“Delicious my having come down to tell him of it!” Mr. Morrow ejaculated.
“My cab was at the door twenty minutes after _The Empire_ had been laid
on my breakfast-table. Now what have you got for me?” he continued,
dropping again into his chair, from which, however, he the next moment
eagerly rose. “I was shown into the drawing-room, but there must be more
to see—his study, his literary sanctum, the little things he has about,
or other domestic objects and features. He wouldn’t be lying down on his
study-table? There’s a great interest always felt in the scene of an
author’s labours. Sometimes we’re favoured with very delightful peeps.
Dora Forbes showed me all his table-drawers, and almost jammed my hand
into one into which I made a dash! I don’t ask that of you, but if we
could talk things over right there where he sits I feel as if I should
get the keynote.”
I had no wish whatever to be rude to Mr. Morrow, I was much too initiated
not to tend to more diplomacy; but I had a quick inspiration, and I
entertained an insurmountable, an almost superstitious objection to his
crossing the threshold of my friend’s little lonely shabby consecrated
workshop. “No, no—we shan’t get at his life that way,” I said. “The way
to get at his life is to—But wait a moment!” I broke off and went
quickly into the house, whence I in three minutes reappeared before Mr.
Morrow with the two volumes of Paraday’s new book. “His life’s here,” I
went on, “and I’m so full of this admirable thing that I can’t talk of
anything else. The artist’s life’s his work, and this is the place to
observe him. What he has to tell us he tells us with _this_ perfection.
My dear sir, the best interviewer is the best reader.”
Mr. Morrow good-humouredly protested. “Do you mean to say that no other
source of information should be open to us?”
“None other till this particular one—by far the most copious—has been
quite exhausted. Have you exhausted it, my dear sir? Had you exhausted
it when you came down here? It seems to me in our time almost wholly
neglected, and something should surely be done to restore its ruined
credit. It’s the course to which the artist himself at every step, and
with such pathetic confidence, refers us. This last book of Mr.
Paraday’s is full of revelations.”
“Revelations?” panted Mr. Morrow, whom I had forced again into his chair.
“The only kind that count. It tells you with a perfection that seems to
me quite final all the author thinks, for instance, about the advent of
the ‘larger latitude.’”
“Where does it do that?” asked Mr. Morrow, who had picked up the second
volume and was insincerely thumbing it.
“Everywhere—in the whole treatment of his case. Extract the opinion,
disengage the answer—those are the real acts of homage.”
Mr. Morrow, after a minute, tossed the book away. “Ah but you mustn’t
take me for a reviewer.”
“Heaven forbid I should take you for anything so dreadful! You came down
to perform a little act of sympathy, and so, I may confide to you, did I.
Let us perform our little act together. These pages overflow with the
testimony we want: let us read them and taste them and interpret them.
You’ll of course have perceived for yourself that one scarcely does read
Neil Paraday till one reads him aloud; he gives out to the ear an
extraordinary full tone, and it’s only when you expose it confidently to
that test that you really get near his style. Take up your book again
and let me listen, while you pay it out, to that wonderful fifteenth
chapter. If you feel you can’t do it justice, compose yourself to
attention while I produce for you—I think I can!—this scarcely less
admirable ninth.”
Mr. Morrow gave me a straight look which was as hard as a blow between
the eyes; he had turned rather red, and a question had formed itself in
his mind which reached my sense as distinctly as if he had uttered it:
“What sort of a damned fool are _you_?” Then he got up, gathering
together his hat and gloves, buttoning his coat, projecting hungrily all
over the place the big transparency of his mask. It seemed to flare over
Fleet Street and somehow made the actual spot distressingly humble: there
was so little for it to feed on unless he counted the blisters of our
stucco or saw his way to do something with the roses. Even the poor
roses were common kinds. Presently his eyes fell on the manuscript from
which Paraday had been reading to me and which still lay on the bench.
As my own followed them I saw it looked promising, looked pregnant, as if
it gently throbbed with the life the reader had given it. Mr. Morrow
indulged in a nod at it and a vague thrust of his umbrella. “What’s
that?”
“Oh, it’s a plan—a secret.”
“A secret!” There was an instant’s silence, and then Mr. Morrow made
another movement. I may have been mistaken, but it affected me as the
translated impulse of the desire to lay hands on the manuscript, and this
led me to indulge in a quick anticipatory grab which may very well have
seemed ungraceful, or even impertinent, and which at any rate left Mr.
Paraday’s two admirers very erect, glaring at each other while one of
them held a bundle of papers well behind him. An instant later Mr.
Morrow quitted me abruptly, as if he had really carried something off
with him. To reassure myself, watching his broad back recede, I only
grasped my manuscript the tighter. He went to the back door of the
house, the one he had come out from, but on trying the handle he appeared
to find it fastened. So he passed round into the front garden, and by
listening intently enough I could presently hear the outer gate close
behind him with a bang. I thought again of the thirty-seven influential
journals and wondered what would be his revenge. I hasten to add that he
was magnanimous: which was just the most dreadful thing he could have
been. _The Tatler_ published a charming chatty familiar account of Mr.
Paraday’s “Home-life,” and on the wings of the thirty-seven influential
journals it went, to use Mr. Morrow’s own expression, right round the
globe.