CREATIVE
The sick-room--all due solemnity and importance must be imported into
the significance of that word--the sick-room became a shrine, served by
two ageing priestesses and a naive acolyte. Everything was done to make
Henry an invalid in the grand manner. His bed of agony became the pivot
on which the household life flutteringly and soothingly revolved. No
detail of delicate attention which the most ingenious assiduity could
devise was omitted from the course of treatment. And if the chamber had
been at the front instead of at the back, the Fulham Vestry would
certainly have received an application for permission to lay down straw
in the street.
The sole flaw in the melancholy beauty of the episode was that Henry was
never once within ten miles of being seriously ill. He was incapable of
being seriously ill. He happened to be one of those individuals who,
when they 'take' a disease, seem to touch it only with the tips of their
fingers: such was his constitution. He had the measles, admittedly. His
temperature rose one night to a hundred and three, and for a few brief
moments his mother and Aunt Annie enjoyed visions of fighting the grim
spectre of Death. The tiny round pink spots covered his face and then
ran together into a general vermilion. He coughed exquisitely. His beard
grew. He supported life on black-currant tea and an atmosphere
impregnated with eucalyptus. He underwent the examination of the doctor
every day at eleven. But he was not personally and genuinely ill. He did
not feel ill, and he said so. His most disquieting symptom was boredom.
This energetic organism chafed under the bed-clothes and the
black-currant tea and the hushed eucalyptic calm of the chamber. He
fervently desired to be up and active and stressful. His mother and aunt
cogitated in vain to hit on some method of allaying the itch for work.
And then one day--it was the day before Christmas--his mother chanced to
say:
'You might try to write out that story you told us about--when you are
a little stronger. It would be something for you to do.'
Henry shook his head sheepishly.
'Oh no!' he said; 'I was only joking.'
'I'm sure you could write it quite nicely,' his mother insisted.
And Henry shook his head again, and coughed. 'No,' he said. 'I hope I
shall have something better to do than write stories.'
'But just to pass the time!' pleaded Aunt Annie.
The fact was that, several weeks before, while his thoughts had been
engaged in analyzing the detrimental qualities of the Stream of Trashy
Novels Constantly Poured Forth by the Press, Henry had himself been
visited by a notion for a story. He had scornfully ejected it as an
inopportune intruder; but it had returned, and at length, to get rid for
ever of this troublesome guest, he had instinctively related the outline
of the tale over the tea-table. And the outline had been pronounced
wonderful. 'It might be called _Love in Babylon_--Babylon being London,
you know,' he had said. And Aunt Annie had exclaimed: 'What a pretty
title!' Whereupon Henry had remarked contemptuously and dismissingly:
'Oh, it was just an idea I had, that's all!' And the secret thought of
both ladies had been, 'That busy brain is never still.'
As the shades of Christmas Eve began to fall, Aunt Annie was seated by
the sick-bed, engaged in making entries in the household washing-book
with a lead pencil. Henry lay with his eyes closed. Mrs. Knight was out
shopping. Presently there was a gentle _ting_ of the front-door bell;
then a protracted silence; then another gentle _ting_.
'Bless the girl! Why doesn't she answer the door?' Aunt Annie whispered
to herself, listening hard.
A third time the bell rang, and Aunt Annie, anathematizing the whole
race of servants, got up, put the washing-book on the dressing-table,
lighted the gas and turned it low, and descended to answer the door in
person and to behead Sarah.
More than an hour elapsed before either sister re-entered Henry's
room--events on the ground-floor had been rather exciting--and then they
appeared together, bearing a bird, and some mince-tarts on a plate, and
a card. Henry was wide awake.
'This _is_ a surprise, dear,' began Mrs. Knight. 'Just listen: "With Sir
George Powell's hearty greetings and best wishes for a speedy recovery!"
A turkey and six mince-tarts. Isn't it thoughtful of him?'
'It's just like the governor,' said Henry, smiling, and feeling the
tenderness of the turkey.
'He is a true gentleman,' said Aunt Annie.
'And we've sent round to the doctor to ask, and he says there's no harm
in your having half a mince-tart; so we've warmed it. And you are to
have a slice off the breast of the turkey to-morrow.'
'Good!' was Henry's comment. He loved a savoury mouthful, and these
dainties were an unexpected bliss, for the ladies had not dreamt of
Christmas fare in the sad crisis, even for themselves.
Aunt Annie, as if struck by a sudden blow, glanced aside at the gas.
'I could have been certain I left the gas turned down,' she remarked.
'I turned it up,' said Henry.
'You got out of bed! Oh, Henry! And your temperature was a hundred and
two only the day before yesterday!'
'I thought I'd begin that thing--just for a lark, you know,' he
explained.
He drew from under the bed-clothes the household washing-book. And
there, nearly at the top of a page, were Aunt Annie's last interrupted
strokes:
'2 Ch----'
and underneath:
'LOVE IN BABYLON'
and the commencement of the tale. The marvellous man had covered nine
pages of the washing-book.
Within twenty-four hours, not only Henry, but his mother and aunt, had
become entirely absorbed in Henry's tale. The ladies wondered how he
thought of it all, and Henry himself wondered a little, too. It seemed
to 'come,' without trouble and almost without invitation. It cost no
effort. The process was as though Henry acted merely as the amanuensis
of a great creative power concealed somewhere in the recesses of his
vital parts. Fortified by two halves of a mince-tart and several slices
of Sir George's turkey, he filled the washing-book full up before dusk
on Christmas Day; and on Boxing Day, despite the faint admiring protests
of his nurses, he made a considerable hole in a quire of the best ruled
essay-paper. Instead of showing signs of fatigue, Henry appeared to grow
stronger every hour, and to revel more and more in the sweet labour of
composition; while the curiosity of the nurses about the exact nature of
what Henry termed the denouement increased steadily and constantly. The
desires of those friends who had wished a Happy Christmas to the
household were generously gratified.
It was a love tale, of course. And it began thus, the first line
consisting of a single word, and the second of three words:
'_Babylon!_
'_And in winter!_
'_The ladies' waiting-room on the arrival platform of one of our vast
termini was unoccupied save for the solitary figure of a young and
beautiful girl, who, clad in a thin but still graceful costume, crouched
shivering over the morsel of fire which the greed of a great company
alone permitted to its passengers. Outside resounded the roar and shriek
of trains, the ceaseless ebb and flow of the human tide which beats for
ever on the shores of modern Babylon. Enid Anstruther gazed sadly into
the embers. She had come to the end of her resources. Suddenly the door
opened, and Enid looked up, naturally expecting to see one of her own
sex. But it was a man's voice, fresh and strong, which exclaimed: "Oh, I
beg pardon!" The two glanced at each other, and then Enid sank
backwards._'
Such were the opening sentences of _Love in Babylon_.
Enid was an orphan, and had come to London in order to obtain a
situation in a draper's shop. Unfortunately, she had lost her purse on
the way. Her reason for sinking back in the waiting-room was that she
had fainted from cold, hunger, and fatigue. Thus she and the man, Adrian
Tempest, became acquainted, and Adrian's first gift to her was seven
drops of brandy, which he forced between her teeth. His second was his
heart. Enid obtained a situation, and Adrian took her to the Crystal
Palace one Saturday afternoon. It was a pity that he had not already
proposed to her, for they got separated in the tremendous Babylonian
crowd, and Enid, unused to the intricacies of locomotion in Babylon,
arrived home at the emporium at an ungodly hour on Sunday morning. She
was dismissed by a proprietor with a face of brass. Adrian sought her in
vain. She sought Adrian in vain--she did not know his address.
Thenceforward the tale split itself into two parts: the one describing
the life of Adrian, a successful barrister, on the heights of Babylon,
and the other the life of Enid, reduced to desperate straits, in the
depths thereof. The contrasts were vivid and terrific.
Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie could not imagine how Henry would bring the
two lovers, each burning secretly the light torch of love in Babylon,
together again. But Henry did not hesitate over the problem for more
than about fifty seconds. Royal Academy. Private View. Adrian present
thereat as a celebrity. Picture of the year, 'The Enchantress.' He
recognises her portrait. She had, then, been forced to sell her beauty
for eighteenpence an hour as an artist's model. To discover the artist
and Enid's address was for Adrian the work of a few minutes.
This might have finished the tale, but Henry opined that the tale was a
trifle short. As a fact, it was. He accordingly invented a further and a
still more dramatic situation. When Adrian proposed to Enid, she
conscientiously told him, told him quietly but firmly, that she could
not marry him for the reason that her father, though innocent of a crime
imputed to him, had died in worldly disgrace. She could not consent to
sully Adrian's reputation. Now, Adrian happened to be the real criminal.
But he did not know that Enid's father had suffered for him, and he had
honestly lived down that distant past. 'If there is a man in this world
who has the right to marry you,' cried Adrian, 'I am that man. And if
there is a man in this world whom you have the right to spurn, I am that
man also.' The extreme subtlety of the thing must be obvious to every
reader. Enid forgave and accepted Adrian. They were married in a snowy
January at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and the story ended thus:
'_Babylon in winter_.
'_Babylon!_'
Henry achieved the entire work in seven days, and, having achieved it,
he surveyed it with equal pride and astonishment. It was a matter of
surprise to him that the writing of interesting and wholesome fiction
was so easy. Some parts of the book he read over and over again, for the
sheer joy of reading.
'Of course it isn't good enough to print,' he said one day, while
sitting up in the arm-chair.
'I should think any publisher would be glad to print it,' said his
mother. 'I'm not a bit prejudiced, I'm sure, and I think it's one of the
best tales I ever read in all my life.'
'Do you really?' Henry smiled, his natural modesty fighting against a
sure conviction that his mother was right.
Aunt Annie said little, but she had copied out _Love in Babylon_ in her
fine, fair Italian hand, keeping pace day by day with Henry's
extraordinary speed, and now she accomplished the transcription of the
last pages.
The time arrived for Henry to be restored to a waiting world. He was
cured, well, hearty, vigorous, radiant. But he was still infected,
isolate, one might almost say _taboo_; and everything in his room, and
everything that everyone had worn while in the room, was in the same
condition. Therefore the solemn process, rite, and ceremony of
purification had to be performed. It began upon the last day of the old
year at dusk.
Aunt Annie made a quantity of paste in a basin; Mrs. Knight bought a
penny brush; and Henry cut up a copy of the _Telegraph_ into long strips
about two inches wide. The sides and sash of the window were then
hermetically sealed; the register of the fireplace was closed, and
sealed also. Clothes were spread out in open order, the bed stripped,
rugs hung over chairs.
'Henry's book?' Mrs. Knight demanded.
'Of course it must be disinfected with the other things,' said Aunt
Annie.
'Yes, of course,' Henry agreed.
'And it will be safer to lay the sheets separately on the floor,' Aunt
Annie continued.
There were fifty-nine sheets of Aunt Annie's fine, finicking caligraphy,
and the scribe and her nephew went down on their knees, and laid them in
numerical sequence on the floor. The initiatory '_Babylon_' found itself
in the corner between the window and the fireplace beneath the
dressing-table, and the final '_Babylon_' was hidden in gloomy retreats
under the bed.
Then Sarah entered, bearing sulphur in a shallow pan, and a box of
matches. The paste and the paste-brush and the remnants of the
_Telegraph_ were carried out into the passage. Henry carefully ignited
the sulphur, and, captain of the ship, was the last to leave. As they
closed the door the odour of burning, microbe-destroying sulphur
impinged on their nostrils. Henry sealed the door on the outside with
'London Day by Day,' 'Sales by Auction,' and a leading article or so.
'There!' said Henry.
All was over.
At intervals throughout the night he thought of the sanative and benign
sulphur smouldering, smouldering always with ghostly yellow flamelets in
the midst of his work of art, while the old year died and the new was
born.