Mr. Donald Stoat cleared his throat with premonitory emphasis and arched his eyebrows significantly. "I hope," he said, "that before you come to any terms with Fothergill, you will talk to me and listen to what I have to say." There was a weighty pause, then he concluded pontifically: "Stoat--the House of Stoat--would like to have you on its list."
"What's that? What's that?" said McHarg feverishly. "Stoat!" he cried suddenly. "Stoat?" He winced nervously in a kind of convulsion of jangled nerves, then paused, trembling and undecided, as if he did not know whether to spring upon Mr. Stoat or to spring out the window. Snapping his bony fingers sharply, he turned to Webber and shrieked again in a shrill, falsetto cackle: "Did you hear it, Georgie? Isn't it wonderful? K-k-k-k-k--Stoat!" he squeaked, prodding Webber in the ribs again. "The House of Stoat! Can you beat it? Isn't it marvellous? Isn't it--All right, all right," he said, breaking off abruptly and turning upon the astounded Mr. Stoat. "All right, Mr. Stoat, we'll talk about it. But some other time. Come in to see me next week," he said feverishly.
With that he grasped Mr. Stoat by the hand, shook it in farewell, and with his other arm practically lifted that surprised gentleman from his chair and escorted him across the room. "Good-bye, goodbye! Come in next week...Good-bye, Bendien!" he now said to the Dutchman, seizing him by the hand, lifting him from the chair, and repeating the process. He herded the two before him with his bony arms outstretched as if he were shooing chickens, and finally got them out of the door, talking rapidly all the time, saying: "Goodbye, good-bye. Thanks for coming in. Come back to see me again. Georgie and I have to go to lunch now."
At last he closed the door on them, turned, and came back in the room. He was obviously unstrung.
* * *
35. A Guest in Spite of Himself
When Bendien and Stoat were so suddenly and unceremoniously ushered from the room, George rose from his chair in some excitement, not knowing what to do with himself. McHarg now looked at him wearily.
"Sit down, sit down!" McHarg gasped, and fell into a chair. He crossed his bony legs with a curiously pathetic and broken attitude. "Christ!" he said, letting out a long sigh, "I'm tired. I feel as if I've been run through a sausage grinder. That damned Dutchman! I went out with him in Amsterdam, and we've been going it ever since. God, I can't remember having eaten since I left Cologne. That was four days ago."
He looked it, too. George was sure that he had spoken the literal truth and that he had not paused to eat for days. He was a wreck of jangled nerves and utterly exhausted weariness. As he sat there with his bony shanks crossed like two pieces of limp string, his gaunt figure had the appearance of being broken in two at the waist. He looked as if he would never be able to get out of that chair again without assistance. Just at that moment, however, the telephone rang sharply, and McHarg leaped up as if he had received an electric shock.
"Jesus Christ!" he shrilled. "What's that?" He darted for the phone, snatched it up savagely, and snapped: "Hello, who's there?" Then feverishly but very cordially: "Oh, hello; hello, Rick--you bastard, you! Where the hell have you been, anyway? I've been trying to reach you all morning...No! No! I just got here last night...Of course I'm going to see you. That's one of the reasons I'm here...No, no, you don't need to come for me. I've got my own car here. We'll drive down. I'm bringing someone with me...Who?" he cackled suddenly in his shrill falsetto. "You'll see, you'll see. Wait till we get there...For dinner? Sure, I'll make it. How long does it take?...Two hours and a half? Seven o'clock. We'll be there with time to spare. Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What's the address? Wait till I get it down."
He seated himself abruptly at the writing-desk, fumbled for a moment with pen and paper, and then passed them impatiently towards George, saying: "Write it down, George, as I give it to you." The address was in Surrey, a farm on a country road several miles away from a small town. The directions for finding it were quite complicated, involving detours and cross-roads, but George finally got it all down correctly. Then McHarg, feverishly assuring his host that they would be there for dinner, with time to spare, hung up.
"Well, now," he said impatiently, springing to his feet with another exhibition of that astounding vitality which seemed to burn in him all the time, "come on, Georgie! Let's snap out of it! We'll have to get going!"
"W-w-w-we?" George stammered. "Y-y-y-you mean me, Mr. McHarg?"
"Sure, sure!" McHarg said impatiently. "Rick's expecting us to dinner. We can't keep him waiting. Come on! Come on! Let's get started! We're getting out of London! We're going places!"
"P-p-p-places?" George stammered again, dumbfounded. "But w-w-w-where are we going, Mr. McHarg?"
"West of England," he barked out instantly. "We'll go down to Rick's and spend the night. But to-morrow--to-morrow," he muttered, pacing up and down and speaking with ominous decision, "we'll be on our way. West of England," he muttered again, pacing and hanging to his coat lapels with bony fingers. "Cathedral towns," he said. "Bath, Bristol, Wells, Exeter, Salisbury, Devonshire, coast of Cornwall," he cried feverishly, getting his geography and his cathedrals hopelessly confused, but covering, nevertheless, a large portion of the kingdom in a single staccato sentence. "Keep out of cities," he went on. "Stay away from swank hotels--joints like this one. Hate them. Hate all of them. Want the country--the English countryside," he said with relish.
George's heart sank. He had not bargained for anything like this. He had come to England to finish his new book. The work had been going well. He had established the beat and cadence of daily hours at his writing, and the prospect of breaking the rhythm of it just when he was going at full swing was something that he dreaded. Moreover, God only knew where such a jaunt as McHarg spoke of would end. McHarg, meanwhile, was still talking, pacing nervously back and forth and letting his enthusiasm mount as his mind built up the idyllic picture of what he had suddenly taken it into his head to do.
"Yes, the English countryside--that's the thing," he said with relish. "We'll put up at night by the side of the road and cook our own meals, or stay at some old inn--some real English country inn," he said with deliberate emphasis. "Tankards of musty ale," he muttered. "A well-done chop by the fireside. A bottle of old port, eh Georgie?" he cried, his scorched face lighting up with great glee. "Did it all before one time. Toured the whole country several years ago with my wife. Used a trailer. Went from place to place. Slept in our trailer at night and did our own cooking. Wonderful! Marvellous!" he barked. "The real way to see the country. The only way."
George said nothing. At the moment he was unable to say anything. For weeks he had looked forward to his meeting with McHarg. He had leaped to his bidding when McHarg had summoned him to get out of bed instantly and come to lunch. But he had never dreamed of being abducted as a travelling and talking companion on an expedition that might last for days and even weeks, and end up almost anywhere. He had no desire or intention of going with McHarg if he could avoid it. And yet--his mind groped frantically for a way out--what was he to do? He did not want to offend him. He had too great an admiration and respect for McHarg to do anything that might, wittingly or unwittingly, hurt him or wound his feelings. And how could he reject the invitation of a man who, with the most generous and unselfish enthusiasm, had used the power and elevation of his high place to try to lift him out of the lower channel in which his own life ran?
In spite of the brevity of their acquaintance, George had already seen dearly and unmistakably what a good and noble human being McHarg really was. He knew how much integrity and courage and honesty was contained in that tormented tenement of fury and lacerated hurts. Regardless of all that was jangled, snarled, and twisted in his life, regardless of all that had become bitter, harsh, and acrid, McHarg was obviously one of the truly good, the truly high, the truly great people of the world. Anyone with an atom of feeling and intelligence, George thought, must have seen this at once. And as he continued to watch and study McHarg, and took in again the shock of his appearance--the inflamed face, the poached
blue eyes, the emaciated figure and nervously shaking hands--an image flashed into his mind which seemed to represent the essential quality of the man, and this, curiously, was the image of Abraham Lincoln. Save for McHarg's tallness and gauntness, there was no physical similarity to Lincoln. The resemblance came, George thought, from a certain homely identity, from a kind of astonishing ugliness which was so marked that it was hard to see how it escaped the grotesque, and yet it was not grotesque. It was an ugliness which somehow, no matter what extravagances of gesture, tone, and manner McHarg indulged in, never lost its quality of enormous, latent dignity. This strange and troubling resemblance became strikingly evident in repose.
For now, his decision having been arrived at with explosive violence, McHarg sat quietly in a chair, his bony legs crossed lankly, and with the fingers of one freckled and large-knuckled hand fumbled in the breast pocket of his coat for his cheque-book and his wallet. He got them out at last, his hands still shaking as with palsy, but even that did not disturb the suggestion of quiet dignity and strength. He put wallet and cheque-book on his knees, fumbled in a pocket of his vest, took out an old, worn spectacle-case, snapped it open, and deliberately extracted a pair of spectacles. They were the most extraordinary spectacles George had ever seen. They looked as if they might have belonged to Washington, or to Franklin, or to Lincoln himself. The rims, the nose clasp, and the handles were of plain old silver. McHarg opened them carefully, and then, using both hands, slowly adjusted them and settled the handles over his large and freckled ears. This done, he bent his head, took up the wallet, opened it, and very carefully began to count the contents. The transforming effect of this simple act was astonishing. The irritable, rasping, overwrought man of a few minutes before was gone completely. This lank and ugly figure in the chair, with its silver-rimmed spectacles, its wry and puckered face lowered in calculation, its big bony hands deliberately fingering each note inside the wallet, was an image of Yankee shrewdness, homely strength, plain dignity, and assured power. His very tone had changed. Still counting his money, without lifting his head, he spoke to George, saying quietly:
"Ring that bell over there, George. We'll have to get some more money. I'll send John out to the bank."
George rang, and shortly the young man with buttons rapped at the door and entered. McHarg glanced up and, opening his chequebook and, taking out his fountain pen, said quietly:
"I need some money, John. Will you take this cheque round to the bank and cash it?"
"Very good, sir," said John. "And 'Enry is 'ere, sir, with the car. 'E wants to know if 'e should wait."
"Yes," said McHarg, still writing out the cheque. "Tell him I'll need him. Tell him we'll be ready in twenty minutes." He tore out the cheque and handed it to the man. "And by the way," he said, "when you come back will you pack some things--shirts, underwear, socks, and so on--in a small bag? We're going out of town."
"Very good, sir," John said quietly, and went out.
McHarg was silent and thoughtful for a moment. Then he capped his fountain pen, restored it to his pocket, put away his wallet and cheque-book, took off his old spectacles with the same grave and patient movement, folded them and laid them in the case, snapped it to and put it in the pocket of his vest, and then, with a much quieter and more genial friendliness than he had yet displayed, brought one hand down smartly on the arm of his chair and said:
"Well, George, what are you doing now? Working on another book?"
Webber told him that he was.
"Going to be good?" he demanded.
Webber said he hoped so.
"A nice, big, fat one like the first? Lots of meat on it, is there? Lots of people?"
Webber told him that there would be.
"That's the stuff," he said. "Go to it and give 'em people," he said quietly. "You've got the feeling for 'ern. You know how to make 'em live. Go on and put 'em in. You'll hear a lot of bunk," he went on. "You've probably heard it already. There'll be a lot of bright young men who will tell you how to write, and tell you that what you do is wrong. They'll tell you that you have no style, no sense of form. They'll tell you that you don't write like Virginia Woolf, or like Proust, or like Gertrude Stein, or like someone else that you ought to write like. Take it all in, as much of it as you can. Believe all of it that you're able to believe. Try to get all the help from it you can, but if you know it's not true, don't pay too much attention to it."
"Will you be able to know whether it's true or not?"
"Oh, yes," he said quietly. "You always know if it's true. Christ, man, you're a writer, you're not a bright young man. If you were a bright young man you wouldn't know whether it was true or not. You'd only say you did. But a writer always knows. The bright young men don't think he does. That's the reason they're bright young men. They think a writer is too dumb or too pig-headed to listen to what they say, but the real truth of the matter is that the writer knows much more about it than they can ever know. Once in a while they say something that hits the nail on the head. But that's only one time in a thousand. When they do, it hurts, but it's worth listening to. It's probably something that you knew about yourself, that you knew you'd have to look at finally, but that you've been trying to dodge and that you hoped no one else would discover. When they punch one of those raw nerves, listen to them, even though its hurts like hell. But usually you'll find that you've known everything they say a long time before they say it, and that what they think is important doesn't amount to a damn."
"Then what's a man to do?" Webber said. "It looks pretty much as if he's got to be his own doctor, doesn't it? It looks as if he's got to find the answer for himself."
"I never found any other way," said McHarg. "I don't think you will, either. So get going. Keep busy. For Christ's sake, don't freeze up. Don't stall around. I've known a lot of young fellows who froze up after their first book, and it wasn't because they had only that one book in them, either. That's what the bright young men thought. That's what they always think, but it just ain't true. Good God, man, you've got a hundred books in you! You can keep on turning them out as long as you live. There's no danger of your drying up. The only danger is of freezing up."
"How do you mean? Why should a man freeze up?"
"Usually," said McHarg, "because he loses his nerve. He listens to the bright young men. His first book gets him pretty good reviews. He takes them seriously. He begins to worry about every little bit of criticism that's sandwiched in with the praise. He begins to wonder if he can do it again. His next book is really going to be 'as good as his first, maybe better. He has been a natural slugger to begin with, with a one-ton punch. Now he begins to shadow-box. He listens to everything they tell him. How to jab and how to hook. How to counter with his right. How to keep out of the way. How to weave and how to bob. How to take care of his feet. He learns to skip the rope, but forgets to use that paralysing punch that he was born with, and the first thing you know some palooka comes along and knocks him for a row of ash-cans. For God's sake, don't let it happen to you. Learn all you can. Improve all you can. Take all the instruction you can absorb. But remember that no amount of instruction can ever take the place of the wallop in the old right hand. If you lose that, you may learn all the proper ways that other men have used to do the job, but you'll have forgotten your own way. As a writer, you'll be through. So for God's sake, get going and keep going. Don't let them slow you down. Make your mistakes, take your chances, look silly, but keep on going. Don't freeze up."
"You think that can happen? Do you think a man can freeze up if he really has talent?"
"Yes," McHarg said quietly, "that can happen. I've seen it happen. You'll find out, as you go on, that most of the things they say, most of the dangers that they warn you of, do not exist. They'll talk to you, for instance, about prostituting your talent. They'll warn you not to write for money. Not to sell your soul to Hollywood. Not to do a dozen other things that have nothing whatever to do with you or with your life. You won't prostitute yourself. A ma
n's talent doesn't get prostituted just because someone waves a fat cheque in his face. If your talent is prostituted, it is because you are a prostitute by nature. The number of writers in this world who weep into their Scotch and tell you of the great books they would have written if they hadn't sold out to Hollywood or to the Saturday Evening Post is astonishingly large. But the number of great writers who have sold out is not large. In fact, I don't believe there are any at all. If Thomas Hardy had been given a contract to write stories for the Saturday Evening Post, do you think he would have written like Zane Grey or like Thomas Hardy? I can tell you the answer to that one. He would have written like Thomas Hardy. He couldn't have written like anyone else but Thomas Hardy. He would have kept on writing like Thomas Hardy whether he wrote for the Saturday Evening Post or Captain Billy's Whizbang. You can't prostitute a great writer, because a great writer will inevitably be himself. He couldn't sell himself out if he wanted to. And a good many of them, I suppose, have wanted to, or thought they did. But he can freeze up. He can listen too much to the bright young men. He can learn to shadow-box, to feint and jab and weave, and he can lose his punch. So whatever you do, don't freeze up."
There was a rap at the door, and in response to McHarg's summons John came in, carrying in his hand a bundle of crisp, brand-new Bank of England notes.
"I think you will find these right, sir," he said, as he handed the money to McHarg. "I counted them. One 'undred pounds, sir."
McHarg took the notes, folded them into a wad, and thrust it carelessly into his pocket. "All right, John," he said. "And now will you pack a few things?"
He got up, looked about him absently, and then, with a sudden resumption of his former feverish manner, he barked out:
"Well, George, get on your coat! We've got to be on our way!"
"B-b-but"--George began to temporise--"don't you think we'd better get some lunch before we start out, Mr. McHarg? If you haven't eaten for so long, you'll need food. Let's go somewhere now and get something to eat."