No More Learning

Saxonstowe wondered how soon he might call at the hospital again—at the end of a week he found himself kicking his heels once more in the room wherein Noah, his family, and his animals trooped gaily down the slopes
154
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
of Mount Ararat. When Sprats came in she greeted him
with an abrupt question.
' Was it you who sent a small cart-load of toys here
last week? ' she asked.
' I certainly did send some toys for the children,' he
answered.
' I thought it must be your
handiwork,' she said. ' Thank you. You will now receive a beautifully
written, politely worded letter of thanks, inscribed on thick, glossy paper by the secretary —do you mind? '
* Yes, I do mind! ' he exclaimed. ' Please don't tell the secretary —what has he or she to do with it ? '
' Very well, I won't,' she said. ' But I will give you a practical tip : when you feel impelled to buy toys for children in hospital, buy something breakable and cheap —it pleases the child just as much as an expensive play- thing. There was one toy too many,' she continued, laughing, ' so I annexed that for myself—a mechanical spider. I play with it in my room sometimes. I am not above being amused by small things. ' —
After this Saxonstowe became a regular visitor he was accepted by some of the patients as a friend ' and admitted to their confidences. They knew him as the Lord,' and announced that ' the Lord ' had said this, or done that, in a fashion which made other visitors, not in the secret, wonder if the children were delirious and had dreams of divine communications. He sent these new friends books, and fruit, and flowers, and the house was gayer and brighter that summer than it had ever been since the brass plate was placed on its door.
One afternoon Saxonstowe arrived with a weighty- looking parcel under his arm. Once within Sprats's parlour he laid it down on the table and began to untie the string. She shook her head.
* You have been spending money on one or other of my children again,' she said. * I shall have to stop it. ' ' No,' he said, with a very shy smile. ' This — is —
for you. '
' For me? ' Her eyes opened with something like
quick,
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
155
incredulous wonder. * What an event ! * she said; * I so seldom have anything given to me. What is it? —
let me see—it looks like an enormous box of chocolate. '
* It's—it's the book,' he answered,' shamefaced as a schoolboy producing his first verses. There ! that's it,' and he placed two formidable-looking volumes, very new and very redolent of the bookbinder's establishment, in her hands. ' That's the very first copy,' he added. ' I wanted you to have it. '
Sprats sat down and turned the books over. He had written her name on the fly-leaf of the first volume, and his own underneath it. She glanced at the maps, the engravings, the diagrams, the scientific tables, and a sudden flush came across her face. She looked up at him.
' I should be proud if I had written a book like this ! ' she said. ' It means—such a lot of—well, of manliness, somehow. Thank you. And it is really pubHshed at last? '
* It is not supposed to be published until next Monday,' he answered. * The reviewers' copies have gone out to-day, but I insisted on having a copy sup- pHed to me belore any one handled another —I wanted you to have the very first. '
* Because I think you'll understand it,' he said; ' and you'll read it. '
' Why? ' she asked.
' Yes,' she answered, ' I shall read it, and I think I shall understand. And now all the lionising will begin. '
Saxonstowe shrugged his shoulders.
* If the people who really know about these things
think I have done well, I shall be satisfied,' he said. * I don't care a scrap about the reviews in the popular papers —I am looking forward with great anxiety to the
criticisms of two or three scientific periodicals. '
' You were going to run away from the lionising busi- ness/ she said. * When are you going? —there is
nothing to keep you, now that the book is out. '
156
LUCIAN THE DREAMER
Saxonstowe looked at her. He was standing at the
of the table on which she had placed the two volumes of his book; she was sitting in a low chair at its side. She looked up at him; she saw his face grow
edge
very grave.
' I didn't think anything would keep me,' he said,
' but I find that something is keeping me. It is you. Do you know that I love you? '
The colour rose in her cheeks, and her eyes left his for an instant; then she faced him.
' I did not know it until just now,' she answered, laying her hand on one of the volumes at her side. ' I knew it then, because you wished me to have the first- fruits of your labour. I was wondering about it—as we talked. '
' Well? ' he said.
' 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
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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. '
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' 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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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.