II

Sidney Heron, the man who had introduced me to the country round about

Leith Hill, was the first visitor received in my Dorking lodging. He

came one Saturday morning when I had resumed work (though the doctor

knew it not), and returned to town on the Sunday night.

I think Heron enjoyed his visit, though, out of consideration for my

lack of condition, he walked less than he would have chosen. It was a

real pleasure to me to have him there; and, in the retrospect, I can

clearly see that I was powerfully stimulated by talk with him on

literary subjects. So much was this so, that on the Saturday night

when I lay down in bed I found my brain in a ferment of activity. I

read for half an hour; but even then, after blowing out my candle, the

plots of new books, ideas for future work, literary schemes of every

sort and kind, all promising quite remarkable success, were spinning

through my mind in most exhilarating fashion. The morning found me

somewhat weary, though not unpleasantly so; and consideration of all

this made me realise, as I had not realised before, the isolation and

retirement of my life there in Dorking; the very marked change it

represented from the busy routine of days spent in the _Advocate_

office. I prized my retirement more than ever after this.

'For,' I thought, 'of what use or purport was all that ceaseless

mental stress and fret in London? It was all quite barren and

fruitless, really. Whereas, here--one can develop thoughts here. This

life makes creative work possible.'

I am afraid I gave no credit to Heron, or to the stimulating effects

upon my own mind of contact with his bracing, if somewhat harsh,

intelligence. All was attributed by me at the time to the advantages

of my sequestered life. The effect of mental stimulus was not by any

means so evanescent as such things often are, and the Monday following

upon Heron's return to town saw me hard at work upon the book which I

had outlined and begun before my illness.

There followed, in that modest little cottage room of mine, some three

or four months of incessant work at high pressure; long days, and

nights, too, at the table, during which my only exercise and

relaxation in a week would be an occasional five minutes' walk to the

post-office, or a stroll after midnight, when I found the cool night

silence soothed me greatly before going to my bedroom. The doctor's

counsels were all forgotten, of course, or remembered only in odd

moments, as when going to bed, or shaving in the morning. Then I would

promise myself reformation when the book was finished. That done I

would live by rote and acquire bucolic health, I told myself.

In most respects that period was thoroughly typical of my life during

the next half dozen years. When the end of a book was reached, there

came the long and wearing process of its revision. Then interviews

with publishers, the correction of proof sheets, the excogitation of

writings for magazines--fuel for the fire that kept my pot a-boiling.

There were intervals of acute mental weariness, and there were

intervals of acute bodily distress. But the intervals of reformed

living, when they came at all, were too brief and spasmodic to make a

stronger or a healthier man of me. My business visits to London were

sometimes made to embrace friendly visits to Sidney Heron's lodgings.

Two or three times I dined with Arncliffe, and very occasionally I was

visited at Dorking by two of the literary journalists who had joined

Arncliffe's staff at the time of his appointment.

With but very few exceptions the critics were very kindly to my

published work, and I apprehend that other writers who read their

reviews of my books must have thought of me as one of the coming men.

(The early nineties was a prolific period in the matter of 'coming

men.') I even indulged that thought myself for a time. But not, I

think, for very long. Like every other writer who ever lived, I would

have liked to reach a large and appreciative audience. But I had the

most lofty scorn for the methods by which I supposed such an

achievement might be accomplished.

For a long time I sincerely believed that it was not from any lack of

substance, style, merit, or quality that my books failed to reach a

really large public; but, rather, that they were without a certain

vulgarity which would commend them to the multitude. If not precisely

that they were too good, I doubtless thought that, whilst good in

every literary sense, they happened to be couched in a vein only to be

appreciated by the subtler minds of the minority. The critics

certainly helped me to sustain this congenial theory; and it was not

until long afterwards that I accepted (with more, perhaps, of sadness

or sourness than philosophy) the conclusion that if my work never had

appealed to a big audience, the simple reason was that it was not big

enough to reach so far. It was perhaps, within the limits of literary

judgment, to some extent praiseworthy. And it won praise. I should

have been content.

I certainly was not content, and I dare say the life I led was too far

removed from the normal, both socially and from a health standpoint,

to permit of content for me, quite apart from any question of personal

temperament or idiosyncrasy. I worked and I slept, and that was all.

That is probably not enough for the purchase of healthy content; at

all events, where the work is sedentary and productive of strain upon

the mind, nerves, and emotions.

As society is constituted in England to-day, a man of my sort may be

almost as completely isolated, socially, in a place like Dorking as he

would expect to be in the middle of the Sahara. The labouring sort of

folk, the trades-people, and the landowners and county families, each

form compact social microcosms. The latter class, in normal

circumstances, remains not so much indifferent to as unaware of the

existence of such people as myself, as bachelors in country-town

lodgings. The other two compact little worlds had nothing to offer me

socially. And so, socially, I had no existence at all.

The same holds good, to a great extent, of my sort of person

practically anywhere to-day. (The latter part of the nineteenth

century produced a quite large number of people who belonged to no

recognised class or order in our social cosmos.) But it is most

noticeable in the case of such a man living in a country town. In

London, or Paris, or New York, there is no longer any question of a

man being in or out of society, since there is no longer any compact

division of the community which forms society. Rather, the community

divides itself into hundreds of circles, most of which meet others at

some point of their circumference.

My doctor in Dorking was a bachelor. I did not attend any church.

There literally was no person in that district with whom I held any

social intercourse whatever. And then, by chance, and in a single day,

I became acquainted with many of the socially superior sort of people

in my neighbourhood.

Arncliffe's chief leader writer on the _Advocate_ staff was a man

called Ernest Lane, who, after winning considerable distinction at

Oxford, falsified cynical anticipations by winning a good deal more

distinction in the world outside the university. It was known that he

had been invited to submit himself to the electors of a constituency

in one of the Home counties, and his work while secretary to a

prominent statesman had earned him a high reputation in political

circles. His book on greater British legislation and administration

added greatly to this reputation, and his friends were rather

surprised when Lane showed that he intended to stick to the writer's

life rather than enter parliament, or accept any political

appointment. Without having become very intimate, Lane and myself had

been distinctly upon good and friendly terms during my time in the

_Advocate_ office, and he had visited me three or four times in my

retreat in Dorking. Lane thought well of my work, and he was the only

man I knew whose political conversation and views had interested me.

It was not without some pleasure, therefore, that I read a letter

received from him in which he said he was coming to see me.

'It appears to be a case of Mohammed coming to the mountain,' this

letter said; 'and, if you will put me up, I should like to spend

Saturday and Sunday nights at your place. I think you will receive an

invitation to Sir George and Lady Barthrop's garden-party on Saturday

next, and if so I hope you will accept, and go there with me. The fact

is, one of my sisters is about to marry Arnold Barthrop, the younger

of the three sons, and the whole tribe of us are supposed to be there

this week-end. I am not keen on these big house-parties, and would far

sooner have the opportunity of seeing something of you if you would

care to have me; but I have promised to attend the garden-party, and

to bring you if I can. Some of the Barthrop's Dorking friends are

rather interesting people, so it will be just as well for you, my dear

hermit, to make their acquaintance.'

Of course, I wrote to Lane to the effect that he would be very

welcome, which was perfectly true; but I was somewhat exercised in my

mind regarding Lady Barthrop's garden-party, although, when her card

of invitation reached me, I replied at once with a formal acceptance.

Sir George Barthrop's house, Deene Place, was quite one of the show

places of the district, and the baronet and his lady were very

prominent people indeed in that part of the county.

Every time my eye fell upon the invitation card, I was conscious of a

sense of irritation and disturbance. What had I to do with

garden-parties? The idea of my attending such a function was absurd. I

should have nothing whatever in common with the people there, nor they

with me. Either I should never again meet one of them, or their

acquaintance would be an irritation and a nuisance to me, robbing me

of my treasured sense of complete independence in that countryside.

Finally, I decided that I would have a headache when the time came,

and get Lane to make my excuses-- 'Not that the hostess, or any one

else there, would know or care anything about my absence or presence,'

I thought.

But my unsocial intention was airily swept aside by Ernest Lane. I did

accompany him to Deene Place, and in due course was presented by him

to Sir George and Lady Barthrop. No sooner had we left the host and

hostess to make way for other guests than Lane touched my elbow.

'Here's the first of the five Graces,' he whispered, nodding towards a

lady who was walking down the terrace in our direction. I remembered

that my friend had five sisters, and a moment later I was being

introduced to this particular member of the sisterhood, whose name, as

I gathered, was Cynthia. As Lane moved away from us just then, to

speak to some one else, I asked my companion if she had been going to

any particular place when we met her. She smiled as we walked slowly

down the terrace steps to the lawn.

'I am afraid my only object just then was the ungracious one of evading

Sir George and Lady Barthrop,' she said. 'Theirs is such a dreadfully

busy neighbourhood. I think being solemnly introduced to a stream of

people is rather a terrible ordeal, don't you?'

'The experience would at least have the advantage of novelty for me,'

I told her. 'But, upon the whole, I fancy I should perhaps prefer a

visit to the dentist.'

'Really!' she laughed. 'Now I didn't know men ever felt like that.

It's exactly how I feel about it. It really is worse than dentistry,

you know, because you are not allowed gas.'

'At least, not laughing gas, but only gaseous laughter and small

talk,' I suggested.

'Which makes you all hazy and muddled without the compensating boon of

unconsciousness. But you are an author and a journalist, Mr. Freydon--my

brother often speaks of you, you know--and so you must have had

lots of experience of this sort of thing; enough to have made you as

hardened as royalty, I should think. I always think of authors and

journalists as living very much in the limelight.'

I explained that some might, but that I had spent several years in

Dorking without, until that day, attending a single social function of

any kind. This seemed to interest her greatly, once I had overcome her

initial incredulity on the point. Then I had to answer questions about

my way of living, and one or two, of a discreet and gently curious

kind, about my methods of working, and the like. There was flattery of

the most delightful kind in the one or two casual references she made

to characters in books of mine. Miss Lane never said: 'I have read

your books,' or, 'I have been interested by your books,' statements

which always produce an awkward pause, and are not interesting in

themselves. But she showed in a much more pleasing way that one's work

had entered into her life, and been welcomed by her.

Quite apart from this, I do not think I could possibly have spent a

quarter of an hour with Cynthia Lane without concluding that she was

the most charming woman I had ever met. 'Charming woman,' I say.

Heavens! How extraordinarily inadequate these threadbare words do

look, as I write them, recalling the image of Cynthia Lane as she

paced with me across that smooth-shaven lawn--green velvet it seemed,

deeply shaded here and there by noble copper beeches.

I suppose Cynthia was beautiful, even judged by technical standards;

for her figure was lissom and very shapely, and the contour of her

sweet face perfect--so far, at least, as I am any judge of such

matters. Her eyes and her hair had a rare loveliness which I have not

seen equalled. But it was the soul of her, the indefinable essence

that was Cynthia Lane, which made her truly lovely. This personality

of hers, at once tender and adroit, bright and grave, humorous and

most sweetly gentle, most admirably kind, shone out upon one from her

face, from her very movements and gestures even, giving to her outward

person a soft radiance which I cannot attempt to describe. This nimbus

of delicate sweetness, this irradiation of her person by her

personality it was, which made Cynthia Lane lovely, as no other woman

I have met has been.

I must have stolen fully half an hour of her time that day, to the

annoyance it may be of many other people. And it was not until she was

being in a sense almost forcibly drawn away from me by the claims of

others that I learned, from the manner in which she was addressed by

Lady Barthrop, that she, Cynthia Lane, of whom I had thought only as

one of Lane's five sisters, as one among my own fellow guests, was

indeed the guest of the occasion, and the betrothed of Lady Barthrop's

younger son.

Other things happened, no doubt. I was presently introduced to young

Barthrop, the bridegroom to be; and, mechanically, I endeavoured to

comport myself fittingly as a guest. But, for me, the entertainment

ended with my separation from Cynthia.

'Do please stop being a recluse, and call while I am here,' she had

said as she was being drawn away from me into a sort of maelstrom of

gaily coloured dresses, and laughing, compliment-paying men. And I

blessed her for that.