CHAPTER THREE
To encourage me, I suppose, Callan gave me the proof-sheets of his nextto read in bed. The thing was so bad that it nearly sickened me of himand his jobs. I tried to read the stuff; to read it conscientiously, toread myself to sleep with it. I was under obligations to old Cal and Iwanted to do him justice, but the thing was impossible. I fathomed asort of a plot. It dealt in fratricide with a touch of adultery; a GreatMoral Purpose loomed in the background. It would have been a dullyreadable novel but for that; as it was, it was intolerable. It wasamazing that Cal himself could put out such stuff; that he should havethe impudence. He was not a fool, not by any means a fool. It revoltedme more than a little.
I came to it out of a different plane of thought. I may not have beenable to write then--or I may; but I did know enough to recognise theflagrantly, the indecently bad, and, upon my soul, the idea that I, too,must cynically offer this sort of stuff if I was ever to sell my tensof thousands very nearly sent me back to my solitude. Callan had begunvery much as I was beginning now; he had even, I believe, had ideals inhis youth and had starved a little. It was rather trying to think thatperhaps I was really no more than another Callan, that, when at last Icame to review my life, I should have much such a record to look backupon. It disgusted me a little, and when I put out the light the horrorssettled down upon me.
I woke in a shivering frame of mind, ashamed to meet Callan's eye. Itwas as if he must be aware of my over-night thoughts, as if he mustthink me a fool who quarrelled with my victuals. He gave no signs of anysuch knowledge--was dignified, cordial; discussed his breakfast withgusto, opened his letters, and so on. An anaemic amanuensis was takingnotes for appropriate replies. How could I tell him that I would not dothe work, that I was too proud and all the rest of it? He would havethought me a fool, would have stiffened into hostility, I should havelost my last chance. And, in the broad light of day, I was loath to dothat.
He began to talk about indifferent things; we glided out on to acurrent of mediocre conversation. The psychical moment, if there wereany such, disappeared.
Someone bearing my name had written to express an intention of offeringpersonal worship that afternoon. The prospect seemed to please the greatCal. He was used to such things; he found them pay, I suppose. We begandesultorily to discuss the possibility of the writer's being a relationof mine; I doubted. I had no relations that I knew of; there was aphenomenal old aunt who had inherited the acres and respectability ofthe Etchingham Grangers, but she was not the kind of person to worship anovelist. I, the poor last of the family, was without the pale, simplybecause I, too, was a novelist. I explained these things to Callan andhe commented on them, found it strange how small or how large, I forgetwhich, the world was. Since his own apotheosis shoals of Callans hadclaimed relationship.
I ate my breakfast. Afterward, we set about the hatching of thatarticle--the thought of it sickens me even now. You will find it in thevolume along with the others; you may see how I lugged in Callan'ssurroundings, his writing-room, his dining-room, the romantic arbour inwhich he found it easy to write love-scenes, the clipped trees likepeacocks and the trees clipped like bears, and all the rest of thebackground for appropriate attitudes. He was satisfied with anyarrangements of words that suggested a gentle awe on the part of thewriter.
"Yes, yes," he said once or twice, "that's just the touch, just thetouch--very nice. But don't you think...." We lunched after some time.
I was so happy. Quite pathetically happy. It had come so easy to me. Ihad doubted my ability to do the sort of thing; but it had writtenitself, as money spends itself, and I was going to earn money like that.The whole of my past seemed a mistake--a childishness. I had kept out ofthis sort of thing because I had thought it below me; I had kept out ofit and had starved my body and warped my mind. Perhaps I had evendamaged my work by this isolation. To understand life one must live--andI had only brooded. But, by Jove, I would try to live now.
Callan had retired for his accustomed siesta and I was smoking pipeafter pipe over a confoundedly bad French novel that I had found in thebook-shelves. I must have been dozing. A voice from behind my backannounced:
"Miss Etchingham Granger!" and added--"Mr. Callan will be downdirectly." I laid down my pipe, wondered whether I ought to have beensmoking when Cal expected visitors, and rose to my feet.
"You!" I said, sharply. She answered, "You see." She was smiling. Shehad been so much in my thoughts that I was hardly surprised--the thinghad even an air of pleasant inevitability about it.
"You must be a cousin of mine," I said, "the name--"
"Oh, call it sister," she answered.
I was feeling inclined for farce, if blessed chance would throw it in myway. You see, I was going to live at last, and life for me meantirresponsibility.
"Ah!" I said, ironically, "you are going to be a sister to me, as theysay." She might have come the bogy over me last night in the moonlight,but now ... There was a spice of danger about it, too, just a touchlurking somewhere. Besides, she was good-looking and well set up, and Icouldn't see what could touch me. Even if it did, even if I got into amess, I had no relatives, not even a friend, to be worried about me. Istood quite alone, and I half relished the idea of getting into amess--it would be part of life, too. I was going to have a little money,and she excited my curiosity. I was tingling to know what she was reallyat.
"And one might ask," I said, "what you are doing in this--in this...." Iwas at a loss for a word to describe the room--the smugness parading asprofessional Bohemianism.
"Oh, I am about my own business," she said, "I told you last night--haveyou forgotten?"
"Last night you were to inherit the earth," I reminded her, "and onedoesn't start in a place like this. Now I should have gone--well--Ishould have gone to some politician's house--a cabinet minister's--sayto Gurnard's. He's the coming man, isn't he?"
"Why, yes," she answered, "he's the coming man."
You will remember that, in those days, Gurnard was only the dark horseof the ministry. I knew little enough of these things, despised politicsgenerally; they simply didn't interest me. Gurnard I dislikedplatonically; perhaps because his face was a little enigmatic--a littlerepulsive. The country, then, was in the position of having noOpposition and a Cabinet with two distinct strains in it--the Churchilland the Gurnard--and Gurnard was the dark horse.
"Oh, you should join your flats," I said, pleasantly. "If he's thecoming man, where do you come in?... Unless he, too, is a Dimensionist."
"Oh, both--both," she answered. I admired the tranquillity with whichshe converted my points into her own. And I was very happy--it struck meas a pleasant sort of fooling....
"I suppose you will let me know some day who you are?" I said.
"I have told you several times," she answered.
"Oh, you won't frighten me to-day," I asserted, "not here, you know, andanyhow, why should you want to?"
"I have told you," she said again.
"You've told me you were my sister," I said; "but my sister died yearsand years ago. Still, if it suits you, if you want to be somebody'ssister ..."
"It suits me," she answered--"I want to be placed, you see."
I knew that my name was good enough to place anyone. We had been theGrangers of Etchingham since--oh, since the flood. And if the girlwanted to be my sister and a Granger, why the devil shouldn't she, solong as she would let me continue on this footing? I hadn't talked to awoman--not to a well set-up one--for ages and ages. It was as if I hadcome back from one of the places to which younger sons exile themselves,and for all I knew it might be the correct thing for girls to electbrothers nowadays in one set or another.
"Oh, tell me some more," I said, "one likes to know about one's sister.You and the Right Honourable Charles Gurnard are Dimensionists, and whoare the others of your set?"
"There is only one," she answered. And would you believe it!--it seemshe was Fox, the editor of my new paper.
"You select your characters with charming indiscri
minateness," I said."Fox is only a sort of toad, you know--he won't get far."
"Oh, he'll go far," she answered, "but he won't get there. Fox isfighting against us."
"Oh, so you don't dwell in amity?" I said. "You fight for your ownhands."
"We fight for our own hands," she answered, "I shall throw Gurnard overwhen he's pulled the chestnuts out of the fire."
I was beginning to get a little tired of this. You see, for me, thescene was a veiled flirtation and I wanted to get on. But I had tolisten to her fantastic scheme of things. It was really a duel betweenFox, the Journal-founder, and Gurnard, the Chancellor of the Exchequer.Fox, with Churchill, the Foreign Minister, and his supporters, forpieces, played what he called "the Old Morality business" againstGurnard, who passed for a cynically immoral politician.
I grew more impatient. I wanted to get out of this stage into somethingmore personal. I thought she invented this sort of stuff to keep me fromgetting at her errand at Callan's. But I didn't want to know her errand;I wanted to make love to her. As for Fox and Gurnard and Churchill, theForeign Minister, who really was a sympathetic character and did standfor political probity, she might be uttering allegorical truths, but Iwas not interested in them. I wanted to start some topic that would leadaway from this Dimensionist farce.
"My dear sister," I began.... Callan always moved about like aconfounded eavesdropper, wore carpet slippers, and stepped round thecorners of screens. I expect he got copy like that.
"So, she's your sister?" he said suddenly, from behind me. "Strange thatyou shouldn't recognise the handwriting...."
"Oh, we don't correspond," I said light-heartedly, "we are _so_different." I wanted to take a rise out of the creeping animal that hewas. He confronted her blandly.
"You must be the little girl that I remember," he said. He had known myparents ages ago. That, indeed, was how I came to know him; I wouldn'thave chosen him for a friend. "I thought Granger said you were dead ...but one gets confused...."
"Oh, we see very little of each other," she answered. "Arthur mighthave said I was dead--he's capable of anything, you know." She spokewith an assumption of sisterly indifference that was absolutelystriking. I began to think she must be an actress of genius, she did itso well. She _was_ the sister who had remained within the pale; I, therapscallion of a brother whose vagaries were trying to his relations.That was the note she struck, and she maintained it. I didn't know whatthe deuce she was driving at, and I didn't care. These scenes with atouch of madness appealed to me. I was going to live, and here,apparently, was a woman ready to my hand. Besides, she was making a foolof Callan, and that pleased me. His patronising manners had irritatedme.
I assisted rather silently. They began to talk of mutualacquaintances--as one talks. They both seemed to know everyone in thisworld. She gave herself the airs of being quite in the inner ring;alleged familiarity with quite impossible persons, with my portentousaunt, with Cabinet Ministers--that sort of people. They talked aboutthem--she, as if she lived among them; he, as if he tried very hard tolive up to them.
She affected reverence for his person, plied him with compliments thathe swallowed raw--horribly raw. It made me shudder a little; it wastragic to see the little great man confronted with that woman. Itshocked me to think that, really, I must appear much like him--must havelooked like that yesterday. He was a little uneasy, I thought, madelittle confidences as if in spite of himself; little confidences aboutthe _Hour_, the new paper for which I was engaged. It seemed to be runby a small gang with quite a number of assorted axes to grind. There wassome foreign financier--a person of position whom she knew (a noble manin the _best_ sense, Callan said); there was some politician (she knewhim too, and he was equally excellent, so Callan said), Mr. Churchillhimself, an artist or so, an actor or so--and Callan. They all wanted alittle backing, so it seemed. Callan, of course, put it in another way.The Great--Moral--Purpose turned up, I don't know why. He could notthink he was taking me in and she obviously knew more about the peopleconcerned than he did. But there it was, looming large, and quite asfarcical as all the rest of it. The foreign financier--they called himthe Duc de Mersch--was by way of being a philanthropist on megalomaniaclines. For some international reason he had been allowed to possesshimself of the pleasant land of Greenland. There was gold in it andtrain-oil in it and other things that paid--but the Duc de Mersch wasnot thinking of that. He was first and foremost a State Founder, or atleast he was that after being titular ruler of some little spot of aTeutonic grand-duchy. No one of the great powers would let any other ofthe great powers possess the country, so it had been handed over to theDuc de Mersch, who had at heart, said Cal, the glorious vision offounding a model state--_the_ model state, in which washed andbroadclothed Esquimaux would live, side by side, regenerated lives,enfranchised equals of choicely selected younger sons of whateveroccidental race. It was that sort of thing. I was even a littleoverpowered, in spite of the fact that Callan was its trumpeter; therewas something fine about the conception and Churchill's acquiescenceseemed to guarantee an honesty in its execution.
The Duc de Mersch wanted money, and he wanted to run a railway acrossGreenland. His idea was that the British public should supply the moneyand the British Government back the railway, as they did in the case ofa less philanthropic Suez Canal. In return he offered an eligibleharbour and a strip of coast at one end of the line; the British publicwas to be repaid in casks of train-oil and gold and with theconsciousness of having aided in letting the light in upon a dark spotof the earth. So the Duc de Mersch started the _Hour_. The _Hour_ was toextol the Duc de Mersch's moral purpose; to pat the Government's back;influence public opinion; and generally advance the cause of the Systemfor the Regeneration of the Arctic Regions.
I tell the story rather flippantly, because I heard it from Callan, andbecause it was impossible to take him seriously. Besides, I was not verymuch interested in the thing itself. But it did interest me to see howdeftly she pumped him--squeezed him dry.
I was even a little alarmed for poor old Cal. After all, the man haddone me a service; had got me a job. As for her, she struck me as apotentially dangerous person. One couldn't tell, she might be someadventuress, or if not that, a speculator who would damage Cal's littleschemes. I put it to her plainly afterward; and quarrelled with her aswell as I could. I drove her down to the station. Callan must have beendistinctly impressed or he would never have had out his trap for her.
"You know," I said to her, "I won't have you play tricks withCallan--not while you're using my name. It's very much at your serviceas far as I'm concerned--but, confound it, if you're going to injure himI shall have to show you up--to tell him."
"You couldn't, you know," she said, perfectly calmly, "you've letyourself in for it. He wouldn't feel pleased with you for letting it goas far as it has. You'd lose your job, and you're going to live, youknow--you're going to live...."
I was taken aback by this veiled threat in the midst of the pleasantry.It wasn't fair play--not at all fair play. I recovered some of my oldalarm, remembered that she really was a dangerous person; that ...
"But I sha'n't hurt Callan," she said, suddenly, "you may make your mindeasy."
"You really won't?" I asked.
"Really not," she answered. It relieved me to believe her. I did notwant to quarrel with her. You see, she fascinated me, she seemed to actas a stimulant, to set me tingling somehow--and to baffle me.... Andthere was truth in what she said. I had let myself in for it, and Ididn't want to lose Callan's job by telling him I had made a fool ofhim.
"I don't care about anything else," I said. She smiled.