For Charteris was important. Patricia was rereading all the books that
Charteris had published, and they engrossed her with an augmenting
admiration.
But it is unnecessary to dilate upon the marvelous and winning pictures
of life in Lichfield before the War between the States which Charteris
has painted in his novels. "Even as the king of birds that with
unwearied wing soars nearest to the sun, yet wears upon his breast the
softest down,"--as we learn from no less eminent authority than that of
the _Lichfield Courier-Herald_--"so Mr. Charteris is equally expert in
depicting the derring-do and tenderness of those glorious days of
chivalry, of fair women and brave men, of gentle breeding, of splendid
culture and wholesome living."
Patricia was not a little puzzled by these books. The traditional
Lichfield, she decided in the outcome, may very possibly have been just
the trick-work of a charlatan's cleverness; but, even in that event,
here were the tales of life in Lichfield--ardent, sumptuous and
fragrant throughout with the fragrance of love and roses, of rhyme and
of youth's lovely fallacies; and for the pot-pourri, if it deserved no
higher name, all who believed that living ought to be a uniformly noble
transaction could not fail to be grateful eternally.
Esthetic values apart--and, indeed, to all such values Patricia accorded
a provisional respect--what most impressed her Stapyltonian mind was the
fact that these books represented, in a perfectly tangible way, success.
Patricia very heartily admired success when it was brevetted as such by
the applause of others. And while to be a noted stylist, and even to be
reasonably sure of annotated reissuement for the plaguing of unborn
schoolchildren, was all well enough, in an unimportant, high-minded way,
Patricia was far more vividly impressed by the blunt figures which told
how many of John Charteris's books had been bought and paid for. She
accepted these figures as his publishers gave them forth, implicitly;
and she marveled over and took odd joy in these figures. They enabled
her to admire Charteris's books without reservation.
By this time Mrs. Ashmeade had managed, in the most natural manner, to
tell Patricia a deal concerning Charteris. No halo graced the portrait
Mrs. Ashmeade painted.... But, indeed, Patricia now viewed John
Charteris, considered as a person, without any particular bias. She did
not especially care--now--what the man had done or had omitted to do.
But the venerable incongruity of the writer and his work confronted her
intriguingly. A Charteris writes _In Old Lichfield;_ a Cockney
drug-clerk writes _The Eve of St. Agnes;_ a genteel printer evolves a
Lovelace; and a cutpurse pens the _Ballad of Dead Ladies_ in a brothel.
It is manifestly impossible; and it happens.
So here, then, was a knave who held, somehow, the keys to a courtlier
and nobler world. These tales made living seem a braver business, for
all that they were written by a poltroon. Was it pure posturing?
Patricia, at least, thought it was not. At worst, such dexterous
maintenance of a pose was hardly despicable, she considered. And,
anyhow, she preferred to believe that Charteris had by some miracle put
the best of himself into these books, had somehow clarified the
abhorrent mixture of ability and evil which was John Charteris; and the
best in him she found, on this hypothesis, to be a deal more admirable
than the best in Rudolph Musgrave.
"It _is_ a part of Jack," she fiercely said. "It is, because I know it
is. All this is part of him--as much a part of him as the cowardice and
the trickery. So I don't really care if he is a liar and a coward. I
ought to, I suppose. But at the bottom of my heart I admire him. He has
made something; he has created these beautiful books, and they will be
here when we are all dead. He doesn't leave the world just as he found
it. That is the only real cowardice, I think--especially as I am going
to do it----"
And later she said, belligerently: "If I had been a man I could have at
least assassinated somebody who was prominent. I do wish Rudolph was
not such a stick-in-the-mud. And I wish I liked Rudolph better. But on
the whole I prefer the physical coward to the moral one. Rudolph simply
bores me stiff with his benevolent airs. He just walks around the place
forgiving me sixty times to the hour, and if he doesn't stop it I am
going to slap him."
Thus Patricia.