No More Learning

' Will you let me be perfectly frank with' you? ' she said. * Are you sure about yourself in this?
' I am sure,' he answered. ' I love you, and I shall never love any other woman. Don't think that I say that in the way in which I dare say it's been said a million times—I mean it. '
' Yes,' she said; ' I imderstand. You wouldn't say anything that you didn't mean. And I am going to be
truthful with you. I don't think it's wrong of me to tell you that I have a feeling for you which I have not, and never had, for any other man that I have known. I could depend on you—I could go to you for help and advice, and I should rely on your
equally
I have felt that since we met, as man and woman, a few weeks ago. '
strength.
' Then ' he began.
' Stop a bit,' she said, ' let me finish. I want to be brutally plain-spoken —it's really best to be so. I want you to know me as I am. I have loved Lucian Damerel ever since he and I were boy and girl. It is, perhaps, a curious love — you might say that there is very much more of a mother's, or a sister's, love in it than a wife's. Well, I don't know. I do know that it nearly broke
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 157
my heart when I heard of his marriage to Haidee. I cannot tell —I have never been able to tell —in what exact way it was that I wanted him, but I did not want her to have him. Perhaps all that, or most of that, feel- ing has gone. I have tried hard, by working for others, to put all thought of another woman's husband out of my mind. But the thought of Lucian is still there— it may, perhaps, always be there. While it is—even in the least, the very least degree—you understand, do you not? ' she said, with a sudden note of eager appeal breaking into her voice.
' Yes,' he answered, ' I understand. '
She rose to her feet and held out her hand to him.
' Then don't let us try to put into words what we can
feel much better,' she said, smiling. * We are friends
— always. And you are going away. '
The children found out that for some time at any rate
there would be no more visits from the Lord. But the toys and the books, the fruit and flowers, came as regu- larly as ever, and the Lord was not forgotten.
XVIII
During the greater part of that summer Lucian had been working steadily on two things : the tragedy which Mr. Harcourt was to produce at the Athenaeum in December, and a new poem which Mr. Robertson intended to pubHsh about the middle of the autumn season. Lucian was flying at high game in respect of both. The tragedy was intended to introduce somethmg of the spirit and dignity of Greek art to the nineteenth- century stage— there was to be nothing common or mean in connection with its production; it was to be a gorgeous
CHAPTER
but one of high
direct intention in writing it was to set English dramatic art on an elevation to which it had never yet been lifted. The poem was an equally ambitious attempt to revive
spectacle,
the epic; its subject, the Norman Conquest,
Lucian's mind since boyhood, and from his tenth year onwards he had read every book and document procur-
He had the work during his Oxford days; the greater part of it was now in type, and Mr. Robertson was incurring vast expense in the shape of author's correc-
able which treated of that fascinating period. begun
tions. Lucian polished and rewrote in a fashion that was exasperating; his pubHsher, never suspecting that so many alterations would be made, had said nothing
and he of profits. ' What a pity that you did not make all your altera-
about them in drawing up a formal agreement, was daily obliged to witness a disappearance
tions and corrections before sending the manuscript to press ! ' he exclaimed one day, when Lucian called with a bundle of proofs which had been hacked about in such 158
distinction, and Lucian's
had filled
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
159
a fashion as to need complete resetting. ' It would have saved a lot of trouble—and expense. '
Lucian stared at him with the eyes of a young owl, round and wondering.
' How on earth can you see what a thing looks like until it's in print? ' he said irritably. 'What are printers for? '
* Just so—just so! ' responded the publisher. * But really, you know, this book is being twice set—every sheet has had to be pulled to pieces, and it adds to the expense. '
Lucian's eyes grew rounder than ever.
' I don't know an5^ing about that,' he answered.
* That is your province — don't bother me about it. ' Robertson laughed. He was beginning to find out, after some experience, that Lucian was imperturbable
on ' certain points. ' Very well,' he said.
By the bye, how much more copy is there—or if copy is too vulgar a word for your
mightiness, how many more lines or verses? '
* About four hundred and fifty lines,' answered
Lucian.
' Say another twenty-four pages,' said Robertson.
' Well, it runs now to three hundred and fifty—that means that it's going to to be a book of close upon four hundred pages. '
* Well? ' questioned Lucian.
' I was merely thinking that it is a long time since the public was asked to buy a volume containing four hundred pages of blank verse,' remarked the publisher.
' I* hope this won't frighten anybody. '
You make some very extraordinary remarks,' said
Lucian, with unmistakable signs of annoyance. * What
do' you mean? ' ' Oh, nothing, nothing !
answered Robertson, who was on sufficient terms of intimacy with Lucian to be able to chaff him a little. * I was merely thinking of trade
considerations. ' " * You appear to be always
merely thinking
"
of
i6o
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
something extraordinary,' said Lucian. ' What can trade considerations have to do with the length of my
poem ? '
' What indeed? ' said the pubUsher. and began to talk
of something else. But when Lucian had gone he looked rather doubtfully at the pile of interlineated proof, and glanced from it to the thin octavo with which the new
poet had won all hearts nearly five years before.
wish it had been just a handful of gold hke that! ' he said to himself. * Four hundred pages of blank verse all at one go ! —it's asking a good deal, unless it catches on with the old maids and the dowagers, like the Course
Well, we shall see; but I'd rather have some of your earlier lyrics than this
weighty ' performance, indeed !
Lucian finished his epic before the middle of July, and fell to work on the final stages of his tragedy. He had promised to read it to the Athenaeum company on the first day of the coming October, and there was still much to do in shaping and revising it. He began to feel impatient and irritable; the sight of his desk annoyed him, and he took to running out of town into the country whenever the wish for the shade of woods and the peace- fulness of the lanes came upon him. Before the end
of Time and the Epic of Hades.
Lucian, my boy—I would
^
' I
of the month he felt unable to work, and he repaired to Sprats for counsel and comfort.
' I don't know how or why it is,* he said, telling her
his troubles, ' but I don't feel as if I had a bit of work
left in me. I haven't any power of concentration left—
I'm always wanting to be doing something else. And
yet I haven't worked very hard this year, and we have
been away a great deal. It's nearly time for going away
again, too—I believe Haidee has already made some
arrangement. '
* Lucian,' said Sprats, ' why don't you go down to
Simonstower? They would be so glad to have you at the vicarage —there's heaps of room. And just think
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
i6i
how jolly 'it is there in August and September—I wish I
could go ! —some memory of the old
Lucian's face lighted up
days had suddenly fired his soul. He saw the famiHar scenes once more under the golden sunlight—the grey castle and its Norman keep, the winding river, the shelv- ing woods, and, framing all, the gold and purple of the moorlands.
' Yes, of course — it's Simonstower that I want. ^ We'll go at once.
' Simonstower ! ' he exclaimed.
Sprats, why can't you come too? '
Sprats shook her head.
' I can't,' she answered. ' I shall have a holiday in
September, but I can't take a single day before. I'm sure it will do you good if you go to Simonstower, Lucian —the north-country air will brighten you up. You haven't been there for four years, and the sight of the old faces and places will act like a tonic'
' I'll arrange it at once,' said Lucian, delighted at the idea, and he went off to announce his projects to Haidee. Haidee looked at him incredulously.
of, Lucian? ' she said. * Don't you remember that we're cramful of engage- ments from' the beginning of August to the end of September? She recited a list of arrangements already entered into, which included a three-weeks' sojourn on
* Whatever are you thinking
Eustace Darlington's steam-yacht, and a fortnight's stay
at his shooting-box in the Highlands. ' Had you for-
gotten? ' she asked. '
' I believe I had! ' he replied; we seem to have so
Look here: do you know, I think I'll back out. I must have this tragedy finished for Harcourt and his people by October, and I can't do it if
many engagements.
I go rushing about from one place to another. I think I shall go down to Simonstower and have a quiet time
and finish my work there — I'll
Darlington. '
' As you please,' she answered.
keep my engagements. '
explain it all to
' course, I shall Of
L
i62 LUCTAN THE DREAMER
* Oh, of course,' he said. ' You won't miss me, you know. I suppose there are lots of other people going? ' ' I suppose so,' she replied carelessly, and there was
an end of the conversation. Lucian explained to Darlington that night that he would not be able to keep his engagement, and set forth the reasons with a fine air of devotion to business. Darlington sympathised, and applauded Lucian 's determination—he knew, he said, what a lot depended upon the success of the new play, and he'd no doubt Lucian wouldn't feel quite easy until it was all in order. After that he must have a long rest—it would be rather good fun to winter in Egypt. Lucian agreed, and next day made his prepara- tions for a descent upon Simonstower. At heart he was
rather more than glad to escape the yacht, the Highland shooting-box, and the people whom he would have met. He cared little for the sea, and hated any form of sport which involved the slaying of animals or birds; the thought of Simonstower in the last weeks of summer was grateful to him, and all that he now wanted was to find himself in a Great Northern express gliding out of King's Cross, bound for the moorlands.
He went round to the hospital on the morning of his departure, and told Sprats with the glee of a schoolboy who is going home for the holidays, that he was off that very afternoon. He was rattling on as to his joy when Sprats stopped him.
' Haidee? ' he said. * But Haidee is not
She's joining a party on Darlington's yacht, and they're going round the coast to his place in the Highlands. I was to have gone, you know, but really I couldn't have worked, and I must work—it's absolutely neces- sary that the play should be finished by the end of
* And Haidee? ' she asked. ' Does she like it? '
September. '
Sprats looked anxious and troubled.
' Look here, Lucian,' she said, ' do you think it's quite right to leave Haidee like that? —isn't it rather neglecting your duties? '
going.
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 163
' But why? ' he asked, with such sincerity that it
became plain to Sprats that the question had never even entered his mind. ' Haidee's all right. It would be beastly selfish on my part if I dragged her down to Simonstower for nearly two months — you know, she doesn't care a bit for the country, and there would be no society for her. She needs sea air, and three weeks on' Darlington's yacht will do her a lot of good. '
Who are the other people? ' asked Sprats.
' Oh, I don't know,' Lucian replied. ' The usual Darlington lot, I suppose. Between you and me.
Sprats, I'm glad I'm not going. I get rather sick of that sort of thing—^it's too much of a hot-house existence. And I don't care about the people one meets, either. '
* And yet you let Haidee meet them ! ' Sprats ex-
claimed. ' Really, Lucian, you grow more and more
paradoxical. '
' But Haidee likes them,' he insisted. * That's just
the sort of thing she does like. And if she likes why shouldn't she have it? '
You are curious couple,' said Sprats.
think we are to be praised for our common-sense
view of things,' he said. am often told that am a dreamer —you've said so yourself, you know —but in real, sober truth, I'm an awfully matter-of-fact sort of
don't live on illusions and ideals and things — worship the God of the Things that Are! '
Sprats gazed at him as mother might gaze at child who boasts of having performed an impossible task.
Oh, you absolute baby! ' she said. Is your pretty head stuffed with wool or with feathers? Paragon of
person.
of all the Practical wonder don't shrivel in your presence like bit of bacon before an Afric sun. Do you think
Common-Sense! Compendium Qualities!
you'll catch your train?
Not stay here listening to abuse. Seriously,
Sprats, it's all right—about Haidee, mean,' he said
appealingly.
you were glissading down precipice at hundred
a
I
'
a
a I it,
I I'* if I
''' If a
I
I
a
'
I
a
I'
i64
LUCIAN THE DREMIER
miles a minute, Lucian, everything would be all right with you until your head broke off or you snapped in two,' she answered. ' You're the Man who Never Stops to Think. Go away and be quiet at Simonstower— - you're mad to get there, and you'll probably leave it within a week. '
calculation, however, Sprats was Lucian went down to Simonstower and stayed there three weeks. He divided his time between the
vicarage and the farm; he renewed his acquaintance with the villagers, and had forgotten nothing of anything relating to them; he spent the greater part of the day in the open air, Uved plainly and slept soundly, and during the second week of his stay he finished his tragedy. Mr. Chilverstone read it and the revised proofs of the epic; as he had a great liking for blank verse, rounded periods, and the grand manner, he prophesied success for both. Lucian drank in his applause with eagerness
he had a great belief in his old tutor's critical powers, and felt that whatever he stamped with the seal of his admiration must be good. He had left London in some- what depressed and irritable spirits because of his in- ability to work; now that the work was completed and praised by a critic in whom he had good reason to repose the fullest confidence, his spirits became as light and joyous as ever.
Lucian would probably have remained longer at Simonstower but for a chance meeting with Lord Saxon- stowe, who had got a little weary of the ancestral hall and had conceived a notion of going across to Norway and taking a long walking tour in a district well out of the tourist track. He mentioned this to Lucian, and— why, he could scarcely explain to himself at the moment
asked him to go with him. Lucian 's imagination was fired at the mere notion of exploring a country which he had never seen before, and he accepted the invitation with fervour. A week later they sailed from Newcastle, and for a whole month they spent nights and days side by side amidst comparative solitudes. Each began to
In making this wrong.
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 165
understand the other, and when, just before the end of September, they returned to England, they had becorne firm friends, and were gainers by their pilgrimage in more ways than one.
CHAPTER XIX
When Lucian went back to town Haidee was winding up a short round of visits in the North; she rejoined him a week later in high spirits and excellent health.
had been delightful; everybody had been nice to her; no end of people had talked about Lucian and his new play — she was dreaming already of the glories of the first night and of the radiance which would centre about herself as the wife of the briUiant young author. Lucian had returned from Norway in equally
health and spirits; he was confident about the tragedy and the epic: he and his wife therefore settled down to confront an immediate prospect of success and pleasure. Haidee resumed her usual round of social gaieties; Lucian was much busied with rehearsals at the theatre and long discussions with Harcourt; neither had a care nor an anxiety, and the wheels of their little world moved smoothly.
Saxonstowe, who had come back to town for a few weeks before going abroad again, took to calling a good deal at the little house in Mayfair. He had come to understand and to like Lucian, and though they were as dissimilar in character as men of different tempera- ment can possibly be, a curious bond of friendship, expressed in tacit acquiescence rather than in open avowal, sprang up between them. Each had a respect for the other's world—a respect which was amusing to Sprats, who, watching them closely, knew that each admired the other in a somewhat sheepish, schoolboy fashion. Lucian, being the less reserved of the two, made no secret of his admiration of the man who had done things the doing of which necessitated bravery, endurance, and self-denial. He was a fervent wor- shipper—almost to a pathetic extreme—of men of
action: the sight of soldiers marching made his toes 1 66
Everything
good
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
167
tingle and his eyes fill with the moisture of enthusiasm; he had been so fascinated by the mere sight of a great Arctic explorer that he had followed him from one town to another during a lecturing tour, simply to stare at him and conjure up for himself the scenes and adventures through which the man had passed. He dehghted in hearing Saxonstowe talk about his life in the deserts, and enjoyed it all the more because Saxonstowe had small gift of language and told his tale with the blushes of a schoolboy who hates making a fuss about anjrthing that he has done.
Saxonstowe, on his part, had a sneaking liking, amounting almost to worship, for men who live in a world of dreams — he had no desire to live in such a world himself, but he cherished an
immense respect for men who, like Lucian, could create. Sometimes he would read a page of the new epic and wonder how on earth it all came into Lucian 's head; Lucian at the same moment was probably turning over the leaves of Saxonstowe' s book and wondering how a man could go through all that that laconic young gentle- man had gone through and yet come back with a stiff upper lip and a smile.
* You and Lucian Damerel appear to have become something of friends,' Lady Firmanence remarked to her nephew when he called upon her one day. ' I don't know that there's much in common between you. '
' Perhaps that is why we are friends,' said Saxon- stowe. ' You generally do get on with people who are a bit different to yourself, don't you? '
Lady Firmanence made no direct answer to this question.
' I've no doubt*Lucian is easy enough to get on with,' she said dryly. The mischief in him, Saxonstowe, is that he's too easy-going about everything. I suppose you know, as you're a sort of friend of the family, that a good deal is being said about Mrs. Damerel and Eustace Darlington? '
' No,' said Saxonstowe; ' I'm not in the way to hear that sort of thing. '
i68 LUCIAN THE DREAMER
' I don't know that you're any the better for being out of the way. I am in the way. There's a good deal being said,' Lady Firrnanence retorted with some asperity. ' I beheve some of you young men think it a positive crime to hsten to the smallest scrap of gossip— it's nothing of the sort. If you live in the world you must learn all you can about the people who make up the world. '
Saxonstowe nodded. His eyes fixed themselves on a toy dog which snored and snuffled at Lady Fir- manence's feet.
' And in this particular case? ' he said.
* Why was Lucian Damerel so foohsh as to go off in one direction while his wife went in another with the man she originally meant to marry? ' inquired Lady Firmanence. ' Come now, Saxonstowe, would you have done that? '
' No,' he said hesitatingly, ' I don't think I should; but then, you see, Damerel looks at things differently. I don't think he would ever give the foolishness of it a thought, and he would certainly think no evil—he's as guileless as a child. '
' Well,' remarked Lady Firmanence, ' I don't admire him any the more for that. I'm a bit out of love with grown-up children. If Lucian Damerel marries a wife he should take care of her. Why, she was three weeks on Darlington's yacht, and three weeks at his place in Scotland (of course there were lots of other people there too, but even then it was foolish), and he was with her at two or three country houses in Northumberland later on—I met them at one myself. ' '
' Lucian and his wife,' said Saxonstowe, fond of having their own way. '
are very
Lady Firmanence looked at her nephew out of her
eye-comers. '
' Oh ! ' she said, with a caustic irony, you think so,
do you? Well, you know, young people who like to have their own way generally come to grief. To my
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 169
mind, your new friends seem to be qualifying for trouble/
Saxonstowe studied the pattern of the carpet and traced bits of it out with his stick.
' Do you think men like Damerel have the power of reckoning things up? ' he said, suddenly looking at his
' I don't quite understand these things, but he always seems to me to
aunt with a quick, appealing glance.
be a bit impatient of anything that has to do with every- day life, and yet he's keen enough about it in one way. He's a real good chap, you know—kindly natured and
and all that. You soon find that in him. And I don't beheve he ever had a wrong thought of anybody—he's a sort of confiding trust in other people that's a bit amusing, even to me, and I haven't seen
open-hearted
such an awful lot of the world. But
a sudden pause and shook his head.
' He came to Lady Firmanence
laughed. " "
' Yes, but,' she repeated. ' That but makes all the difference. But this is Lucian Damerel—he is a
child who sits in a gaily caparisoned, comfortably appointed boat which has been launched on a wide river that runs through a mighty valley. He has neither sail nor rudder, and he is so intent on the beauty of the scenery through which he is swept that he does not recognise their necessity. His eyes are fixed on the rose- flushed peak of a far-off mountain, the glitter of the sunshine on a dancing wave, or on the basket of provi- sions which thoughtful hands have put in the boat. It may be that the boat will glide to its destination in safety, and land him on the edge of a field of velvety grass wherein he can lie down in peace to dream as long as he pleases. But it also may be that it will run on a rock in mid-stream and knock his fool's paradise into a cocked hat—and what's going to happen then? ' asked Lady Firmanence.
' Lots of things might happen,' said Saxonstowe, smiling triumphantly at the thought of beating his clever relative at her own game. * He might be able to swim.
170
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
for example. He might right the boat, get into it again, and learn by experience that one shouldn't go fooling about without a rudder. Some other chap might come along and give him a hand. Or the river might be so shallow that he could walk ashore with no more dis- comfort than he would get from wet feet. *
her lips and regarded her nephew with a fixed stare which lasted until the smile
died out of his face.
* Or there might be a crocodile, or an alligator, at
hand, which he could saddle and bridle, and con- vert into a park hack,' she said. * There are indeed many things which might happen; what I'm chiefly concerned about is, what would happen if Lucian's Httle boat did upset? I confess that I should know Lucian Damerel much more thoroughly, and have a more accurate conception of him, if I knew exactly what he would say and do when
Lady Finnanence pursed
There is no moment in life, Saxonstowe, wherein a man's real self, real character,
real quality, is so severely tested and laid bare as that unexpected one in which Fortune seizes him by the scruff of his neck and bundles him into the horsepond of adversity—it's what he says and does when he comes up spluttering that stamps him as a man or a mouse. '
Saxonstowe felt tolerably certain of what any man would say under the circumstances alluded to by Lady Firmanence, but as she seemed highly delighted with her similes and her epigrams, he said nothing of his convic- tions, and soon afterwards took his departure^
the upsetting happened.
CHAPTER XX
On a certain Monday morning in the following November, Lucian's great epic was published to the trade and the world, and the leading newspapers devoted a good deal of their space to remarking upon its merits, its demerits, and its exact relation to literature. Lucian found a pile of the London morning dailies of the superior sort awaiting his attention when he descended
to his breakfast-room, and he went through them systematically. When he had made an end of them he looked across the table at Haidee, and he smiled in what she thought a rather queer way.
' I say, Haidee ! ' he exclaimed, ' these reviews are— well, they're not very flattering. There are six mighty voices of the press here, — Times, Telegraph, Post, News, Chronicle, and Standard—and there appears to be a strange unanimity of opinion in their pronunciations. The epic poem seems to be at something of a discount. '
The reviews, in fact, were not couched in an enthusiastic vein—taking them as a whole they were cold. There was a ring of disappointment in them. One reviewer, daring to be bold, plain, and somewhat brutal, said there was more genuine poetry in any one page of any of Mr. Damerel's previous volumes than in the whole four hundred of his new one. Another openly declared his belief that the poem was the result of long years of careful, scholarly labour, of constant polishing, resetting, and rewriting; it smelled strongly of the lamp, but the smell of the lamp was not in evidence in the fresh, free, passionate work which they had previously had from the same pen. Mr. Damerel's history, said a
third, was as accurate as his lines were polished; one learned almost as much of the Norman Conquest from his poem as from the pages of Freeman, but the spon- taneity of his earliest work appeared to be wanting in 171
172
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
his latest. Each of the six reviewers seemed to be indulging a sentimental sorrow for the Mr. Damerel of the earlier days; their criticisms had an undercurrent of regret that Lucian had chosen to explore another path than that which he had hitherto trodden in triumph. The consensus of opinion, as represented by the critics of the six morning newspapers lying on Lucian 's break- fast-table, amounted to this: that Mr. Damerel's new work, unmistakably the production of a true poet though it was, did not possess the quahties of power and charm which had distinguished his previous volumes. And to show his exact meaning and make out a good case for himself, each critic hit upon the exasperating trick of reprinting those of Lucian' s earlier lines which made perpetual music in their own particular souls, pointing to them with a proud finger as something great and glorious, and hinting that they were samples of goods which they would have wished Mr. Damerel to supply for ever.
Lucian was disappointed and gratified; amused and
It was disappointing to find that the incense to which he had become accustomed was not offered up to him in the usual lavish fashion; but it was pleasing to hear the nice things said of what he had done and of what the critics beheved him capable of doing. He was amused at the disappointment of the gentlemen who
annoyed.
Lucian the earlier to Lucian the later—and, after all, it was annoying to find one's great effort some- what looked askance at.
preferred
'I've given them too much,' he said, turning to con- siderations of breakfast with a certain amount of pity for himself. ' I ought to have remembered that the stomach of this generation is a weak one—Tennyson was wise in giving his public the Idylls of the King in fragments — if he'd given his most fervent admirers the whole lot all at once they'd have had a surfeit. I should have followed his example, but I wanted to present the thing as a whole. And it is good, however they may damn it with faint praise. '
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 173
' Does this mean that the book won't sell? ' asked Haidee, who had gathered up the papers, and was glanc- ing through the columns at the head of which Lucian's name stood out in bold letters.
' Sell? Why, I don't think reviews make much difference to the sales of a book,' answered Lucian. * I really don't know — I suppose the people who bought all my other volumes will buy this. '
But as he ate his chop and drank his coffee he began to wonder what would happen if the new volume did not sell. He knew exactly how many copies of his other volumes had been sold up to the end of the previous half-year: it was no business instinct that made him carry the figures in his mind, but rather the instinct of the general who counts his prisoners, his captured eagles, and his dead enemies after a victory, and of the
who knows that the magnitude of the winnings of a great racehorse is a tribute to the quality of its blood and bone and muscle. He recalled the figures of the last statement of account rendered to him
his publisher, and their comfortable rotundity cheered him. Whatever the critics might say, he had a public, and a public of considerable size. And after all, this was the first time the critics had not burned incense at his shrine—he forgave them with generous readiness, and ere he rose from the breakfast-table was as full as ever of confident optimism. He felt as regards those particular reviewers as a man might feel who bids all and sundry to a great feast, and finds that the first- comers are taken aback by the grand proportions of the banquet —he pitied them for their lack of appetite, but he had no doubt of the verdict of the vast majority of later comers.
But if Lucian had heard some of the things that were said of him and his beloved epic in those holes and comers of literary life wherein one may hear much trenchant criticism plainly voiced, he would have felt less cock-sure about it and himself. It was the general opinion amongst a certain class of critics, who exercised
sportsman
by
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LUCIAN THE DREAMER
a certain influence upon public thought, that there was too much of the workshop in his magnum opus. It was a magnificent block of marble that he had handled, but he had handled it too much, and the result would have been greater if he had not perpetually hovered about it with a hungry chisel and an itching mallet. It was perfect in form and language and proportion, but it wanted life and fire and rude strength.
' It reminds me,' said one man, discussing it in a club corner where coffee-cups, liqueur-glasses, and cigarettes were greatly in evidence, ' of the statue of Galatea, flawless, immaculate, but neuter, —yes, neuter
—as it appeared at the very moment ere Pygmalion's love breathed into it the very flush, the palpitating, forceful tremor of life. ' —
This man was young and newly come to town the others looked at him with shy eyes and tender sympathy, for they knew what it was that he meant to say, and they also knew, being older, how difficult it is to express oneself in words.
' How very differently one sees things ! ' sighed one of them. ' Damerel's new poem, now, reminds me of a copy of the Pink 'Un, carefully edited by a committee of old maids for the use of mixed classes in infant schools. '
The young man who used mellifluous words mani- fested signs of astonishment. He looked at the last speaker with inquiring eyes.
* Ssh! ' whispered a voice at his elbow, ' don't ask him what he means at any time. He means that the thing's lacking in virility. '
It may have been the man who Hkened Lucian's epic to an emasculated and expurgated Pink 'Un to whom was due a subsequent article in the Porthole, wherein, under the heading Lucian the Ladylike, much sympathy was expressed with William the Conqueror at his sad fate in being sung by a nineteenth-century bard. There was much good-humoured satire in that article, but a
' You mean ' he began.
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 175
good many of its points were sharply
Lucian winced under them. He was beginning to find by that time that his epic was not being greeted with the enthusiasm which he had anticipated for it; the great literary papers, the influential journals of the provinces, and the critics who wrote of it in two or three of the monthly reviews, all concurred that it was very fine as a literary exercise, but each deplored the absence of a
certain something which had been very conspicuous indeed in his earlier volumes.
Lucian began to think things over. He remembered how his earlier work had been written—he recalled the free, joyous flush of thought, the impulse to write, the fertility and fecundity which had been his in those days, and he contrasted it all with the infinite pains which he had taken in polishing and revising the epic. It must have been the process of revision, he thought, which had sifted the fire and life out of the poem. He read and re-read passages of it—in spite of all that the critics said, they pleased him. He remembered the labour he had gone through, and valued the results by it. And finally, he put the whole affair away from him, feeling that he and his world were not in accord, and that he had better wrap himself in his cloak for a while. He spoke of the
epic no more. But unfortunately for Lucian, there were monetary considerations at the back of the new volume, and when he discovered at the end of a month that the sales were small and already at a stand- still, he felt a sudden, strange sinking at the heart. He looked at Mr. Robertson, who communicated this news to him, in a fashion which showed the pubUsher that he did not quite understand this apparently capricious neglect on the part of the public. Mr. Robertson
barbed, and
endeavoured to explain matters to him.
' After all,' he said, ' there is such a thing as a vogue,
and the best man may lose it. I don't say that you have lost yours, but here's the fact that the book is at a stand- still. The faithful bought as a religious duty as soon as we published; those of the outer courts won't buy. For
176
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
one thing, your poem is not quite in the fashion—what people are buying just now in poetry is patriotism up- to-date, with extension of the Empire, and Maxim-guns, and deification of the soldier and sailor, and so on. '
* You talk as if there were fashions in poetry as there are in clothes/ said Lucian, with some show of scornful
indignation. ' * So there are, my dear sir !
replied the pubHsher. ' If you lived less in the clouds and more in the world
of plain fact you would know it.
would think it strange, if you had ever read to find PoUok's poem, The Course Time, selling to the extent of thousands and tens of thousands, or of Tupper's Pro- verbial Philosophy making almost as prominent figure in the middle-class household as the Bible itself. Of course there's a fashion in poetry, as there in every- thing else. Byron was once the fashion; Mrs. Hemans
You, for instance,
was once the fashion; even Robert Montgomery was once fashionable. You yourself were very fashionable for three years — you see, you'll pardon me for speaking plainly, you were an interesting young man. You had
beautiful face; you were what the women call " inter- esting "; you aroused all the town by your romantic marriage—you became personality. think you've had big run of it,' concluded Mr. Robertson. Why, lots of men come up and go down within two years— you've had four already. '
Lucian regarded him with grave eyes.
Do you think of me as of rocket or comet? ' he
said. things are what you say they are, wish
But think you are wrong,' and he went away to consider all that had been said to him. He decided, after some thought and reflec-
tion, that his publisher was not arguing on sound Hues, and he assured himself for the hundredth time that the production of the tragedy would put everything right.
was now very near to the day on which the tragedy was to be produced at the Athenaeum, and both Lucian and Mr. Harpourt had been worried to the point of death
had never pubhshed an3^hing.
It
If
'
a a
I
a
I 'a
I I
is
it,
'
a a
if
of
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 177
by pressmen who wanted to know all about it. Chiefly owing to their persistency the public were now in posses-
sion of a considerable amount of information as to what it might expect to hear and see. It was to witness —that portion of it, at any rate, which was lucky enough to secure seats for the first night—an attempt to revive tragedy on the lines of pure Greek art. As this attempt was being made at the close of the nineteenth century, it was quite in accordance with everything that vast sums of money should be laid out on costumes, scenery, and accessories, and it was well known to the readers of the
halfpenny newspapers
that the production involved the of so many hundreds of supernumeraries,
employment
that so many thousands of poimds had been spent on the scenery, that certain realistic effects had been worked up at enormous cost, and that the whole affair, to put it in plain language, was a gigantic business speculation — nothing more nor less, indeed, than the provision of a gorgeous spectacular drama, full of life and colour and modem stage effects, which should be enthralling and commanding enough to attract the public until a hand- some profit had been made on the outlay. But the words
' an 'attempt to revive Tragedy on the lines of pure Greek Art looked well in print, and had a highly respectable sound, and the production of Lucian's second tribute to the tragic muse was looked forward to with much interest by many people who ignored the fact that many thousands of pounds were being expended in placing it upon the stage.
M
XXI
At twelve o'clock on the night that witnessed the produc- tion of the tragedy, Lucian found himself one of a group of six men which had gathered together in Harcourt's dressing-room. There was a blue haze of cigarette smoke all over the room; a decanter of whisky with syphons and glasses stood on a table in the centre; most of the men had abready helped themselves to a drink. Lucian found a glass in his own hand, and sipped the mixture in it he recognised the taste of soda, and remeni- bered in a vague fashion that he much preferred ApolH- naris, but he said to himself, or something said to him, that it didn't matter. His brain was whirling with the events of the night; he still saw, as in a dream, the misty
auditorium as he had seen it from a box; the stage as he had seen it during a momentary excursion to the back of the dress-circle; the busy world behind the scenes where stage-carpenters sweated and swore, and the dust made one's throat tickle. He recalled particular faces and heard particular voices; all the world and his wife had been there, and all the first-nighters, and all his friends, and he had spoken to a great many people. They all seemed to swim before him as in a dream, and th« sound of their voices came, as it were, from the cylinder of a phonograph. He remembered seeing Mr. Chilverstone and his wife in the stalls — their faces were rapt and eloquent; in the stalls, too, he had seen Sprats
CHAPTER
Berenson; he himself had spent some of the time with Haidee and Darlington and other people of their set in a box, but he had also
wandered in and out of Harcourt's dressing-room a good deal, and had sometimes spoken to Harcourt, and some- times to his business manager. He had a vague recol- lection that he had faced the house himself at the end of everything, and had bowed several times in response to
178
and Lord Saxonstowe and Mrs.
LUCIAN THE DREAMER 179
cheering which was still buzzing in his ears. The night was over.
He took another drink from the glass in his hand and
him; there was a curious feeling in his brain that he himself was not there, that he had gone away, or been left behind somewhere in the world's mad rush, and that he was something else, watching a sem- blance of himself and the semblance's surroundings. The scene interested and amused whatever it was that was
looked about
Harcourt, free of his Greek draperies, now appeared in a shirt and trousers; he stood before the mirror on his dressing-table, brushing his hair —Lucian wondered where he bought his braces, which,
looked at closely, revealed a peculiarly dainty pattern worked by hand. All the time that he was manipulating the brushes he was talking in ' disconnected sentences. Lucian caught some of them: Little cutting here and there—that bit dragged —I'm told that was a fine effect — very favourable indeed —we shall see, we shall see! ' — and he wondered what Harcourt was talking about. Near the actor-manager, in an easy-chair, sat an old gentleman of benevolent aspect, white-bearded, white- moustached, who wore a fur-lined cloak over his evening- dress. He was sucking at a cigar, and his hand, very fat and very white, held a glass at which he kept looking from time to time as if he were not quite certain what to do with it. He was reported to be at the back of Har- court in financial matters, and he blinked and nodded at
looking on from his brain.
sentence rapidly spoken by the actor-manager, but said nothing. Near him stood two men in cloaks and opera-hats, also holding glasses in their hands and smok- ing cigarettes — one of them Lucian recognised as a great critic, the other as a famous actor. At his own side, talking very rapidly, was the sixth man, Harcourt 's Lucian suddenly realised that he was nodding his head at this man as if in intelligent com- prehension of what he was saying, whereas he had not understood one word. He shook himself together as a
man does who throws drowsiness aside.
every
business-manager.
i8o LUCIAN THE DREAMER
* I'm sorry,' he said. ' I—I don't think I was pajdng attention. I don't know why, but I feel half-asleep. '
'It's the reaction,' said Harcourt, hastily getting into his waistcoat and coat. ' I feel tired out—if I had my way there should be no such thing as a first night—it's a most wearing occasion. '
The famous critic turned with a smile.
' Think of being able to lie in bed to-morrow with a
sheaf of newspapers on your counterpane! ' he said
pleasantly.
Then somehow, chatting disjointedly, they got out of
the theatre. Harcourt and Lucian drove off in a hansom together —they were near neighbours.
' What do you think? ' asked Lucian, as they drove
away.
' Oh, I think it went all right, as far as one could
judge. There was plenty of applause —we shall see what is said to-morrow morning,' answered Harcourt, with a mighty yawn. ' They can't say that it wasn't magni- ficently staged,' he added, with complacency. ' And everything went like clockwork. I'll tell you what—I wish I could go to sleep for the next six months !