Two schoolfellows, who had sat together in the Sixth at Clifton,met at Paddington some twenty years later and travelled down toenter their two sons at one school. On their way, while the boysshyly became acquainted, the fathers discussed the project of thisstory; a small matter in comparison with the real business of thatday--but that it happened so gives me the opportunity of dedicating_Fort Amity_ to you, its editor in _The Monthly Review_, as areminder to outlast the short life granted in these days to novels.
Yet if either of our sons shall turn its pages some years hence,though but to remind himself of his first journey to school, I hopehe will not lay it down too contemptuously. The tale has, for itsown purposes, so seriously confused the geography of Fort Amitie,that he may search the map and end by doubting if any such fortressever existed and stood a siege: but I trust it will leave him in nodoubt of what his elders understood by honour and friendship.
Of these two themes, at any rate, I have composed it, and dedicate itto a poet who has sung nobly of both. "Like to the generations ofleaves are those of men"--but while we last, let these deciduouspages commemorate the day when we two went back to school fourstrong. May they also contain nothing unworthy to survive us in ourtwo fellow-travellers!
A. T. QUILLER-COUCH.
The Haven, April 20th, 1904.
PREFACE.
More than once, attempting a story of high and passionate love--inthis book, for example, and still more recklessly in my tale of_Sir John Constantine_--I have had to pause and ask myself theelementary question: Can such a story, if at once true and exemplary,conclude otherwise than in sorrow?
The great artists in poetry and prose fiction seem to consent that itcannot: and this, I think, not because--understanding love as theydo, with all its wonder and wild desire--they would conduct it tolife-long bliss if they could, but simply because they cannot fit itinto this muddy vesture of decay. They may dismiss us in the endwith peace and consolation:
And calm of mind, all passion spent.
And we know or have known that of its impulse among us lesser folk itholifies and populates this world. But our own transience qualifiesit. Only when love here claims to be above the world--"All for Love,and the World well Lost"--we feel that its exorbitance must wreck ithere and now, however it may shine hereafter. That is why all thegreat legends of love--the tale of Tristan and Iseult, for instance--are unhappy legends: as that is why they still tease us.
I hope these remarks will not be deemed too pompous for the prefaceto a story in which true love is crossed by a soldier's sense ofhonour. The theme is a variant on a great commonplace: and,following my habit, I let the incidents and characters have their ownway without the author's comment or interference.