CHAPTER TWO
Her figure faded into the darkness, as pale things waver down into deepwater, and as soon as she disappeared my sense of humour returned. Theepisode appeared more clearly, as a flirtation with an enigmatic, butdecidedly charming, chance travelling companion. The girl was a riddle,and a riddle once guessed is a very trivial thing. She, too, would be avery trivial thing when I had found a solution. It occurred to me thatshe wished me to regard her as a symbol, perhaps, of the future--as atype of those who are to inherit the earth, in fact. She had beenplaying the fool with me, in her insolent modernity. She had wished meto understand that I was old-fashioned; that the frame of mind of whichI and my fellows were the inheritors was over and done with. We were tobe compulsorily retired; to stand aside superannuated. It was obviousthat she was better equipped for the swiftness of life. She had asomething--not only quickness of wit, not only ruthless determination,but a something quite different and quite indefinably more impressive.Perhaps it was only the confidence of the superseder, the essentialquality that makes for the empire of the Occidental. But I was not anegro--not even relatively a Hindoo. I was somebody, confound it, I wassomebody.
As an author, I had been so uniformly unsuccessful, so absolutelyunrecognised, that I had got into the way of regarding myself as aheadof my time, as a worker for posterity. It was a habit of mind--the onlyrevenge that I could take upon despiteful Fate. This girl came toconfound me with the common herd--she declared herself to be that veryposterity for which I worked.
She was probably a member of some clique that called themselves FourthDimensionists--just as there had been pre-Raphaelites. It was a matterof cant allegory. I began to wonder how it was that I had never heard ofthem. And how on earth had they come to hear of me!
"She must have read something of mine," I found myself musing: "theJenkins story perhaps. It must have been the Jenkins story; they gaveit a good place in their rotten magazine. She must have seen that it wasthe real thing, and...." When one is an author one looks at things inthat way, you know.
By that time I was ready to knock at the door of the great Callan. Iseemed to be jerked into the commonplace medium of a great, great--oh,an infinitely great--novelist's home life. I was led into a well-litdrawing-room, welcomed by the great man's wife, gently propelled into abedroom, made myself tidy, descended and was introduced into thesanctum, before my eyes had grown accustomed to the lamp-light. Callanwas seated upon his sofa surrounded by an admiring crowd of very localpersonages. I forget what they looked like. I think there was a manwhose reddish beard did not become him and another whose face might havebeen improved by the addition of a reddish beard; there was also anextremely moody dark man and I vaguely recollect a person who lisped.
They did not talk much; indeed there was very little conversation. Whatthere was Callan supplied. He--spoke--very--slowly--and--very--authoritatively, like a great actor whose aim is to hold the stage aslong as possible. The raising of his heavy eyelids at the opening doorconveyed the impression of a dark, mental weariness; and seemed somehowto give additional length to his white nose. His short, brown beard wasgetting very grey, I thought. With his lofty forehead and with hissuperior, yet propitiatory smile, I was of course familiar. Indeed onesaw them on posters in the street. The notables did not want to talk.They wanted to be spell-bound--and they were. Callan sat there in anappropriate attitude--the one in which he was always photographed. Onehand supported his head, the other toyed with his watch-chain. His facewas uniformly solemn, but his eyes were disconcertingly furtive. Hecross-questioned me as to my walk from Canterbury; remarked that thecathedral was a--magnificent--Gothic--Monument and set me right as tothe lie of the roads. He seemed pleased to find that I remembered verylittle of what I ought to have noticed on the way. It gave him anopportunity for the display of his local erudition.
"A--remarkablewoman--used--to--live--in--the--cottage--next--the--mill--at--Stelling,"he said; "she was the original of Kate Wingfield."
"In your 'Boldero?'" the chorus chorussed.
Remembrance of the common at Stelling--of the glimmering white faces ofthe shadowy cottages--was like a cold waft of mist to me. I forgot tosay "Indeed!"
"She was--a very--remarkable--woman--She----"
I found myself wondering which was real; the common with its mistyhedges and the blurred moon; or this room with its ranks of uniformlybound books and its bust of the great man that threw a portentous shadowupward from its pedestal behind the lamp.
Before I had entirely recovered myself, the notables were departing tocatch the last train. I was left alone with Callan.
He did not trouble to resume his attitude for me, and when he did speak,spoke faster.
"Interesting man, Mr. Jinks?" he said; "you recognised him?"
"No," I said; "I don't think I ever met him."
Callan looked annoyed.
"I thought I'd got him pretty well. He's Hector Steele. In my'Blanfield,'" he added.
"Indeed!" I said. I had never been able to read "Blanfield." "Indeed,ah, yes--of course."
There was an awkward pause.
"The whiskey will be here in a minute," he said, suddenly. "I don't haveit in when Whatnot's here. He's the Rector, you know; a great temperanceman. When we've had a--a modest quencher--we'll get to business."
"Oh," I said, "your letters really meant--"
"Of course," he answered. "Oh, here's the whiskey. Well now, Fox wasdown here the other night. You know Fox, of course?"
"Didn't he start the rag called--?"
"Yes, yes," Callan answered, hastily, "he's been very successful inlaunching papers. Now he's trying his hand with a new one. He's anyamount of backers--big names, you know. He's to run my next as a_feuilleton_. This--this venture is to be rather more serious in tonethan any that he's done hitherto. You understand?"
"Why, yes," I said; "but I don't see where I come in."
Callan took a meditative sip of whiskey, added a little more water, alittle more whiskey, and then found the mixture to his liking.
"You see," he said, "Fox got a letter here to say that Wilkinson haddied suddenly--some affection of the heart. Wilkinson was to havewritten a series of personal articles on prominent people. Well, Fox wasnonplussed and I put in a word for you."
"I'm sure I'm much--" I began.
"Not at all, not at all," Callan interrupted, blandly. "I've known youand you've known me for a number of years."
A sudden picture danced before my eyes--the portrait of the Callan ofthe old days--the fawning, shady individual, with the seedy clothes, thefurtive eyes and the obliging manners.
"Why, yes," I said; "but I don't see that that gives me any claim."
Callan cleared his throat.
"The lapse of time," he said in his grand manner, "rivets what we maycall the bands of association."
He paused to inscribe this sentence on the tablets of his memory. Itwould be dragged in--to form a purple patch--in his new serial.
"You see," he went on, "I've written a good deal of autobiographicalmatter and it would verge upon self-advertisement to do more. You knowhow much I dislike _that_. So I showed Fox your sketch in the_Kensington_."
"The Jenkins story?" I said. "How did you come to see it?"
"Then send me the _Kensington_," he answered. There was a touch ofsourness in his tone, and I remembered that the _Kensington_ I had seenhad been ballasted with seven goodly pages by Callan himself--sevenunreadable packed pages of a serial.
"As I was saying," Callan began again, "you ought to know me very well,and I suppose you are acquainted with my books. As for the rest, I willgive you what material you want."
"But, my dear Callan," I said, "I've never tried my hand at that sort ofthing."
Callan silenced me with a wave of his hand.
"It struck both Fox and myself that your--your 'Jenkins' was just whatwas wanted," he said; "of course, that was a study of a kind ofbroken-down painter. But it was well done."
I bowed my head. Praise fro
m Callan was best acknowledged in silence.
"You see, what we want, or rather what Fox wants," he explained, "is akind of series of studies of celebrities _chez eux_. Of course,they are not broken down. But if you can treat them as you treated Jenkins--get them in their studies, surrounded by what in their case stands forthe broken lay figures and the faded serge curtains--it will be exactly thething. It will be a new line, or rather--what is a great deal better,mind you--an old line treated in a slightly, very slightly differentway. That's what the public wants."
"Ah, yes," I said, "that's what the public wants. But all the same, it'sbeen done time out of mind before. Why, I've seen photographs of you andyour arm-chair and your pen-wiper and so on, half a score of times in thesixpenny magazines."
Callan again indicated bland superiority with a wave of his hand.
"You undervalue yourself," he said.
I murmured--"Thanks."
"This is to be--not a mere pandering to curiosity--but an attempt to getat the inside of things--to get the atmosphere, so to speak; not merelyto catalogue furniture."
He was quoting from the prospectus of the new paper, and then clearedhis throat for the utterance of a tremendous truth.
"Photography--is not--Art," he remarked.
The fantastic side of our colloquy began to strike me.
"After all," I thought to myself, "why shouldn't that girl have playedat being a denizen of another sphere? She did it ever so much betterthan Callan. She did it too well, I suppose."
"The price is very decent," Callan chimed in. "I don't know how much perthousand, ...but...."
I found myself reckoning, against my will as it were.
"You'll do it, I suppose?" he said.
I thought of my debts ... "Why, yes, I suppose so," I answered. "But whoare the others that I am to provide with atmospheres?"
Callan shrugged his shoulders.
"Oh, all sorts of prominent people--soldiers, statesmen, Mr. Churchill,the Foreign Minister, artists, preachers--all sorts of people."
"All sorts of glory," occurred to me.
"The paper will stand expenses up to a reasonable figure," Callanreassured me.
"It'll be a good joke for a time," I said. "I'm infinitely obliged toyou."
He warded off my thanks with both hands.
"I'll just send a wire to Fox to say that you accept," he said, rising.He seated himself at his desk in the appropriate attitude. He had anappropriate attitude for every vicissitude of his life. These he hadstruck before so many people that even in the small hours of the morninghe was ready for the kodak wielder. Beside him he had every form oflabour-saver; every kind of literary knick-knack. There werebook-holders that swung into positions suitable to appropriateattitudes; there were piles of little green boxes with red capitalletters of the alphabet upon them, and big red boxes with black smallletters. There was a writing-lamp that cast an aesthetic glow uponanother appropriate attitude--and there was one typewriter withnote-paper upon it, and another with MS. paper already in position.
"My God!" I thought--"to these heights the Muse soars."
As I looked at the gleaming pillars of the typewriters, the image of myown desk appeared to me; chipped, ink-stained, gloriously dusty. Ithought that when again I lit my battered old tin lamp I should seeashes and match-ends; a tobacco-jar, an old gnawed penny penholder, bitsof pink blotting-paper, match-boxes, old letters, and dust everywhere.And I knew that my attitude--when I sat at it--would be inappropriate.
Callan was ticking off the telegram upon his machine. "It will go in themorning at eight," he said.