On a bleak wet stormy afternoon at the outset of last year’s Spring, I
was in a cottage, all alone, and knowing that I must be all alone till
evening. It was a remote cottage, in a remote county, and had been ‘let
furnished’ by its owner. My spirits are easily affected by weather, and
I hate solitude. And I dislike to be master of things that are not mine.
‘Be careful not to break us,’ say the glass and china. ‘You’d better
not spill ink on me,’ growls the carpet. ‘None of your dog’s-earing,
thumb-marking, back-breaking tricks here!’ snarl the books.
The books in this cottage looked particularly disagreeable--horrid
little upstarts of this and that scarlet or cerulean ‘series’ of
‘standard’ authors. Having gloomily surveyed them, I turned my back on
them, and watched the rain streaming down the latticed window, whose
panes seemed likely to be shattered at any moment by the wind. I have
known men who constantly visit the Central Criminal Court, visit also
the scenes where famous crimes were committed, form their own theories
of those crimes, collect souvenirs of those crimes, and call themselves
Criminologists. As for me, my interest in crime is, alas, merely morbid.
I did not know, as those others would doubtless have known, that
the situation in which I found myself was precisely of the kind most
conducive to the darkest deeds. I did but bemoan it, and think of Lear
in the hovel on the heath. The wind howled in the chimney, and the rain
had begun to sputter right down it, so that the fire was beginning to
hiss in a very sinister manner. Suppose the fire went out! It looked as
if it meant to. I snatched the pair of bellows that hung beside it. I
plied them vigorously. ‘Now mind!--not too vigorously. We aren’t yours!’
they wheezed. I handled them more gently. But I did not release them
till they had secured me a steady blaze.
I sat down before that blaze. Despair had been warded off. Gloom,
however, remained; and gloom grew. I felt that I should prefer any one’s
thoughts to mine. I rose, I returned to the books. A dozen or so of
those which were on the lowest of the three shelves were full-sized,
were octavo, looked as though they had been bought to be read. I would
exercise my undoubted right to read one of them. Which of them? I
gradually decided on a novel by a well-known writer whose works, though
I had several times had the honour of meeting her, were known to me only
by repute.
I knew nothing of them that was not good. The lady’s ‘output’ had not
been at all huge, and it was agreed that her ‘level’ was high. I had
always gathered that the chief characteristic of her work was its great
‘vitality.’ The book in my hand was a third edition of her latest novel,
and at the end of it were numerous press-notices, at which I glanced
for confirmation. ‘Immense vitality,’ yes, said one critic. ‘Full,’
said another, ‘of an intense vitality.’ ‘A book that will live,’ said
a third. How on earth did he know that? I was, however, very willing
to believe in the vitality of this writer for all present purposes.
Vitality was a thing in which she herself, her talk, her glance, her
gestures, abounded. She and they had been, I remembered, rather too much
for me. The first time I met her, she said something that I lightly and
mildly disputed. On no future occasion did I stem any opinion of hers.
Not that she had been rude. Far from it. She had but in a sisterly,
brotherly way, and yet in a way that was filially eager too, asked me
to explain my point. I did my best. She was all attention. But I was
conscious that my best, under her eye, was not good. She was quick to
help me: she said for me just what I had tried to say, and proceeded to
show me just why it was wrong. I smiled the gallant smile of a man who
regards women as all the more adorable because logic is not their strong
point, bless them! She asked--not aggressively, but strenuously, as one
who dearly loves a joke--what I was smiling at. Altogether, a chastening
encounter; and my memory of it was tinged with a feeble resentment. How
she had scored! No man likes to be worsted in argument by a woman. And
I fancy that to be vanquished by a feminine writer is the kind of defeat
least of all agreeable to a man who writes. A ‘sex war,’ we are often
told is to be one of the features of the world’s future--women
demanding the right to do men’s work, and men refusing, resisting,
counter-attacking. It seems likely enough. One can believe anything
of the world’s future. Yet one conceives that not all men, if this
particular evil come to pass, will stand packed shoulder to shoulder
against all women. One does not feel that the dockers will be very
bitter against such women as want to be miners, or the plumbers frown
much upon the would-be steeple-jills. I myself have never had my sense
of fitness jarred, nor a spark of animosity roused in me, by a woman
practising any of the fine arts--except the art of writing. That she
should write a few little poems or pensées, or some impressions of a
trip in a dahabieh as far as (say) Biskra, or even a short story or
two, seems to me not wholly amiss, even though she do such things for
publication. But that she should be an habitual, professional author,
with a passion for her art, and a fountain-pen and an agent, and sums
down in advance of royalties on sales in Canada and Australia, and a
profound knowledge of human character, and an essentially sane outlook,
is somehow incongruous with my notions--my mistaken notions, if you
will--of what she ought to be.
‘Has a profound knowledge of human character, and an essentially sane
outlook’ said one of the critics quoted at the end of the book that I
had chosen. The wind and the rain in the chimney had not abated, but
the fire was bearing up bravely. So would I. I would read cheerfully and
without prejudice. I poked the fire and, pushing my chair slightly back,
lest the heat should warp the book’s covers, began Chapter I. A
woman sat writing in a summer-house at the end of a small garden
that overlooked a great valley in Surrey. The description of her was
calculated to make her very admirable--a thorough woman, not strictly
beautiful, but likely to be thought beautiful by those who knew her
well; not dressed as though she gave much heed to her clothes, but
dressed in a fashion that exactly harmonised with her special type. Her
pen ‘travelled’ rapidly across the foolscap, and while it did so she was
described in more and more detail. But at length she came to a ‘knotty
point’ in what she was writing. She paused, she pushed back the hair
from her temples, she looked forth at the valley; and now the landscape
was described, but not at all exhaustively, it, for the writer soon
overcame her difficulty, and her pen travelled faster than ever, till
suddenly there was a cry of ‘Mammy!’ and in rushed a seven-year-old
child, in conjunction with whom she was more than ever admirable; after
which the narrative skipped back across eight years, and the woman
became a girl, giving as yet no token of future eminence in literature
but--I had an impulse which I obeyed almost before I was, conscious of
it.
Nobody could have been more surprised than I was at what I had
done--done so neatly, so quietly and gently. The book stood closed,
upright, with its back to me, just as on a book-shelf, behind the bars
of the grate. There it was. And it gave forth, as the flames crept
up the blue cloth sides of it, a pleasant though acrid smell. My
astonishment had passed, giving place to an exquisite satisfaction.
How pottering and fumbling a thing was even the best kind of written
criticism! I understood the contempt felt by the man of action for the
man of words. But what pleased me most was that at last, actually, I, at
my age, I of all people, had committed a crime--was guilty of a crime.
I had power to revoke it. I might write to my bookseller for an
unburnt copy, and place it on the shelf where this one had stood--this
gloriously glowing one. I would do nothing of the sort. What I had done
I had done. I would wear forever on my conscience the white rose of
theft and the red rose of arson. If hereafter the owner of this cottage
happened to miss that volume--let him! If he were fool enough to write
to me about it, would I share my grand secret with him? No. Gently,
with his poker, I prodded that volume further among the coals.
The all-but-consumed binding shot forth little tongues of bright
colour--flamelets of sapphire, amethyst, emerald. Charming! Could even
the author herself not admire them? Perhaps. Poor woman!--I had scored
now, scored so perfectly that I felt myself to be almost a brute while
I poked off the loosened black outer pages and led the fire on to pages
that were but pale brown.
These were quickly devoured. But it seemed to me that whenever I left
the fire to forage for itself it made little headway. I pushed the book
over on its side. The flames closed on it, but presently, licking their
lips, fell back, as though they had had enough. I took the tongs and put
the book upright again, and raked it fore and aft. It seemed almost
as thick as ever. With poker and tongs I carved it into two, three
sections--the inner pages flashing white as when they were sent to
the binders. Strange! Aforetime, a book was burnt now and again in the
market-place by the common hangman. Was he, I wondered, paid by the
hour? I had always supposed the thing quite easy for him--a bright
little, brisk little conflagration, and so home. Perhaps other books
were less resistant than this one? I began to feel that the critics were
more right than they knew. Here was a book that had indeed an intense
vitality, and an immense vitality. It was a book that would live--do
what one might. I vowed it should not. I subdivided it, spread it,
redistributed it. Ever and anon my eye would be caught by some sentence
or fragment of a sentence in the midst of a charred page before the
flames crept over it. Always loathed you, but, I remember; and think
Tolstoi was right. Who had always loathed whom? And what, what, had
Tolstoi been right about? I had an absurd but genuine desire to know.
Too late! Confound the woman!--she was scoring again. I furiously drove
her pages into the yawning crimson jaws of the coals. Those jaws had
lately been golden. Soon, to my horror, they seemed to be growing grey.
They seemed to be closing--on nothing. Flakes of black paper, full-sized
layers of paper brown and white, began to hide them from me altogether.
I sprinkled a boxful of wax matches. I resumed the bellows. I lunged
with the poker. I held a newspaper over the whole grate. I did all that
inspiration could suggest, or skill accomplish. Vainly. The fire went
out--darkly, dismally, gradually, quite out.
How she had scored again! But she did not know it. I felt no bitterness
against her as I lay back in my chair, inert, listening to the storm
that was still raging. I blamed only myself. I had done wrong. The small
room became very cold. Whose fault was that but my own? I had done wrong
hastily, but had done it and been glad of it. I had not remembered the
words a wise king wrote long ago, that the lamp of the wicked shall be
put out, and that the way of trangressors is hard.