Cromwellian this writer means
Pre-Commonwealth, the inclusion of Piccadilly in the description of a
country girl's conception of swell London, written a hundred years
later, when Piccadilly was "fait accompli," seems to me not unnatural.
I am bound to say, however, that when I first read the passage
(p. 181)--immediately after I had written it--I thought "those days" meant
the days of the story. Analysis of London topography would have been
out of place in treating of the cogitations of a country girl unfamiliar
with the metropolis._
_To fulfil the conditions which literary usage appears to dictate,
and to signalise his conformity with public opinion, there is no
doubt that the writer of "An Affair of Dishonour"--or, shall I
drop the thin veil adopted to avoid egotism, and say I myself--should
have made that work not only Early Victorian, but Suburban.
For, as I understand, I am expected to be Suburban. This is less
difficult, as suburbs do not depend on chroniclers, like periods, but
remain to speak for themselves. One knows when one is being
Suburban. Among epochs one treads gingerly, like the skater on
ice that scarcely bears him. I may take as an instance a book I
wrote, called "Somehow Good," whose cradle, as it were, was the
Twopenny Tube. The frequent reference to this story as an "Early
Victorian" tale has impressed me that Early Victorianism is an
abstract quality, which owes its fascination neither to its earliness,
nor to its epoch. I am stating the case broadly, but as this is
entirely between ourselves, very great niceties are hardly called for.
We may leave the Sciolist, and the Merest Tyro, to fight about
niceties. On the other hand, outside opinion, though a little vague
about Early Victorianism, has not been inconsistent about
Suburbanity. It has shrewdly identified, in my first four novels, the
Suburban character of Tooting, Balham, Hampstead, Putney,
Shepherd's Bush, and Wimbledon; and I now perceive that my
reader was entitled to expect Clapham Junction or Peckham Bye,
at least. Nothing would have pleased me better, when writing my
last book, than to supply the nearest practicable Carolean equivalent,
had I seen more clearly how the land lay. However, it's done now
and can't be helped._
_Broadly speaking, then, non-Victorianity and defective Suburbanity
seem to be responsible for my slump in conformity. And,
though I have to go to America for distinct proofs of it, I am obliged
to recognise suggestions of the same critical decision nearer home.
The first three of the following American reviews appeared at
intervals in the same journal, showing how deeply the writer had
taken my delinquency to heart:_
"_Probably written years ago, and found in an old desk._"
"_A totally uncharacteristic and thoroughly disappointing 'historical
romance._'"
"'_A perfectly good cat,' that I have found in the literary ash-pan
.... differs from everything that has come
to us previously from the author's pen,
as lifeless clay differs from living spirit._"
"_Wherein lies the superiority of fiction that can give us nothing better
than this?_"
"_It is not, in itself, worth reading ... being an unpleasant, unexciting,
and unoriginal experiment in historical romance ... leaving us disappointed
of what we hoped for, and unedified by what we get._"
"_The ghosts of 'David Copperfield' and 'Joseph Vance,' 'Alice-for-Short,'
and the 'Little Marchioness,' may together weep pale spirit tears, or nobly
repress them, in the hope that 'It Never can Happen Again._'"
"_We can but hope for a return from this invented matter and artificial
style to an unabashed Victorianism, from which it should appear the author
is trying to escape._"
_There is something spirited in a selection of quotations which
begins and ends with such different conjectures as to the genesis of
their subject. There can be no doubt about the earnestness of the
hope expressed in the last one, for it is confirmed in the same words
by more than one American journal_.[#]
[#] The force of the unanimity of two or three American papers grows
less when their reader perceives the verbal identity of the article
throughout--and that their writers are not only unanimous, but unicorporeal.
Numbers are impressive, but when they play fast and loose with plurality
in this way, all their edge is taken off.
_Another accusation against me is that I have given up nice
people, and only write about nasty ones. Is this true? I myself
thought Lucinda a nice enough girl, particularly when she was
fishing in the sea for the phosphorescence. All the same, the
following seemed to me quite a just comment, and very well worded:
"There must have been something of Phaedra in Lucinda for her
to act as she did, unless we are to revert to the belief in a baneful
Aphrodite no human will can resist." Something of Phaedra--but
still, I submit, not much, for Sir Oliver was passionately urgent;
while Hippolytus--to borrow a phrase from Mrs. Steptoe, a quarter
where I have unlimited credit--didn't want to any such a thing._
_Every book has a right to an assumption intrinsically improbable,
to make the story go. What a flat tragedy Hamlet would have been
without its fundamental ghost! And my "quidlibet audendi"
is a small presumption compared with my giant namesake's. Of
course, I have no right to the comparison unless you grant like
rights to tittlebat and leviathan. "Semper fiat aequa potestas,"
for both. Indeed, the dwarf needs artificial latitude more than the
giant._
_In my capacity of tittlebat in an estuary of Leviathan's great
sea--or, should I not rather say, a sandhopper on its coast?--I
have assumed that this baneful Aphrodite no human will can resist
had possession of Lucinda; who was, and continued to be, a very
nice girl for all that. Phaedra was not nice, because of the attitude
of Hippolytus, as sketched by Mrs. Steptoe; and even more because
of the fibs she told when she found the young man blind to the
attractions of his stepmother. Lucinda was not a bit the less nice
because she was swept away by, absorbed into, crushed under, a
passion of which she only knew that it was the reverse of hate, and
of which few of us know much more. Indeed, all male persuasions
get so very mixed, owing to the Nature of Things, that they are
almost a negligible factor in the solution of the problem. Now and
again, however, it is hinted at by thoughtful male persons--Shakespeare
and Browning, and the like. Read this, for instance:_
"_But, please you, wonder I would put
My cheek beneath that lady's foot;
Rather than trample under mine
The laurels of the Florentine,
And you shall see how the Devil spends
A fire God gave for other ends._
"_I tell you, I stride up and down
This garret, crowned with Love's best crown,
And feasted with Love's perfect feast
To think I kill for her at least
Body and soul and peace and fame,
Alike youth's end and manhood's aim._"
/tb
_Perhaps you will say that no ladylike, well-brought-up girl, ever
feels so explosive. About a Man too--the idea! But for my part,
I don't see that Browning's chap need have been a nasty chap.
Nevertheless, my sense of the proprieties--which is keen--compels
me to admit that if I had a daughter, and she were to go on like that,
I should feel it my duty to point out to her that if she continued to
do so, she would run the risk of being taken for a suffragette, or
something. I might get no farther, because I word things badly._
_Lucinda, you see, might have gone on like that about Oliver;
only no doubt the memory of old precepts hung about her, and acted
as I trust my remonstrance would have done in the case of my
hypothetical daughter. Anyhow, I do think that the time-honoured
usage which keeps girls as ignorant of life as possible, so that they
shall be docile when a judicious Hymen offers them a marriage
with a suitable parti, ought at least, as a set-off, to go
hand-in-hand with leniency towards this ignorance when it betrays its
possessor into an indiscretion she has no means of gauging the
dangers of. For my belief is that the wickedness of her action
seemed purely academical to Lucinda. And Oliver knew how to
manage cases of this sort, bless you!_
_As for him, I readily admit that he was not nice, but I take the
testimonials to his nastiness as complimentary. When an Italian
audience pelts Iago with rotten eggs, it is accepted by the actor as
heartfelt praise. And you must have Devils, as well as Fairies,
when it's in a Pantomime, as we all know. An unhappy author
whom lack of material for copy has nearly qualified for Earlswood
cannot go on for ever writing about good people. He must have a
villain, please, sooner or later!_
_Nevertheless, some of my correspondents want to deprive me of
this innocent luxury. Such an appeal as the following makes me
feel that I may have to "leave the killing out, when all is done._"
"_Dear sir, can any 'success' that meets your latest story compensate
for the pain, and--so personal have you made our relations to you--the
humiliation so many of us feel?_
"_Why leave the heights--the sunny hill-slopes--where we met you
as a wise, sweet older brother, and lingered long after your story was
over, with stilled and strengthened hearts?_
"_I am sure none of us is happier, and none certainly is better for
breathing the sickening air into which you have led us...._"
Now, if I had published this story after a manifesto warning,
cautioning, and earnestly entreating all readers who expected it to
be Victorian and Suburban to keep their money in their pockets,
I should not be feeling, as I do now, that the writer of the above
letter had been entrapped into reading it under false pretences. I
can only offer humble and heartfelt apology to the writers, English
as well as American, of _the many letters I have received, practically
of the same tenor as the above_.
_But I am left in a dilemma. I cannot consider myself bound
to make my next net volume exclusively Victorian, Suburban,
kindly, gossipy, button-holy--I rather like that word--in the face
of some very strong encouragements to have another go-in at Barts,
or their equivalents, of evil dispositions, or, perhaps I should say,
of Mediæval dispositions; for I am countenanced by many sporting
chronologists in attaching a meaning to this word at war with
my boyish understanding of it, which stopped the "moyen âge" at
the Reformation. However, it doesn't matter; this is all in
confidence. I cannot very well cite these encouragements. They form
part of a most liberal and intelligent series of reviews--not
unmixed praise by any means--which I am sticking at odd times in
a big book, to which I shall have to allude more particularly presently.
It is enough for us now that several of them speak of "An Affair
of Dishonour" as its author's best production, so far. After that
I must really be Mediæval, or Marry-come-up, or whatever one
ought to call it, a little more. There is no way out._
_A reviewer of an isolated and forcible genius also has a share in
inducing me to try the same line again. I want to be reviewed by
him, please, as often as possible. There is a healthy and bracing
tone in his lightest word. Listen:_
"_A story-teller ought to be able to tell a story. There is a story in
'An Affair of Dishonour,' but I pity the reader who tries to excavate
it. He must tie a wet towel round his head, and clench his teeth, and
prepare to face hours of digging and scraping. And when he has
excavated the story from the heavy clay of the style, he will ask why
the author took so much trouble to bury it so deep in affectation...
Mr. De Morgan tries to copy the language of the seventeenth century,
but he copies it like a schoolboy.... To make the mess complete, the
last chapter is taken from a manuscript._
"_If Mr. De Morgan desired to imitate Esmond he ought to have
stuck to the Esmond method. If he wished to tell a melodramatic story
he ought to have told it plainly. The story is stale.... I suppose
the rake is meant to be a Lovelace, and Lucinda a Clarissa Harlowe.
The whole thing is artificial, there is no illusion, and the characters are
all sticks. The battle is bad, and the duels are bad, and the dialogue
is very bad. And how it bores one!_"
_Can you wonder that I look forward to being reviewed again by
this gentleman? I shall feel an eager anticipation as I search
among my press-cuttings, after the appearance of this present
volume, for the name of his halfpenny journal. I can fancy his
indignation at a picture that speaks--a completer mess even than
the dragging in of a manuscript at the end of Lucinda! This was
shocking--at least, it must have been, as otherwise this gentleman
would have been talking nonsense._
_But my button-holed readers must be expecting me to come to the
point. It is this. "A Likely Story" is an honest, if a humble,
attempt to satisfy all parties--except, indeed, the last party just
cited, whom I should be sorry to satisfy. It combines on one
canvas the story of a family incident that is purely Victorian--though,
alas, the era came to an end so shortly afterwards--with
another, of the Italian cinquecento, without making any further
demand on human powers of belief than that a picture is made to
talk. I have also introduced a very pretty suburb, Coombe, as the
residence of the earliest Victorian aunt, to my thinking, that my
pen is responsible for. I like this way of shifting the
responsibility off my own shoulders._
_However, it is fair to admit that the expedient of making the
photographic copy talk, as well as the original, may outrage the
sense of probability of some of my more matter-of-fact readers. I
shall be sorry, because modification in a second edition will be
difficult, if not impossible._
_If I do not succeed in pleasing both sections of my Public, I am
at least certain of the approval of a very large number of readers
who have found my previous productions too long. The foregoing
is even less than the 100,000 words which seem to recommend
themselves as the right length, per se, for a net volume. A slump
from a quarter to a twentieth of a million words marks a powerful
self-restraint on the part of my "cacoethes scribendi"--an essay
towards conformity which seems to me to deserve recognition. I
do not understand that anyone has, so far, propounded the doctrine
that a story cannot be too short. If that were so the author would
save himself a world of trouble by emulating the example of the
unknown author of the shortest work of its kind on record--the
biography of St. James the Less. But perhaps I am mistaken in
supposing that Jackaminory and the Apostle were one and the same
personage._
_I am personally more interested in the length of reviews than of
books, in connexion with the volume mentioned just now, in which
I am collecting my press-cuttings. The page of this volume is
fourteen inches by eight, and three reviews thirteen inches long
exactly cover it, leaving a little space for the name of the journal
and the date. It is too small to accommodate more than three
normal press columns in the width. So that a review thirteen
inches long is from my point of view the most suitable for my books.
Of course, twenty-six and thirty-nine inches are equally acceptable.
The difficulty only begins when accommodation of fractions becomes
necessary. I account that review ill-written which perplexes
me with the need for such accommodation._
_I am prepared to accept six shilling volumes of 100,000 words,
with reviews thirteen inches long, as the true and perfect image of
Literature indeed._
_Man, male and female, is a reading animal: or, what is perhaps
more to the purpose, believes himself one. He may be divided into
two classes--the Studious Reader and the General Reader. The
former never skims books. If he dips into them at all he takes long
dips, and when he comes out, leaves a bookmark in to show where
he was or which was his machine. He goes steadily and earnestly
through the last, last, last word of Scientific thought--say, for
instance, "An Essay towards a fuller Analysis of the Correlation
between Force, Matter and Motion, with especial reference to their
relations in Polydimensional Space"--and wants to just finish
a marginal note upon it in pencil when the dinner-gong gets a
rumble. He knits his brows and jumps and snorts when he peruses
a powerful criticism, with antitheses and things. He very often
thinks he will buy that book, only he must just glance at it again
before he sends the order. Nevertheless, his relations with Fiction
lack cordiality. They do not go, on his part, beyond picking up
the last net volume from the drawing-room table, reading the title
aloud, and putting it down again. And he only does this because
it's there, and looks new. He wouldn't complain if no Fiction
came into the house at all._
_Not so the General Reader. His theory of Literature is entirely
different. Broadly speaking, it is this: that books are meant to
be read, up to a certain point; but that, as soon as that point is
reached, it is desirable that they should be returned to Mudie's or
the "Times," and something else got, with a little less prosywozying
in it; and bounceable young women who ought to know better, but
don't; and detectives if possible, and motors and aeroplanes
anyhow. The exact definition of this point is difficult, but it lies
somewhere about the region in which the General Reader gets bored to
death, and can't stand this dam rot any longer. It does not matter
to him that he may be the loser by his abrupt decisions; if anything,
he takes an unnatural pleasure in straining the capacity of his
Circulating Library to the full extent of its contract. He has paid
his subscription, and may change whenever he likes. That's the
bargain, and no humbugging!_
_So he goes on slap-dashing about, shuttle-cocking back every
new delivery, saying "Pish!" over this and "Tush!" about that;
writing short comments on margins such as, "Vieux jeu!" or "No
Woman would"; only occasionally going carefully through a
book to find the chapter that reviewer-fellow said was quite unfit for
the girls to read, because one really ought to keep an eye on what
comes into the house nowadays. His decisions can, however,
scarcely be accepted as unfailing guides to a just discrimination
of literary merit, as those who know him are never tired of
insisting on his inattentive habits, his paroxysms of electric
suddenness in action, and, above all, his insatiable thirst for
something new. As for me, I am like Charles Lamb, when he was told
there was a gentleman in the room who admired "Paradise
Regained." I should like to feel his bumps._
_Nevertheless, he is a personage for whom Authors have a great
and natural respect. He is so numerous! And just think what
fun it would be if each of him bought a copy of each of one's
immortal works! Consequently, I wish to consult his liking, and am
prepared--within reason--to defer to his opinion of what length a
book ought to be. It is no doubt quite otherwise with those Authors
who may be said to belong to the school of Inspirationalism--really
one feels quite Modern, writing such a word--who claim for each of
their stories the position or character of a sneeze--an automatic
action which its victim, perpetrator, executant, interpreter,
proprietor, promoter, parent, mover, seconder--or whatever we choose
to call him--has absolutely no control over._
_But I am wandering away from the point of this apology, which
is really to say "peccavi," and, please, I won't do so any more.
So far, that is, as is practicable. If I drop into a prehistoric
problem-novel, by way of a change, or have a try at an autobiography
of Queen Nilocris--just possibilities at random--I will do
what I can to head off readers who want one sort only, and know
which it is._
_As for the foregoing story, it is just as Victorian as it is anything
else, though not, perhaps, Early enough to give entire satisfaction.
One can't expect everything, in this imperfect world. To my
thinking the shortness of the story should cover a multitude of sins._
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS GUILDFORD