LITERATURE IS LOW
But after half an hour's further struggle he got up and drifted
aimlessly out of the room, finally bringing up in the kitchen.
Kate was here concocting a savoury and an _entrée_ and two or three
other things for his dinner, for she had packed the depressed and
depressing Ellen off to the bakers' picnic with Anna from "Greenways"
and was sole mistress of her hearth and home for the day.
Here she was when her brother found her, covered up in a spotless apron
and, with sleeves rolled engagingly back over her plump white arms,
energetically pounding up some anchovies. Hugh sat down heavily on the
edge of the dresser.
"A writer's a miserable beast, K," he said dejectedly.
"Give it up to-day, boy," she said. "I can see you can't help yourself.
Go for a walk,--go and look up the little pets. Or have a romp with the
children across the road. Don't break your back to-day over a load that
another day you will snap your fingers at."
He took no notice of her suggestions.
"Can you deny that it is a miserable trade? A womanish sort of business?
You sit twiddling your pen, your nerves so a-stretch that if a door
bangs the mood shuts down on you for the day. And there's that fellow
across the road swinging away with his axe among the trees just as he
has been ever since breakfast. He'll leave off presently and boil his
billy and eat his bread and cheese and have his smoke, and then back
he'll go to his work. There it is spread out straight before him, and
the muscles on his arms--have you ever noticed the fellow's
muscles?--tell him that he is equal to it. Do you ever see _him_ pacing
distractedly about, wondering if the mood will come to him? Do you ever
see _him_ sitting dejectedly twiddling his axe, and rendered quite
incapable because he has been interrupted at a critical time and put out
of vein? I tell you, my girl, that fellow's a man, and I'd like to go
out and shake hands with him."
"And doubtless," said Kate, hastily sprinkling coral pepper over her
savouries, "doubtless every time that fine fellow stops to wipe his
beaded brow, he glances over here to envy a man who has nothing to do
but sit in a comfortable chair in the shade and scribble any nonsense
that comes into his head."
"Now, why," said Hugh addressing the rows of plates ranged beside him,
"why does a woman feel it her bounden duty to clap down with a
conventional remark like that every time a man lets off a little steam?
Besides I deny it,--the chair is _not_ comfortable."
Kate gave a sidelong glance at the clock and began to chop parsley as if
against time.
"No," said Hugh, "I will _not_ take the hint, my good woman. I hold you
with my glittering eye and listen to me you shall. 'Litteratoor is
low',--Artemus Ward says so. Worse than that it's no longer
exclusive,--Mr. Dooley maintains that it is not. Do you remember the
verse and chapter, madam?"
"Something about turning Miranda into authoreen does her skirt sag,"
murmured Kate.
Hugh held up a hand commanding silence and rolled out his Irish with
gusto: "'Th' longer th' wurruld lasts th' more books does be comin' out.
They's a publisher in ivry block an' in thousands iv happy homes some
wan is plugging away at th' romantic novel or whalin' out a pome on th'
typewriter upstairs. A fam'ly without an author is as contemptible as
wan without a priest. Is Malachi near-sighted, peevish, averse to th'
suds, an' can't tell whether th' three in th' front yard is blue or
green? Make an author iv him! Does Miranda prisint no attraction to the
young men iv th' neighbourhood, does her over-skirt dhrag an' is she
poor with th' gas range? Make an authoreen iv her!' That's it, Kit, it's
a poor sort of life at best, no manliness about it. Picture the
contrast, girl--those fine fellows who stood at attention by their gun
at Colenso when it was all up with them, and your blessed brother
tinkering away at a pink and white muslin heroine that never was on land
or sea."
"But, but, but," said Kate, "you can't have a world made up of axemen
and fine soldiers. It seems to me Nature has made a use for your
contemptible authors in letting them inspire others to fine deeds. Those
men at Colenso, for instance,--I grant you it _was_ a fine thing to do,
to stand at attention while awaiting death. But I believe if such a
thing ever could have been inquired into with the minuteness that the
Psychic Research Society brings to bear upon the problems that confront
it, it would have been found that something far back in the minds of one
or more of the three, some fine deed in a book, some shining act
witnessed on a stage, gave the cue for the act at which the civilized
world thundered applause."
"It's a pretty notion," said Hugh, "and a kind one to a writer sunk in
a slough of despond. But I hae ma doots."
"I haven't," said Kate stoutly. "In point of fact I truly believe that
one half of our actions--especially our better ones--spring from an
unconscious desire to be like or unlike some character of some book or
play. Where a sincere Christian struggles desperately to live like
Christ of the Great Book, the less courageous aim lower and substitute a
panorama of book characters that shift with their stages of growth. Many
a meanness of life is left uncommitted, not solely because it is a
meanness but because it would look execrable in the pages of a novel.
Why, only for being terrorized by the Old Maid of Fiction, I'd be
keeping a cat and a parrot myself by this time, Hugh Kinross, and you
know it."
"And what should I be doing?" asked Hugh, amused.
Kate cogitated for a moment.
"You would have been an Egoist, only Meredith made you ashamed to be
one," she answered.
Hugh nodded approval at her hit.
"But I'm still a posturing, narrow-living ass, ain't I?" he said, "like
the rest of the writing tribe."
"Oh," said Kate comfortably, "of course one hates an author that's all
author--how does it go? fellows in foolscap uniforms turned up with
ink? But you're not that sort, Hughie. I will say for you that when you
haven't the pen in your hand you are just plain man."
"Thanks, old girl," said Hugh, grateful for a moment. But then he soon
drooped again.
"No, no, the trail of the serpent is over the artistic temperament, Kit.
Look at me,--if I get into a company where I'm pointed out, _monstrari
digito_, as Hugh Kinross, I'm bored--and no doubt show that I am."
"Yes, I've often noticed that," said Kate, who had long secretly
considered this rather a noble trait in her brother's character.
"Yes," said Hugh pensively, "and then when I get into a company where no
one knows me from Smith the chemist's clerk, a childish resentment comes
over me."
"Good heavens!" cried Kate.
It was not Hugh's pettiness that called forth the exclamation, but the
saddening circumstance that she had put her chopped and seasoned parsley
into the sweet mixture that represented the pudding.
"How," she asked pathetically, "can I get ready to feed a lion when it
gets under my feet all the time like this? Is there _nothing_ you can
do? Couldn't you go and play wild beasts under the piano for a little
time? Max and Muffie would help you growl."
Hugh abandoned the dresser which rattled ominously as he took his solid
weight off.
"Max and Muffie remind me of Miss Bibby, and Miss Bibby reminds me of a
duty to be performed," he said; "I've promised to read her story. Well,
if England expects every man this day to do his duty, Australia may
expect duty this day to do a man."
Kate heard him going heavily back to his study.