The Death of the Lion by Henry James

The Death of the Lion by Henry JamesThe Death of the LionCHAPTER I.I HAD simply, I
suppose, a change of heart, and it must have begun when I received my manuscript back
from Mr. Pinhorn. Mr. Pinhorn was my "chief," as he was called in the office: he had the high
mission of bringing the paper up. This was a weekly periodical, which had been supposed
to be almost past redemption when he took hold of it. It was Mr. Deedy who had let the
thing down so dreadfully: he was never mentioned in the office now save in connexion with
that misdemeanour. Young as I was I had been in a manner taken over from Mr. Deedy,
who had been owner as well as editor; forming part of a promiscuous lot, mainly plant and
office-furniture, which poor Mrs. Deedy, in her bereavement and depression, parted with at
a rough valuation. I could account for my continuity but on the supposition that I had been
cheap. I rather resented the practice of fathering all flatness on my late protector, who was in
his unhonoured grave; but as I had my way to make I found matter enough for complacency
in being on a "staff." At the same time I was aware of my exposure to suspicion as a
product of the old lowering system. This made me feel I was doubly bound to have ideas,
and had doubtless been at the bottom of my proposing to Mr. Pinhorn that I should lay my
lean hands on Neil Paraday. I remember how he looked at me - quite, to begin with, as if
he had never heard of this celebrity, who indeed at that moment was by no means in the
centre of the heavens; and even when I had knowingly explained he expressed but little
confidence in the demand for any such stuff. When I had reminded him that the great
principle on which we were supposed to work was just to create the demand we required,
he considered a moment and then returned: "I see - you want to write him up.""Call it that if
you like.""And what's your inducement?""Bless my soul - my admiration!"Mr. Pinhorn
pursed up his mouth. "Is there much to be done with him?""Whatever there is we should
have it all to ourselves, for he hasn't been touched."This argument was effective and Mr.
Pinhorn responded. "Very well, touch him." Then he added: "But where can you do
it?""Under the fifth rib!"Mr. Pinhorn stared. "Where's that?""You want me to go down and
see him?" I asked when I had enjoyed his visible search for the obscure suburb I seemed
to have named."I don't 'want' anything - the proposal's your own. But you must remember
that that's the way we do things NOW," said Mr. Pinhorn with another dig Mr.
Deedy.Unregenerate as I was I could read the queer implications of this speech. The
present owner's superior virtue as well as his deeper craft spoke in his reference to the late
editor as one of that baser sort who deal in false representations. Mr. Deedy would as
soon have sent me to call on Neil Paraday as he would have published a "holidaynumber";
but such scruples presented themselves as mere ignoble thrift to his successor,
whose own sincerity took the form of ringing door-bells and whose definition of genius was
the art of finding people at home. It was as if Mr. Deedy had published reports without his
young men's having, as Pinhorn would have said, really been there. I was unregenerate, as
I have hinted, and couldn't be concerned to straighten out the journalistic morals of my chief,
feeling them indeed to be an abyss over the edge of which it was better not to peer.
Really to be there this time moreover was a vision that made the idea of writing something
subtle about Neil Paraday only the more inspiring. I would be as considerate as even Mr.
Deedy could have wished, and yet I should be as present as only Mr. Pinhorn could
conceive. My allusion to the sequestered manner in which Mr. Paraday lived - it had formed
part of my explanation, though I knew of it only by hearsay - was, I could divine, very much
what had made Mr. Pinhorn nibble. It struck him as inconsistent with the success of his
paper that any one should be so sequestered as that. And then wasn't an immediate
exposure of everything just what the public wanted? Mr. Pinhorn effectually called me to
order by reminding me of the promptness with which I had met Miss Braby at Liverpool on
her return from her fiasco in the States. Hadn't we published, while its freshness and flavour
were unimpaired, Miss Braby's own version of that great international episode? I felt
somewhat uneasy at this lumping of the actress and the author, and I confess that after
having enlisted Mr. Pinhorn's sympathies I procrastinated a little. I had succeeded better
than I wished, and I had, as it happened, work nearer at hand. A few days later I called on
Lord Crouchley and carried off in triumph the most unintelligible statement that had yet
appeared of his lordship's reasons for his change of front. I thus set in motion in the daily
papers columns of virtuous verbiage. The following week I ran down to Brighton for a chat,
as Mr. Pinhorn called it, with Mrs. Bounder, who gave me, on the subject of her divorce,
many curious particulars that had not been articulated in court. If ever an article flowed from
the primal fount it was that article on Mrs. Bounder. By this time, however, I became aware
that Neil Paraday's new book was on the point of appearing and that its approach had
been the ground of my original appeal to Mr. Pinhorn, who was now annoyed with me for
having lost so many days. He bundled me off - we would at least not lose another. I've
always thought his sudden alertness a remarkable example of the journalistic instinct.
Nothing had occurred, since I first spoke to him, to create a visible urgency, and no
enlightenment could possibly have reached him. It was a pure case of profession flair - he
had smelt the coming glory as an animal smells its distant prey.CHAPTER II.I MAY as well
say at once that this little record pretends in no degree to be a picture either of my
introduction to Mr. Paraday or of certain proximate steps and stages. The scheme of my
narrative allows no space for these things, and in any case a prohibitory sentiment would
hang about my recollection of so rare an hour. These meagre notes are essentially private,
so that if they see the light the insidious forces that, as my story itself shows, make at
present for publicity will simply have overmastered my precautions. The curtain fell lately
enough on the lamentable drama. My memory of the day I alighted at Mr. Paraday's door
is a fresh memory of kindness, hospitality, compassion, and of the wonderful illuminating talk
in which the welcome was conveyed. Some voice of the air had taught me the right
moment, the moment of his life at which an act of unexpected young allegiance might most
come home to him. He had recently recovered from a long, grave illness. I had gone to the
neighbouring inn for the night, but I spent the evening in his company, and he insisted the
next day on my sleeping under his roof. I hadn't an indefinite leave: Mr. Pinhorn supposed
us to put our victims through on the gallop. It was later, in the office, that the rude motions of
the jig were set to music. I fortified myself, however, as my training had taught me to do, by
the conviction that nothing could be more advantageous for my article than to be written in
the very atmosphere. I said nothing to Mr. Paraday about it, but in the morning, after my
remove from the inn, while he was occupied in his study, as he had notified me he should
need to be, I committed to paper the main heads of my impression. Then thinking to
commend myself to Mr. Pinhorn by my celerity, I walked out and posted my little packet
before luncheon. Once my paper was written I was free to stay on, and if it was calculated
to divert attention from my levity in so doing I could reflect with satisfaction that I had never
been so clever. I don't mean to deny of course that I was aware it was much too good for
Mr. Pinhorn; but I was equally conscious that Mr. Pinhorn had the supreme shrewdness of
recognising from time to time the cases in which an article was not too bad only because it
was too good. There was nothing he loved so much as to print on the right occasion a thing
he hated. I had begun my visit to the great man on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his
book came out. A copy of it arrived by the first post, and he let me go out into the garden
with it immediately after breakfast, I read it from beginning to end that day, and in the
evening he asked me to remain with him the rest of the week and over the Sunday.That
night my manuscript came back from Mr. Pinhorn, accompanied with a letter the gist of which
was the desire to know what I meant by trying to fob off on him such stuff. That was the
meaning of the question, if not exactly its form, and it made my mistake immense to me.
Such as this mistake was I could now only look it in the face and accept it. I knew where I
had failed, but it was exactly where I couldn't have succeeded. I had been sent down to be
personal and then in point of fact hadn't been personal at all: what I had dispatched to
London was just a little finicking feverish study of my author's talent. Anything less relevant
to Mr. Pinhorn's purpose couldn't well be imagined, and he was visibly angry at my having
(at his expense, with a second-class ticket) approached the subject of our enterprise only to
stand off so helplessly. For myself, I knew but too well what had happened, and how a
miracle - as pretty as some old miracle of legend - had been wrought on the spot to save
me. There had been a big brush of wings, the flash of an opaline robe, and then, with a
great cool stir of the air, the sense of an angel's having swooped down and caught me to his
bosom. He held me only till the danger was over, and it all took place in a minute. With my
manuscript back on my hands I understood the phenomenon better, and the reflexions I
made on it are what I meant, at the beginning of this anecdote, by my change of heart. Mr.
Pinhorn's note was not only a rebuke decidedly stern, but an invitation immediately to send
him - it was the case to say so - the genuine article, the revealing and reverberating sketch
to the promise of which, and of which alone, I owed my squandered privilege. A week or
two later I recast my peccant paper and, giving it a particular application to Mr. Paraday's
new book, obtained for it the hospitality of another journal, where, I must admit, Mr. Pinhorn
was so far vindicated as that it attracted not the least attention.CHAPTER III.I WAS frankly,
at the end of three days, a very prejudiced critic, so that one morning when, in the garden,
my great man had offered to read me something I quite held my breath as I listened. It was
the written scheme of another book - something put aside long ago, before his illness, but
that he had lately taken out again to reconsider. He had been turning it round when I came
down on him, and it had grown magnificently under this second hand. Loose liberal
confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping eloquent letter - the overflow into talk
of an artist's amorous plan. The theme I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest he had
yet treated; and this familiar statement of it, full too of fine maturities, was really, in
summarised splendour, a mine of gold, a precious independent work. I remember rather
profanely wondering whether the ultimate production could possibly keep at the pitch. His
reading of the fond epistle, at any rate, made me feel as if I were, for the advantage of
posterity, in close correspondence with him - were the distinguished person to whom it had
been affectionately addressed. It was a high distinction simply to be told such things. The
idea he now communicated had all the freshness, the flushed fairness, of the conception
untouched and untried: it was Venus rising from the sea and before the airs had blown
upon her. I had never been so throbbingly present at such an unveiling. But when he had
tossed the last bright word after the others, as I had seen cashiers in banks, weighing
mounds of coin, drop a final sovereign into the tray, I knew a sudden prudent alarm."My
dear master, how, after all, are you going to do it? It's infinitely noble, but what time it will
take, what patience and independence, what assured, what perfect conditions! Oh for a
lone isle in a tepid sea!""Isn't this practically a lone isle, and aren't you, as an encircling
medium, tepid enough?" he asked, alluding with a laugh to the wonder of my young
admiration and the narrow limits of his little provincial home. "Time isn't what I've lacked
hitherto: the question hasn't been to find it, but to use it. Of course my illness made, while it
lasted, a great hole - but I dare say there would have been a hole at any rate. The earth we
tread has more pockets than a billiard-table. The great thing is now to keep on my
feet.""That's exactly what I mean."Neil Paraday looked at me with eyes - such pleasant
eyes as he had - in which, as I now recall their expression, I seem to have seen a dim
imagination of his fate. He was fifty years old, and his illness had been cruel, his
convalescence slow. "It isn't as if I weren't all right.""Oh if you weren't all right I wouldn't look
at you!" I tenderly said.We had both got up, quickened as by this clearer air, and he had
lighted a cigarette. I had taken a fresh one, which with an intenser smile, by way of answer
to my exclamation, he applied to the flame of his match. "If I weren't better I shouldn't have
thought of THAT!" He flourished his script in his hand."I don't want to be discouraging, but
that's not true," I returned. "I'm sure that during the months you lay here in pain you had
visitations sublime. You thought of a thousand things. You think of more and more all the
while. That's what makes you, if you'll pardon my familiarity, so respectable. At a time
when so many people are spent you come into your second wind. But, thank God, all the
same, you're better! Thank God, too, you're not, as you were telling me yesterday,
'successful.' If YOU weren't a failure what would be the use of trying? That's my one
reserve on the subject of your recovery - that it makes you 'score,' as the newspapers say.
It looks well in the newspapers, and almost anything that does that's horrible. 'We are
happy to announce that Mr. Paraday, the celebrated author, is again in the enjoyment of
excellent health.' Somehow I shouldn't like to see it.""You won't see it; I'm not in the least
celebrated - my obscurity protects me. But couldn't you bear even to see I was dying or
dead?" my host enquired."Dead - passe encore; there's nothing so safe. One never
knows what a living artist may do - one has mourned so many. However, one must make
the worst of it. You must be as dead as you can.""Don't I meet that condition in having just
published a book?""Adequately, let us hope; for the book's verily a masterpiece."At this
moment the parlour-maid appeared in the door that opened from the garden: Paraday
lived at no great cost, and the frisk of petticoats, with a timorous "Sherry, sir?" was about his
modest mahogany. He allowed half his income to his wife, from whom he had succeeded
in separating without redundancy of legend. I had a general faith in his having behaved well,
and I had once, in London, taken Mrs. Paraday down to dinner. He now turned to speak to
the maid, who offered him, on a tray, some card or note, while, agitated, excited, I
wandered to the end of the precinct. The idea of his security became supremely dear to
me, and I asked myself if I were the same young man who had come down a few days
before to scatter him to the four winds. When I retraced my steps he had gone into the
house, and the woman - the second London post had come in - had placed my letters and
a newspaper on a bench. I sat down there to the letters, which were a brief business, and
then, without heeding the address, took the paper from its envelope. It was the journal of
highest renown, THE EMPIRE of that morning. It regularly came to Paraday, but I
remembered that neither of us had yet looked at the copy already delivered. This one had
a great mark on the "editorial" page, and, uncrumpling the wrapper, I saw it to be directed to
my host and stamped with the name of his publishers. I instantly divined that THE
EMPIRE had spoken of him, and I've not forgotten the odd little shock of the circumstance.
It checked all eagerness and made me drop the paper a moment. As I sat there conscious
of a palpitation I think I had a vision of what was to be. I had also a vision of the letter I
would presently address to Mr. Pinhorn, breaking, as it were, with Mr. Pinhorn. Of course,
however, the next minute the voice of THE EMPIRE was in my ears.The article wasn't, I
thanked heaven, a review; it was a "leader," the last of three, presenting Neil Paraday to the
human race. His new book, the fifth from his hand, had been but a day or two out, and THE
EMPIRE, already aware of it, fired, as if on the birth of a prince, a salute of a whole column.
The guns had been booming these three hours in the house without our suspecting them.
The big blundering newspaper had discovered him, and now he was proclaimed and
anointed and crowned. His place was assigned him as publicly as if a fat usher with a wand
had pointed to the topmost chair; he was to pass up and still up, higher and higher,
between the watching faces and the envious sounds - away up to the dais and the throne.
The article was "epoch-making," a landmark in his life; he had taken rank at a bound, waked
up a national glory. A national glory was needed, and it was an immense convenience he
was there. What all this meant rolled over me, and I fear I grew a little faint - it meant so
much more than I could say "yea" to on the spot. In a flash, somehow, all was different; the
tremendous wave I speak of had swept something away. It had knocked down, I
suppose, my little customary altar, my twinkling tapers and my flowers, and had reared itself
into the likeness of a temple vast and bare. When Neil Paraday should come out of the
house he would come out a contemporary. That was what had happened: the poor man
was to be squeezed into his horrible age. I felt as if he had been overtaken on the crest of
the hill and brought back to the city. A little more and he would have dipped down the short
cut to posterity and escaped.CHAPTER IV.WHEN he came out it was exactly as if he had
been in custody, for beside him walked a stout man with a big black beard, who, save that
he wore spectacles, might have been a policeman, and in whom at a second glance I
recognised the highest contemporary enterprise."This is Mr. Morrow," said Paraday,
looking, I thought, rather white: "he wants to publish heaven knows what about me."I
winced as I remembered that this was exactly what I myself had wanted. "Already?" I cried
with a sort of sense that my friend had fled to me for protection.Mr. Morrow glared,
agreeably, through his glasses: they suggested the electric headlights of some monstrous
modem ship, and I felt as if Paraday and I were tossing terrified under his bows. I saw his
momentum was irresistible. "I was confident that I should be the first in the field. A great
interest is naturally felt in Mr. Paraday's surroundings," he heavily observed."I hadn't the
least idea of it," said Paraday, as if he had been told he had been snoring."I find he hasn't
read the article in THE EMPIRE," Mr. Morrow remarked to me. "That's so very interesting -
it's something to start with," he smiled. He had begun to pull off his gloves, which were
violently new, and to look encouragingly round the little garden. As a "surrounding" I felt how
I myself had already been taken in; I was a little fish in the stomach of a bigger one. "I
represent," our visitor continued, "a syndicate of influential journals, no less than thirty-seven,
whose public - whose publics, I may say - are in peculiar sympathy with Mr. Paraday's line
of thought. They would greatly appreciate any expression of his views on the subject of
the art he so nobly exemplifies. In addition to my connexion with the syndicate just
mentioned I hold a particular commission from THE TATLER, whose most prominent
department, 'Smatter and Chatter' - I dare say you've often enjoyed it - attracts such
attention. I was honoured only last week, as a representative of THE TATLER, with the
confidence of Guy Walsingham, the brilliant author of 'Obsessions.' She pronounced
herself thoroughly pleased with my sketch of her method; she went so far as to say that I
had made her genius more comprehensible even to herself."Neil Paraday had dropped on
the garden-bench and sat there at once detached and confounded; he looked hard at a bare
spot in the lawn, as if with an anxiety that had suddenly made him grave. His movement
had been interpreted by his visitor as an invitation to sink sympathetically into a wicker chair
that stood hard by, and while Mr. Morrow so settled himself I felt he had taken official
possession and that there was no undoing it. One had heard of unfortunate people's
having "a man in the house," and this was just what we had. There was a silence of a
moment, during which we seemed to acknowledge in the only way that was possible the
presence of universal fate; the sunny stillness took no pity, and my thought, as I was sure
Paraday's was doing, performed within the minute a great distant revolution. I saw just how
emphatic I should make my rejoinder to Mr. Pinhorn, and that having come, like Mr. Morrow,
to betray, I must remain as long as possible to save. Not because I had brought my mind
back, but because our visitors last words were in my ear, I presently enquired with gloomy
irrelevance if Guy Walsingham were a woman."Oh yes, a mere pseudonym - rather pretty,
isn't it? - and convenient, you know, for a lady who goes in for the larger latitude.
'Obsessions, by Miss So-and-so,' would look a little odd, but men are more naturally
indelicate. Have you peeped into 'Obsessions'?" Mr. Morrow continued sociably to our
companion.Paraday, still absent, remote, made no answer, as if he hadn't heard the
question: a form of intercourse that appeared to suit the cheerful Mr. Morrow as well as any
other. Imperturbably bland, he was a man of resources - he only needed to be on the
spot. He had pocketed the whole poor place while Paraday and I were wool-gathering,
and I could imagine that he had already got his "heads." His system, at any rate, was
justified by the inevitability with which I replied, to save my friend the trouble: "Dear no - he
hasn't read it. He doesn't read such things!" I unwarily added."Things that are TOO far over
the fence, eh?" I was indeed a godsend to Mr. Morrow. It was the psychological moment;
it determined the appearance of his note-book, which, however, he at first kept slightly
behind him, even as the dentist approaching his victim keeps the horrible forceps. "Mr.
Paraday holds with the good old proprieties - I see!" And thinking of the thirty-seven
influential journals, I found myself, as I found poor Paraday, helplessly assisting at the
promulgation of this ineptitude. "There's no point on which distinguished views are so
acceptable as on this question - raised perhaps more strikingly than ever by Guy
Walsingham - of the permissibility of the larger latitude. I've an appointment, precisely in
connexion with it, next week, with Dora Forbes, author of 'The Other Way Round,' which
everybody's talking about. Has Mr. Paraday glanced at 'The Other Way Round'?" Mr.
Morrow now frankly appealed to me. I took on myself to repudiate the supposition, while
our companion, still silent, got up nervously and walked away. His visitor paid no heed to
his withdrawal; but opened out the note-book with a more fatherly pat. "Dora Forbes, I
gather, takes the ground, the same as Guy Walsingham's, that the larger latitude has simply
got to come. He holds that it has got to be squarely faced. Of course his sex makes him a
less prejudiced witness. But an authoritative word from Mr. Paraday - from the point of
view of HIS sex, you know - would go right round the globe. He takes the line that we
HAVEN'T got to face it?"I was bewildered: it sounded somehow as if there were three
sexes. My interlocutor's pencil was poised, my private responsibility great. I simply sat
staring, none the less, and only found presence of mind to say: "Is this Miss Forbes a
gentleman?"Mr. Morrow had a subtle smile. "It wouldn't be 'Miss' - there's a wife!""I mean
is she a man?""The wife?" - Mr. Morrow was for a moment as confused as myself. But
when I explained that I alluded to Dora Forbes in person he informed me, with visible
amusement at my being so out of it, that this was the "pen-name" of an indubitable male -
he had a big red moustache. "He goes in for the slight mystification because the ladies are
such popular favourites. A great deal of interest is felt in his acting on that idea - which IS
clever, isn't it? - and there's every prospect of its being widely imitated." Our host at this
moment joined us again, and Mr. Morrow remarked invitingly that he should be happy to
make a note of any observation the movement in question, the bid for success under a
lady's name, might suggest to Mr. Paraday. But the poor man, without catching the allusion,
excused himself, pleading that, though greatly honoured by his visitor's interest, he
suddenly felt unwell and should have to take leave of him - have to go and lie down and
keep quiet. His young friend might be trusted to answer for him, but he hoped Mr. Morrow
didn't expect great things even of his young friend. His young friend, at this moment,
looked at Neil Paraday with an anxious eye, greatly wondering if he were doomed to be ill
again; but Paraday's own kind face met his question reassuringly, seemed to say in a glance
intelligible enough: "Oh I'm not ill, but I'm scared: get him out of the house as quietly as
possible." Getting newspaper-men out of the house was odd business for an emissary of
Mr. Pinhorn, and I was so exhilarated by the idea of it that I called after him as he left us:
"Read the article in THE EMPIRE and you'll soon be all right!"CHAPTER V."DELICIOUS
my having come down to tell him of it!" Mr. Morrow ejaculated. "My cab was at the door
twenty minutes after THE EMPIRE had been laid on my breakfast-table. Now what have
you got for me?" he continued, dropping again into his chair, from which, however, he the
next moment eagerly rose. "I was shown into the drawing-room, but there must be more
to see - his study, his literary sanctum, the little things he has about, or other domestic
objects and features. He wouldn't be lying down on his study-table? There's a great
interest always felt in the scene of an author's labours. Sometimes we're favoured with
very delightful peeps. Dora Forbes showed me all his table-drawers, and almost jammed
my hand into one into which I made a dash! I don't ask that of you, but if we could talk things
over right there where he sits I feel as if I should get the keynote."I had no wish whatever to
be rude to Mr. Morrow, I was much too initiated not to tend to more diplomacy; but I had a
quick inspiration, and I entertained an insurmountable, an almost superstitious objection to
his crossing the threshold of my friend's little lonely shabby consecrated workshop. "No, no
- we shan't get at his life that way," I said. "The way to get at his life is to - But wait a
moment!" I broke off and went quickly into the house, whence I in three minutes
reappeared before Mr. Morrow with the two volumes of Paraday's new book. "His life's
here," I went on, "and I'm so full of this admirable thing that I can't talk of anything else. The
artist's life's his work, and this is the place to observe him. What he has to tell us he tells us
with THIS perfection. My dear sir, the best interviewer is the best reader."Mr. Morrow
good-humouredly protested. "Do you mean to say that no other source of information
should be open to us?""None other till this particular one - by far the most copious - has
been quite exhausted. Have you exhausted it, my dear sir? Had you exhausted it when
you came down here? It seems to me in our time almost wholly neglected, and something
should surely be done to restore its ruined credit. It's the course to which the artist himself at
every step, and with such pathetic confidence, refers us. This last book of Mr. Paraday's is
full of revelations.""Revelations?" panted Mr. Morrow, whom I had forced again into his
chair."The only kind that count. It tells you with a perfection that seems to me quite final all
the author thinks, for instance, about the advent of the 'larger latitude.'""Where does it do
that?" asked Mr. Morrow, who had picked up the second volume and was insincerely
thumbing it."Everywhere - in the whole treatment of his case. Extract the opinion,
disengage the answer - those are the real acts of homage."Mr. Morrow, after a minute,
tossed the book away. "Ah but you mustn't take me for a reviewer.""Heaven forbid I
should take you for anything so dreadful! You came down to perform a little act of
sympathy, and so, I may confide to you, did I. Let us perform our little act together. These
pages overflow with the testimony we want: let us read them and taste them and interpret
them. You'll of course have perceived for yourself that one scarcely does read Neil
Paraday till one reads him aloud; he gives out to the ear an extraordinary full tone, and it's
only when you expose it confidently to that test that you really get near his style. Take up
your book again and let me listen, while you pay it out, to that wonderful fifteenth chapter. If
you feel you can't do it justice, compose yourself to attention while I produce for you - I think
I can! - this scarcely less admirable ninth."Mr. Morrow gave me a straight look which was as
hard as a blow between the eyes; he had turned rather red, and a question had formed
itself in his mind which reached my sense as distinctly as if he had uttered it: "What sort of a
damned fool are YOU?" Then he got up, gathering together his hat and gloves, buttoning
his coat, projecting hungrily all over the place the big transparency of his mask. It seemed
to flare over Fleet Street and somehow made the actual spot distressingly humble: there
was so little for it to feed on unless he counted the blisters of our stucco or saw his way to
do something with the roses. Even the poor roses were common kinds. Presently his
eyes fell on the manuscript from which Paraday had been reading to me and which still lay
on the bench. As my own followed them I saw it looked promising, looked pregnant, as if it
gently throbbed with the life the reader had given it. Mr. Morrow indulged in a nod at it and
a vague thrust of his umbrella. "What's that?""Oh, it's a plan - a secret.""A secret!" There
was an instant's silence, and then Mr. Morrow made another movement. I may have been
mistaken, but it affected me as the translated impulse of the desire to lay hands on the
manuscript, and this led me to indulge in a quick anticipatory grab which may very well have
seemed ungraceful, or even impertinent, and which at any rate left Mr. Paraday's two
admirers very erect, glaring at each other while one of them held a bundle of papers well
behind him. An instant later Mr. Morrow quitted me abruptly, as if he had really carried
something off with him. To reassure myself, watching his broad back recede, I only
grasped my manuscript the tighter. He went to the back door of the house, the one he had
come out from, but on trying the handle he appeared to find it fastened. So he passed
round into the front garden, and by listening intently enough I could presently hear the outer
gate close behind him with a bang. I thought again of the thirty-seven influential journals and
wondered what would be his revenge. I hasten to add that he was magnanimous: which
was just the most dreadful thing he could have been. THE TATLER published a charming
chatty familiar account of Mr. Paraday's "Home-life," and on the wings of the thirty-seven
influential journals it went, to use Mr. Morrow's own expression, right round the
globe.CHAPTER VI.A WEEK later, early in May, my glorified friend came up to town,
where, it may be veraciously recorded he was the king of the beasts of the year. No
advancement was ever more rapid, no exaltation more complete, no bewilderment more
teachable. His book sold but moderately, though the article in THE EMPIRE had done
unwonted wonders for it; but he circulated in person to a measure that the libraries might well
have envied. His formula had been found - he was a "revelation." His momentary terror
had been real, just as mine had been - the overclouding of his passionate desire to be left
to finish his work. He was far from unsociable, but he had the finest conception of being let
alone that I've ever met. For the time, none the less, he took his profit where it seemed
most to crowd on him, having in his pocket the portable sophistries about the nature of the
artist's task. Observation too was a kind of work and experience a kind of success; London
dinners were all material and London ladies were fruitful toil. "No one has the faintest
conception of what I'm trying for," he said to me, "and not many have read three pages that
I've written; but I must dine with them first - they'll find out why when they've time." It was
rather rude justice perhaps; but the fatigue had the merit of being a new sort, while the
phantasmagoric town was probably after all less of a battlefield than the haunted study. He
once told me that he had had no personal life to speak of since his fortieth year, but had had
more than was good for him before. London closed the parenthesis and exhibited him in
relations; one of the most inevitable of these being that in which he found himself to Mrs.
Weeks Wimbush, wife of the boundless brewer and proprietress of the universal
menagerie. In this establishment, as everybody knows, on occasions when the crush is
great, the animals rub shoulders freely with the spectators and the lions sit down for whole
evenings with the lambs.It had been ominously clear to me from the first that in Neil Paraday
this lady, who, as all the world agreed, was tremendous fun, considered that she had
secured a prime attraction, a creature of almost heraldic oddity. Nothing could exceed her
enthusiasm over her capture, and nothing could exceed the confused apprehensions it
excited in me. I had an instinctive fear of her which I tried without effect to conceal from her
victim, but which I let her notice with perfect impunity. Paraday heeded it, but she never
did, for her conscience was that of a romping child. She was a blind violent force to which I
could attach no more idea of responsibility than to the creaking of a sign in the wind. It was
difficult to say what she conduced to but circulation. She was constructed of steel and
leather, and all I asked of her for our tractable friend was not to do him to death. He had
consented for a time to be of india-rubber, but my thoughts were fixed on the day he
should resume his shape or at least get back into his box. It was evidently all right, but I
should be glad when it was well over. I had a special fear - the impression was
ineffaceable of the hour when, after Mr. Morrow's departure, I had found him on the sofa in
his study. That pretext of indisposition had not in the least been meant as a snub to the
envoy of THE TATLER - he had gone to lie down in very truth. He had felt a pang of his
old pain, the result of the agitation wrought in him by this forcing open of a new period. His
old programme, his old ideal even had to be changed. Say what one would, success was
a complication and recognition had to be reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious illumination
of the missal in the convent cell were things of the gathered past. It didn't engender
despair, but at least it required adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion we had
passed a bargain, my part of which was that I should make it my business to take care of
him. Let whoever would represent the interest in his presence (I must have had a mystical
prevision of Mrs. Weeks Wimbush) I should represent the interest in his work - or
otherwise expressed in his absence. These two interests were in their essence opposed;
and I doubt, as youth is fleeting, if I shall ever again know the intensity of joy with which I felt
that in so good a cause I was willing to make myself odious.One day in Sloane Street I
found myself questioning Paraday's landlord, who had come to the door in answer to my
knock. Two vehicles, a barouche and a smart hansom, were drawn up before the house."In
the drawing-room, sir? Mrs. Weeks Wimbush.""And in the dining-room?""A young lady, sir
- waiting: I think a foreigner."It was three o'clock, and on days when Paraday didn't lunch out
he attached a value to these appropriated hours. On which days, however, didn't the dear
man lunch out? Mrs. Wimbush, at such a crisis, would have rushed round immediately after
her own repast. I went into the dining-room first, postponing the pleasure of seeing how,
upstairs, the lady of the barouche would, on my arrival, point the moral of my sweet
solicitude. No one took such an interest as herself in his doing only what was good for him,
and she was always on the spot to see that he did it. She made appointments with him to
discuss the best means of economising his time and protecting his privacy. She further
made his health her special business, and had so much sympathy with my own zeal for it
that she was the author of pleasing fictions on the subject of what my devotion had led me
to give up. I gave up nothing (I don't count Mr. Pinhorn) because I had nothing, and all I had
as yet achieved was to find myself also in the menagerie. I had dashed in to save my
friend, but I had only got domesticated and wedged; so that I could do little more for him
than exchange with him over people's heads looks of intense but futile
intelligence.CHAPTER VII.THE young lady in the dining-room had a brave face, black hair,
blue eyes, and in her lap a big volume. "I've come for his autograph," she said when I had
explained to her that I was under bonds to see people for him when he was occupied.
"I've been waiting half an hour, but I'm prepared to wait all day." I don't know whether it was
this that told me she was American, for the propensity to wait all day is not in general
characteristic of her race. I was enlightened probably not so much by the spirit of the
utterance as by some quality of its sound. At any rate I saw she had an individual patience
and a lovely frock, together with an expression that played among her pretty features like a
breeze among flowers. Putting her book on the table she showed me a massive album,
showily bound and full of autographs of price. The collection of faded notes, of still more
faded "thoughts," of quotations, platitudes, signatures, represented a formidable purpose.I
could only disclose my dread of it. "Most people apply to Mr. Paraday by letter, you
know.""Yes, but he doesn't answer. I've written three times.""Very true," I reflected; "the
sort of letter you mean goes straight into the fire.""How do you know the sort I mean?" My
interlocutress had blushed and smiled, and in a moment she added: "I don't believe he
gets many like them!""I'm sure they're beautiful, but he burns without reading." I didn't add
that I had convinced him he ought to."Isn't he then in danger of burning things of
importance?""He would perhaps be so if distinguished men hadn't an infallible nose for
nonsense."She looked at me a moment - her face was sweet and gay. "Do YOU burn
without reading too?" - in answer to which I assured her that if she'd trust me with her
repository I'd see that Mr. Paraday should write his name in it.She considered a little.
"That's very well, but it wouldn't make me see him.""Do you want very much to see him?"
It seemed ungracious to catechise so charming a creature, but somehow I had never yet
taken my duty to the great author so seriously."Enough to have come from America for the
purpose."I stared. "All alone?""I don't see that that's exactly your business, but if it will
make me more seductive I'll confess that I'm quite by myself. I had to come alone or not
come at all."She was interesting; I could imagine she had lost parents, natural protectors -
could conceive even she had inherited money. I was at a pass of my own fortunes when
keeping hansoms at doors seemed to me pure swagger. As a trick of this bold and
sensitive girl, however, it became romantic - a part of the general romance of her freedom,
her errand, her innocence. The confidence of young Americans was notorious, and I
speedily arrived at a conviction that no impulse could have been more generous than the
impulse that had operated here. I foresaw at that moment that it would make her my
peculiar charge, just as circumstances had made Neil Paraday. She would be another
person to look after, so that one's honour would be concerned in guiding her straight. These
things became clearer to me later on; at the instant I had scepticism enough to observe to
her, as I turned the pages of her volume, that her net had all the same caught many a big
fish. She appeared to have had fruitful access to the great ones of the earth; there were
people moreover whose signatures she had presumably secured without a personal
interview. She couldn't have worried George Washington and Friedrich Schiller and Hannah
More. She met this argument, to my surprise, by throwing up the album without a pang. It
wasn't even her own; she was responsible for none of its treasures. It belonged to a girlfriend
in America, a young lady in a western city. This young lady had insisted on her
bringing it, to pick up more autographs: she thought they might like to see, in Europe, in
what company they would be. The "girl-friend," the western city, the immortal names, the
curious errand, the idyllic faith, all made a story as strange to me, and as beguiling, as some
tale in the Arabian Nights. Thus it was that my informant had encumbered herself with the
ponderous tome; but she hastened to assure me that this was the first time she had
brought it out. For her visit to Mr. Paraday it had simply been a pretext. She didn't really
care a straw that he should write his name; what she did want was to look straight into his
face.I demurred a little. "And why do you require to do that?""Because I just love him!"
Before I could recover from the agitating effect of this crystal ring my companion had
continued: "Hasn't there ever been any face that you've wanted to look into?"How could I
tell her so soon how much I appreciated the opportunity of looking into hers? I could only
assent in general to the proposition that there were certainly for every one such yearnings,
and even such faces; and I felt the crisis demand all my lucidity, all my wisdom. "Oh yes,
I'm a student of physiognomy. Do you mean," I pursued, "that you've a passion for Mr.
Paraday's books?""They've been everything to me and a little more beside - I know them
by heart. They've completely taken hold of me. There's no author about whom I'm in such
a state as I'm in about Neil Paraday.""Permit me to remark then," I presently returned, "that
you're one of the right sort.""One of the enthusiasts? Of course I am!""Oh there are
enthusiasts who are quite of the wrong. I mean you're one of those to whom an appeal can
be made.""An appeal?" Her face lighted as if with the chance of some great sacrifice.If she
was ready for one it was only waiting for her, and in a moment I mentioned it. "Give up this
crude purpose of seeing him! Go away without it. That will be far better."She looked
mystified, then turned visibly pale. "Why, hasn't he any personal charm?" The girl was
terrible and laughable in her bright directness."Ah that dreadful word 'personally'!" I wailed;
"we're dying of it, for you women bring it out with murderous effect. When you meet with a
genius as fine as this idol of ours let him off the dreary duty of being a personality as well.
Know him only by what's best in him and spare him for the same sweet sake."My young
lady continued to look at me in confusion and mistrust, and the result of her reflexion on what
I had just said was to make her suddenly break out: "Look here, sir - what's the matter with
him?""The matter with him is that if he doesn't look out people will eat a great hole in his
life."She turned it over. "He hasn't any disfigurement?""Nothing to speak of!""Do you mean
that social engagements interfere with his occupations?""That but feebly expresses it.""So
that he can't give himself up to his beautiful imagination?""He's beset, badgered, bothered
- he's pulled to pieces on the pretext of being applauded. People expect him to give
them his time, his golden time, who wouldn't themselves give five shillings for one of his
books.""Five? I'd give five thousand!""Give your sympathy - give your forbearance. Twothirds
of those who approach him only do it to advertise themselves.""Why it's too bad!"
the girl exclaimed with the face of an angel. "It's the first time I was ever called crude!" she
laughed.I followed up my advantage. "There's a lady with him now who's a terrible
complication, and who yet hasn't read, I'm sure, ten pages he ever wrote."My visitor's wide
eyes grew tenderer. "Then how does she talk - ?""Without ceasing. I only mention her as a
single case. Do you want to know how to show a superlative consideration? Simply avoid
him.""Avoid him?" she despairingly breathed."Don't force him to have to take account of
you; admire him in silence, cultivate him at a distance and secretly appropriate his message.
Do you want to know," I continued, warming to my idea, "how to perform an act of homage
really sublime?" Then as she hung on my words: "Succeed in never seeing him at
all!""Never at all?" - she suppressed a shriek for it."The more you get into his writings the
less you'll want to, and you'll be immensely sustained by the thought of the good you're
doing him."She looked at me without resentment or spite, and at the truth I had put before
her with candour, credulity, pity. I was afterwards happy to remember that she must have
gathered from my face the liveliness of my interest in herself. "I think I see what you
mean.""Oh I express it badly, but I should be delighted if you'd let me come to see you -
to explain it better."She made no response to this, and her thoughtful eyes fell on the big
album, on which she presently laid her hands as if to take it away. "I did use to say out
West that they might write a little less for autographs - to all the great poets, you know - and
study the thoughts and style a little more.""What do they care for the thoughts and style?
They didn't even understand you. I'm not sure," I added, "that I do myself, and I dare say
that you by no means make me out."She had got up to go, and though I wanted her to
succeed in not seeing Neil Paraday I wanted her also, inconsequently, to remain in the
house. I was at any rate far from desiring to hustle her off. As Mrs. Weeks Wimbush,
upstairs, was still saving our friend in her own way, I asked my young lady to let me briefly
relate, in illustration of my point, the little incident of my having gone down into the country for
a profane purpose and been converted on the spot to holiness. Sinking again into her chair
to listen she showed a deep interest in the anecdote. Then thinking it over gravely she
returned with her odd intonation: "Yes, but you do see him!" I had to admit that this was the
case; and I wasn't so prepared with an effective attenuation as I could have wished. She
eased the situation off, however, by the charming quaintness with which she finally said:
"Well, I wouldn't want him to be lonely!" This time she rose in earnest, but I persuaded her
to let me keep the album to show Mr. Paraday. I assured her I'd bring it back to her myself.
"Well, you'll find my address somewhere in it on a paper!" she sighed all resignedly at the
door.CHAPTER VIII.I BLUSH to confess it, but I invited Mr. Paraday that very day to
transcribe into the album one of his most characteristic passages. I told him how I had got
rid of the strange girl who had brought it - her ominous name was Miss Hurter and she lived
at an hotel; quite agreeing with him moreover as to the wisdom of getting rid with equal
promptitude of the book itself. This was why I carried it to Albemarle Street no later than on
the morrow. I failed to find her at home, but she wrote to me and I went again; she wanted
so much to hear more about Neil Paraday. I returned repeatedly, I may briefly declare, to
supply her with this information. She had been immensely taken, the more she thought of
it, with that idea of mine about the act of homage: it had ended by filling her with a generous
rapture. She positively desired to do something sublime for him, though indeed I could
see that, as this particular flight was difficult, she appreciated the fact that my visits kept her
up. I had it on my conscience to keep her up: I neglected nothing that would contribute to it,
and her conception of our cherished author's independence became at last as fine as his
very own. "Read him, read him - THAT will be an education in decency," I constantly
repeated; while, seeking him in his works even as God in nature, she represented herself
as convinced that, according to my assurance, this was the system that had, as she
expressed it, weaned her. We read him together when I could find time, and the generous
creature's sacrifice was fed by our communion. There were twenty selfish women about
whom I told her and who stirred her to a beautiful rage. Immediately after my first visit her
sister, Mrs. Milsom, came over from Paris, and the two ladies began to present, as they
called it, their letters. I thanked our stars that none had been presented to Mr. Paraday.
They received invitations and dined out, and some of these occasions enabled Fanny
Hurter to perform, for consistency's sake, touching feats of submission. Nothing indeed
would now have induced her even to look at the object of her admiration. Once, hearing his
name announced at a party, she instantly left the room by another door and then
straightway quitted the house. At another time when I was at the opera with them - Mrs.
Milsom had invited me to their box - I attempted to point Mr. Paraday out to her in the
stalls. On this she asked her sister to change places with her and, while that lady devoured
the great man through a powerful glass, presented, all the rest of the evening, her inspired
back to the house. To torment her tenderly I pressed the glass upon her, telling her how
wonderfully near it brought our friend's handsome head. By way of answer she simply
looked at me in charged silence, letting me see that tears had gathered in her eyes. These
tears, I may remark, produced an effect on me of which the end is not yet. There was a
moment when I felt it my duty to mention them to Neil Paraday, but I was deterred by the
reflexion that there were questions more relevant to his happiness.These question indeed,
by the end of the season, were reduced to a single one - the question of reconstituting so
far as might be possible the conditions under which he had produced his best work. Such
conditions could never all come back, for there was a new one that took up too much place;
but some perhaps were not beyond recall. I wanted above all things to see him sit down
to the subject he had, on my making his acquaintance, read me that admirable sketch of.
Something told me there was no security but in his doing so before the new factor, as we
used to say at Mr. Pinhorn's, should render the problem incalculable. It only half-reassured
me that the sketch itself was so copious and so eloquent that even at the worst there would
be the making of a small but complete book, a tiny volume which, for the faithful, might well
become an object of adoration. There would even not be wanting critics to declare, I
foresaw, that the plan was a thing to be more thankful for than the structure to have been
reared on it. My impatience for the structure, none the less, grew and grew with the
interruptions. He had on coming up to town begun to sit for his portrait to a young painter,
Mr. Rumble, whose little game, as we also used to say at Mr. Pinhorn's, was to be the first
to perch on the shoulders of renown. Mr. Rumble's studio was a circus in which the man of
the hour, and still more the woman, leaped through the hoops of his showy frames almost
as electrically as they burst into telegrams and "specials." He pranced into the exhibitions
on their back; he was the reporter on canvas, the Vandyke up to date, and there was one
roaring year in which Mrs. Bounder and Miss Braby, Guy Walsingham and Dora Forbes
proclaimed in chorus from the same pictured walls that no one had yet got ahead of
him.Paraday had been promptly caught and saddled, accepting with characteristic goodhumour
his confidential hint that to figure in his show was not so much a consequence as a
cause of immortality. From Mrs. Wimbush to the last "representative" who called to
ascertain his twelve favourite dishes, it was the same ingenuous assumption that he would
rejoice in the repercussion. There were moments when I fancied I might have had more
patience with them if they hadn't been so fatally benevolent. I hated at all events Mr.
Rumble's picture, and had my bottled resentment ready when, later on, I found my
distracted friend had been stuffed by Mrs. Wimbush into the mouth of another cannon. A
young artist in whom she was intensely interested, and who had no connexion with Mr.
Rumble, was to show how far he could make him go. Poor Paraday, in return, was naturally
to write something somewhere about the young artist. She played her victims against each
other with admirable ingenuity, and her establishment was a huge machine in which the
tiniest and the biggest wheels went round to the same treadle. I had a scene with her in
which I tried to express that the function of such a man was to exercise his genius - not to
serve as a hoarding for pictorial posters. The people I was perhaps angriest with were the
editors of magazines who had introduced what they called new features, so aware were
they that the newest feature of all would be to make him grind their axes by contributing his
views on vital topics and taking part in the periodical prattle about the future of fiction. I
made sure that before I should have done with him there would scarcely be a current form
of words left me to be sick of; but meanwhile I could make surer still of my animosity to
bustling ladies for whom he drew the water that irrigated their social flower-beds.I had a
battle with Mrs. Wimbush over the artist she protected, and another over the question of a
certain week, at the end of July, that Mr. Paraday appeared to have contracted to spend
with her in the country. I protested against this visit; I intimated that he was too unwell for
hospitality without a nuance, for caresses without imagination; I begged he might rather take
the time in some restorative way. A sultry air of promises, of ponderous parties, hung over
his August, and he would greatly profit by the interval of rest. He hadn't told me he was ill
again that he had had a warning; but I hadn't needed this, for I found his reticence his worst
symptom. The only thing he said to me was that he believed a comfortable attack of
something or other would set him up: it would put out of the question everything but the
exemptions he prized. I'm afraid I shall have presented him as a martyr in a very small
cause if I fail to explain that he surrendered himself much more liberally than I surrendered
him. He filled his lungs, for the most part; with the comedy of his queer fate: the tragedy
was in the spectacles through which I chose to look. He was conscious of inconvenience,
and above all of a great renouncement; but how could he have heard a mere dirge in the
bells of his accession? The sagacity and the jealousy were mine, and his the impressions
and the harvest. Of course, as regards Mrs. Wimbush, I was worsted in my encounters, for
wasn't the state of his health the very reason for his coming to her at Prestidge? Wasn't it
precisely at Prestidge that he was to be coddled, and wasn't the dear Princess coming to
help her to coddle him? The dear Princess, now on a visit to England, was of a famous
foreign house, and, in her gilded cage, with her retinue of keepers and feeders, was the
most expensive specimen in the good lady's collection. I don't think her august presence
had had to do with Paraday's consenting to go, but it's not impossible he had operated as a
bait to the illustrious stranger. The party had been made up for him, Mrs. Wimbush
averred, and every one was counting on it, the dear Princess most of all. If he was well
enough he was to read them something absolutely fresh, and it was on that particular
prospect the Princess had set her heart. She was so fond of genius in ANY walk of life, and
was so used to it and understood it so well: she was the greatest of Mr. Paraday's
admirers, she devoured everything he wrote. And then he read like an angel. Mrs.
Wimbush reminded me that he had again and again given her, Mrs. Wimbush, the privilege
of listening to him.I looked at her a moment. "What has he read to you?" I crudely
enquired.For a moment too she met my eyes, and for the fraction of a moment she
hesitated and coloured. "Oh all sorts of things!"I wondered if this were an imperfect
recollection or only a perfect fib, and she quite understood my unuttered comment on her
measure of such things. But if she could forget Neil Paraday's beauties she could of course
forget my rudeness, and three days later she invited me, by telegraph, to join the party at
Prestidge. This time she might indeed have had a story about what I had given up to be
near the master. I addressed from that fine residence several communications to a young
lady in London, a young lady whom, I confess, I quitted with reluctance and whom the
reminder of what she herself could give up was required to make me quit at all. It adds to
the gratitude I owe her on other grounds that she kindly allows me to transcribe from my
letters a few of the passages in which that hateful sojourn is candidly
commemorated.CHAPTER IX."I SUPPOSE I ought to enjoy the joke of what's going on
here," I wrote, "but somehow it doesn't amuse me. Pessimism on the contrary possesses
me and cynicism deeply engages. I positively feel my own flesh sore from the brass nails
in Neil Paraday's social harness. The house is full of people who like him, as they mention,
awfully, and with whom his talent for talking nonsense has prodigious success. I delight in
his nonsense myself; why is it therefore that I grudge these happy folk their artless
satisfaction? Mystery of the human heart - abyss of the critical spirit! Mrs. Wimbush thinks
she can answer that question, and as my want of gaiety has at last worn out her patience
she has given me a glimpse of her shrewd guess. I'm made restless by the selfishness of
the insincere friend - I want to monopolise Paraday in order that he may push me on. To be
intimate with him is a feather in my cap; it gives me an importance that I couldn't naturally
pretend to, and I seek to deprive him of social refreshment because I fear that meeting
more disinterested people may enlighten him as to my real motive. All the disinterested
people here are his particular admirers and have been carefully selected as such. There's
supposed to be a copy of his last book in the house, and in the hall I come upon ladies, in
attitudes, bending gracefully over the first volume. I discreetly avert my eyes, and when I
next look round the precarious joy has been superseded by the book of life. There's a
sociable circle or a confidential couple, and the relinquished volume lies open on its face and
as dropped under extreme coercion. Somebody else presently finds it and transfers it,
with its air of momentary desolation, to another piece of furniture. Every one's asking every
one about it all day, and every one's telling every one where they put it last. I'm sure it's
rather smudgy about the twentieth page. I've a strong impression, too, that the second
volume is lost - has been packed in the bag of some departing guest; and yet everybody
has the impression that somebody else has read to the end. You see therefore that the
beautiful book plays a great part in our existence. Why should I take the occasion of such
distinguished honours to say that I begin to see deeper into Gustave Flaubert's doleful
refrain about the hatred of literature? I refer you again to the perverse constitution of
man."The Princess is a massive lady with the organisation of an athlete and the confusion of
tongues of a valet de place. She contrives to commit herself extraordinarily little in a great
many languages, and is entertained and conversed with in detachments and relays, like an
institution which goes on from generation to generation or a big building contracted for under
a forfeit. She can't have a personal taste any more than, when her husband succeeds, she
can have a personal crown, and her opinion on any matter is rusty and heavy and plain -
made, in the night of ages, to last and be transmitted. I feel as if I ought to 'tip' some
custode for my glimpse of it. She has been told everything in the world and has never
perceived anything, and the echoes of her education respond awfully to the rash footfall - I
mean the casual remark - in the cold Valhalla of her memory. Mrs. Wimbush delights in her
wit and says there's nothing so charming as to hear Mr. Paraday draw it out. He's
perpetually detailed for this job, and he tells me it has a peculiarly exhausting effect. Every
one's beginning - at the end of two days - to sidle obsequiously away from her, and Mrs.
Wimbush pushes him again and again into the breach. None of the uses I have yet seen
him put to infuriate me quite so much. He looks very fagged and has at last confessed to
me that his condition makes him uneasy - has even promised me he'll go straight home
instead of returning to his final engagements in town. Last night I had some talk with him
about going to-day, cutting his visit short; so sure am I that he'll be better as soon as he's
shut up in his lighthouse. He told me that this is what he would like to do; reminding me,
however, that the first lesson of his greatness has been precisely that he can't do what he
likes. Mrs. Wimbush would never forgive him if he should leave her before the Princess
has received the last hand. When I hint that a violent rupture with our hostess would be the
best thing in the world for him he gives me to understand that if his reason assents to the
proposition his courage hangs woefully back. He makes no secret of being mortally afraid
of her, and when I ask what harm she can do him that she hasn't already done he simply
repeats: 'I'm afraid, I'm afraid! Don't enquire too closely,' he said last night; 'only believe
that I feel a sort of terror. It's strange, when she's so kind! At any rate, I'd as soon overturn
that piece of priceless Sevres as tell her I must go before my date.' It sounds dreadfully
weak, but he has some reason, and he pays for his imagination, which puts him (I should
hate it) in the place of others and makes him feel, even against himself, their feelings, their
appetites, their motives. It's indeed inveterately against himself that he makes his
imagination act. What a pity he has such a lot of it! He's too beastly intelligent. Besides,
the famous reading's still to come off, and it has been postponed a day to allow Guy
Walsingham to arrive. It appears this eminent lady's staying at a house a few miles off,
which means of course that Mrs. Wimbush has forcibly annexed her. She's to come over in
a day or two - Mrs. Wimbush wants her to hear Mr. Paraday."To-day's wet and cold, and
several of the company, at the invitation of the Duke, have driven over to luncheon at
Bigwood. I saw poor Paraday wedge himself, by command, into the little supplementary
seat of a brougham in which the Princess and our hostess were already ensconced. If the
front glass isn't open on his dear old back perhaps he'll survive. Bigwood, I believe, is
very grand and frigid, all marble and precedence, and I wish him well out of the adventure. I
can't tell you how much more and more your attitude to him, in the midst of all this, shines out
by contrast. I never willingly talk to these people about him, but see what a comfort I find it
to scribble to you! I appreciate it - it keeps me warm; there are no fires in the house. Mrs.
Wimbush goes by the calendar, the temperature goes by the weather, the weather goes
by God knows what, and the Princess is easily heated. I've nothing but my acrimony to
warm me, and have been out under an umbrella to restore my circulation. Coming in an
hour ago I found Lady Augusta Minch rummaging about the hall. When I asked her what
she was looking for she said she had mislaid something that Mr. Paraday had lent her. I
ascertained in a moment that the article in question is a manuscript, and I've a foreboding that
it's the noble morsel he read me six weeks ago. When I expressed my surprise that he
should have bandied about anything so precious (I happen to know it's his only copy - in
the most beautiful hand in all the world) Lady Augusta confessed to me that she hadn't had
it from himself, but from Mrs. Wimbush, who had wished to give her a glimpse of it as a
salve for her not being able to stay and hear it read."'Is that the piece he's to read,' I asked,
'when Guy Walsingham arrives?'"'It's not for Guy Walsingham they're waiting now, it's for
Dora Forbes,' Lady Augusta said. 'She's coming, I believe, early to-morrow. Meanwhile
Mrs. Wimbush has found out about him, and is actively wiring to him. She says he also
must hear him.'"'You bewilder me a little,' I replied; 'in the age we live in one gets lost
among the genders and the pronouns. The clear thing is that Mrs. Wimbush doesn't guard
such a treasure so jealously as she might.'"'Poor dear, she has the Princess to guard! Mr.
Paraday lent her the manuscript to look over.'"'She spoke, you mean, as if it were the
morning paper?'"Lady Augusta stared - my irony was lost on her. 'She didn't have time, so
she gave me a chance first; because unfortunately I go to-morrow to Bigwood.'"'And your
chance has only proved a chance to lose it?'"'I haven't lost it. I remember now - it was very
stupid of me to have forgotten. I told my maid to give it to Lord Dorimont - or at least to his
man.'"'And Lord Dorimont went away directly after luncheon.'"'Of course he gave it back to
my maid - or else his man did,' said Lady Augusta. 'I dare say it's all right.'"The conscience
of these people is like a summer sea. They haven't time to look over a priceless
composition; they've only time to kick it about the house. I suggested that the 'man,' fired
with a noble emulation, had perhaps kept the work for his own perusal; and her ladyship
wanted to know whether, if the thing shouldn't reappear for the grand occasion appointed
by our hostess, the author wouldn't have something else to read that would do just as well.
Their questions are too delightful! I declared to Lady Augusta briefly that nothing in the
world can ever do so well as the thing that does best; and at this she looked a little
disconcerted. But I added that if the manuscript had gone astray our little circle would have
the less of an effort of attention to make. The piece in question was very long - it would
keep them three hours."'Three hours! Oh the Princess will get up!' said Lady Augusta."'I
thought she was Mr. Paraday's greatest admirer.'"'I dare say she is - she's so awfully clever.
But what's the use of being a Princess - '"'If you can't dissemble your love?' I asked as
Lady Augusta was vague. She said at any rate she'd question her maid; and I'm hoping
that when I go down to dinner I shall find the manuscript has been recovered."CHAPTER
X."IT has NOT been recovered," I wrote early the next day, "and I'm moreover much
troubled about our friend. He came back from Bigwood with a chill and, being allowed to
have a fire in his room, lay down a while before dinner. I tried to send him to bed and
indeed thought I had put him in the way of it; but after I had gone to dress Mrs. Wimbush
came up to see him, with the inevitable result that when I returned I found him under arms
and flushed and feverish, though decorated with the rare flower she had brought him for his
button-hole. He came down to dinner, but Lady Augusta Minch was very shy of him. Today
he's in great pain, and the advent of ces dames - I mean of Guy Walsingham and Dora
Forbes - doesn't at all console me. It does Mrs. Wimbush, however, for she has
consented to his remaining in bed so that he may be all right to-morrow for the listening
circle. Guy Walsingham's already on the scene, and the Doctor for Paraday also arrived
early. I haven't yet seen the author of 'Obsessions,' but of course I've had a moment by
myself with the Doctor. I tried to get him to say that our invalid must go straight home - I
mean to-morrow or next day; but he quite refuses to talk about the future. Absolute quiet
and warmth and the regular administration of an important remedy are the points he mainly
insists on. He returns this afternoon, and I'm to go back to see the patient at one o'clock,
when he next takes his medicine. It consoles me a little that he certainly won't be able to
read - an exertion he was already more than unfit for. Lady Augusta went off after breakfast,
assuring me her first care would be to follow up the lost manuscript. I can see she thinks me
a shocking busybody and doesn't understand my alarm, but she'll do what she can, for
she's a good-natured woman. 'So are they all honourable men.' That was precisely what
made her give the thing to Lord Dorimont and made Lord Dorimont bag it. What use HE
has for it God only knows. I've the worst forebodings, but somehow I'm strangely without
passion - desperately calm. As I consider the unconscious, the well-meaning ravages of
our appreciative circle I bow my head in submission to some great natural, some universal
accident; I'm rendered almost indifferent, in fact quite gay (ha-ha!) by the sense of
immitigable fate. Lady Augusta promises me to trace the precious object and let me have
it through the post by the time Paraday's well enough to play his part with it. The last
evidence is that her maid did give it to his lordship's valet. One would suppose it some
thrilling number of THE FAMILY BUDGET. Mrs. Wimbush, who's aware of the accident, is
much less agitated by it than she would doubtless be were she not for the hour inevitably
engrossed with Guy Walsingham."Later in the day I informed my correspondent, for whom
indeed I kept a loose diary of the situation, that I had made the acquaintance of this celebrity
and that she was a pretty little girl who wore her hair in what used to be called a crop. She
looked so juvenile and so innocent that if, as Mr. Morrow had announced, she was resigned
to the larger latitude, her superiority to prejudice must have come to her early. I spent most
of the day hovering about Neil Paraday's room, but it was communicated to me from below
that Guy Walsingham, at Prestidge, was a success. Toward evening I became conscious
somehow that her superiority was contagious, and by the time the company separated for
the night I was sure the larger latitude had been generally accepted. I thought of Dora
Forbes and felt that he had no time to lose. Before dinner I received a telegram from Lady
Augusta Minch. "Lord Dorimont thinks he must have left bundle in train - enquire." How
could I enquire - if I was to take the word as a command? I was too worried and now too
alarmed about Neil Paraday. The Doctor came back, and it was an immense satisfaction to
me to be sure he was wise and interested. He was proud of being called to so
distinguished a patient, but he admitted to me that night that my friend was gravely ill. It was
really a relapse, a recrudescence of his old malady. There could be no question of moving
him: we must at any rate see first, on the spot, what turn his condition would take.
Meanwhile, on the morrow, he was to have a nurse. On the morrow the dear man was
easier, and my spirits rose to such cheerfulness that I could almost laugh over Lady
Augusta's second telegram: "Lord Dorimont's servant been to station - nothing found.
Push enquiries." I did laugh, I'm sure, as I remembered this to be the mystic scroll I had
scarcely allowed poor Mr. Morrow to point his umbrella at. Fool that I had been: the thirtyseven
influential journals wouldn't have destroyed it, they'd only have printed it. Of course I
said nothing to Paraday.When the nurse arrived she turned me out of the room, on which I
went downstairs. I should premise that at breakfast the news that our brilliant friend was
doing well excited universal complacency, and the Princess graciously remarked that he was
only to be commiserated for missing the society of Miss Collop. Mrs. Wimbush, whose
social gift never shone brighter than in the dry decorum with which she accepted this fizzle in
her fireworks, mentioned to me that Guy Walsingham had made a very favourable
impression on her Imperial Highness. Indeed I think every one did so, and that, like the
money-market or the national honour, her Imperial Highness was constitutionally sensitive.
There was a certain gladness, a perceptible bustle in the air, however, which I thought
slightly anomalous in a house where a great author lay critically ill. "Le roy est mort - vive le
roy": I was reminded that another great author had already stepped into his shoes. When I
came down again after the nurse had taken possession I found a strange gentleman
hanging about the hall and pacing to and fro by the closed door of the drawing-room. This
personage was florid and bald; he had a big red moustache and wore showy
knickerbockers - characteristics all that fitted to my conception of the identity of Dora Forbes.
In a moment I saw what had happened: the author of "The Other Way Round" had just
alighted at the portals of Prestidge, but had suffered a scruple to restrain him from
penetrating further. I recognised his scruple when, pausing to listen at his gesture of caution,
I heard a shrill voice lifted in a sort of rhythmic uncanny chant. The famous reading had
begun, only it was the author of "Obsessions" who now furnished the sacrifice. The new
visitor whispered to me that he judged something was going on he oughtn't to
interrupt."Miss Collop arrived last night," I smiled, "and the Princess has a thirst for the
inedit."Dora Forbes lifted his bushy brows. "Miss Collop?""Guy Walsingham, your
distinguished confrere - or shall I say your formidable rival?""Oh!" growled Dora Forbes.
Then he added: "Shall I spoil it if I go in?""I should think nothing could spoil it!" I
ambiguously laughed.Dora Forbes evidently felt the dilemma; he gave an irritated crook to
his moustache. "SHALL I go in?" he presently asked.We looked at each other hard a
moment; then I expressed something bitter that was in me, expressed it in an infernal "Do!"
After this I got out into the air, but not so fast as not to hear, when the door of the drawingroom
opened, the disconcerted drop of Miss Collop's public manner: she must have
been in the midst of the larger latitude. Producing with extreme rapidity, Guy Walsingham
has just published a work in which amiable people who are not initiated have been pained
to see the genius of a sister-novelist held up to unmistakeable ridicule; so fresh an
exhibition does it seem to them of the dreadful way men have always treated women.
Dora Forbes, it's true, at the present hour, is immensely pushed by Mrs. Wimbush and has
sat for his portrait to the young artists she protects, sat for it not only in oils but in
monumental alabaster.What happened at Prestidge later in the day is of course
contemporary history. If the interruption I had whimsically sanctioned was almost a scandal,
what is to be said of that general scatter of the company which, under the Doctor's rule,
began to take place in the evening? His rule was soothing to behold, small comfort as I
was to have at the end. He decreed in the interest of his patient an absolutely soundless
house and a consequent break-up of the party. Little country practitioner as he was, he
literally packed off the Princess. She departed as promptly as if a revolution had broken
out, and Guy Walsingham emigrated with her. I was kindly permitted to remain, and this
was not denied even to Mrs. Wimbush. The privilege was withheld indeed from Dora
Forbes; so Mrs. Wimbush kept her latest capture temporarily concealed. This was so little,
however, her usual way of dealing with her eminent friends that a couple of days of it
exhausted her patience, and she went up to town with him in great publicity. The sudden
turn for the worse her afflicted guest had, after a brief improvement, taken on the third night
raised an obstacle to her seeing him before her retreat; a fortunate circumstance doubtless,
for she was fundamentally disappointed in him. This was not the kind of performance for
which she had invited him to Prestidge, let alone invited the Princess. I must add that none
of the generous acts marking her patronage of intellectual and other merit have done so
much for her reputation as her lending Neil Paraday the most beautiful of her numerous
homes to die in. He took advantage to the utmost of the singular favour. Day by day I saw
him sink, and I roamed alone about the empty terraces and gardens. His wife never came
near him, but I scarcely noticed it: as I paced there with rage in my heart I was too full of
another wrong. In the event of his death it would fall to me perhaps to bring out in some
charming form, with notes, with the tenderest editorial care, that precious heritage of his
written project. But where was that precious heritage and were both the author and the
book to have been snatched from us? Lady Augusta wrote me that she had done all she
could and that poor Lord Dorimont, who had really been worried to death, was extremely
sorry. I couldn't have the matter out with Mrs. Wimbush, for I didn't want to be taunted by
her with desiring to aggrandise myself by a public connexion with Mr. Paraday's
sweepings. She had signified her willingness to meet the expense of all advertising, as
indeed she was always ready to do. The last night of the horrible series, the night before
he died, I put my ear closer to his pillow."That thing I read you that morning, you know.""In
your garden that dreadful day? Yes!""Won't it do as it is?""It would have been a glorious
book.""It IS a glorious book," Neil Paraday murmured. "Print it as it stands -
beautifully.""Beautifully!" I passionately promised.It may be imagined whether, now that
he's gone, the promise seems to me less sacred. I'm convinced that if such pages had
appeared in his lifetime the Abbey would hold him to-day. I've kept the advertising in my
own hands, but the manuscript has not been recovered. It's impossible, and at any rate
intolerable, to suppose it can have been wantonly destroyed. Perhaps some hazard of a
blind hand, some brutal fatal ignorance has lighted kitchen-fires with it. Every stupid and
hideous accident haunts my meditations. My undiscourageable search for the lost treasure
would make a long chapter. Fortunately I've a devoted associate in the person of a young
lady who has every day a fresh indignation and a fresh idea, and who maintains with
intensity that the prize will still turn up. Sometimes I believe her, but I've quite ceased to
believe myself. The only thing for us at all events is to go on seeking and hoping together;
and we should be closely united by this firm tie even were we not at present by another.