For all that, theWatchmanmade a brave show every Friday, and its articles were quoted widely in the provincial Press as representing the weighty opinion of Tory inner circles; and the more theWatchmanwas quoted the higher rose the hopes of Mr. Pilkington that Lord Dingleton would continue to bridge the monthly chasm which yawned between the income of theWatchmanand the cost of its production, for—let us blab the horrid truth, as yet unknown to Henry—the paper was merely the expensive hobby of his lordship.
On returning to his office after his encounter with Trevor Smith, the young journalist was surprised and delighted to find Adrian Grant seated in his chair, and smoking the eternal cigarette.
"Thought I would just drop in to see how you were getting along," the visitor said, rising and shaking hands with his protégé. "Very comfortable quarters here," glancing round Henry's well-furnished room.
"I had just been wondering this very day when I should have the pleasure of seeing you again." The sincerity of Henry's words was apparent on his face.
"I have only run up to town for a week or two before leaving for another spell in Sardinia. I am getting restless again, and there flow the waters of Nepenthe. But the question is: How are you?"
"Pleased with my work, at least, I must say, and fascinated by London. But only to-day Ihave had a peep at its under side, and I fear that the less one knows of that the better for one's peace."
"'See all, nor be afraid.' Surely you will let Browning advise you if that decadent Adrian Grant is too pessimistic for your healthy British taste," said the visitor, with the hint of a smile.
The"Magpie" is, or was, a hotel of the good old-fashioned homely type, standing in a street off the Strand, in the Adelphi quarter. One must speak thus indefinitely, since the whole face of the neighbourhood has been transformed within recent years, and many a memory-laden house demolished. At the "Magpie" the era of electric bells, elevators, ostentation, had produced no effect, and within hail of manycaravansérais, where the pomp and circumstance of King Money might have been seen in all its extravagance, the "Magpie" retained its flavour of old-time cosiness and plainness.
It was a hotel much frequented by the better class of country visitors; the London man of fashion never strayed within its portals. But here, by reason of the retired situation of the place, the accommodation of the rooms, and in some degree (we may suppose) the moderate terms, the headquarters of the Pen and Pencil Club were situated. Less than three hundred yards away, the Strandwas a turgid stream of noises; here was a backwater startlingly quiet.
Though certain of the vulgar upstarts, who manage to sneak into every community of proper men, not excepting literary clubland, complained that they could not get eatable food at the "Magpie," the members of the club, as a whole, did eat with some heartiness whenever they assembled around the board, which was twice a month during autumn and winter. Few of the members turned up in evening dress; the average author does not find it necessary to entirely expose his shirt-front when he sits down to his evening meal. Something of the older Bohemianism hung, like lavender in an ancient chest, about the Pen and Pencil Club; from which it will be understood that it was not exactly the Bohemianism of dirty clothes and stale beer, but rather that brotherliness which enables men of kindred tastes and interests to dispense with the artificial ceremonies of society.
Such was the spirit of the company to which Henry was introduced by his friend at the "Magpie." The buzz of talk in the club-room dazed him a little at first, and very timidly did he submit to be introduced to this celebrity and to that. Most of the members and guests assembled were standing talking familiarly, awaiting the summons to dinner.
"Let me introduce my friend Mr. Charles, of theWatchman, Mr. Angus St. Clair," said Mr. P., thus mentioning the name of a world-famous Scottish novelist, with whom Henry almost funked shaking hands.
Yet Mr. Sinclair was scarcely so impressive to gaze upon as many a City clerk; far less so than any young man behind a draper's counter in Oxford Street. He was below medium height, quite without distinction of features, and wore a faded brown suit. Withal, his publishers could sell fifty thousand copies of any book he cared to write, and the Press of the Anglo-Saxon race resounded with anecdotes about him.
"Ma name's pronounced Sinkler, but they pock-puddens will ca' me St. Clair, so what can a body do, Mr. Chairles?"
Mr. Charles couldn't enlighten him; but his host suggested that the Scotch didn't know how to pronounce their own names, and weren't very particular how they treated English ones. The secretary of the club dragged Mr. Sinclair off before he could return fire to introduce him to one craving his hand-shake, and Mr. Puddephatt, who appeared to be known only as Adrian Grant among the members, said to Henry that whenever he saw Sinclair he thought of a boiled egg, because the fellow seemed so small and thin that he felt he could break his skull with a tap of a spoon.
"Ah, Mr. Grinton, how do you do?... My guest, Mr. Charles, of theWatchman—a coming man, my dear Grinton, a coming man."
Mr. Edward Grinton shook hands with the coming man, who was never in a more retiring mood.
"I read theWatchman," he said, "and like it, but I wish it wouldn't worry about my literary style. The only test of merit in novels, Mr. Charles, is sales. Ask at any bookseller if his customers care a straw for literary style. They want a story, and I give 'em what they—Ah, Tredgold! Still slogging at that play?" and Mr. Grinton turned abruptly to another member who had two plays running at London theatres, and, in Grinton's phrase, "made pots of money."
This Grinton no longer holds the bookstalls in the palm of his hand. His star has set; but at that time his stories sold enormously, and earned him a large income. They were common trash, concerned chiefly with mysterious murders, and each had a startling picture on the cover, which the publisher alleged was the chief cause of their success. He had curly hair. That was the only thing about him Henry noticed.
In turn he was next introduced to Henry Davies, the editor of theMorning Sun, the great Radical daily—a man who stuttered strangely, and had difficulty in saying that he was p—p—pleased to m—m—meet Mr. Ch—Ch—Charles; Mr. FrederickFleming, the well-known dramatic critic of theDaily Journal; and other celebrities whom he had long worshipped from afar. The most ordinary mortals all; not one of them had the mystic touch of Adrian Grant, who seemed to Henry the most distinguished man among the company.
"Dinner is served, gentlemen," the waiter called, in rousing tones, and instantly the babble ceased, and members and guests filed out to the dining-room.
Henry was seated next to his host, and had on his right Mr. Bone, the eminent publisher, who happened to be the guest of Grinton, the novelist. The lion lay down with the lamb in the Pen and Pencil Club.
It was the custom of the fraternity after dining to carry on a discussion on some literary topic, and to "talk shop" to their heart's content. The chairman, Mr. Diamond Jones, a highly successful literary critic, whose profound ignorance of literature's deeper depths was the standing joke of his fellow-clubmen, mentioned that they did talk shop there, but contended that "literary shop" was worth talking, as everybody was interested in it; other "shop" was only "shop," and therefore contemptible. Your literary worker has a fine disdain for every branch of life but his own.
The speaking was scarcely enthralling. Ithappened to turn on the subject of humour in literature, and a celebrated humorist opened the discussion with some observations which suggested (unfairly) that he knew very little of what he was talking about. Apparently he had never heard that Shakespeare was a humorist, or that Carlyle was not devoid of the quality, or that Thackeray had some of it, not to mention Dickens. Even Meredith and Hardy escaped the notice of all the speakers, who talked about most things but the topic that had been introduced. Henry concluded that the gifts of writing and oratory are seldom wedded in the one. The best speaker was a novelist, whose books were as free from humour as Ireland is from snakes. He thought that humour wasn't a high quality. Good for him that he had none, as the great reading public likes a man who is either as serious as an owl or as giddy as a Merry Andrew. Sinclair was reputedly a humorist, but it was difficult to get him to open his mouth on the subject, and when he did the company was in doubt whether to laugh or applaud.
"Humour," he said, in his drawling Scotch accent, "is, according to Russell Lowell, the great antiseptic of leeterature. For my pairt, 'werna ma heart licht I wad dee.'" And he sat down.
Really these great guns of literature thunderedno better than a twopenny cannon. Henry had heard as good at a church debating society in Wheelton. At least, the disparity was scarce appreciable, and yet the men he had listened to were, each of them, capable of great things pen in hand; most of them would have been a loadstar of interest in any large provincial city. They were best beheld at a distance and behind the glamour of their books, he thought.
But he had reason to modify his opinion in the light of the club-room gossip which followed the dinner and discussion. He was soon tingling with delight at hearing men whose names were widely known discussing the affairs of the literary world. He felt that he stood at the very fount of those streams of gossip which flow far and wide through the channels of the Press. He knew that many a paragraph he had clipped from a London journal and printed in his column in theLaysford Leaderhad originated in the after-dinner chatter of his club, or some such coterie. "I am informed that Mr. Blank's next novel will deal with," or "My readers may be interested to know that Mr. So-and-So, the celebrated author of this or that, is about to," or again, "Mr. Such-and-Such is contemplating a holiday in Timbuctoo with a view to local colour for his next romance, which has been arranged to appear in"—he could now seethat these pleasant pars, with their delightful "behind-the-scenes" flavour, grew out of meetings like this.
After leaving the "Magpie," Adrian Grant walked with Henry as far as Long Acre, where the latter could get a 'bus Bloomsburyward.
"An interesting gathering," said the novelist; "how did it impress you?"
"Chiefly that distinguished authors are very like human beings, on the whole."
"I'm glad of that. Now you're learning. But you'll find much true camaraderie among them, if you allow for the little eccentricities of the artistic temperament, which you are sure to notice the more you know of them. I overheard a very third-rate novelist to-night telling a guest that his own books were divided into three periods; the middle one being a bridge that linked the two expressions of his mind together. Heavens! I don't suppose there's a score of people in the country who are the least concerned in his work. But he's a good fellow for all his vanity. We're all of us vain, more or less."
"I was also struck by the number of well-known people—men, I mean, whose names are discussed throughout the whole country," Henry observed. "It was difficult to realise the distinguished nature of the company. You couldn'tsee the wood for trees, if the simile will hold water."
"Quite so. Should you become as famous as Maister Sinkler, you'll still find that in any club you enter there will be someone better known than yourself. That's the best of London. It brings you to your level. Where life is prolific—look at China—it is least valued. Where geniuses, or men of talent, most abound, why, it's like Gilbert's era, 'when dukes were four a penny.' At best, you're only a bit of vegetable in London's broth-pot. But it's good that it should be so. In the country you are inclined to esteem yourself too highly, and of all human follies that's the worst."
Mr. P.'s speech sounded like a literary setting of Flo's opinion: "You're a somebody here; in London you'd be one of the crowd."
They walked without speaking through the musty-smelling region of Covent Garden, and had reached Long Acre before Henry broke the silence suddenly by remarking, as if after much considering of the point:
"You said that one would find some true camaraderie among the literary set. That scarcely tallies with your rather pessimistic views of human nature in general."
"Well, after all, it's difficult to be consistent—andspeak your mind. My views of human nature remain unchanged, and though, as you have said, authors are very like folk, they do have a touch of brotherliness which you will find in no other profession; certainly not in the musical, of which I know something. There may appear to be a good deal of back-biting and jealousy among literary men; but they are always ready to encourage the new man, to applaud the conscientious worker. Remember that most authors of genius have first been proclaimed by their fellows of the pen. In the nature of things it must be so. The asinine public has to be told who are the writers worth reading. Mind you, the duffer will get never a leg up, and before any one gets a lift he has to show himself worthy of it. But I suppose the same might be said of the business world as well."
"Do you think I'm going the right way for a leg up, then?—if I may bore you with my own petty affairs."
"Not yet; but you'll soon be shaping that way. This I realise: journalism will give any moderately clever fellow a living, but even a genius will scarcely win a reputation that way. Billy Ricketts writes a book, and even if it's a bad one, Billy is for a week or two more noticed in the papers than the editor of theTimeswill be in five years. The journalist who gives his best to his paper is apathetic figure—from the British or Henry Charles point of view, I mean, as I'm looking at the situation with your ideas to direct me, your view of success. He is probably our nearest approach to the Greek sculptors I seem to remember quoting to you once. Anonymity is essential to the true artist, I hold; and strangely, it is the newspaper man—none less artistic—who conforms to this law in England, perhaps unwillingly."
"Of course, we'll never agree on that point," said Henry, "as I'm all for personality."
"So; that's what I know, and hence my line of reasoning. Play up your personality for all it's worth, and be happy. It's not my way; but no matter. And to do so, journalism is at best only a training school. What you must do is a book. Once you make a moderate success with a book, your precious personality has become a marketable thing in modern Philistia."
"You mean a novel, I suppose?"
"I mean a book. You're not a poet, or the song within would have rilled out long ago.Ergo, it's not a book of poetry. You have a literary touch, and might do well in the essay; but essays are 'off' just now, says the Ass-in-Chief of the great B. P. You haven't gone round the world on your hands and knees, or walked from Charing Cross to St. Paul's on your head—either of whichachievements would have given you copy for a sensational book hot with personality, and made you the most sought-after lecturer of the day. So there remains only the novel, and the B. P. shouts for more novel, like the whimpering infant it is. Give it novel, my lad. You, as well as anybody. That the novel has become a contemptible convention of the publishing trade is not its fault. Always remember we have Meredith and Hardy and Stevenson writing novels, and you will think well of that vehicle of expression."
"But I have no great impulse to write fiction. I'd rather write about the men who write it," Henry said.
"A pity that; for little of real value is done without the impulse. But one never knows. Try and see. The impulse may follow in the same sense that certain psychologists believe the simulation of an emotion produces its effect. I like the idea; but am not quite ready to accept it. Reproduce the muscular expressions of sorrow or joy, and you will after a time be sorrowful or glad, says Nordau. There's something in the thought, perhaps. Similarly, determine to write a novel, and the mood for novel-writing will be induced. I don't say I agree with the theory. But it's worth a trial, and anyhow a novel is theeasiest form in which to make a public appeal, to make merchandise of your personality."
Adrian Grant's face wore its half-cynical smile as he said this, and extending his hand to Henry, he added abruptly, as his manner was: "This is your 'bus, I think; I must make for Kensington."
Henry shook hands at once with a hurried expression of thanks for his friend's kindness, and jumped on the 'bus, while Mr. P. hailed a passing hansom, and set out for his rooms in Gloucester Road.
Vague and confused were the thoughts of Henry as the 'bus lumbered its way by historic Drury Lane and across Holborn, to his door in Bloomsbury. A 'bus ride was still full of romance to him, and the glimmering lamps of London were dearer to his mind than "the swing of Pleiades"; every jingling cab that passed, every lighted window, was touched with romance in his eyes. To make this wondrous City listen to him—how the dream thrilled him! That the unknown thousands who flitted through these world-famous streets, and lived behind these lighted windows, might read what he wrote and know him for the writer—it was worth trying for. Already he had seen his book brave in bright gilt, shouldering the best of them in the book-shops of Holborn and the Strand; he could read the reviews distinctly:noticed even the size and style of the type they were set in, was gratified to find them so remarkably favourable, and—"Wob'n Plice!" shouted the conductor.
Henry descended to asphalt, and was presently putting on his slippers in his small sitting-room in a Bloomsbury boarding-house.
Onthe mantelpiece of his room, set on end against the little marble clock which ignored the flight of time, Henry found three letters. He examined the addresses and postmarks of each, and saw at a glance that one was from his sister Dora, another from Flo, and the third from Edgar Winton. For a moment he hesitated, undecided which to open first. Home for him had a far-off call by now, and it was with the vague sense of a dream that was past that he read Dora's fortnightly letters. Flo—hers was a more recent influence—and from a fascinating it had come to be an irksome one: the more real by that token. He burst open Edgar's letter with his forefinger, and read:
"Dear Henry,—I've been going to write you any time these last six weeks, but—well, old man, I'm no hand at correspondence unless it's a penny a line. Besides, I hear about you through Flo, who is quite reconciled to your absence, which thepoet tells us makes the heart grow fonder. I wonder!"But first of all, you'll want an inside view of the dear old rickety oldLeader. Your successor is a daisy, and no mistake. Walks into the office in knickers and a cloth cap, and shaves once a week when his beard is ready for clipping. Even Dodge, the newest junior, sneers at him, and refuses to recognise 'that josser' as editor. It's hard cheese on a youngster to run up against a weed like Steel for his first editor. Gives a low idea of our noble profession, don't you know."Steel's greatest feat has been to assault his wife in the street while drunk (that's Steel, not the wife, I mean, who was lushing), and get run in; but a word from 'Puggie' [Mr. Albert Scriven, the chief reporter, so called by reason of his physical appearance], who happened to be at the police station at the time, put the matter right, and 'Puggie' took our warrior to his ''appy little 'ome.' It fell to my lot to vamp up the usual editorial cackle myself that night, but I've got to help the beauty most nights, as he doesn't like work. Jones knows of his little exploits, but does nothing. He's got him cheap, and that's enough for him. Besides, nobody outside the office—and nobody in it, for that matter—would believe that Steel was editor of the paper, so Jones swaggersabout the town, and has taken to describing himself as 'managing editor.' Oh, we enjoy life here! there's a lot of fun in the game. Steel wonders how the paper lived through the editorship of 'a literary ass.' He isn't nuts on literature; but with a pair of scissors, some gum, and a pencil, the Johnnie can knock out leaders while you cough, and the joke is nobody seems to be a bit the worse. Hope you don't mind my telling you this; but really, do you think anybody reads leaders? I hope they don't read mine."TheLeaderappeared four hours late yesterday. What do you think of that? Jones again. He's a treat. A cog-wheel of the Hoe machine burst, and there wasn't a spare one in stock, nor in the town. Though he had been warned months ago, when a similar accident happened, that the last spare wheel had been used, he would not spend the money to stock one or two. We had to borrow one from theMilton Daily Post. You are well out of the hole, I can tell you."I read theWatchmanevery week, and think it immense; but you fly above me, old man. I'm only a country scribbler, and must admire you a long way off. I takes off my hat to you, sir."The mater is rather queer just now, and I hope she isn't going to kipper. But one never cantell. 'Our times are in His hand,' that's Browning, isn't it? I saw it quoted the other day, and managed to drag it into a leaderette this week. Sounds well, I think."Pater joins in kind regards—at least, I suppose he does, though I haven't asked him—and Flo is sending her warmest breathings direct, I understand. —Believe me, ever thine,"Edgar Winton."
"Dear Henry,—I've been going to write you any time these last six weeks, but—well, old man, I'm no hand at correspondence unless it's a penny a line. Besides, I hear about you through Flo, who is quite reconciled to your absence, which thepoet tells us makes the heart grow fonder. I wonder!
"But first of all, you'll want an inside view of the dear old rickety oldLeader. Your successor is a daisy, and no mistake. Walks into the office in knickers and a cloth cap, and shaves once a week when his beard is ready for clipping. Even Dodge, the newest junior, sneers at him, and refuses to recognise 'that josser' as editor. It's hard cheese on a youngster to run up against a weed like Steel for his first editor. Gives a low idea of our noble profession, don't you know.
"Steel's greatest feat has been to assault his wife in the street while drunk (that's Steel, not the wife, I mean, who was lushing), and get run in; but a word from 'Puggie' [Mr. Albert Scriven, the chief reporter, so called by reason of his physical appearance], who happened to be at the police station at the time, put the matter right, and 'Puggie' took our warrior to his ''appy little 'ome.' It fell to my lot to vamp up the usual editorial cackle myself that night, but I've got to help the beauty most nights, as he doesn't like work. Jones knows of his little exploits, but does nothing. He's got him cheap, and that's enough for him. Besides, nobody outside the office—and nobody in it, for that matter—would believe that Steel was editor of the paper, so Jones swaggersabout the town, and has taken to describing himself as 'managing editor.' Oh, we enjoy life here! there's a lot of fun in the game. Steel wonders how the paper lived through the editorship of 'a literary ass.' He isn't nuts on literature; but with a pair of scissors, some gum, and a pencil, the Johnnie can knock out leaders while you cough, and the joke is nobody seems to be a bit the worse. Hope you don't mind my telling you this; but really, do you think anybody reads leaders? I hope they don't read mine.
"TheLeaderappeared four hours late yesterday. What do you think of that? Jones again. He's a treat. A cog-wheel of the Hoe machine burst, and there wasn't a spare one in stock, nor in the town. Though he had been warned months ago, when a similar accident happened, that the last spare wheel had been used, he would not spend the money to stock one or two. We had to borrow one from theMilton Daily Post. You are well out of the hole, I can tell you.
"I read theWatchmanevery week, and think it immense; but you fly above me, old man. I'm only a country scribbler, and must admire you a long way off. I takes off my hat to you, sir.
"The mater is rather queer just now, and I hope she isn't going to kipper. But one never cantell. 'Our times are in His hand,' that's Browning, isn't it? I saw it quoted the other day, and managed to drag it into a leaderette this week. Sounds well, I think.
"Pater joins in kind regards—at least, I suppose he does, though I haven't asked him—and Flo is sending her warmest breathings direct, I understand. —Believe me, ever thine,
"Edgar Winton."
Henry was inclined to resent the flippant tone of the letter, the senseless slang; but he remembered that it was "only Edgar's way," and stuffed the sheets back into their envelope and into his inside pocket. Flo's letter he turned over again as he lifted it and Dora's from his knee. He opened his sister's next, and laid the other down.
It was the usual Hampton budget of uninteresting details about the doings of that little community, and Henry read it in his usual perfunctory way, scarce recollecting the people whose names were recalled by it. "Who on earth is old Gatepost? I believe she means old John Crew, the farm bailiff. I'm surprised he is only dying now. Thought he would have been dead long ago." Often his thoughts would run thus over some bit of news from Dora. She seemed to write from out the past.
"Hoping you are well, as we all are when this leaves. No more at present, from your loving Sis."
"Hoping you are well, as we all are when this leaves. No more at present, from your loving Sis."
The phrase might have been stereotyped; it was Dora's one form of "drawing to a close." Indeed, she did not draw thither; she simply closed according to formula when she had spun her loose threads of news into some semblance of a web of words.
Dora's letter was presently keeping Edgar's company, with many another tattered envelope and note, in Henry's pocket.
He turned to the third of the letters with no apparent zest.
"She writes a neat hand after all," he murmured, as he scanned the superscription. A bad sign that. A man in love should be the last person to ask for an opinion of the handwriting of his sweetheart. When he can speak with deliberation on the subject or think of it with detachment, he has become critical, and the end—happy or otherwise—is not far off. Happy only if there is still time or courage to draw back.
"She writes a neat hand after all," said Henry, as he rammed his finger into the flap of the scented envelope and burst it open. "After all!" These even more than the words preceding them were suggestive.
The hour was late, and who knows but that may, to some extent, have been responsible for the blinking mood in which the young man read his sweetheart's letter? It was the typical feminine scrawl, chiefly chatter about society doings in Laysford.
"Oh, I'm becoming quite a giddy girl, dearest, and me engaged. It's too awful. Just fancy, I've been to three functions—three! Poor me that used to go nowhere at all. The Mellises' garden party was a very swell affair. I was there because I teach the daughter the pianoforte—and a silly thing she is. But—don'tbe angry now, Hal—who do you think took me to the Mayor's reception? Why, that terrible goose, Mr. Trentham, the Mayor's secretary. You remember him? Short, stout, fair moustache, butalwayswell dressed. Fancies himself,rather. He has asked me to go with him to another reception, when some sort of conference comes to Laysford. I don't know what it is, but the receptions are all right. Lots of fun and the best of everything. Perhaps you wouldn't like me to go, dearest? But really you needn't bejealous. Trentham isreallya goose. Only one is so dull, and theneverybodyknows I'm engaged."
"Oh, I'm becoming quite a giddy girl, dearest, and me engaged. It's too awful. Just fancy, I've been to three functions—three! Poor me that used to go nowhere at all. The Mellises' garden party was a very swell affair. I was there because I teach the daughter the pianoforte—and a silly thing she is. But—don'tbe angry now, Hal—who do you think took me to the Mayor's reception? Why, that terrible goose, Mr. Trentham, the Mayor's secretary. You remember him? Short, stout, fair moustache, butalwayswell dressed. Fancies himself,rather. He has asked me to go with him to another reception, when some sort of conference comes to Laysford. I don't know what it is, but the receptions are all right. Lots of fun and the best of everything. Perhaps you wouldn't like me to go, dearest? But really you needn't bejealous. Trentham isreallya goose. Only one is so dull, and theneverybodyknows I'm engaged."
Henry knew, certainly; and he had no doubt the "everybody" was not unjustified. He acceptedthe information without a pang of jealousy.
"Everybody knows I'm engaged." Somehow, he would not readily have confessed to delight in the fact. Trentham he did not recall as suggestive of the ungainly biped. "Rather a decent sort of chap," thought Henry. "Not much in Flo's way, I imagine." He blinked through the remainder of the letter, never dreaming—though near to dreamtime—that Trentham was wondering what Flo could see in Henry Charles. The man who can divine just why another man loves or admires one woman, or why a woman "sees anything" in another man, has yet to be born. He was certainly neither Henry Charles nor Mr. Trentham.
"Not a word from Flo about her mother," Henry reflected, on his way to bed. "Just like her—all about herself. I wonder if I'm an ass!"
How unreasonable men are. Why should Flo have written about anyone but herself?
It was time for Henry to wonder. But he was still wondering months later, when Trentham was not.
The fact is, this Trentham was a very fair specimen of the average bull-headed Englishman, and better than most in the eyes of Miss Winton, since he enjoyed a private income, which made him quite independent of the salary attaching to his official position. His name cropped up frequentlyfor a time in Flo's letters to Henry, but the latter scarcely referred to it in any of his replies, from which Flo judged him jealous, and when Trentham had never a mention from her, Henry supposed him circling in some other orbit. Here, of course, he was wrong, and he might have noticed a lowering temperature in the tone of Flo's epistles. There was still need to ask himself whether he was an ass, and to answer in the affirmative. But he never thought out an answer until one day it came ready-made in a fine right-hander, which took his breath away:
"Dear Henry,—I am so sorry to tell you that I cannot continue our engagement. My affections have undergone a change, and I think it best for both of us that we should not carry out the engagement. I have promised to marry Mr. Trentham, who really thought we were never engaged. I haven't worn the ring much, as I didn't care greatly for the style of it, and now return it. I feel it is best for both of us to cease our correspondence. I shall always wish you well.— Sincerely yours,"Flo Winton."
"Dear Henry,—I am so sorry to tell you that I cannot continue our engagement. My affections have undergone a change, and I think it best for both of us that we should not carry out the engagement. I have promised to marry Mr. Trentham, who really thought we were never engaged. I haven't worn the ring much, as I didn't care greatly for the style of it, and now return it. I feel it is best for both of us to cease our correspondence. I shall always wish you well.— Sincerely yours,
"Flo Winton."
"An ass," undoubtedly. The thing that he had often wished had happened, yet he felt chagrined,and the sense of having been wronged leaped up at him.
"She has made a fool of me," thought Henry, after reading the brief note, "and yet I'm glad." But he was nothing of the kind. He knew that he ought to be glad; he had hoped for this for nearly a year in the odd moments when he saw things clearly, and realised that Flo was receding from the place she had once held in his esteem. His visits to Laysford had not improved matters. He was vexed, irritated, disappointed—anything but glad. His self-esteem was wounded, and to have avoided an injury there he would have faced even the obligation he had entered into before coming to London.
"She has taken up Trentham because the creature has a bit of money," he muttered savagely, crumpling up the offending note, and then opening it out to read the fateful words again. "So much for women!" And he swept the sex aside for the perfidy of this one, though the woman's very selfishness was the saving of him.
"Delighted!" he wrote in bold letters on a postcard, and put her name and address on it. Then he tore it up, and feared he was a cad to the bargain.
Delighted! He was miserable for three days, until he could sit down and pen a sensible letter,in which he expressed the opinion that Flo had a better knowledge of her affections than he had, and that while he would never have given her the pain of breaking their engagement, he accepted the situation with some philosophy, since it did not altogether run against his own inclination.
A silly affair enough, as he came to understand once the final letter had been posted, and even so he had a delusion that at some time he had been actually in love with Flo. One cannot tell whether she had any delusions on the same object. She was not of the kind who dream dreams.
"I'm terribly sorry, old man, that Flo has cut up this way," wrote Edgar. "I always fancied you and she were engaged, but evidently not. Trentham is a very decent sort. They're to be married soon now that the mater is all right again. Flo is nuts on 'style,' you know, and you are not—unless it's literary style. After all, perhaps it's for the best. I think everything is for the best except what happens at theLeaderoffice. Steel still keeps the uneven tenor of his way. I make wonderful progress. Don't gasp when I tell you that, quite unsolicited, I got a rise of half-a-crown last week. I think I shall buy a motor-car with it. Fancy, Jones has gone in for electric light. You wouldn't know theplace now—the light shows up the dirt so strongly."
But Laysford had entirely lost interest for Henry now. To fancy one has been in love is almost as serious a condition as to be in love.
Adrian Granthad gone away to Sardinia, but he had left Henry urged to the point of writing "that book." At first Henry approached the task with but little taste, for he had the good sense to doubt whether his talent lay in the direction of creative work, as the writing of fiction is so comically miscalled. But the thing had to be done, and as well now as again. At first progress was slow, as book-reviewing for theWatchmankept him busy most nights at home, while sub-editorial duties filled out all too amply his office hours. There was agony of mind in the writing of the early chapters, and he had not gone far when the rupture with Flo came to disturb his thoughts and to agitate his feelings. But it had the effect of setting him almost savagely to his novel again, and gloomy was the atmosphere he created in his chapters. It was a romance of town and country life, and was entitled provisionally, "Grey Life."
For a while after Flo's exit from his life thebook went ahead rapidly; then he set it aside almost afraid to go on after reading what he had written; it was so savage, so unlike anything he had ever hoped to write. If at that time he could have been impersonal enough in his criticism, he would have seen at a glance that Adrian Grant was not only responsible for his having essayed the task, but that he had projected something of his pessimism into the mind of the writer.
The unfolding young editor, who had meant to write such a scathing review of "Ashes," would have been as incensed by the unhealthy gloom, the wintry sadness, of "Grey Life." Of course, it is to be remembered that the said young editor had never delivered the terrible slating he intended to devote to Adrian Grant's popular work, but he had at least thought it, and believed it would have been justified, even after he had written something different. Though the morbidity of sex was entirely absent from "Grey Life," it contained a good deal that was as deserving of ban as anything in "Ashes."
When Mr. P. returned in the late autumn of the year from his sojourn in the South, he asked to be shown the manuscript, incomplete as it was; and pronounced it good.
"You've stuck almost in sight of the end," he said.
"Wrecked in port," replied Henry, laughing.
"Not quite wrecked, but floating rudderless. There's no reason why this shouldn't hit—if you want to make a hit. But it's generally books that are published without intent to 'boom' that stumble into success. At least, it's been so with mine."
"But I'm uneasy about it all. Don't you think the picture intolerably grey?"
"None too grey, my lad—grey is the colour of life," said the man who had just come back from cloudless blue skies and gorgeous sunsets.
"Somehow I felt like that when writing, but when I read it I have an inkling that life is brighter than I have shown it to be; that it's worth while living both in country and in town."
"It's not for me to advise one who has done so well off his own bat, but I would suggest that you work the thing out to its bitter end, keeping true to the artistic impulse which will settle each of the characters for you, and without you, if you but let it have its sway."
"But it would be a bitter end for two of them."
"Precisely. For all of them, probably. It is for most of us."
"There I don't agree with you. Don't you think the bitter end is at the beginning? The book ends bitterly at the start, so to speak."
"I do, and I don't object to that in the least. The fact is, you have subordinated your Philistine nature most wonderfully, and are in a fair way to produce a work of art, but here the Philistine part of you comes uppermost at a critical moment, and has its usual fit of remorse at a piece of genuine art. I would not have credited you with the capacity to produce such a work as this manuscript contains. That is frank, isn't it?"
"And I ought to be flattered, I suppose. But I'm not. I've been disillusioned all along the line, but surely when the illusions fall away life is not merely a corner for moping in. Besides, is it a worthy work to disillusionise others?"
"It is. It is the business of sane men to expose for what they are the fools' paradises of the world."
"Surely not. Let the fools find it out themselves; and if they never do, the better for them."
"Look here, my young friend, your best plan is to take a holiday at once and go down home for two or three weeks, to get over this mood of contrariness. I'm surprised that you've been slogging away in London all through the stifling summer. It was mere madness. You're suffering from mental clog. Shake free of Fleet Street for a week or two, and the book will finish, never fear. Whatever you do, don't have one of those maudlin,barley-sugar ends. Be true to life, and let all else go. Perhaps a visit home would supply the contrast necessary to re-start the mind."
"I've been thinking of that this very day."
"Then my advice is: Go. You're not looking well. London is a hard task-master, and the slave who runs to the eternal crack of his whip is by way of being untimely worn out."
The idea of spending an autumn holiday at home had been with Henry for some time, even to the exclusion of plans for a visit to the Continent, and it was evidence of the influence this strange friend had over him, that so soon as he suggested it the project was distinctly forwarded.
In another week he was to be homeward-bound: heart-free, but disappointed. Successful in a sense, and a failure in the light of his inner desires. London had not brought him peace of mind, and Hampton, he feared, would only bore him into accepting the life of the City as the lesser of two evils.
If Henry could have looked inward then he would have seen that all his uneasiness came from the dragging of the old anchor of faith which began long ago at Laysford on his first meeting with Mr. Puddephatt. That, and naught else. Edward John believed in the Bibleverbatim et litteratim; worshipped it with the superstitious awe wherewith asentimental woman bobs to tuppenceworth of stucco and a penn'orth of paint fashioned into a Bambino; would have believed it implicitly had the story ran that Jonah swallowed the whale; and often, indeed, expressed his readiness for that supreme test of faith.
To Henry, as to every young man who thinks, came the inevitable collision between inherited belief and acquired knowledge. Also the inevitable wreckage. Many thousands had gone his road before him, and more will follow. To the father the roads of Knowledge and of Faith ran neatly parallel, the one narrow and the other broad; but as the son laboured at the widening of the former, the road of Faith, trodden less and less, was dwindling into a crooked and uncertain footway. It's an old, old story—why say more than that the miraculous basis of belief is a mere quicksand when Knowledge attempts to stand upon it?
But Edward John was as much a man as his son would ever be, and Henry could see that his father was as important a unit in the Kingdom of Heaven as he could hope to become. Was Ignorance, then, the kindest friend? No, there must be a way for the cultured as for the unlettered; but was it a different way?
Thus and so forth went the unrestful soul ofthe young man, who was even then writing his undecided mind into a novel, and by that token giving evidence of an ignorance as essential as his father's, different in kind but not in degree.
Twodays before Henry had planned to leave London for his holiday at home, Adrian Grant looked in upon him hurriedly at theWatchmanoffice to ask if it were possible for him to secure accommodation at Hampton.
"You!" exclaimed Henry, in surprise, and something akin to a feeling of shame for the meagre possibilities of entertainment at his home flushed his face.
"Why not?" said his friend, with a smile. "I know less than nothing of English rural life, and it came to me as an inspiration this morning that here was a chance to try the effect of country quiet at home. I have a bit of work to finish, and most of my writing has been done abroad in drowsy places. Strange I have never tried our own rural shades, though I produce but little either in London or at Laysford."
"It's an idea, certainly," Henry observed, in a very uncertain tone. "I'm sorry my people—"
"Of course, I would not dream of troubling yourfolk, but I suppose there's such a thing as a village inn even in your secluded corner of earth."
"There's the 'Wings and Spur,' to be sure, but I am doubtful of its comfort."
"It's an inn, and that's enough for one who has wandered strange roads," and the bright earnestness of the novelist proved to Henry that he really meant to carry out this whim of his.
Nor did he fail to notice a strange elation of manner in Mr. P. for which he could not satisfactorily account.
The incident, however, was the matter of a moment, and the novelist went away as hurriedly as he entered after ascertaining the train by which Henry purposed travelling from St. Pancras, leaving the journalist with the uncomfortable sense of being party to some absurd freak.
His wits were not nimble enough, thus suddenly taxed, to see all sides of the project, and he swayed between the pleasant thought of visiting his old home in the company of one so distinguished as Adrian Grant, and the dubious fear of the impression which his humble relatives might make upon this polished man of the world. His father's doubtful h's sounded uncomfortably on the ear of his memory; the prospect of his toil-worn mother entertaining such a guest, if only for an occasional meal, seemed too unlikely a thing to contemplate. He turnedagain to his work with the wish that Adrian Grant might stay in London, or find some other rural retreat to suit his capricious taste.
But it was necessary to warn the folks at home, and to make the best of what might well prove an awkward business. So Henry wrote to his father that night, explaining that he was bringing a distinguished visitor to the village, and though he would reside at the inn, he would no doubt be a good deal at their house. This he did after having seriously debated with himself the idea of writing to his friend and framing a set of excuses or plausible reasons why he should not go. Henry's ingenuity was not equal to that.
All this explains why on a certain autumn afternoon the Post Office of Hampton Bagot, and indeed the whole of the village street, exhaled an air of expectancy. There were hurried traffickings between the shop of Edward John Charles, the "Wings and Spur," the butcher's, and sundry others. Perhaps the loudest note of warning that an event of unusual interest portended was struck by the bright red necktie which Edward John Charles had donned at the urgent request of his daughters. This was truly a matter for surprise, for while he had been seen occasionally on weekdays wearing a collar, the tie had always been a Sunday vanity. His clothes, too, were his Sundaybest. His appearances at the door were frequent and short, with no pleasant play of the coat-tails; and his earnest questing glances towards the road from the station, which opened into the main street of the village some little distance east of the Post Office, were foolishly unjustified before the dinner hour, as there was no possibility of the visitors arriving until the late afternoon.
Customers at the Post Office were all condemned to a delightfully exaggerated account of the "lit'ry gent from Lunnon" who was to grace the village with his presence and suffuse Henry Charles with reflected glory, though it seemed a difficult thing to conceive the pride of Hampton as in need of glorifying. But the customers were as keen for Edward John's gossip as he to purvey it, and it is more than probable that several ounces of shag were bought that day by persons who stood in no immediate need of them, but were glad of an excuse for a chat with the postmaster. Even the snivelling Miffin shuffled across with such an excuse for a chat, and returned to tell his apprentice that he could see no reason for all this "'ow d'y' do."
"S'possin' there was a railway haccident! Stranger things 'ave 'appened, merk moi werds," said he, with a waggle of his forefinger in the direction of his junior, who, though much in useas an object for Miffin's addressing, seldom had the courage to comment upon his employer's opinions.
At the "Wings and Spur," as the afternoon wore on, there was also the unusual excitement of despatching a creaky old gig to the station to bring up the travellers, and Edward John must needs wander down to exchange opinions with his friend Mr. Jukes as the vehicle was being got ready.
Even the aged vicar was among the callers at the Post Office, inquiring if it was certain that Henry would be at home for the next Sunday, as that day was to be memorable by the preaching of Mr. Godfrey Needham's farewell sermon, and nothing would please him better than to see among his congregation "one over whom he had watched with interest and admiration from his earliest years."
Time had dealt severely with the once quaint and sprightly figure of this good man. Since Eunice had taken him in hand he had lost his old eccentric touches of habit, but year by year age had slackened his gait and slowed him down to a grey-haired, tottering figure, who, when we first saw him, took the village street like the rising wind. He had now decided to give up the hard work of his parish and his pulpit, and this was to devolve upon an alert young curate who had recently been appointed.
"We need new blood, Mr. Charles, even in the pulpit. And we old men must make way for the younger generation," he said sadly to his faithful parishioner.
"Aye, Mr. Needham, none o' us can stand up again' Natur'. But you're good for many a year yet to come, and I hope I am too."
"You are hale as ever, but I can say with the Psalmist: 'My days are like a shadow that declineth; and I am withered like grass.'"
"True, Mr. Needham, all flesh is grass, but it is some comfort to the grass that's withering to see the new blades a-growing around it"—a speech Edward John recalled in later years as one of his happiest efforts in the art of conversation.
"Yes, if the old grass knows that the new is its seedling. You are happy, Mr. Charles, in that way."
Edward John hitched at his uncomfortable collar and modestly fingered his necktie, while Mr. Needham proceeded to sound the praises of Henry.
"But I confess," the vicar went on to say, "I am at times troubled in my mind as to how his faith has withstood the shocks it must receive in the buffetings of City life. I trust the good seed which I strove to plant in his heart as a boy has grown up unchoked by the thistles which the distractions of the world so often sow there."
"Oh, 'is 'eart's all right, Mr. Needham," said the postmaster cheerily, as the vicar shook hands with him, and moved slowly away towards his home.
Despite the excitement of preparation both at the Post Office and the inn, and the beguilement of gossip which brought the most improbable stories into circulation among the village folk, as, for example, that Mrs. Charles had borrowed a silver teapot from the wife of the estate agent to Sir Henry Birken; a story devoid of fact, for Edward John had paid in hard cash at Birmingham for that article, as well as a cream jug to match, making a special journey for the purpose the previous day, and thus carrying out a twenty-five-year-old promise to his patient wife—despite these excellent reasons for speeding the time, the hours wore slowly on, and the postmaster must have covered a mile or two in his wanderings between his shop door and the corner of the street, from which a distant view of the returning vehicle might be had. It was expected back by four o'clock, and when on the stroke of five it had not returned, Mrs. Charles was sitting in gloom, with terrible pictures of railway accidents passing before her mind, gazing in a sort of mental morgue upon her dead boy.
Soon after five o'clock the gig pulled up before the door at a moment when the vigilance of thepostmaster had been relaxed, and Henry had stepped into the shop before his father was there to greet him; but it had been Dora's good fortune to see him arrive while giving some finishing touches to his bedroom upstairs, and the clatter of her descent brought the whole group about him in a twinkling.
In the excitement of the moment Henry's expected companion was forgotten, until his father asked suddenly: "And where's your lit'ry friend?"
"Oh, I've missed him somehow. He didn't turn up at St. Pancras this morning, and I've no idea what's become of him."
The news fell among them like a thunderbolt, and all but Henry immediately thought of that silver teapot and other preparations for the distinguished visitor. Edward John secretly regretted his journey to Birmingham; but Mrs. Charles was glad she had the teapot, visitor or no visitor.
Henry was not altogether sorry, if he had spoken his mind, for he had never quite reconciled himself to his friend's proposal. But he did not speak his mind, and he endeavoured to sympathise with his father's regrets at the absence of Adrian Grant, as Mrs. Charles had been straining every nerve to provide a meal worthy of the man.
"P'raps he'll be to-morrow," said Edward John "Poor old Jukes 'll feel a bit left. He'd been building on 'aving 'im."
"I'm sorry for the trouble he has caused you all, and I hope he may yet turn up so that you won't be disappointed."
"Never mind, 'Enry, my lad, it's you we want in the first place, and right glad we are to see you. The vicar was in asking for you this afternoon. You'll know a difference on the old man. Going down the 'ill, he is. But we're all growing older every day, as the song says. You're filling out now, and that's good. I said you were growing all to legs last time. Aye, aye, 'ere you are again."
"You haven't been troubled with your chest, Henry, I hope," said Mrs. Charles, taking advantage of a moment when her husband did not seem to have a question to ask.
"Chest! dear no, mother; always wear flannel next the skin, you know," her son replied lightly.
Mrs. Charles sighed, and her lips tightened as in pain.
"What books has Mr. Grant written?" Dora asked,à proposof nothing.
"Some novels which I don't advise you to read," said Henry.
"Why that? I'm growing quite literary," his sister returned. "Eunice has infected me; she's a great reader now."
At mention of the name, Henry coloured a little.
"Indeed!" he said. "She always had good taste, I think; but really I'm sick of books and writing. I think you used to do pretty well without them."
"Hearken at that," said his father. "Sick of books! It's the same all over. Old Brag the butcher used to say, leave a cat free for a night in the shop to eat all it could get, and it was safe to leave the beef alone ever after. I'm sick o' postage stamps, but we've got to sell 'em."
"I'm not so tired of my work as all that," Henry went on, "but down here I'm glad to get away from it."
We know this was scarcely true, as he had brought down his unfinished manuscript of "that book" to work at it if he felt the mood come on. He spoke chiefly to divert the conversation from the topic of Adrian Grant's novels, which he felt he could not frankly discuss in this home of simple life.
"I must call on Mr. Needham before Sunday," he added inconsequently to his father.
"Eunice is at home just now, but she's going away on a visit to her aunt at Tewksburynext week," said Dora, and Mrs. Charles watched the face of her son anxiously as his sister spoke.
"Oh, indeed!" said Henry, without betraying any feeling.
Itwas on a Friday that Henry arrived at Hampton. He had expected a telegram from Adrian Grant that evening, explaining his failure to join him at St. Pancras, but no word was received. Nor did Saturday morning bring a note. But it brought the morning papers and tragic news.
Henry was seated in the garden behind his father's house—a real old-world garden, with rudely-made paths and a charming tangle of flowers—gigantic hollyhocks, bright calceolarias, sweet-smelling jasmine, stocks, early asters and chrysanthemums, growing in rich profusion and in the most haphazard manner. The jasmine climbed over the trellis-work of the summer-seat, made long years ago by the hands of Edward John before he had grown stout and lazy, and now creaking aloud to be repaired.
He had come out here with a Birmingham morning paper in his hand—a paper which made his journalistic blood boil when he thought how intolerably dull and self-sufficient it was—and hehad only opened it at the London letter when he saw a name that made him fumble the sheets quickly into small compass for close reading—Adrian Grant!
A new book by him? a bit of personal gossip? No. He read: