completely surrounded the enemy. Every newspaper, every periodical, held in ambush an advertisement of “The Vital Thing.” Weeks in advance the great commander had begun to form his lines of attack. Allusions to the remarkable significance of the coming work had appeared first in the scientific and literary reviews, spreading thence to the supplements of the daily journals. Not a moment passed without a quickening touch to the public consciousness: seventy millions of people were forced to remember at least once a day that Professor Linyard’s book was on the verge of appearing. Slips emblazoned with the question:
On the day of publication, the Professor had withdrawn to his laboratory. The shriek of the advertisements was in his ears, and his one desire was to avoid all knowledge of the event they heralded. A reaction of self- consciousness had set in, and if Harviss’s cheque had sufficed to buy up the first edition of “The Vital Thing” the Professor would gladly have devoted it to that purpose. But the sense of inevitableness gradually subdued him, and he received his wife’s copy of the
The review was minute and exhaustive. Thanks no doubt to Harviss’s diplomacy, it had been given to the
The
“All I ask you is to admit that I saw what would happen,” he said with a touch of professional pride. “I knew you’d struck the right note—I knew they’d be quoting you from Maine to San Francisco. Good as fiction? It’s better —it’ll keep going longer.”
“Will it?” said the Professor with a slight shudder. He was resigned to an ephemeral triumph, but the thought of the book’s persistency frightened him.
“I should say so! Why, you fit in everywhere—science, theology, natural history—and then the all-for-the-best element which is so popular just now. Why, you come right in with the How-to-Relax series, and they sell way up in the millions. And then the book’s so full of tenderness—there are such lovely things in it about flowers and children. I didn’t know an old Dryasdust like you could have such a lot of sentiment in him. Why, I actually caught myself snivelling over that passage about the snowdrops piercing the frozen earth; and my wife was saying the other day that, since she’s read ‘The Vital Thing,’ she begins to think you must write the ‘What-Cheer Column,’ in the
And as earnest of this belief he drew the Professor a supplementary cheque.
V
Mrs. Linyard’s knock cut short the importunities of the lady who had been trying to persuade the Professor to be taken by flashlight at his study table for the Christmas number of the
The lady from the
The groan with which he followed her retreat was interrupted by his wife’s question: “Do they pay you for these interviews, Samuel?”
The Professor looked at her with sudden attention. “Not directly,” he said, wondering at her expression.
She sank down with a sigh. “Indirectly, then?”
“What is the matter, my dear? I gave you Harviss’s second cheque the other day—”
Her tears arrested him. “Don’t be hard on the boy, Samuel! I really believe your success has turned his head.”
“The boy—what boy? My success—? Explain yourself, Susan!”
“It’s only that Jack has—has borrowed some money—which he can’t repay. But you mustn’t think him altogether to blame, Samuel. Since the success of your book he has been asked about so much—it’s given the children quite a different position. Millicent says that wherever they go the first question asked is, ‘Are you any relation of the author of “The Vital Thing”?’ Of course we’re all very proud of the book; but it entails obligations which you may not have thought of in writing it.”
The Professor sat gazing at the letters and newspaper clippings on the study-table which he had just successfully defended from the camera of the
“I don’t know that the
Mrs. Linyard’s eyes glowed with maternal avidity.
“What is it, Samuel?”
“A series of ‘Scientific Sermons’ for the Round-the-Gas-Log column of