Had any of the admirers of _Martin Renard_ entered the library of his
author that night he would have seen an interesting thing. He would
have seen the creator of that idol of clerks and messenger-lads and
fourth-form boys frankly putting the case before a portrait propped up on
a chair. He would have heard that popular author haranguing, pleading,
curiously on his defence, turning the thing this way and that.
"If _you'd_ gone over, Michael," that author argued, "you'd have done
precisely the same thing. If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a
kind; We've got to be one thing or the other--isn't that so, Andriaovsky?
Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way--only one way. I've kept
your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single
beautiful phrase will you find in the _Martin Renards;_ I've cut 'em
out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no
temple.... And think what I _might_ have done--what they all do! They
deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades;
_you_ know the style!--'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but
that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine
artist!'--I _haven't_ done that. I _haven't_ run with the hare and hunted
with the hounds. I _am_ just Harrison, who does that detective
rubbish!... These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, _they're_ the real
sinners, Michael--the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one
thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'--ha! ha!).... Of
course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll _they_ do, do
you think? He'll scrape up a few pounds out of the stew where I find
thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the
chairs talked that night, you remember!... But you wait until I finish
your 'Life.'..."
I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I
might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a
start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that
years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me.