II

_The Major Key_ was the new novel, and the great thing accordingly was

to finish it; a consummation for which three months of the _Beacon_ had

in some degree prepared the way. The action of that journal was indeed a

shock, but I didn’t know then the worst, didn’t know that in addition

to being a shock it was also a symptom. It was the first hint of the

difficulty to which poor Limbert was eventually to succumb. His state

was the happier of a truth for his not immediately seeing all that it

meant. Difficulty was the law of life, but one could thank heaven it was

exceptionally present in that horrid quarter. There was the difficulty

that inspired, the difficulty of _The Major Key_ to wit, which it was

after all base to sacrifice to the turning of somersaults for pennies.

These convictions Ray Limbert beguiled his fresh wait by blandly

entertaining: not indeed, I think, that the failure of his attempt to

be chatty didn’t leave him slightly humiliated. If it was bad enough

to have grinned through a horse-collar it was very bad indeed to have

grinned in vain. Well, he would try no more grinning or at least no more

horse-collars. The only success worth one’s powder was success in the

line of one’s idiosyncrasy. Consistency was in itself distinction, and

what was talent but the art of being completely whatever it was that one

happened to be? One’s things were characteristic or they were nothing.

I look back rather fondly on our having exchanged in those days these

admirable remarks and many others; on our having been very happy too, in

spite of postponements and obscurities, in spite also of such occasional

hauntings as could spring from our lurid glimpse of the fact that even

twaddle cunningly calculated was far above people’s heads. It was easy

to wave away spectres by the reflection that all one had to do was not

to write for people; it was certainly not for people that Limbert wrote

while he hammered at _The Major Key_. The taint of literature was fatal

only in a certain kind of air, which was precisely the kind against

which we had now closed our window. Mrs. Stannace rose from her crumpled

cushions as soon as she had obtained an adjournment, and Maud looked

pale and proud, quite victorious and superior, at her having obtained

nothing more. Maud behaved well, I thought, to her mother, and well

indeed for a girl who had mainly been taught to be flowerlike to every

one. What she gave Ray Limbert her fine, abundant needs made him

then and ever pay for; but the gift was liberal, almost wonderful--an

assertion I make even while remembering to how many clever women, early

and late, his work has been dear. It was not only that the woman he was

to marry was in love with him, but that (this was the strangeness)

she had really seen almost better than any one what he could do. The

greatest strangeness was that she didn’t want him to do something

different. This boundless belief was indeed the main way of her

devotion; and as an act of faith it naturally asked for miracles. She

was a rare wife for a poet if she was not perhaps the best who could

have been picked out for a poor man.

Well, we were to have the miracles at all events and we were in a

perfect state of mind to receive them. There were more of us every day,

and we thought highly even of our friend’s odd jobs and pot-boilers. The

_Beacon_ had had no successor, but he found some quiet comers and stray

chances. Perpetually poking the fire and looking out of the window, he

was certainly not a monster of facility, but he was, thanks perhaps to a

certain method in that madness, a monster of certainty. It wasn’t every

one however who knew him for this: many editors printed him but once.

He was getting a small reputation as a man it was well to have the

first time; he created obscure apprehensions as to what might happen the

second. He was good for making an impression, but no one seemed exactly

to know what the impression was good for when made. The reason was

simply that they had not seen yet _The Major Key_ that fiery-hearted

rose as to which we watched in private the formation of petal after

petal and flame after flame. Nothing mattered but this, for it had

already elicited a splendid bid, much talked about in Mrs. Highmore’s

drawing-room, where at this point my reminiscences grow particularly

thick. _Her_ roses bloomed all the year and her sociability increased

with her row of prizes. We had an idea that we “met every one” there--so

we naturally thought when we met each other. Between our hostess and Ray

Limbert flourished the happiest relation, the only cloud on which was

that her husband eyed him rather askance. When he was called clever this

personage wanted to know what he had to “show;” and it was certain that

he showed nothing that could compare with Jane Highmore. Mr. Highmore

took his stand on accomplished work and, turning up his coat-tails,

warmed his rear with a good conscience at the neat bookcase in which

the generations of triplets were chronologically arranged. The harmony

between his companions rested on the fact that, as I have already

hinted, each would have liked so much to be the other. Limbert couldn’t

but have a feeling about a woman who in addition to being the best

creature and her sister’s backer would have made, could she have

condescended, such a success with the _Beacon_. On the other hand Mrs.

Highmore used freely to say: “Do you know, he’ll do exactly the thing

that _I_ want to do? I shall never do it myself, but he’ll do it

instead. Yes, he’ll do _my_ thing, and I shall hate him for it--the

wretch.” Hating him was her pleasant humour, for the wretch was

personally to her taste.

She prevailed on her own publisher to promise to take _The Major Key_

and to engage to pay a considerable sum down, as the phrase is, on the

presumption of its attracting attention. This was good news for the

evening’s end at Mrs. Highmore’s when there were only four or five left

and cigarettes ran low; but there was better news to come, and I have

never forgotten how, as it was I who had the good fortune to bring it, I

kept it back on one of those occasions, for the sake of my effect, till

only the right people remained. The right people were now more and

more numerous, but this was a revelation addressed only to a choice

residuum--a residuum including of course Limbert himself, with whom I

haggled for another cigarette before I announced that as a consequence

of an interview I had had with him that afternoon, and of a subtle

argument I had brought to bear, Mrs. Highmore’s pearl of publishers had

agreed to put forth the new book as a serial. He was to “run” it in

his magazine and he was to pay ever so much more for the privilege. I

produced a fine gasp which presently found a more articulate relief,

but poor Limbert’s voice failed him once for all (he knew he was to walk

away with me) and it was some one else who asked me in what my subtle

argument had resided. I forget what florid description I then gave of

it: to-day I have no reason not to confess that it had resided in the

simple plea that the book was exquisite. I had said: “Come, my dear

friend, be original; just risk it for that!” My dear friend seemed

to rise to the chance, and I followed up my advantage, permitting

him honestly no illusion as to the quality of the work. He clutched

interrogatively at two or three attenuations, but I dashed them aside,

leaving him face to face with the formidable truth. It was just a pure

gem: was he the man not to flinch? His danger appeared to have acted

upon him as the anaconda acts upon the rabbit; fascinated and paralysed,

he had been engulfed in the long pink throat. When a week before, at my

request, Limbert had let me possess for a day the complete manuscript,

beautifully copied out by Maud Stannace, I had flushed with indignation

at its having to be said of the author of such pages that he hadn’t the

common means to marry. I had taken the field in a great glow to repair

this scandal, and it was therefore quite directly my fault if three

months later, when _The Major Key_ began to run, Mrs. Stannace was

driven to the wall. She had made a condition of a fixed income; and at

last a fixed income was achieved.

She had to recognise it, and after much prostration among the

photographs she recognised it to the extent of accepting some of the

convenience of it in the form of a project for a common household, to

the expenses of which each party should proportionately contribute.

Jane Highmore made a great point of her not being left alone, but Mrs.

Stannace herself determined the proportion, which on Limbert’s side at

least and in spite of many other fluctuations was never altered. His

income had been “fixed” with a vengeance: having painfully stooped to

the comprehension of it Mrs. Stannace rested on this effort to the end

and asked no further question on the subject. _The Major Key_ in other

words ran ever so long, and before it was half out Limbert and Maud had

been married and the common household set up. These first months were

probably the happiest in the family annals, with wedding-bells and

budding laurels, the quiet, assured course of the book and the friendly,

familiar note, round the corner, of Mrs. Highmore’s big guns. They gave

Ralph time to block in another picture as well as to let me know after

a while that he had the happy prospect of becoming a father. We had

at times some dispute as to whether _The Major Key_ was making an

impression, but our contention could only be futile so long as we were

not agreed as to what an impression consisted of. Several persons wrote

to the author and several others asked to be introduced to him: wasn’t

that an impression? One of the lively “weeklies,” snapping at the deadly

“monthlies,” said the whole thing was “grossly inartistic”--wasn’t

that? It was somewhere else proclaimed “a wonderfully subtle

character-study”--wasn’t that too? The strongest effect doubtless was

produced on the publisher when, in its lemon-coloured volumes, like

a little dish of three custards, the book was at last served cold: he

never got his money back and so far as I know has never got it back to

this day. _The Major Key_ was rather a great performance than a great

success. It converted readers into friends and friends into lovers; it

placed the author, as the phrase is--placed him all too definitely; but

it shrank to obscurity in the account of sales eventually rendered. It

was in short an exquisite thing, but it was scarcely a thing to have

published and certainly not a thing to have married on. I heard all

about the matter, for my intervention had much exposed me. Mrs. Highmore

said the second volume had given her ideas, and the ideas are probably

to be found in some of her works, to the circulation of which they have

even perhaps contributed. This was not absolutely yet the very thing she

wanted to do, but it was on the way to it. So much, she informed me,

she particularly perceived in the light of a critical study which I put

forth in a little magazine; which the publisher in his advertisements

quoted from profusely; and as to which there sprang up some absurd story

that Limbert himself had written it. I remember that on my asking some

one why such an idiotic thing had been said my interlocutor replied:

“Oh, because, you know, it’s just the way he _would_ have written!” My

spirit sank a little perhaps as I reflected that with such analogies in

our manner there might prove to be some in our fate.

It was during the next four or five years that our eyes were open to

what, unless something could be done, that fate, at least on Limbert’s

part, might be. The thing to be done was of course to write the book,

the book that would make the difference, really justify the burden he

had accepted and consummately express his power. For the works that

followed upon _The Major Key_ he had inevitably to accept conditions the

reverse of brilliant, at a time too when the strain upon his resources

had begun to show sharpness. With three babies in due course, an ailing

wife and a complication still greater than these, it became highly

important that a man should do only his best. Whatever Limbert did was

his best; so at least each time I thought and so I unfailingly said

somewhere, though it was not my saying it, heaven knows, that made the

desired difference. Every one else indeed said it, and there was among

multiplied worries always the comfort that his position was quite

assured. The two books that followed _The Major Key_ did more than

anything else to assure it, and Jane Highmore was always crying out:

“You stand alone, dear Ray; you stand absolutely alone!” Dear Ray

used to tell me that he felt the truth of this in feebly attempted

discussions with his bookseller. His sister-in-law gave him good advice

into the bargain; she was a repository of knowing hints, of esoteric

learning. These things were doubtless not the less valuable to him

for bearing wholly on the question of how a reputation might be with

a little gumption, as Mrs. Highmore said, “worked.” Save when she

occasionally bore testimony to her desire to do, as Limbert did,

something some day for her own very self, I never heard her speak of the

literary motive as if it were distinguishable from the pecuniary. She

cocked up his hat, she pricked up his prudence for him, reminding him

that as one seemed to take one’s self so the silly world was ready to

take one. It was a fatal mistake to be too candid even with those who

were all right--not to look and to talk prosperous, not at least to

pretend that one had beautiful sales. To listen to her you would have

thought the profession of letters a wonderful game of bluff. Wherever

one’s idea began it ended somehow in inspired paragraphs in the

newspapers. “_I_ pretend, I assure you, that you are going off like

wildfire--I can at least do that for you!” she often declared, prevented

as she was from doing much else by Mr. Highmore’s insurmountable

objection to _their_ taking Mrs. Stannace.

I couldn’t help regarding the presence of this latter lady in Limbert’s

life as the major complication: whatever he attempted it appeared given

to him to achieve as best he could in the mere margin of the space

in which she swung her petticoats. I may err in the belief that she

practically lived on him, for though it was not in him to follow

adequately Mrs. Highmore’s counsel there were exasperated confessions

he never made, scanty domestic curtains he rattled on their rings. I may

exaggerate in the retrospect his apparent anxieties, for these after all

were the years when his talent was freshest and when as a writer he most

laid down his line. It wasn’t of Mrs. Stannace nor even as time went on

of Mrs. Limbert that we mainly talked when I got at longer intervals a

smokier hour in the little grey den from which we could step out, as we

used to say, to the lawn. The lawn was the back-garden, and Limbert’s

study was behind the dining-room, with folding doors not impervious to

the clatter of the children’s tea. We sometimes took refuge from it in

the depths--a bush and a half deep--of the shrubbery, where was a bench

that gave us a view while we gossiped of Mrs. Stannace’s tiara-like

headdress nodding at an upper window. Within doors and without Limbert’s

life was overhung by an awful region that figured in his conversation,

comprehensively and with unpremeditated art, as Upstairs. It was

Upstairs that the thunder gathered, that Mrs. Stannace kept her accounts

and her state, that Mrs. Limbert had her babies and her headaches, that

the bells for ever jangled at the maids, that everything imperative in

short took place--everything that he had somehow, pen in hand, to meet

and dispose of in the little room on the garden-level. I don’t think

he liked to go Upstairs, but no special burst of confidence was needed

to make me feel that a terrible deal of service went. It was the habit

of the ladies of the Stannace family to be extremely waited on, and I’ve

never been in a house where three maids and a nursery-governess

gave such an impression of a retinue. “Oh, they’re so deucedly, so

hereditarily fine!”--I remember how that dropped from him in some

worried hour. Well, it was because Maud was so universally fine that

we had both been in love with her. It was not an air moreover for the

plaintive note: no private inconvenience could long outweigh for him the

great happiness of these years--the happiness that sat with us when we

talked and that made it always amusing to talk, the sense of his being

on the heels of success, coming closer and closer, touching it at last,

knowing that he should touch it again and hold it fast and hold it high.

Of course when we said success we didn’t mean exactly what Mrs. Highmore

for instance meant. He used to quote at me as a definition something

from a nameless page of my own, some stray dictum to the effect that

the man of his craft had achieved it when of a beautiful subject his

expression was complete. Well, wasn’t Limbert’s in all conscience

complete?