He settled himself comfortably on the seat, lit his pipe, and began to read: “A Bad Un to Beat: a Novel of Sporting Life, by the Honorable Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede, author of Yoicks, With the Mudshire Pack, The Sportleigh Stables, etc., etc., 3 vols. At all Libraries.” The Press, it seemed, pronounced this to be “a charming book. Mrs. Runnymede has wit and humor enough to furnish forth half-a-dozen ordinary sporting novels.” “Told with the sparkle and vivacity of a past-mistress in the art of novel writing,” said the Review; while Miranda, of Smart Society, positively bubbled with enthusiasm. “You must forgive me, Aminta,” wrote this young person, “if I have not sent the description I promised of Madame Lulu’s new creations and others of that ilk. I must a tale unfold; Tom came in yesterday and began to rave about the Honorable Mrs. Scudamore Runnymede’s last novel, A Bad Un to Beat. He says all the Smart Set are talking of it, and it seems the police have to regulate the crowd at Mudie’s. You know I read everything Mrs. Runnymede writes, so I set out Miggs directly to beg, borrow or steal a copy, and I confess I burnt the midnight oil before I laid it down. Now, mind you get it, you will find it so awfully chic.” Nearly all the novelists on Messrs. Beit’s list were ladies, their works all ran to three volumes, and all of them pleased the Press, the Review, and Miranda of Smart Society. One of these books, Millicent’s Marriage, by Sarah Pocklington Sanders, was pronounced fit to lie on the schoolroom table, on the drawing-room bookshelf, or beneath the pillow of the most gently nurtured of our daughters. “This,” the reviewer went on, “is high praise, especially in these days when we are deafened by the loud-voiced clamor of self-styled ‘artists.’ We would warn the young men who prate so persistently of style and literature, construction and prose harmonies, that we believe the English reading public will have none of them. Harmless amusement, a gentle flow of domestic interest, a faithful reproduction of the open and manly life of the hunting field, pictures of innocent and healthy English girlhood such as Miss Sanders here affords us; these are the topics that will always find a welcome in our homes, which remain bolted and barred against the abandoned artist and the scrofulous stylist.”
He turned over the pages of the little book and chuckled in high relish; he discovered an honest enthusiasm, a determination to strike a blow for the good and true that refreshed and exhilarated. A beaming face, spectacled and whiskered probably, an expansive waistcoat, and a tender heart, seemed to shine through the words which Messrs. Beit had quoted; and the alliteration of the final sentence; that was good too; there was style for you if you wanted it. The champion of the blushing cheek and the gushing eye showed that he too could handle the weapons of the enemy if he cared to trouble himself with such things. Lucian leant back and roared with indecent laughter till the tabby tomcat who had succeeded to the poor dead beasts looked up reproachfully from his sunny corner, with a face like the reviewer’s, innocent and round and whiskered. At last he turned to his parcel and drew out some half-dozen sheets of manuscript, and began to read in a rather desponding spirit; it was pretty obvious, he thought, that the stuff was poor and beneath the standard of publication. The book had taken a year and a half in the making; it was a pious attempt to translate into English prose the form and mystery of the domed hills, the magic of occult valleys, the sound of the red swollen brook swirling through leafless woods. Daydreams and toil at nights had gone into the eager pages, he had laboured hard to do his very best, writing and rewriting, weighing his cadences, beginning over and over again, grudging no patience, no trouble if only it might be pretty good; good enough to print and sell to a reading public which had become critical. He glanced through the manuscript in his hand, and to his astonishment, he could not help thinking that in its measure it was decent work. After three months his prose seemed fresh and strange as if it had been wrought by another man, and in spite of himself he found charming things, and impressions that were not commonplace. He knew how weak it all was compared with his own conceptions; he had seen an enchanted city, awful, glorious, with
