But Uncle George refused to be comforted. “Look here, Bob!” said he, pathetically, “why don’t you brace up and write something—well! we’ll put it, something of the sort you can do. For you can, you know.”
“Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second edition before publication?” I softly queried. “I had no money. I was ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle’s deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread.” I refilled my glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. “This time next year,” said I, as dreamily, “I shall be able to afford cake; for I shall have written As the Coming of Dawn.”
Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. “You catch me lending you any money for your—brief Biblical words!” he said.
“For the reign of subtle immorality,” I sighed, “is well-nigh over. Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly—sordidly, at times—and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!”
“Dearest Robert!” remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, “you are sadly passé: that pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago.”
“The point is well taken,” I admitted, “for our life of today is already reflected—faintly, I grant you—in the best-selling books. We have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have tossed over the contents of every closet in the ménage à trois. And I—moi, qui vous parle—I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in Afield; and henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence.”
“Saul among the prophets,” Uncle George suggested, helpfully.
“Quite so,” I assented, “and my first prophecy will be As the Coming of Dawn.”
Mr. Bulmer tapped his forehead significantly. “Mad, quite mad!” said he, in parenthesis.
“I shall be idyllic,” I continued, sweetly; “I shall write of the ineffable glory of first love. I shall babble of green fields and the keen odours of spring and the shamefaced countenances of lovers, met after last night’s kissing. It will be the story of love that stirs blindly in the hearts of maids and youths, and does not know that it is love—the love which manhood has half forgotten and that youth has not the skill to write of. But I, at twenty-four, shall write its story as it has never been written; and I shall make a great book of it, that will go into thousands and thousands of editions. Yes, before heaven, I will!”
I brought my fist down, emphatically, on the table.
“H’m!” said Mr. Bulmer, dubiously; “going back to renew associations with your first love? I have tried it, and I generally find her grandchildren terribly in the way.”
“It is imperative,” said I—“yes, imperative for the scope of my book, that I should view life through youthful and unsophisticated eyes. I discovered that, upon the whole, Miss Jemmett is too obviously an urban product to serve my purpose. And I can’t find anyone who will.”
Uncle George whistled softly. “ ‘Honourable young gentleman,’ ” he murmured, as to himself, “ ‘desires to meet attractive and innocent young lady. Object: to learn how to be idyllic in three-hundred pages.’ ”
There was no commentary upon his text.
“I say,” queried Mr. Bulmer, “do you think this sort of thing is fair to the girl? Isn’t it a little cold-blooded?”
“Respected nunky, you are at times very terribly the man in the street! Anyhow, I leave the Green Chalybeate tomorrow in search of As the Coming of Dawn.”
“Look here,” said Mr. Bulmer, rising, “if you start on a tour of the country, looking for assorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my abducting you from some rustic institution for the insane. You take a liver-pill and go to bed! I don’t promise anything, mind, but perhaps about the first I can manage a little cheque if only you will make oath on a few Bibles not to tank up on it in Lichfield. The transoms there,” he added unkindlily, “are not built for those full rich figures.”
II
Next morning, I notified the desk-clerk, and, quite casually, both the newspaper correspondents, that the Green Chalybeate was about to be bereft of the presence of a distinguished novelist. Then, as my train did not leave till night, I resolved to be bored on horseback, rather than on the golf-links, and had Guendolen summoned, from the stable, for a final investigation of the country roads thereabouts.
Guendolen this afternoon elected to follow a new route; and knowing by experience that any questioning of this decision could but result in undignified defeat, I assented. Thus it came about that we circled parallel to the boardwalk, which leads uphill to the deserted Royal Hotel, and passed its rows of broken windows; and went downhill again, always at Guendolen’s election; and thus came to the creek, which babbled
