CHAPTER VI
Holidays were brief at the firm of Leslie Campbell; September meant strenuous preparation for the rush of autumn publications. "Piccadilly" had just gone into its shilling edition; and Ran Wyman had written a novel which was hastily, and quite rightly, banned by the libraries; this involved a tremendous amount of heated correspondence with the papers; the first number of the "White Review" would be issued the following month. And though the fortunate of the earth were still dallying by sea or mountain, the staff of Leslie Campbell could afford to do without ordinary people's relaxations—so argued Guy Burnett in his enthusiasm, and sadly the Heart-breaker assented.
But the turmoil and clatter at the office, the brilliant never-ending jargon of intellect, the exaggerated importance these Pioneers of the Future attached to their own and one another's brain-products, all this no longer affected Gareth in the same melancholy sense of being forever a mere looker-on. His book, till the present loved for itself and the treasures he put into it, now that he was back in London, twinkled into being as the key which was by and by to admit him to the fellowship of "Campbell's Young Men."
One of Them!—did ever a youthful squire yearning to sit at Arthur's Round Table of Knights, regard his hard-won spurs with half the reverent incredulity, as Gareth the book which was to procure him a place at the literary round table. There lurked no pain now in watching their impatience of outsiders, their splendid overwhelming swank. They did not lord it on false pretences; not one but had by some intellectual achievement earned a seat at the board; by some achievement.... Gareth fumbled for the consciousness of his half-finished book. He felt swelling up within him vast possibilities of swank, delicious new sensation which had hitherto been entirely foreign to his nature. How patronizingly he would encourage Guy Burnett: "Finished your 'Episode of a Navvy' yet, my lad? O you young pessimists...." With what a careless air would he accept Campbell's invitations to dine, and (seated at his host's right hand) how eloquently hold forth on his lately discovered philosophy of Attainment in Denial. Then the ease with which he would slip into his niche at gatherings in Mona Gurney's delightful Sussex cottage, Ran Wyman's eccentric suite of apartments in the Adelphi; Gareth had heard these spoken of; knew too that Graham Carr had a cherished abode in Devon, where the elect could at any time walk in with their portmanteaux: "I've run down to hammer out my new theme with you, Carr." "You're welcome, Temple, old man"—and the long intimate talks lasting far into the night. The insolence of the Heart-breaker would naturally have dissolved by then into the profoundest respect. And a suppressed dislike for the junior partner could at last find vent in speech: "I don't agree with you at all on that point, Alexander," swinging his legs from the desk in the inner room.
Mere childishness, perhaps, all this. Toys of fancy not fit for a grown man, for a man of forty years. The main miracle of the future was to be possessor of the creative gift; to walk on the shoulders of the rest of the world, pealing your message from the silver trumpet at your lips. Ah! but Gareth wanted the little human things as well—he had done without for so long; so long been overlooked and shoved aside; despised or pitied; a cipher, a negative quantity wherever he chanced to be; a failure—he desired the trivial tangible circumstances of success, or he could never believe it had really and actually come to him, to him, Gareth Temple, reader of other people's books. Whenever, late evenings and Sundays, he slackened at his labour of writing, and glancing round the ugly little dining-room, would think despondently of the sea and the attic window, then he had only to murmur the magic catch-phrase "One of Them" to be spurred to fresh bouts of toil. Of the success of the book finished, he had not the slightest doubt; this was not conceit, but rather judgment made fine and discriminating through long years of practice; not blind conceit, but a marvelling humility at the strange good fortune which had at length befallen him, permitting him to stumble on an idea above all things new, new and arresting. His style had always been faultless; slightly over-ornate, perhaps; something quaint and scholarly in the formal phrases that grouped themselves around an incident, like the rich blue and red and gold decorations on medieval parchment margins. But that would contrast well with the vigorous stripped sentences of the realistic school. No doubts then, as to ultimate triumph. Where Gareth did experience a few uncertain twinges was as to his moral capacities for the leg-swinging act, even when the right to swing was his own. Suppose—suppose after all he decided not to place his work with Leslie Campbell for publication, but send it rather to the Booke-Shoppe, an old-fashioned firm existing since the declining years of the nineteenth century; which continued to publish for the most part essays and belles-lettres, slender volumes of poetry and costly illustrated folios; a firm of book epicures, somewhatprécieuxin their handlings as delicately contemptuous of Campbell's strong red meat, as were "Campbell's Young Men" superior on the score of caviare andhors d'œuvrescontributed by the Booke-Shoppe to the general feast of literature.
Gareth went once to have a look at the Booke-Shoppe, stealing a twilight half-hour from the day's drudgery with Leslie Campbell. Thus the quest held a guilty pang of disloyalty not altogether unpleasant. He also knew that he would again be late for dinner; likewise that the gazing upon the outer walls of a publisher's sanctum was the sheerest folly, with the book lying scarcely more than half completed in his desk at home. Guilt and folly and a secret quest were good companions for a mellow September evening; the sunset powdering all the roofs of London with gold; Bloomsbury Church lifting a dazzling spire into the tender fading blue of the sky-strip that tented Holborn; and a blind man's fiddle scattering its melody, now plaintive, now a mere scraping jig, among the rapid swell of footsteps on the pavement. The Booke-Shoppe revealed itself in a tiny by-street, where the houses leant a little towards one another, as though in gossiping indignation at the incongruous glaring picture-palace, newly erected at the corner. And here was the Booke-Shoppe's dangling sign, that jutted over the wrought-iron lantern in the porch; latticed windows bulging oddly into the street; behind them a sense of dimness ... this was indeed the Perfect Publisher, from whose shrine one could imagine, without any shrinkings of distaste, the issue of all one's cherished favourites. Gareth fancied himself summoned to the octagonal chamber he was sure lingered behind those squares of thick glass; a chamber at once fragrant and frowsy with cobwebs and the aroma of lingering hopes; everywhere books; books piled and tumbled and tottering on floor and shelf; folios and quartos and duodecimos; classics and lyric poets and Elizabethan drama; rare gems of modern verse and prose. At a table likewise heaped, a wizened figure sitting in a round circle of lamplight; a little smoky old man, with spectacles pushed high up among a bush of untidy white hair, and kindly short-sighted brown eyes that mused absently on who might be the stranger at the door. Then Gareth would declare his name, and be greeted by a flood of gentle enthusiasm, and an exquisite comprehension of all he had put into "The Round Adventure."
"A somewhat fantastic title, Mr. Temple, but we'll keep it, oh, we'll keep it. My dear lad—you must permit me to call you so—I can't be too proud that you brought your delightful wares to the Booke-Shoppe!"... Discussion of contract, terms, advertisement?—perhaps! It was manifestly absurd for Gareth, sixteen years a reader, to hover and hope and dream impossible dreams of publishers; dream as he did in front of that iron swinging sign, on a mellow September evening; dream as might have done the veriest novice in the realm of letters. Gareth should have known better. Besides which, it made him late for dinner.
As it happened, Kathleen was later even than he. But in the parlour of Pacific Villa he found Trixie Worley awaiting him. The apparition was less of a shock than it might have been, had not her spiritual presence already formed a habit of straying into his realm of imagination; he knew just exactly what she was going to say, and how she would say it....
"Mr.Temple. Awordwith you.Privately."
"Certainly, Mrs. Worley. Won't you sit down?" She was mauver even than he remembered her. Much mauver....
She shut her eyes, gasped two or three times—then suddenly raised her eyebrows till they shot out of sight; and proceeded to issue a series of disjointed galvanic shocks.
"Mr.Temple. I'm amoralwoman."
She stopped dead. And he hastened to assure her that he believed this to be the case ... and wondered what he could have said to lead to the question being raised. "Won't you sit down?"... Surely this had not been interpreted in any wrong sense? Her next contribution to the interview seemed to hint the contrary:
"And I believe in thesanctityof the marriage law."
"Oh, quite; yes, indeed...." A horrible suspicion flashed through him, that her visit might be the result of a guilty attachment formed for himself; and that these references to holy wedlock were merely preliminary.
"And however muchFredadmires him, hehasgot awife."
Gareth gave it up. "Who has?"
"Mr.Kirby."
Then the object of her affection was that little Maori with the slanting yellow eyes. Gareth felt relieved. But why had he been chosen for father confessor?
"He has—yes—certainly ... a very beautiful woman!"
("Oh, Lord—perhaps I ought to have left that unsaid!")
"Andyouhave awife."
"And you have a husband," ... he was convinced now that it was a comic game they were playing, in which he had to fulfil his due share....
"Then why doesn't she lookafterhim?"
This apparently referred to Kathleen and Fred Worley—an improbable conjunction. Cautiously Gareth waited for more.
"Sinceyouseem quite unable to look afterher."
"Kathleen?"
"It'sagainstFred's express wish that I am here. Even though I've lefttwoof his cards outside. With mine."
But these did not seem to her bewildered host very adequate aids to respectability, since the enigma was now meandering backwards to what was from his point of view its most undesirable solution—namely, that Kathleen should console Fred for Trixie's desertion to himself. He did not at all like to be closeted with Trixie against Fred's express wish. And he cursed his own innate courtesy which would not permit him to do other than make a visitor appear welcome in his house.
"Do let me get you a glass of lemonade—or some cake?"
She wagged her head in solemn refusal. "The affair isboundto lead——" interminable pause in which the plot thickened like gravy exposed to the chill air ... "to theCream-Pashionel. They alwaysdo."
"Look here, Mrs. Worley," Temple crossed to the fireplace, and standing with his back to the grate, faced her with good-humoured determination to break through that awful barrier of mystery, "I honestly haven't the faintest idea what you are so kindly trying to tell me. I'm not clever at guessing things, you know. Won't you explain?"
"I'mbreakingit to you.Gently," said Trixie, still stolidly obscure. And indeed, by the time Gareth had groped through the enmeshing glooms to the heart of the riddle, that Kathleen and Napier Kirby were engaged in a surreptitious love-affair, it scarcely came any more as a reeling shock to his senses....
"Fredknows. AndIknow. I should supposepoorGrace knows. And everybody exceptyou. They have been seen motoring. Embracing. In the neighbourhood.Mr.Temple. You have been blind,indeed. You mustdosomething. Words cannot express my sorrow. And disgust. That such a thing should start under my very roof. Fredstilladmires him, though I say all day: 'Fred.Don'tadmire him!'"
She rose to go.
"You must take action at once.Sternaction. Appeal to her sense of shame. Tell her she's tooold." Pregnant interval of silence during the glove-buttoning process.... "Can you?—thanks ... or are youtooupset?... Thanks. And tell her—she's above all—awife."
And Mrs. Worley departed, immensely inflated with the consciousness of having impressively performed an unpleasant duty to her neighbour.
Gareth, left alone with the revelation that Kathleen was all this while deceiving him, that "people were beginning to talk," and "God knows how far the business has gone," Gareth ought no doubt to have aged visibly beneath the deadly blow, and sat quite, quite still for many hours, with hair turning slowly white.
Gareth experienced a momentary shock, certainly; the Songs his Mother Taught Him were responsible for that: honour and plighted troth, and—perhaps this was his fault; he should have shielded the woman—he had been neglecting her shamefully for the book ... the book! he had his secret love, why should she not have had hers the while? They needed something—at their age they needed something, when there were no children. He speculated on the personality of Napier Kirby. He had barely come in contact with him, at Rapparee House. Had they been very happy, the guilty pair? Rather, were they at present very happy? since no explanation now was required for Kathleen's unpunctuality. He wished she would come in and tell him all about it; where Kirby had taken her, and what he had said—but Gareth knew that would not do. He must either continue in ignorance, or display the qualities moral decency decreed should in these cases be displayed: indignation, jealousy, insulted honour, "you-shall-not-quit-my-roof,"—Gareth hunted about for these tendencies, desperately alarmed to find as substitute a gentle rosy glow of benevolence towards the erring couple, mild curiosity, and a purely whimsical desire to inform Mrs. Worley of the line he intended to take up in the matter.
It would have to be blindness, foolish complacent blindness to what was happening beneath his very eyes. An attitude rather damaging to his vanity, certainly, but he had failed to make Kathleen happy, and had no right, no right whatever, to rob her of the happiness she had gathered elsewhere. They had dragged on each other long enough; each should now enjoy the last topsy-turvy parcels they each had drawn from the bran-pie of youthful adventure. Gareth knew that before this year's summer he could not have been guilty of such incredible coolness in the face of disaster; but the madness of their holiday time, and then his book ... he had neglected Kathleen and must pay the price in silence.
Oh, let him at least be frank! Gareth replaced on the mantelpiece a black china cat with glassy yellow stare, which he had been hypnotically regarding, and threw himself in the arm-chair, shading his eyes with his hand. Let him be frank with himself! It was no question of payment—it was deliverance. It was a well-nigh sobbing relief. She was going. After all these hot aching years of strain, fortune in a wild fervour of generosity was tossing him one gift after another, culminating with this: that without any effort of action on his part, he was to be left alone; alone to live his life, and write his books, and ... dream his dreams of another girl; one who came in a breath of wind as fragrant and as cool, as Kathleen's presence had been a nightmare of harassed tightly puckered misery. The ethereal mist-maid of his visions had been so much with him of late, slipping in and out of the pages of the book, that he would not have been at all surprised to see her materialize like any Galatea. She had flitted through so many fanciful love-scenes, that Kathleen by his side at nights gave him an uneasy sense of treachery. If Kathleen were gone, then no one need ever step between him and the love he might have found, once, in youth. Perhaps even now, if he were alone—he half stretched forth his arms, "Oh, my dear, my dear" ... in a great rush of gratitude for his impending release. He had been so tired, with that patient tiredness which is worst of all; and himself would never have jerked off the yoke; he was the man, the bread-winner—Songs his Mother Taught Him ... no, Gareth would have kept faith with Kathleen, though it wore away his very life in fretted atoms. But now—he had only not to see.
When Kathleen entered, flushed, and with a certain vibrant quality to tone and gesture, he asked no questions, pretended to be deeply immersed in work; "Extra rush; autumn season." He had never told her about the book; this dream should not be damaged by too close handling. Perhaps, if she went before it appeared in print—it was still more than a third removed from completion—perhaps then he need never tell her. Gareth had dreaded that telling; dreaded her quick practical comments; dreaded the interest she would surely display. He wondered when she and Kirby were planning to make definite escape, and wished—again with a flicker of amusement at the thought of Mrs. Worley—that it would not be such manifest bad form to ask.
The book was not running as swiftly as it had done in Ilfracombe. He believed he might complete it by the end of the year—if he were alone.
September tiptoed so mildly into October, that in London, where berries do not redden in the hedges, the end of summer came as scarcely a shock. The skies were still blue, and the leaves still green; and if the sun rose an hour or two later, who can tell across London roofs and through London windows? If the sun dipped an hour or two earlier, so much the better for London lovers, who await longingly the shadows in a city where there is no solitude.
Napier and Kathleen were content to dawdle through the days, curiously heedless whether their intimacy were apparent to all eyes. Napier, indeed, was willing enough that Grace should hear rumours of his errantry ... he never lost sight of his resentful love for Grace and her provocative indifference, except in very rare moments when Kathleen's veritable monsoons of passion—hot wind from out of the desert—swept away all angry fidelity. Misunderstanding the woman as he did, misunderstanding the esoteric causes for the brilliance and beauty of this her last leap towards the sun, he approved of her extreme recklessness as to discovery, setting it down to a capacity lightly to enjoy a light flirtation, to revel bountifully in the fun which the passing moment yields to its devotees; her stormier moods he attributed to the devastating power of his own fascination. Naïve glee at his ability to inspire such genuine emotion, mingled with a somewhat unpleasant, perhaps even racial desire that he could all the while shout to Grace: "There you are!Thereyou are!" ... making her a present of Kathleen's body and soul, in order that Grace might better appreciate him, the recipient of these.
He owned, quite apart from the large house in Hamilton Terrace where his official family life was spent, a set of bachelor chambers off Jermyn Street, and here Kathleen and he often passed their evenings. The furniture of these rooms was amusing to her critical faculty: perfect unobtrusive taste of an English gentleman; every article expensive with the careless air of costing next to nothing; yet here and there, where Napier's secret preferences had willy-nilly broken through his layer of acquired good form, were spurts of gaudy colour: a bead-embroidered cushion ... scarlet and gold piano-cover he had draped with much pride and festooned with a large tinsel rose ... a couple of gold-framed pictures of very pink-and-white nudes with plenty of hair ... things that cost next to nothing with a shrieking air of being expensive.
But Kathleen loved just those awful pictures and the tinsel rose, with the same tenderness she had once poured on to Gareth's smaller failings—before these failings had become her daily companions.
And it was good to lie on the couch with her head on the satin cushion—his cushion—while he sang to her ... jumble of opera, and crooning lullaby, and those husky bitter-sweet melodies that never sound quite human, but rather as the plaint of love itself, or wail of exile....
Then he would stop singing, and laugh, and soothe her with his kisses ... cuddle her as if she were a silly child, and pet her ... who had ever before shown the temerity to pet Kathleen? And how she worshipped him for it ... worshipped his feline caresses.
On a certain Sunday of mid-October, Napier took her for a day's motoring in the country lanes of Surrey. He was in excellent humour, in anticipation of a trip to Spain, where he was entered for the great International Automobile Race to be held within a fortnight. Napier had little doubt but that he would come out victor in the contest; and Kathleen, noting his marvellous handling of the car, adjustment so swift and delicate as to be well-nigh instinctive to every emergency of road and traffic, Kathleen shared his confidence, and exulted in the man who was master of his job. For the time being, in the exhilaration of their rush out of London into a world that was bright and ruddy and clear-edged, nature's last abundant fling of colour and warmth before the closing-in, she succeeded in forgetting his impending departure. They lunched sumptuously at Dorking, and then leapt on again, eating up the curl of the road with incredible speed.... Napier's golden eyes were fixed straight ahead of him—his mouth smiled—and he hummed a tune that throbbed with a queer barbaric dissonance....
"What is it?" asked Kathleen, fascinated.
"Moorish. I picked it up when I was touring in Spain. Did I ever tell you, Kathleen, that I'd been a chauffeur for five months?"
And he related, with infinite zest at recollection, how some people had wished to hire from him a car and chauffeur for an exhaustive trip through Spain, during his first struggling years in the motor business; all the men in his service already booked, he yet had not dared to refuse so advantageous an offer, and had boldly undertaken the job himself, with all its attendant duties of guide and bottle-washer—"And Lordy! how that country twisted itself round the very core of my heart!"
So thus was explained his sudden thrilling inflection when, during their first conversation at Ilfracombe, he had spoken of Granada, and the hill called The Last Sigh of the Moor.... "I'd like to stand with you just there, and look down on the Alhambra...."
Why not, then? Why not? Throughout the rest of the afternoon she was strung to vibrant expectation of his: "Come with me, Kathleen!"...
Perhaps now he would say it; now, in the mellow inn-garden where they had tea, and watched the sun drop, a spinning red globe, through the opalescent October mists.
But though Napier talked excitedly, incessantly, of his vagabondage in Spain; fluent description of just what had attracted him: the lazy Southern people with their courtly ways—the clear rich colours—the voluptuous sunshine—over all, a sense of dignified repose, quiescent to the memory of past greatness in history; though he talked so much and so long that by the time they started for home, the chill of evening had crept up dankly over the landscape; yet he did not say: "Come with me, Kathleen...."
A moaning breeze rustled the foliage that clung faithfully to the boughs, reminding them that the day's generous flare of crimson and wine-colour and topaz had been the merest bravado ... and that winter was coming soon, very soon—Kathleen shivered a little, and drew her cloak tightly round her; the cushioned seats of the car felt soggy, and some withered leaves had blown in.... And still Napier talked of Spain, and the Moors in Spain, and castles in Spain, and himself in Spain—with never a word of her in Spain; never a word....
"I've got to go home to dinner to-night, darling; shall I put you down near Hammersmith or——"
She did not want to go home. The panic she was just succeeding in holding at arm's length, would surely find her at Pacific Villa.
She could easily fashion some careless lie to explain her absence to Gareth; the same lie she always used to cover those long evenings at the flat: she was going to the Worleys; they were teaching her bridge; would Gareth care to come too?—she risked the danger of an affirmative, knowing how busy he was of late, how he disliked bridge, how he disliked Trixie. Anyway, he appeared curiously apathetic towards her doings since their summer holiday.
"I don't want any dinner, Nap. Drop me at the flat, and join me later on, can you?"
He assented; but half-heartedly. It was wonderful to be going to Spain; wonderful to win the Cup Race—for he fully intended to win it by dexterous combinations of skill, recklessness, and foul play; wonderful that the feat was one which could be performed showily in sight of the multitude. Nothing was wanting to his anticipations of glory, save a special audience of his wife. Yes, Grace must be persuaded to come with him next week. He planned for a reconciliation to take place between them this very evening.... And afterwards he would sit blissfully with her beautiful auburn head against his knee, and make plans for their second honeymoon, along the Guadal-quiver.... And he would describe to her just how splendid she would feel, seeing him outrival all competitors in the great race.
Yes, Grace must come with him to Spain. He wanted it. Usually he got what he wanted. He drove to Hamilton Terrace and dressed for dinner, in a riot of triumphant anticipation....
A couple of hours later saw him, ominously silent, and with a curious glint under his heavy eyelids, letting himself into the flat where Kathleen awaited him. Grace had refused his request, quite calmly and good-temperedly; had said it would bore her....
And here was a dark woman with arms strangling his neck ... overwhelming him in a tide of words ... pleading, pleading that when he went to Spain, she might not be left behind. Pleading, as one pleads who for two solitary hours has been in desperate battle with the spectre of an old dread.
"I won't stay here—I won't. Napier, you promised, if ever you went South.... You said: 'One day we'll go together.' And this is 'one day,' isn't it? isn't it? Let me see you race and win. Take me along. Napier, you promised ... and I love you.... I won't face the grey days, and the white days, and the thick yellow days. You were so long coming this evening ... and it was cold and dark—my hands are numb with cold.... A hateful ballad-singer started croaking outside: 'Failin' leaf and fadin' tree——'.... She did, Napier, she did! and I couldn't bear it.... I wanted to kill her. Take me with you to Spain ... to see you win!"
For through all her stammering anguish was sufficient acumen left to strike again and again that final note, as the surest means of reaching his ear.
He bent back her head, so that her mouth lay beneath his. And she felt rather than saw his smile ... evil flash of smile, white in a dusky face....
("Dear old Nap, it would bore me stiff; I hate travelling.")
"Yes. You shall come with me," he assured Kathleen softly.
Kathleen was afire with excitement when that evening she alighted from the Hammersmith omnibus. Over and done with now, the strain and pretence and irritation of life with Gareth. Humdrum day succeeding day; monotony that his futile comings and goings were powerless to dispel. Panic-peopled realms of thought: winter-fear, birthday-dread—realm that she could not even claim as solely hers, since instinctively he was familiar with every shape therein—all over and done with. Warm land, warm love; her old tormented nature cast like the garment of a snake. In ten days' time. Morality, humour, common sense, stubbornly thrust under, lest they should reveal flaws and dangers in this glory of the future towards which doggedly she thrust her indomitable will. Nine more evenings to walk up that hideous front garden, to unlock that blistered door, look in the dining-room to see if Gareth were still up—her lip curved scornfully at the reflection that never once had he betrayed sufficient intelligence to note her altered demeanour.
She opened the dining-room door. The lamp was smoking badly. She attempted with smarting eyes to pierce the fog.
Gareth was sitting at the table, his head propped on his hands; staring, staring straight in front of him, with the look of a man to whom has just happened the worst thing of all. Before him in a pile stood the usual array of brown-paper-bound manuscripts which he brought back from the office; one lay strewn on the floor, white patches on the dingy carpet. Somebody must have thrown it there.
"Has anything happened, Gareth? Aren't you feeling well?"
He gazed at and through her, as if she were not there.
"Gareth, did you hear me? Has anything happened?"
After a long pause, her presence seemed to penetrate to him, as a buzzing element of which he must at all costs be quit.
"Go to bed, Kathleen. I'm quite all right." His voice was dull and toneless.
She could not be bothered with him that night of nights; he, of the old order of things.... Kathleen closed the door; went happily upstairs.
And Gareth was left with his pile of other people's books, and the one among them that contained his idea.
"The Reverse of the Medal," by Pat O'Neill.
Who was Pat O'Neill? He neither knew nor cared. Obviously a new writer, since the name was unfamiliar. For that reason, Gareth had selected it for reading first of the number, in the hope of striking something original.... Well, he had succeeded; Gareth had long since been convinced of the originality of his own inspiration.
The perusal of the opening chapters evoked a keen scholarly pleasure in the masterly handling of phrases, for the unmistakable genius displayed in character and thought.... And all the while, a curious unreal sensation, as if he were being dragged along unfamiliar paths towards a spot of which he was perfectly cognizant, would recognize the instant he set eyes on it; only the way thither was not known to him.... The nightmare feeling grew and grew—he was stifling truth in a blurred rapid horror of leading—on and on—unmistakably aware now to what summit of inspiration each phrase, each situation, was leading....
A last effort of frantic unconvinced self-persuasion that he was mistaken, the next page would show him so—well then, the next chapter; he had his own book so much on his mind, that it infected absurdly everything he read; this other, this Pat O'Neill, was labouring towards an entirely different issue; funny that in places it should appear so like.
Half-way through the manuscript, no more possibility of doubt. It was then that the white staring pages found their scattered resting-place on the carpet.
His idea.
In his official capacity, he would have to compose a report to send up to Leslie Campbell, who would probably publish the book. An astoundingly good piece of work, he would have to report well on it.
His idea.
Not for an instant could he accuse the unknown author of deliberate plagiarism. No; these brainwaves occurred at times. He had heard several cases of two books or two plays each founded on the same theme, evolved at the same period by their totally unconscious creators. In this case, the other man would get in first, that was all. And it mattered so intensely to Gareth.
Drearily he stared at the black china cat with yellow eyes, who occupied the centre of the mantelpiece, just where the faded red velvet with its brownish fringe was looped up with a nail.
"What am I to do?"
The cat leered evilly: "You might give the book a bad report; then the Heart-breaker would tie it up in a parcel, and, whistling, carry it to the post."
"Another firm will publish it if Campbell doesn't. There's a good two months' work in mine still. 'The Reverse of the Medal' is bound to get in first."
"Then keep back the manuscript," counselled the black china cat, who had presided so long on that shelf in that room, that it must in witnessing, have sucked into its unaired soul all of the bickerings and heart-burnings of the two dwelling in Pacific Villa, and all of the things unsaid that hung thickly in the air long after the dining-room was empty of occupants. A nasty little cheap black cat, meagre and dusty.
"Then keep back the manuscript."
"Keep it back?"
"Well, why not?"
It did occasionally last a couple of months before the reader sent up his report of a book. Not often; Gareth was regular in the discharge of his duties. Moreover, every manuscript received at the office was of course duly notified with date and title. But it might easily happen that in this case the copy should be accidentally mislaid, mislaid for quite a length of time.
And in the meanwhile he would work; work feverishly at his own book. Finish it in six weeks. Finish it, and submit it to a publisher, any publisher, so only that it got in first.
Why not?
"It's—mean," said Gareth to the black china cat.
"I don't care one way or another," the latter retorted indifferently. "Go back to the old routine, day after day, and nothing ahead to look forward to. Dreams smashed. Career in atoms. Shoved on one side by 'Campbell's Young Men.' Just tolerated by Campbell himself——"
"Ah, no—I can't!" The man buried his head on his arms, while a great bitterness drained his soul. Forty years, and nothing to show for them—and now to have success snatched away when it dangled within grasping reach. "I can't!"
... Gareth looked too long into the shallow eyes of the black china cat....
"Pat O'Neill must pay for pitching on the same idea as mine," he said at last, slowly. And slowly gathered up the scattered manuscript, sheet by sheet. Slowly crossed to the desk, and opened the lowest drawer, and thrust in the untidy parcel; crushed it down, and shut the drawer, and locked it.
When he mounted the creaking stairway to the room he shared with Kathleen, there were ugly lines around his mouth, a hard glitter in his eyes. And he was vexed to see her smiling in her sleep.