The Cords of Vanity Part 20

5

I had meanwhile decided, first, to write another and a better book than _The Apostates_ or _Afield_ had ever pretended to be; and afterward to marry Rosalind Jemmett, whom I found, in my too-hackneyed but habitual phrase, "adorable." For this Rosalind was an eminently "sensible match," and as such, I considered, quite appropriate for a Townsend.

The main thing though, to me, was to write the book of which I had already the central idea,--very vague, as yet, but of an unquestionable magnificence. Development of it, on an at all commensurate scale, necessitated many inconveniences, and among them, the finding of someone who would a.s.sist me in imbuing the love-scenes--of which there must unfortunately be a great many--with reality; and for the tale's _milieu_ I again pitched upon the Green Chalybeate,--where, as you may remember, I first met with Stella.

So I said a not unpromising farewell to Rosalind Jemmett, who was going into Canada for the summer. She was quite frankly grieved by the absolute necessity of my taking a rigorous course of the Chalybeate waters, but agreed with me that one's health is not to be trifled with.

And of course she would write if I really wanted her to, though she couldn't imagine _why_--But I explained why, with not a little detail.

And she told me, truthfully, that I was talking like an idiot; and was not, I thought, irrevocably disgusted by my idiocy. So that, all in all, I was not discontented when I left her.

Then I ordered Byam to pack and, by various unveracious representations, induced my Uncle George Bulmer--as a sort of visible and outward sign that I forgave him for declining to lend me another penny--to accompany me to the Green Chalybeate. Besides, I was fond of the old scoundrel....

6

When I began to scribble these haphazard memories I had designed to be very droll concerning the "provincialism" of Lichfield; for, as every inhabitant of it will tell you, it is "quite hopelessly provincial,"

--and this is odd, seeing that, as investigation will a.s.sure you, the city is exclusively inhabited by self-confessed cosmopolitans. I had meant to depict Fairhaven, too, in the broad style of _Cranford_, say; and to be so absolutely side-splitting when I touched upon the Green Chalybeate as positively to endanger the existence of any apoplectic reader, who presumed to peruse the chapter which dealt with this resort.

But, upon reflection, I am too familiar with these places to attempt to treat them humorously. The persons who frequent their byways are too much like the persons who frequent the byways of any other place, I find, at bottom. For to write convincingly of the persons peculiar to any locality it is necessary either to have thoroughly misunderstood them, or else perseveringly to have been absent from daily intercourse with them until age has hardened the brain-cells, and you have forgotten what they are really like. Then, alone, you may write the necessary character studies which will be sufficiently abundant in human interest.

For, at bottom, any one of us is tediously like any other.

Comprehension is the grave of sympathy; scratch deeply enough and you will find not any livelily-coloured Tartarism, but just a mediocre and thoroughly uninteresting human being. So I may not ever be so droll as I had meant to be; and if you wish to chuckle over the grotesque places I have lived in, you must apply to persons who have spent two weeks there, and no more.

For the rest, Lichfield, and Fairhaven also, got at and into me when I was too young to defend myself. Therefore Lichfield and Fairhaven cannot ever, really, seem to me grotesque. To the contrary, it is the other places which must always appear to me a little queer when judged by the standards of Fairhaven and Lichfield.

16.

_He Seeks for Copy_

I had aforetime ordered Mr. George Bulmer to read _The Apostates_, and, as the author of this volume explained, from motives that were purely well-meaning. To-night I was superintending the process.

"For the scene of the book is the Green Chalybeate," said I; "and it may be my masterly rhetoric will so far awaken your benighted soul, Uncle George, as to enable you to perceive what the more immediate scenery is really like. Why, think of it! what if you should presently fall so deeply in love with the adjacent mountains as to consent to overlook the deficiencies of the more adjacent cafe! Try now, nunky!

try hard to think that the right verb is really more important than the right vermouth! and you have no idea what good it may do you."

Mr. Bulmer read on, with a bewildered face, while I gently stirred the contents of my tall and delectably odored gla.s.s. It was "frosted" to a nicety. We were drinking "Mamie Taylors" that summer, you may remember; and I had just brought up a pitcherful from the bar.

"Oh, I say, you know!" observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth chapter, and flung down the book.

"Rot, utter rot," I a.s.sented pleasantly; "puerile and futile trifling with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your st.u.r.dy common-sense instantly detected. In fact," I added, hopefully, "I think that chapter is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In _Afield_, you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the n.o.blest sentiments, the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father's whiskey and water; and 'Old-Fas.h.i.+oned' and 'Fair Play' have been obliging enough to write to the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low moral standards of to-day. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot to show you--all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit, and my fine impersonal att.i.tude, and the survival of the fittest, and so on."

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 b.u.t.ter for my daily bread." I refilled my gla.s.s 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 gla.s.s. "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 _pa.s.se_: that pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago."

"The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is already reflected--faintly, I grant you,--in the best-selling books. We have pa.s.sed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness and wide margins; our quondam decadents now sn.i.g.g.e.r 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 _menage a 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 a.s.sented, "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 a.s.sociations 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 any one 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 to-morrow 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 a.s.sorted dawns and idylls, it will end in my abducting you from some rustic inst.i.tution 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."

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 a.s.sented. Thus it came about that we circled parallel to the boardwalk, which leads uphill to the deserted Royal Hotel, and pa.s.sed its rows of broken windows; and went downhill again, always at Guendolen's election; and thus came to the creek, which babbled across the roadway and was overhung with thick foliage that lisped and whispered cheerfully in the placid light of the declining sun. It was there that the germ of _As the Coming of Dawn_ was found.

For I had fallen into a reverie over the deplorable obstinacy of my new heroine, who declined, for all my labours, to be unsophisticated; and taking advantage of this, Guendolen had twitched the reins from my hand and proceeded to satisfy her thirst in a manner that was rather too noisy to be quite good form. I sat in patience, idly observing the sparkling reflection of the sunlight on the water. I was elaborating a comparison between my obstinate heroine and Guendolen. Then Guendolen snorted, as something rustled through the underbrush, and turning, I perceived a Vision.

The Vision was in white, with a profusion of open-work. There were blue ribbons connected with it. There were also black eyes, of the almond-shaped, heavy-lidded variety that I had thought existed only in Lely's pictures, and great coils of brown hair which was gold where the chequered sunlight fell upon it, and two lips that were inexpressibly red. I was filled with pity for my tired horse, and a resolve that for this once her thirst should be quenched.

Thereupon, I lifted my cap hastily; and Guendolen scrambled to the other bank, and spluttered, and had carried me well past the Iron Spring, before I announced to the evening air that I was a fool, and that Guendolen was describable by various quite picturesque and derogatory epithets. And I smiled.

"Now, Robert Etheridge Townsend, you writer of books, here is a subject made to your hand!" And then:

"Only 'twixt the light and shade Floating memories of my maid Make me pray for Guendolen."