Lucian was growing really anxious about his manuscript. He had gained
enough experience at twenty-three to know that editors and publishers
must not be hurried; but his book had been lying at Messrs. Beit’s
office for more than three months. For six weeks he had not dared to
expect an answer, but afterwards life had become agonizing. Every
morning, at post-time, the poor wretch nearly choked with anxiety to
know whether his sentence had arrived, and the rest of the day was
racked with alternate pangs of hope and despair. Now and then he was
almost assured of success; conning over these painful and eager pages
in memory, he found parts that were admirable, while again, his
inexperience reproached him, and he feared he had written a raw and
awkward book, wholly unfit for print. Then he would compare what he
remembered of it with notable magazine articles and books praised by
reviewers, and fancy that after all there might be good points in the
thing; he could not help liking the first chapter for instance. Perhaps
the letter might come tomorrow. So it went on; week after week of sick
torture made more exquisite by such gleams of hope; it was as if he
were stretched in anguish on the rack, and the pain relaxed and kind
words spoken now and again by the tormentors, and then once more the
grinding pang and burning agony. At last he could bear suspense no
longer, and he wrote to Messrs. Beit, inquiring in a humble manner
whether the manuscript had arrived in safety. The firm replied in a
very polite letter, expressing regret that their reader had been
suffering from a cold in the head, and had therefore been unable to
send in his report. A final decision was promised in a week’s time, and
the letter ended with apologies for the delay and a hope that he had
suffered no inconvenience. Of course the “final decision” did not come
at the end of the week, but the book was returned at the end of three
weeks, with a circular thanking the author for his kindness in
submitting the manuscript, and regretting that the firm did not see
their way to producing it. He felt relieved; the operation that he had
dreaded and deprecated for so long was at last over, and he would no
longer grow sick of mornings when the letters were brought in. He took
his parcel to the sunny corner of the garden, where the old wooden seat
stood sheltered from the biting March winds. Messrs. Beit had put in
with the circular one of their short lists, a neat booklet, headed:
_Messrs. Beit & Co.’s Recent Publications_.
He settled himself comfortably on the seat, lit his pipe, and began to
read: “_A Bad Un to Beat:_ a Novel of Sporting Life, by the Honorable
Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede, author of _Yoicks, With the Mudshire Pack,
The Sportleigh Stables_, etc., etc., 3 vols. At all Libraries.” The
_Press_, it seemed, pronounced this to be “a charming book. Mrs.
Runnymede has wit and humor enough to furnish forth half-a-dozen
ordinary sporting novels.” “Told with the sparkle and vivacity of a
past-mistress in the art of novel writing,” said the _Review_; while
Miranda, of _Smart Society_, positively bubbled with enthusiasm. “You
must forgive me, Aminta,” wrote this young person, “if I have not sent
the description I promised of Madame Lulu’s new creations and others of
that ilk. I must a tale unfold; Tom came in yesterday and began to rave
about the Honorable Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede’s last novel, _A Bad Un to
Beat_. He says all the Smart Set are talking of it, and it seems the
police have to regulate the crowd at Mudie’s. You know I read
everything Mrs. Runnymede writes, so I set out Miggs directly to beg,
borrow or steal a copy, and I confess I burnt the midnight oil before I
laid it down. Now, mind you get it, you will find it so awfully
_chic_.” Nearly all the novelists on Messrs. Beit’s list were ladies,
their works all ran to three volumes, and all of them pleased the
_Press_, the _Review_, and Miranda of _Smart Society_. One of these
books, _Millicent’s Marriage_, by Sarah Pocklington Sanders, was
pronounced fit to lie on the school-room table, on the drawing-room
bookshelf, or beneath the pillow of the most gently nurtured of our
daughters. “This,” the reviewer went on, “is high praise, especially in
these days when we are deafened by the loud-voiced clamor of
self-styled ‘artists.’ We would warn the young men who prate so
persistently of style and literature, construction and prose harmonies,
that we believe the English reading public will have none of them.
Harmless amusement, a gentle flow of domestic interest, a faithful
reproduction of the open and manly life of the hunting field, pictures
of innocent and healthy English girlhood such as Miss Sanders here
affords us; these are the topics that will always find a welcome in our
homes, which remain bolted and barred against the abandoned artist and
the scrofulous stylist.”
He turned over the pages of the little book and chuckled in high
relish; he discovered an honest enthusiasm, a determination to strike a
blow for the good and true that refreshed and exhilarated. A beaming
face, spectacled and whiskered probably, an expansive waistcoat, and a
tender heart, seemed to shine through the words which Messrs. Beit had
quoted; and the alliteration of the final sentence; that was good too;
there was style for you if you wanted it. The champion of the blushing
cheek and the gushing eye showed that he too could handle the weapons
of the enemy if he cared to trouble himself with such things. Lucian
leant back and roared with indecent laughter till the tabby tom-cat who
had succeeded to the poor dead beasts looked up reproachfully from his
sunny corner, with a face like the reviewer’s, innocent and round and
whiskered. At last he turned to his parcel and drew out some half-dozen
sheets of manuscript, and began to read in a rather desponding spirit;
it was pretty obvious, he thought, that the stuff was poor and beneath
the standard of publication. The book had taken a year and a half in
the making; it was a pious attempt to translate into English prose the
form and mystery of the domed hills, the magic of occult valleys, the
sound of the red swollen brook swirling through leafless woods.
Day-dreams and toil at nights had gone into the eager pages, he had
laboured hard to do his very best, writing and rewriting, weighing his
cadences, beginning over and over again, grudging no patience, no
trouble if only it might be pretty good; good enough to print and sell
to a reading public which had become critical. He glanced through the
manuscript in his hand, and to his astonishment, he could not help
thinking that in its measure it was decent work. After three months his
prose seemed fresh and strange as if it had been wrought by another
man, and in spite of himself he found charming things, and impressions
that were not commonplace. He knew how weak it all was compared with
his own conceptions; he had seen an enchanted city, awful, glorious,
with flame smitten about its battlements, like the cities of the
Sangraal, and he had moulded his copy in such poor clay as came to his
hand; yet, in spite of the gulf that yawned between the idea and the
work, he knew as he read that the thing accomplished was very far from
a failure. He put back the leaves carefully, and glanced again at
Messrs. Beit’s list. It had escaped his notice that _A Bad Un to Beat_
was in its third three-volume edition. It was a great thing, at all
events, to know in what direction to aim, if he wished to succeed. If
he worked hard, he thought, he might some day win the approval of the
coy and retiring Miranda of _Smart Society_; that modest maiden might
in his praise interrupt her task of disinterested advertisement, her
philanthropic counsels to “go to Jumper’s, and mind you ask for Mr. C.
Jumper, who will show you the lovely blue paper with the yellow spots
at ten shillings the piece.” He put down the pamphlet, and laughed
again at the books and the reviewers: so that he might not weep. This
then was English fiction, this was English criticism, and farce, after
all, was but an ill-played tragedy.
The rejected manuscript was hidden away, and his father quoted Horace’s
maxim as to the benefit of keeping literary works for some time “in the
wood.” There was nothing to grumble at, though Lucian was inclined to
think the duration of the reader’s catarrh a little exaggerated. But
this was a trifle; he did not arrogate to himself the position of a
small commercial traveler, who expects prompt civility as a matter of
course, and not at all as a favor. He simply forgot his old book, and
resolved that he would make a better one if he could. With the hot fit
of resolution, the determination not to be snuffed out by one refusal
upon him, he began to beat about in his mind for some new scheme. At
first it seemed that he had hit upon a promising subject; he began to
plot out chapters and scribble hints for the curious story that had
entered his mind, arranging his circumstances and noting the effects to
be produced with all the enthusiasm of the artist. But after the first
breath the aspect of the work changed; page after page was tossed aside
as hopeless, the beautiful sentences he had dreamed of refused to be
written, and his puppets remained stiff and wooden, devoid of life or
motion. Then all the old despairs came back, the agonies of the
artificer who strives and perseveres in vain; the scheme that seemed of
amorous fire turned to cold hard ice in his hands. He let the pen drop
from his fingers, and wondered how he could have ever dreamed of
writing books. Again, the thought occurred that he might do something
if he could only get away, and join the sad procession in the murmuring
London streets, far from the shadow of those awful hills. But it was
quite impossible; the relative who had once promised assistance was
appealed to, and wrote expressing his regret that Lucian had turned out
a “loafer,” wasting his time in scribbling, instead of trying to earn
his living. Lucian felt rather hurt at this letter, but the parson only
grinned grimly as usual. He was thinking of how he signed a check many
years before, in the days of his prosperity, and the check was payable
to this didactic relative, then in but a poor way, and of a thankful
turn of mind.
The old rejected manuscript had almost passed out of his recollection.
It was recalled oddly enough. He was looking over the _Reader_, and
enjoying the admirable literary criticisms, some three months after the
return of his book, when his eye was attracted by a quoted passage in
one of the notices. The thought and style both wakened memory, the
cadences were familiar and beloved. He read through the review from the
beginning; it was a very favorable one, and pronounced the volume an
immense advance on Mr. Ritson’s previous work. “Here, undoubtedly, the
author has discovered a vein of pure metal,” the reviewer added, “and
we predict that he will go far.” Lucian had not yet reached his
father’s stage, he was unable to grin in the manner of that irreverent
parson. The passage selected for high praise was taken almost word for
word from the manuscript now resting in his room, the work that had not
reached the high standard of Messrs. Beit & Co., who, curiously enough,
were the publishers of the book reviewed in the _Reader_. He had a few
shillings in his possession, and wrote at once to a bookseller in
London for a copy of _The Chorus in Green_, as the author had oddly
named the book. He wrote on June 21st and thought he might fairly
expect to receive the interesting volume by the 24th; but the postman,
true to his tradition, brought nothing for him, and in the afternoon he
resolved to walk down to Caermaen, in case it might have come by a
second post; or it might have been mislaid at the office; they forgot
parcels sometimes, especially when the bag was heavy and the weather
hot. This 24th was a sultry and oppressive day; a grey veil of cloud
obscured the sky, and a vaporous mist hung heavily over the land, and
fumed up from the valleys. But at five o’clock, when he started, the
clouds began to break, and the sunlight suddenly streamed down through
the misty air, making ways and channels of rich glory, and bright
islands in the gloom. It was a pleasant and shining evening when,
passing by devious back streets to avoid the barbarians (as he very
rudely called the respectable inhabitants of the town), he reached the
post-office; which was also the general shop.
“Yes, Mr. Taylor, there is something for you, sir,” said the man.
“William the postman forgot to take it up this morning,” and he handed
over the packet. Lucian took it under his arm and went slowly through
the ragged winding lanes till he came into the country. He got over the
first stile on the road, and sitting down in the shelter of a hedge,
cut the strings and opened the parcel. _The Chorus in Green_ was got up
in what reviewers call a dainty manner: a bronze-green cloth, well-cut
gold lettering, wide margins and black “old-face” type, all witnessed
to the good taste of Messrs. Beit & Co. He cut the pages hastily and
began to read. He soon found that he had wronged Mr. Ritson—that old
literary hand had by no means stolen his book wholesale, as he had
expected. There were about two hundred pages in the pretty little
volume, and of these about ninety were Lucian’s, dovetailed into a
rather different scheme with skill that was nothing short of exquisite.
And Mr. Ritson’s own work was often very good; spoilt here and there
for some tastes by the “cataloguing” method, a somewhat materialistic
way of taking an inventory of the holy country things; but, for that
very reason, contrasting to a great advantage with Lucian’s hints and
dreams and note of haunting. And here and there Mr. Ritson had made
little alterations in the style of the passages he had conveyed, and
most of these alterations were amendments, as Lucian was obliged to
confess, though he would have liked to argue one or two points with his
collabourator and corrector. He lit his pipe and leant back comfortably
in the hedge, thinking things over, weighing very coolly his experience
of humanity, his contact with the “society” of the countryside, the
affair of the _The Chorus in Green_, and even some little incidents
that had struck him as he was walking through the streets of Caermaen
that evening. At the post-office, when he was inquiring for his parcel,
he had heard two old women grumbling in the street; it seemed, so far
as he could make out, that both had been disappointed in much the same
way. One was a Roman Catholic, hardened, and beyond the reach of
conversion; she had been advised to ask alms of the priests, “who are
always creeping and crawling about.” The other old sinner was a
Dissenter, and, “Mr. Dixon has quite enough to do to relieve good
Church people.” Mrs. Dixon, assisted by Henrietta, was, it seemed, the
lady high almoner, who dispensed these charities. As she said to Mrs.
Colley, they would end by keeping all the beggars in the county, and
they really couldn’t afford it. A large family was an expensive thing,
and the girls _must_ have new frocks. “Mr. Dixon is always telling me
and the girls that we must not _demoralize_ the people by
indiscriminate charity.” Lucian had heard of these sage counsels, and
thought of them as he listened to the bitter complaints of the gaunt,
hungry old women. In the back street by which he passed out of the town
he saw a large “healthy” boy kicking a sick cat; the poor creature had
just strength enough to crawl under an outhouse door; probably to die
in torments. He did not find much satisfaction in thrashing the boy,
but he did it with hearty good will. Further on, at the corner where
the turnpike used to be, was a big notice, announcing a meeting at the
school-room in aid of the missions to the Portuguese. “Under the
Patronage of the Lord Bishop of the Diocese,” was the imposing
headline; the Reverend Merivale Dixon, vicar of Caermaen, was to be in
the chair, supported by Stanley Gervase, Esq., J.P., and by many of the
clergy and gentry of the neighborhood. Senhor Diabo, “formerly a
Romanist priest, now an evangelist in Lisbon,” would address the
meeting. “Funds are urgently needed to carry on this good work,”
concluded the notice. So he lay well back in the shade of the hedge,
and thought whether some sort of an article could not be made by
vindicating the terrible Yahoos; one might point out that they were in
many respects a simple and unsophisticated race, whose faults were the
result of their enslaved position, while such virtues as they had were
all their own. They might be compared, he thought, much to their
advantage, with more complex civilizations. There was no hint of
anything like the Beit system of publishing in existence amongst them;
the great Yahoo nation would surely never feed and encourage a scabby
Houyhnhnm, expelled for his foulness from the horse-community, and the
witty dean, in all his minuteness, had said nothing of “safe” Yahoos.
On reflection, however, he did not feel quite secure of this part of
his defense; he remembered that the leading brutes had favorites, who
were employed in certain simple domestic offices about their masters,
and it seemed doubtful whether the contemplated vindication would not
break down on this point. He smiled queerly to himself as he thought of
these comparisons, but his heart burned with a dull fury. Throwing back
his unhappy memory, he recalled all the contempt and scorn he had
suffered; as a boy he had heard the masters murmuring their disdain of
him and of his desire to learn other than ordinary school work. As a
young man he had suffered the insolence of these wretched people about
him; their cackling laughter at his poverty jarred and grated in his
ears; he saw the acrid grin of some miserable idiot woman, some
creature beneath the swine in intelligence and manners, merciless, as
he went by with his eyes on the dust, in his ragged clothes. He and his
father seemed to pass down an avenue of jeers and contempt, and
contempt from such animals as these! This putrid filth, moulded into
human shape, made only to fawn on the rich and beslaver them, thinking
no foulness too foul if it were done in honor of those in power and
authority; and no refined cruelty of contempt too cruel if it were
contempt of the poor and humble and oppressed; it was to this obscene
and ghastly throng that he was something to be pointed at. And these
men and women spoke of sacred things, and knelt before the awful altar
of God, before the altar of tremendous fire, surrounded as they
professed by Angels and Archangels and all the Company of Heaven; and
in their very church they had one aisle for the rich and another for
the poor. And the species was not peculiar to Caermaen; the rich
business men in London and the successful brother author were probably
amusing themselves at the expense of the poor struggling creature they
had injured and wounded; just as the “healthy” boy had burst into a
great laugh when the miserable sick cat cried out in bitter agony, and
trailed its limbs slowly, as it crept away to die. Lucian looked into
his own life and his own will; he saw that in spite of his follies, and
his want of success, he had not been consciously malignant, he had
never deliberately aided in oppression, or looked on it with enjoyment
and approval, and he felt that when he lay dead beneath the earth,
eaten by swarming worms, he would be in a purer company than now, when
he lived amongst human creatures. And he was to call this loathsome
beast, all sting and filth, brother! “I had rather call the devils my
brothers,” he said in his heart, “I would fare better in hell.” Blood
was in his eyes, and as he looked up the sky seemed of blood, and the
earth burned with fire.
The sun was sinking low on the mountain when he set out on the way
again. Burrows, the doctor, coming home in his trap, met him a little
lower on the road, and gave him a friendly good-night.
“A long way round on this road, isn’t it?” said the doctor. “As you
have come so far, why don’t you try the short cut across the fields?
You will find it easily enough; second stile on the left hand, and then
go straight ahead.”
He thanked Dr. Burrows and said he would try the short cut, and Burrows
span on homeward. He was a gruff and honest bachelor, and often felt
very sorry for the lad, and wished he could help him. As he drove on,
it suddenly occurred to him that Lucian had an awful look on his face,
and he was sorry he had not asked him to jump in, and to come to
supper. A hearty slice of beef, with strong ale, whisky and soda
afterwards, a good pipe, and certain Rabelaisian tales which the doctor
had treasured for many years, would have done the poor fellow a lot of
good, he was certain. He half turned round on his seat, and looked to
see if Lucian were still in sight, but he had passed the corner, and
the doctor drove on, shivering a little; the mists were beginning to
rise from the wet banks of the river.
Lucian trailed slowly along the road, keeping a look out for the stile
the doctor had mentioned. It would be a little of an adventure, he
thought, to find his way by an unknown track; he knew the direction in
which his home lay, and he imagined he would not have much difficulty
in crossing from one stile to another. The path led him up a steep bare
field, and when he was at the top, the town and the valley winding up
to the north stretched before him. The river was stilled at the flood,
and the yellow water, reflecting the sunset, glowed in its deep pools
like dull brass. These burning pools, the level meadows fringed with
shuddering reeds, the long dark sweep of the forest on the hill, were
all clear and distinct, yet the light seemed to have clothed them with
a new garment, even as voices from the streets of Caermaen sounded
strangely, mounting up thin with the smoke. There beneath him lay the
huddled cluster of Caermaen, the ragged and uneven roofs that marked
the winding and sordid streets, here and there a pointed gable rising
above its meaner fellows; beyond he recognized the piled mounds that
marked the circle of the amphitheatre, and the dark edge of trees that
grew where the Roman wall whitened and waxed old beneath the frosts and
rains of eighteen hundred years. Thin and strange, mingled together,
the voices came up to him on the hill; it was as if an outland race
inhabited the ruined city and talked in a strange language of strange
and terrible things. The sun had slid down the sky, and hung quivering
over the huge dark dome of the mountain like a burnt sacrifice, and
then suddenly vanished. In the afterglow the clouds began to writhe and
turn scarlet, and shone so strangely reflected in the pools of the
snake-like river, that one would have said the still waters stirred,
the fleeting and changing of the clouds seeming to quicken the stream,
as if it bubbled and sent up gouts of blood. But already about the town
the darkness was forming; fast, fast the shadows crept upon it from the
forest, and from all sides banks and wreaths of curling mist were
gathering, as if a ghostly leaguer were being built up against the
city, and the strange race who lived in its streets. Suddenly there
burst out from the stillness the clear and piercing music of the
_réveillé_, calling, recalling, iterated, reiterated, and ending with
one long high fierce shrill note with which the steep hills rang.
Perhaps a boy in the school band was practicing on his bugle, but for
Lucian it was magic. For him it was the note of the Roman trumpet,
_tuba mirum spargens sonum_, filling all the hollow valley with its
command, reverberated in dark places in the far forest, and resonant in
the old graveyards without the walls. In his imagination he saw the
earthen gates of the tombs broken open, and the serried legion swarming
to the eagles. Century by century they passed by; they rose, dripping,
from the river bed, they rose from the level, their armor shone in the
quiet orchard, they gathered in ranks and companies from the cemetery,
and as the trumpet sounded, the hill fort above the town gave up its
dead. By hundreds and thousands the ghostly battle surged about the
standard, behind the quaking mist, ready to march against the
mouldering walls they had built so many years before.
He turned sharply; it was growing very dark, and he was afraid of
missing his way. At first the path led him by the verge of a wood;
there was a noise of rustling and murmuring from the trees as if they
were taking evil counsel together. A high hedge shut out the sight of
the darkening valley, and he stumbled on mechanically, without taking
much note of the turnings of the track, and when he came out from the
wood shadow to the open country, he stood for a moment quite bewildered
and uncertain. A dark wild twilight country lay before him, confused
dim shapes of trees near at hand, and a hollow below his feet, and the
further hills and woods were dimmer, and all the air was very still.
Suddenly the darkness about him glowed; a furnace fire had shot up on
the mountain, and for a moment the little world of the woodside and the
steep hill shone in a pale light, and he thought he saw his path beaten
out in the turf before him. The great flame sank down to a red glint of
fire, and it led him on down the ragged slope, his feet striking
against ridges of ground, and falling from beneath him at a sudden dip.
The bramble bushes shot out long prickly vines, amongst which he was
entangled, and lower he was held back by wet bubbling earth. He had
descended into a dark and shady valley, beset and tapestried with
gloomy thickets; the weird wood noises were the only sounds, strange,
unutterable mutterings, dismal, inarticulate. He pushed on in what he
hoped was the right direction, stumbling from stile to gate, peering
through mist and shadow, and still vainly seeking for any known
landmark. Presently another sound broke upon the grim air, the murmur
of water poured over stones, gurgling against the old misshapen roots
of trees, and running clear in a deep channel. He passed into the chill
breath of the brook, and almost fancied he heard two voices speaking in
its murmur; there seemed a ceaseless utterance of words, an endless
argument. With a mood of horror pressing on him, he listened to the
noise of waters, and the wild fancy seized him that he was not
deceived, that two unknown beings stood together there in the darkness
and tried the balances of his life, and spoke his doom. The hour in the
matted thicket rushed over the great bridge of years to his thought; he
had sinned against the earth, and the earth trembled and shook for
vengeance. He stayed still for a moment, quivering with fear, and at
last went on blindly, no longer caring for the path, if only he might
escape from the toils of that dismal shuddering hollow. As he plunged
through the hedges the bristling thorns tore his face and hands; he
fell amongst stinging-nettles and was pricked as he beat out his way
amidst the gorse. He raced headlong, his head over his shoulder,
through a windy wood, bare of undergrowth; there lay about the ground
mouldering stumps, the relics of trees that had thundered to their
fall, crashing and tearing to earth, long ago; and from these remains
there flowed out a pale thin radiance, filling the spaces of the
sounding wood with a dream of light. He had lost all count of the
track; he felt he had fled for hours, climbing and descending, and yet
not advancing; it was as if he stood still and the shadows of the land
went by, in a vision. But at last a hedge, high and straggling, rose
before him, and as he broke through it, his feet slipped, and he fell
headlong down a steep bank into a lane. He lay still, half-stunned, for
a moment, and then rising unsteadily, he looked desperately into the
darkness before him, uncertain and bewildered. In front it was black as
a midnight cellar, and he turned about, and saw a glint in the
distance, as if a candle were flickering in a farm-house window. He
began to walk with trembling feet towards the light, when suddenly
something pale started out from the shadows before him, and seemed to
swim and float down the air. He was going down hill, and he hastened
onwards, and he could see the bars of a stile framed dimly against the
sky, and the figure still advanced with that gliding motion. Then, as
the road declined to the valley, the landmark he had been seeking
appeared. To his right there surged up in the darkness the darker
summit of the Roman fort, and the streaming fire of the great full moon
glowed through the bars of the wizard oaks, and made a halo shine about
the hill. He was now quite close to the white appearance, and saw that
it was only a woman walking swiftly down the lane; the floating
movement was an effect due to the somber air and the moon’s glamour. At
the gate, where he had spent so many hours gazing at the fort, they
walked foot to foot, and he saw it was Annie Morgan.
“Good evening, Master Lucian,” said the girl, “it’s very dark, sir,
indeed.”
“Good evening, Annie,” he answered, calling her by her name for the
first time, and he saw that she smiled with pleasure. “You are out
late, aren’t you?”
“Yes, sir; but I’ve been taking a bit of supper to old Mrs. Gibbon.
She’s been very poorly the last few days, and there’s nobody to do
anything for her.”
Then there were really people who helped one another; kindness and pity
were not mere myths, fictions of “society,” as useful as Doe and Roe,
and as non-existent. The thought struck Lucian with a shock; the
evening’s passion and delirium, the wild walk and physical fatigue had
almost shattered him in body and mind. He was “degenerate,” _decadent_,
and the rough rains and blustering winds of life, which a stronger man
would have laughed at and enjoyed, were to him “hail-storms and
fire-showers.” After all, Messrs. Beit, the publishers, were only sharp
men of business, and these terrible Dixons and Gervases and Colleys
merely the ordinary limited clergy and gentry of a quiet country town;
sturdier sense would have dismissed Dixon as an old humbug, Stanley
Gervase, Esquire, J.P., as a “bit of a bounder,” and the ladies as
“rather a shoddy lot.” But he was walking slowly now in painful
silence, his heavy, lagging feet striking against the loose stones. He
was not thinking of the girl beside him; only something seemed to swell
and grow and swell within his heart; it was all the torture of his
days, weary hopes and weary disappointment, scorn rankling and
throbbing, and the thought “I had rather call the devils my brothers
and live with them in hell.” He choked and gasped for breath, and felt
involuntary muscles working in his face, and the impulses of a madman
stirring him; he himself was in truth the realization of the vision of
Caermaen that night, a city with mouldering walls beset by the ghostly
legion. Life and the world and the laws of the sunlight had passed
away, and the resurrection and kingdom of the dead began. The Celt
assailed him, becoming from the weird wood he called the world, and his
far-off ancestors, the “little people,” crept out of their caves,
muttering charms and incantations in hissing inhuman speech; he was
beleaguered by desires that had slept in his race for ages.
“I am afraid you are very tired, Master Lucian. Would you like me to
give you my hand over this rough bit?”
He had stumbled against a great round stone and had nearly fallen. The
woman’s hand sought his in the darkness; as he felt the touch of the
soft warm flesh he moaned, and a pang shot through his arm to his
heart. He looked up and found he had only walked a few paces since
Annie had spoken; he had thought they had wandered for hours together.
The moon was just mounting above the oaks, and the halo round the dark
hill brightened. He stopped short, and keeping his hold of Annie’s
hand, looked into her face. A hazy glory of moonlight shone around them
and lit up their eyes. He had not greatly altered since his boyhood;
his face was pale olive in colour, thin and oval; marks of pain had
gathered about the eyes, and his black hair was already stricken with
grey. But the eager, curious gaze still remained, and what he saw
before him lit up his sadness with a new fire. She stopped too, and did
not offer to draw away, but looked back with all her heart. They were
alike in many ways; her skin was also of that olive colour, but her
face was sweet as a beautiful summer night, and her black eyes showed
no dimness, and the smile on the scarlet lips was like a flame when it
brightens a dark and lonely land.
“You are sorely tired, Master Lucian, let us sit down here by the
gate.”
It was Lucian who spoke next: “My dear, my dear.” And their lips were
together again, and their arms locked together, each holding the other
fast. And then the poor lad let his head sink down on his sweetheart’s
breast, and burst into a passion of weeping. The tears streamed down
his face, and he shook with sobbing, in the happiest moment that he had
ever lived. The woman bent over him and tried to comfort him, but his
tears were his consolation and his triumph. Annie was whispering to
him, her hand laid on his heart; she was whispering beautiful,
wonderful words, that soothed him as a song. He did not know what they
meant.
“Annie, dear, dear Annie, what are you saying to me? I have never heard
such beautiful words. Tell me, Annie, what do they mean?”
She laughed, and said it was only nonsense that the nurses sang to the
children.
“No, no, you are not to call me Master Lucian any more,” he said, when
they parted, “you must call me Lucian; and I, I worship you, my dear
Annie.”
He fell down before her, embracing her knees, and adored, and she
allowed him, and confirmed his worship. He followed slowly after her,
passing the path which led to her home with a longing glance. Nobody
saw any difference in Lucian when he reached the rectory. He came in
with his usual dreamy indifference, and told how he had lost his way by
trying the short cut. He said he had met Dr. Burrows on the road, and
that he had recommended the path by the fields. Then, as dully as if he
had been reading some story out of a newspaper, he gave his father the
outlines of the Beit case, producing the pretty little book called _The
Chorus in Green_. The parson listened in amazement.
“You mean to tell me that _you_ wrote this book?” he said. He was quite
roused.
“No; not all of it. Look; that bit is mine, and that; and the beginning
of this chapter. Nearly the whole of the third chapter is by me.”
He closed the book without interest, and indeed he felt astonished at
his father’s excitement. The incident seemed to him unimportant.
“And you say that eighty or ninety pages of this book are yours, and
these scoundrels have stolen your work?”
“Well, I suppose they have. I’ll fetch the manuscript, if you would
like to look at it.”
The manuscript was duly produced, wrapped in brown paper, with Messrs.
Beit’s address label on it, and the post-office dated stamps.
“And the other book has been out a month.” The parson, forgetting the
sacerdotal office, and his good habit of grinning, swore at Messrs.
Beit and Mr. Ritson, calling them damned thieves, and then began to
read the manuscript, and to compare it with the printed book.
“Why, it’s splendid work. My poor fellow,” he said after a while, “I
had no notion you could write so well. I used to think of such things
in the old days at Oxford; ‘old Bill,’ the tutor, used to praise my
essays, but I never wrote anything like this. And this infernal ruffian
of a Ritson has taken all your best things and mixed them up with his
own rot to make it go down. Of course you’ll expose the gang?”
Lucian was mildly amused; he couldn’t enter into his father’s feelings
at all. He sat smoking in one of the old easy chairs, taking the rare
relish of a hot grog with his pipe, and gazing out of his dreamy eyes
at the violent old parson. He was pleased that his father liked his
book, because he knew him to be a deep and sober scholar and a cool
judge of good letters; but he laughed to himself when he saw the magic
of print. The parson had expressed no wish to read the manuscript when
it came back in disgrace; he had merely grinned, said something about
boomerangs, and quoted Horace with relish. Whereas now, before the book
in its neat case, lettered with another man’s name, his approbation of
the writing and his disapproval of the “scoundrels,” as he called them,
were loudly expressed, and, though a good smoker, he blew and puffed
vehemently at his pipe.
“You’ll expose the rascals, of course, won’t you?” he said again.
“Oh no, I think not. It really doesn’t matter much, does it? After all,
there are some very weak things in the book; doesn’t it strike you as
‘young?’ I have been thinking of another plan, but I haven’t done much
with it lately. But I believe I’ve got hold of a really good idea this
time, and if I can manage to see the heart of it I hope to turn out a
manuscript worth stealing. But it’s so hard to get at the core of an
idea—the heart, as I call it,” he went on after a pause. “It’s like
having a box you can’t open, though you know there’s something
wonderful inside. But I do believe I’ve a fine thing in my hands, and I
mean to try my best to work it.”
Lucian talked with enthusiasm now, but his father, on his side, could
not share these ardors. It was his part to be astonished at excitement
over a book that was not even begun, the mere ghost of a book flitting
elusive in the world of unborn masterpieces and failures. He had loved
good letters, but he shared unconsciously in the general belief that
literary attempt is always pitiful, though he did not subscribe to the
other half of the popular faith—that literary success is a matter of
very little importance. He thought well of books, but only of printed
books; in manuscripts he put no faith, and the _paulo-post-futurum_
tense he could not in any manner conjugate. He returned once more to
the topic of palpable interest.
“But about this dirty trick these fellows have played on you. You won’t
sit quietly and bear it, surely? It’s only a question of writing to the
papers.”
“They wouldn’t put the letter in. And if they did, I should only get
laughed at. Some time ago a man wrote to the _Reader_, complaining of
his play being stolen. He said that he had sent a little one-act comedy
to Burleigh, the great dramatist, asking for his advice. Burleigh gave
his advice and took the idea for his own very successful play. So the
man said, and I daresay it was true enough. But the victim got nothing
by his complaint. ‘A pretty state of things,’ everybody said. ‘Here’s a
Mr. Tomson, that no one has ever heard of, bothers Burleigh with his
rubbish, and then accuses him of petty larceny. Is it likely that a man
of Burleigh’s position, a playwright who can make his five thousand a
year easily, would borrow from an unknown Tomson?’ I should think it
very likely, indeed,” Lucian went on, chuckling, “but that was their
verdict. No; I don’t think I’ll write to the papers.”
“Well, well, my boy, I suppose you know your own business best. I think
you are mistaken, but you must do as you like.”
“It’s all so unimportant,” said Lucian, and he really thought so. He
had sweeter things to dream of, and desired no communion of feeling
with that madman who had left Caermaen some few hours before. He felt
he had made a fool of himself, he was ashamed to think of the fatuity
of which he had been guilty, such boiling hatred was not only wicked,
but absurd. A man could do no good who put himself into a position of
such violent antagonism against his fellow-creatures; so Lucian rebuked
his heart, saying that he was old enough to know better. But he
remembered that he had sweeter things to dream of; there was a secret
ecstasy that he treasured and locked tight away, as a joy too exquisite
even for thought till he was quite alone; and then there was that
scheme for a new book that he had laid down hopelessly some time ago;
it seemed to have arisen into life again within the last hour; he
understood that he had started on a false tack, he had taken the wrong
aspect of his idea. Of course the thing couldn’t be written in that
way; it was like trying to read a page turned upside down; and he saw
those characters he had vainly sought suddenly disambushed, and a
splendid inevitable sequence of events unrolled before him.
It was a true resurrection; the dry plot he had constructed revealed
itself as a living thing, stirring and mysterious, and warm as life
itself. The parson was smoking stolidly to all appearance, but in
reality he was full of amazement at his own son, and now and again he
slipped sly furtive glances towards the tranquil young man in the
arm-chair by the empty hearth. In the first place, Mr. Taylor was
genuinely impressed by what he had read of Lucian’s work; he had so
long been accustomed to look upon all effort as futile that success
amazed him. In the abstract, of course, he was prepared to admit that
some people did write well and got published and made money, just as
other persons successfully backed an outsider at heavy odds; but it had
seemed as improbable that Lucian should show even the beginnings of
achievement in one direction as in the other. Then the boy evidently
cared so little about it; he did not appear to be proud of being worth
robbing, nor was he angry with the robbers.
He sat back luxuriously in the disreputable old chair, drawing long
slow wreaths of smoke, tasting his whisky from time to time, evidently
well at ease with himself. The father saw him smile, and it suddenly
dawned upon him that his son was very handsome; he had such kind gentle
eyes and a kind mouth, and his pale cheeks were flushed like a girl’s.
Mr. Taylor felt moved. What a harmless young fellow Lucian had been; no
doubt a little queer and different from others, but wholly inoffensive
and patient under disappointment. And Miss Deacon, her contribution to
the evening’s discussion had been characteristic; she had remarked,
firstly, that writing was a very unsettling occupation, and secondly,
that it was extremely foolish to entrust one’s property to people of
whom one knew nothing. Father and son had smiled together at these
observations, which were probably true enough. Mr. Taylor at last left
Lucian along; he shook hands with a good deal of respect, and said,
almost deferentially:
“You mustn’t work too hard, old fellow. I wouldn’t stay up too late, if
I were you, after that long walk. You must have gone miles out of your
way.”
“I’m not tired now, though. I feel as if I could write my new book on
the spot”; and the young man laughed a gay sweet laugh that struck the
father as a new note in his son’s life.
He sat still a moment after his father had left the room. He cherished
his chief treasure of thought in its secret place; he would not enjoy
it yet. He drew up a chair to the table at which he wrote or tried to
write, and began taking pens and paper from the drawer. There was a
great pile of ruled paper there; all of it used, on one side, and
signifying many hours of desperate scribbling, of heart-searching and
rack of his brain; an array of poor, eager lines written by a waning
fire with waning hope; all useless and abandoned. He took up the sheets
cheerfully, and began in delicious idleness to look over these
fruitless efforts. A page caught his attention; he remembered how he
wrote it while a November storm was dashing against the panes; and
there was another, with a queer blot in one corner; he had got up from
his chair and looked out, and all the earth was white fairyland, and
the snowflakes whirled round and round in the wind. Then he saw the
chapter begun of a night in March: a great gale blew that night and
rooted up one of the ancient yews in the churchyard. He had heard the
trees shrieking in the woods, and the long wail of the wind, and across
the heaven a white moon fled awfully before the streaming clouds. And
all these poor abandoned pages now seemed sweet, and past unhappiness
was transmuted into happiness, and the nights of toil were holy. He
turned over half a dozen leaves and began to sketch out the outlines of
the new book on the unused pages; running out a skeleton plan on one
page, and dotting fancies, suggestions, hints on others. He wrote
rapidly, overjoyed to find that loving phrases grew under his pen; a
particular scene he had imagined filled him with desire; he gave his
hand free course, and saw the written work glowing; and action and all
the heat of existence quickened and beat on the wet page. Happy fancies
took shape in happier words, and when at last he leant back in his
chair he felt the stir and rush of the story as if it had been some
portion of his own life. He read over what he had done with a renewed
pleasure in the nimble and flowing workmanship, and as he put the
little pile of manuscript tenderly in the drawer he paused to enjoy the
anticipation of tomorrow’s labour.
And then—but the rest of the night was given to tender and delicious
things, and when he went up to bed a scarlet dawn was streaming from
the east.