"He was a very good friend of Michael's--of both of us. You can talk
quite freely to him. I want to say at the beginning that I should like
him to be associated with you in this."
I don't know how I divined on the spot her relation to Schofield, whoever
he was. She told me that he too was a painter.
"Michael thought very highly of his things," she said.
"I don't know them," I replied.
"You probably wouldn't," she returned....
But I caught the quick drop of her eyes from their brief excursion round
my library, and I felt something within me stiffen a little. It did not
need Maschka Andriaovsky to remind me that I had not attained my position
without--let us say--splitting certain differences; the looseness of
the expression can be corrected hereafter. Life consists very largely of
compromises. You doubtless know my name, whichever country or hemisphere
you happen to live in, as that of the creator of Martin Renard, the
famous and popular detective; and I was not at that moment disposed to
apologise, either to Maschka or Schofield or anybody else, for having
written the stories at the bidding of a gaping public. The moment the
public showed that it wanted something better I was prepared to give it.
In the meantime, I sat in my very comfortable library, securely shielded
from distress by my balance at my banker's.
"Well," I said after a moment, "let's see how we stand. And first
as to what you're likely to get out of this. It goes without saying,
of course, that by writing the 'Life' I can get you any amount of
'fame'--advertisement, newspaper talk, and all the things that, it struck
me, Michael always treated with especial scorn. My name alone, I say,
will do that. But for anything else I'm by no means so sure. You see," I
explained, "it doesn't follow that because I can sell hundreds of
thousands of... you know what... that I can sell anything I've a mind to
sign." I said it, confident that she had not lived all those years with
her brother without having learned the axiomatic nature of it. To my
discomfiture, she began to talk like a callow student.
"I should have thought that it followed that if you could sell
something--" she hesitated only for a moment, then courageously gave the
other stuff its proper adjective, "--something rotten, you could have
sold something good when you had the chance."
"Then if you thought that you were wrong," I replied briefly and
concisely.
"_Michael_ couldn't, of course," she said, putting Michael out of the
question with a little wave of her hand, "because Michael was--I mean,
Michael wasn't a business man. You are."
"I'm speaking as one," I replied. "I don't waste time in giving people
what they don't want. That is business. I don't undertake your brother's
'Life' as a matter of business, but as an inestimable privilege. I
repeat, it doesn't follow that the public will buy it."
"But--but--" she stammered, "the public will buy a _Pill_ if they see
your name on the testimonial!"
"A Pill--yes," I said sadly.... Genius and a Pill were, alas, different
things. "But," I added more cheerfully, "you can never tell what the
public will do. They _might_ buy it--there's no telling except by
trying--"
"Well, Schofield thinks they will," she informed me with decision.
"I dare say he does, if he's an artist. They mostly do," I replied.
"He doesn't think Michael will ever be popular," she emphasised the
adjective slightly, "but he does think he has a considerable following if
they could only be discovered."
I sighed. All artists think that. They will accept any compromise except
the one that is offered to them.... I tried to explain to Maschka that in
this world we have to stand to the chances of all or nothing.
"You've got to be one thing or the other--I don't know that it matters
very much which," I said. "There's Michael's way, and there's... mine.
That's all. However, we'll try it. All you can say to me, and more, I'll
say to a publisher for you. But he'll probably wink at me."
For a moment she was silent. Then she said: "Schofield rather fancies one
publisher."
"Oh? Who's he?" I asked.
She mentioned a name. If I knew anything at all of business she might as
well have offered _The Life of Michael Andriaovsky_ to The Religious
Tract Society at once....
"Hm!... And has Mr. Schofield any other suggestions?" I inquired.
He had. Several. I saw that Schofield's position would have to be defined
before we went any further.
"Hm!" I said again. "Well, I shall have to rely on Schofield for those
five years in which I saw little of Michael; but unless Schofield knows
more of publishing than I do, and can enforce a better contract and a
larger sum on account than I can, I really think, Maschka, that you'll do
better to leave things to me. For one thing, it's only fair to me. My
name hasn't much of an artistic value nowadays, but it has a very
considerable commercial one, and my worth to publishers isn't as a writer
of the Lives of Geniuses."
I could see she didn't like it; but that couldn't be helped. It had to be
so. Then, as we sat for a time in silence over the fire, I noticed again
how like her brother she was. She was not, it was true, much like him as
he had been on that last visit of mine to him ... and I sighed as I
remembered that visit. The dreadful scene had come back to me....
On account, I suppose, of the divergence of our paths, I had not even
heard of his illness until almost the finish. Immediately I had hastened
to the Hampstead "Home," only to find him already in the agony. He had
not been too far gone to recognise me, however, for he had muttered
something brokenly about "knowing better," that a spasm had interrupted.
Besides myself, only Maschka had been there; and I had been thankful for
the summons that had called her for a moment out of the room. I had still
retained his already cold hand; his brow had worked with that dreadful
struggle; and his eyes had been closed.
But suddenly he had opened them, and the next moment had sat up on his
pillow. He had striven to draw his hand from mine.
"Who are you?" he had suddenly demanded, not knowing me.
I had come close to him. "You know me, Andriaovsky--Harrison?" I had
asked sorrowfully.
I had been on the point of repeating my name but suddenly, after holding
my eyes for a moment with a look the profundity and familiarity of which
I cannot express, he had broken into the most ghastly haunting laugh I
have ever heard.
"_Harrison?_" the words had broken throatily from him.... "_Oh yes; I
know you!... You shall very soon know that I know you if... if..._"
The cough and rattle had come as Maschka had rushed into the room. In ten
seconds Andriaovsky had fallen back, dead.