Title: Seven Men [Excerpts]
Author: Beerbohm, Max, Sir
Language: English
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SEVEN MEN

by Max Beerbohm



  Transcriber’s Note:
  From the version of “Seven Men” published in 1919 by William
  Heinemann (London).  Two of the stories have been omitted
  (“James Pethel” and “A.V. Laider”) since they are available

  In this plain ASCII version, emphasis and syllable
  stress italics have been converted to capitals; foreign italics and accents
  have been removed

  In “Enoch Soames:”
   I added a missing closing quotation mark in the following
  phrase: ‘Ten past two,’ he said.

  In “Hilary Maltby and Stephen Braxton:”
   I changed the opening double quote to a single quote in:
  ‘I wondered what old Mr. Abraham Hayward...
  and
  ‘I knew that if I leaned forward...



ENOCH SOAMES



When a book about the literature of the eighteen-nineties was given by
Mr. Holbrook Jackson to the world, I looked eagerly in the index for
SOAMES, ENOCH. I had feared he would not be there. He was not there.
But everybody else was. Many writers whom I had quite forgotten, or
remembered but faintly, lived again for me, they and their work, in Mr.
Holbrook Jackson’s pages. The book was as thorough as it was brilliantly
written. And thus the omission found by me was an all the deadlier
record of poor Soames’ failure to impress himself on his decade.

I daresay I am the only person who noticed the omission. Soames had
failed so piteously as all that! Nor is there a counterpoise in the
thought that if he had had some measure of success he might have passed,
like those others, out of my mind, to return only at the historian’s
beck. It is true that had his gifts, such as they were, been
acknowledged in his life-time, he would never have made the bargain I
saw him make--that strange bargain whose results have kept him always in
the foreground of my memory. But it is from those very results that the
full piteousness of him glares out.

Not my compassion, however, impels me to write of him. For his sake,
poor fellow, I should be inclined to keep my pen out of the ink. It is
ill to deride the dead. And how can I write about Enoch Soames without
making him ridiculous? Or rather, how am I to hush up the horrid fact
that he WAS ridiculous? I shall not be able to do that. Yet, sooner or
later, write about him I must. You will see, in due course, that I have
no option. And I may as well get the thing done now.


In the Summer Term of ‘93 a bolt from the blue flashed down on Oxford.
It drove deep, it hurtlingly embedded itself in the soil. Dons and
undergraduates stood around, rather pale, discussing nothing but it.
Whence came it, this meteorite? From Paris. Its name? Will Rothenstein.
Its aim? To do a series of twenty-four portraits in lithograph. These
were to be published from the Bodley Head, London. The matter was
urgent. Already the Warden of A, and the Master of B, and the Regius
Professor of C, had meekly ‘sat.’ Dignified and doddering old men, who
had never consented to sit to any one, could not withstand this dynamic
little stranger. He did not sue: he invited; he did not invite: he
commanded. He was twenty-one years old. He wore spectacles that flashed
more than any other pair ever seen. He was a wit. He was brimful of
ideas. He knew Whistler. He knew Edmond de Goncourt. He knew every one
in Paris. He knew them all by heart. He was Paris in Oxford. It was
whispered that, so soon as he had polished off his selection of dons,
he was going to include a few undergraduates. It was a proud day for me
when I--I--was included. I liked Rothenstein not less than I feared him;
and there arose between us a friendship that has grown ever warmer, and
been more and more valued by me, with every passing year.

At the end of Term he settled in--or rather, meteoritically
into--London. It was to him I owed my first knowledge of that forever
enchanting little world-in-itself, Chelsea, and my first acquaintance
with Walter Sickert and other august elders who dwelt there. It was
Rothenstein that took me to see, in Cambridge Street, Pimlico, a young
man whose drawings were already famous among the few--Aubrey Beardsley,
by name. With Rothenstein I paid my first visit to the Bodley Head.
By him I was inducted into another haunt of intellect and daring, the
domino room of the Cafe Royal.

There, on that October evening--there, in that exuberant vista of
gilding and crimson velvet set amidst all those opposing mirrors and
upholding caryatids, with fumes of tobacco ever rising to the painted
and pagan ceiling, and with the hum of presumably cynical conversation
broken into so sharply now and again by the clatter of dominoes shuffled
on marble tables, I drew a deep breath, and ‘This indeed,’ said I to
myself, ‘is life!’

It was the hour before dinner. We drank vermouth. Those who knew
Rothenstein were pointing him out to those who knew him only by name.
Men were constantly coming in through the swing-doors and wandering
slowly up and down in search of vacant tables, or of tables occupied by
friends. One of these rovers interested me because I was sure he wanted
to catch Rothenstein’s eye. He had twice passed our table, with a
hesitating look; but Rothenstein, in the thick of a disquisition on
Puvis de Chavannes, had not seen him. He was a stooping, shambling
person, rather tall, very pale, with longish and brownish hair. He had
a thin vague beard--or rather, he had a chin on which a large number
of hairs weakly curled and clustered to cover its retreat. He was an
odd-looking person; but in the ‘nineties odd apparitions were more
frequent, I think, than they are now. The young writers of that era--and
I was sure this man was a writer--strove earnestly to be distinct in
aspect. This man had striven unsuccessfully. He wore a soft black hat
of clerical kind but of Bohemian intention, and a grey waterproof cape
which, perhaps because it was waterproof, failed to be romantic. I
decided that ‘dim’ was the mot juste for him. I had already essayed to
write, and was immensely keen on the mot juste, that Holy Grail of the
period.

The dim man was now again approaching our table, and this time he made
up his mind to pause in front of it. ‘You don’t remember me,’ he said in
a toneless voice.

Rothenstein brightly focussed him. ‘Yes, I do,’ he replied after a
moment, with pride rather than effusion--pride in a retentive memory.
‘Edwin Soames.’

‘Enoch Soames,’ said Enoch.

‘Enoch Soames,’ repeated Rothenstein in a tone implying that it was
enough to have hit on the surname. ‘We met in Paris two or three times
when you were living there. We met at the Cafe Groche.’

‘And I came to your studio once.’

‘Oh yes; I was sorry I was out.’

‘But you were in. You showed me some of your paintings, you know.... I
hear you’re in Chelsea now.’

‘Yes.’

I almost wondered that Mr. Soames did not, after this monosyllable, pass
along. He stood patiently there, rather like a dumb animal, rather like
a donkey looking over a gate. A sad figure, his. It occurred to me that
‘hungry’ was perhaps the mot juste for him; but--hungry for what? He
looked as if he had little appetite for anything. I was sorry for him;
and Rothenstein, though he had not invited him to Chelsea, did ask him
to sit down and have something to drink.

Seated, he was more self-assertive. He flung back the wings of his cape
with a gesture which--had not those wings been waterproof--might
have seemed to hurl defiance at things in general. And he ordered an
absinthe. ‘Je me tiens toujours fidele,’ he told Rothenstein, ‘a la
sorciere glauque.’

‘It is bad for you,’ said Rothenstein dryly.

‘Nothing is bad for one,’ answered Soames. ‘Dans ce monde il n’y a ni de
bien ni de mal.’

‘Nothing good and nothing bad? How do you mean?’

‘I explained it all in the preface to “Negations.”’

‘“Negations”?’

‘Yes; I gave you a copy of it.’

‘Oh yes, of course. But did you explain--for instance--that there was no
such thing as bad or good grammar?’

‘N-no,’ said Soames. ‘Of course in Art there is the good and the evil.
But in Life--no.’ He was rolling a cigarette. He had weak white hands,
not well washed, and with finger-tips much stained by nicotine. ‘In Life
there are illusions of good and evil, but’--his voice trailed away to a
murmur in which the words ‘vieux jeu’ and ‘rococo’ were faintly audible.
I think he felt he was not doing himself justice, and feared that
Rothenstein was going to point out fallacies. Anyhow, he cleared his
throat and said ‘Parlons d’autre chose.’

It occurs to you that he was a fool? It didn’t to me. I was young, and
had not the clarity of judgment that Rothenstein already had. Soames was
quite five or six years older than either of us. Also, he had written a
book.

It was wonderful to have written a book.

If Rothenstein had not been there, I should have revered Soames. Even as
it was, I respected him. And I was very near indeed to reverence when
he said he had another book coming out soon. I asked if I might ask what
kind of book it was to be.

‘My poems,’ he answered. Rothenstein asked if this was to be the title
of the book. The poet meditated on this suggestion, but said he rather
thought of giving the book no title at all. ‘If a book is good in
itself--’ he murmured, waving his cigarette.

Rothenstein objected that absence of title might be bad for the sale
of a book. ‘If,’ he urged, ‘I went into a bookseller’s and said simply
“Have you got?” or “Have you a copy of?” how would they know what I
wanted?’

‘Oh, of course I should have my name on the cover,’ Soames answered
earnestly. ‘And I rather want,’ he added, looking hard at Rothenstein,
‘to have a drawing of myself as frontispiece.’ Rothenstein admitted
that this was a capital idea, and mentioned that he was going into the
country and would be there for some time. He then looked at his watch,
exclaimed at the hour, paid the waiter, and went away with me to dinner.
Soames remained at his post of fidelity to the glaucous witch.

‘Why were you so determined not to draw him?’ I asked.

‘Draw him? Him? How can one draw a man who doesn’t exist?’

‘He is dim,’ I admitted. But my mot juste fell flat. Rothenstein
repeated that Soames was non-existent.

Still, Soames had written a book. I asked if Rothenstein had read
‘Negations.’ He said he had looked into it, ‘but,’ he added crisply,
‘I don’t profess to know anything about writing.’ A reservation very
characteristic of the period! Painters would not then allow that any one
outside their own order had a right to any opinion about painting. This
law (graven on the tablets brought down by Whistler from the summit of
Fujiyama) imposed certain limitations. If other arts than painting were
not utterly unintelligible to all but the men who practised them,
the law tottered--the Monroe Doctrine, as it were, did not hold good.
Therefore no painter would offer an opinion of a book without warning
you at any rate that his opinion was worthless. No one is a better judge
of literature than Rothenstein; but it wouldn’t have done to tell him
so in those days; and I knew that I must form an unaided judgment on
‘Negations.’

Not to buy a book of which I had met the author face to face would
have been for me in those days an impossible act of self-denial. When
I returned to Oxford for the Christmas Term I had duly secured
‘Negations.’ I used to keep it lying carelessly on the table in my room,
and whenever a friend took it up and asked what it was about I would
say ‘Oh, it’s rather a remarkable book. It’s by a man whom I know.’ Just
‘what it was about’ I never was able to say. Head or tail was just what
I hadn’t made of that slim green volume. I found in the preface no clue
to the exiguous labyrinth of contents, and in that labyrinth nothing to
explain the preface.


‘Lean near to life. Lean very near--nearer.

‘Life is web, and therein nor warp nor woof is, but web only.

‘It is for this I am Catholick in church and in thought, yet do let
swift Mood weave there what the shuttle of Mood wills.’


These were the opening phrases of the preface, but those which followed
were less easy to understand. Then came ‘Stark: A Conte,’ about a
midinette who, so far as I could gather, murdered, or was about to
murder, a mannequin. It was rather like a story by Catulle Mendes in
which the translator had either skipped or cut out every alternate
sentence. Next, a dialogue between Pan and St. Ursula--lacking, I felt,
in ‘snap.’ Next, some aphorisms (entitled ‘Aphorismata’ [spelled in
Greek]). Throughout, in fact, there was a great variety of form; and
the forms had evidently been wrought with much care. It was rather the
substance that eluded me. Was there, I wondered, any substance at all?
It did now occur to me: suppose Enoch Soames was a fool! Up cropped a
rival hypothesis: suppose _I_ was! I inclined to give Soames the benefit
of the doubt. I had read ‘L’Apres-midi d’un Faune’ without extracting a
glimmer of meaning. Yet Mallarme--of course--was a Master. How was I to
know that Soames wasn’t another? There was a sort of music in his
prose, not indeed arresting, but perhaps, I thought, haunting, and laden
perhaps with meanings as deep as Mallarme’s own. I awaited his poems
with an open mind.

And I looked forward to them with positive impatience after I had had a
second meeting with him. This was on an evening in January. Going into
the aforesaid domino room, I passed a table at which sat a pale man with
an open book before him. He looked from his book to me, and I looked
back over my shoulder with a vague sense that I ought to have recognised
him. I returned to pay my respects. After exchanging a few words, I said
with a glance to the open book, ‘I see I am interrupting you,’ and was
about to pass on, but ‘I prefer,’ Soames replied in his toneless voice,
‘to be interrupted,’ and I obeyed his gesture that I should sit down.

I asked him if he often read here. ‘Yes; things of this kind I read
here,’ he answered, indicating the title of his book--‘The Poems of
Shelley.’

‘Anything that you really’--and I was going to say ‘admire?’ But I
cautiously left my sentence unfinished, and was glad that I had done so,
for he said, with unwonted emphasis, ‘Anything second-rate.’

I had read little of Shelley, but ‘Of course,’ I murmured, ‘he’s very
uneven.’

‘I should have thought evenness was just what was wrong with him. A
deadly evenness. That’s why I read him here. The noise of this place
breaks the rhythm. He’s tolerable here.’ Soames took up the book and
glanced through the pages. He laughed. Soames’ laugh was a short, single
and mirthless sound from the throat, unaccompanied by any movement of
the face or brightening of the eyes. ‘What a period!’ he uttered, laying
the book down. And ‘What a country!’ he added.

I asked rather nervously if he didn’t think Keats had more or less held
his own against the drawbacks of time and place. He admitted that there
were ‘passages in Keats,’ but did not specify them. Of ‘the older men,’
as he called them, he seemed to like only Milton. ‘Milton,’ he said,
‘wasn’t sentimental.’ Also, ‘Milton had a dark insight.’ And again, ‘I
can always read Milton in the reading-room.’

‘The reading-room?’

‘Of the British Museum. I go there every day.’

‘You do? I’ve only been there once. I’m afraid I found it rather a
depressing place. It--it seemed to sap one’s vitality.’

‘It does. That’s why I go there. The lower one’s vitality, the more
sensitive one is to great art. I live near the Museum. I have rooms in
Dyott Street.’

‘And you go round to the reading-room to read Milton?’

‘Usually Milton.’ He looked at me. ‘It was Milton,’ he certificatively
added, ‘who converted me to Diabolism.’

‘Diabolism? Oh yes? Really?’ said I, with that vague discomfort and that
intense desire to be polite which one feels when a man speaks of his own
religion. ‘You--worship the Devil?’

Soames shook his head. ‘It’s not exactly worship,’ he qualified, sipping
his absinthe. ‘It’s more a matter of trusting and encouraging.’

‘Ah, yes.... But I had rather gathered from the preface to “Negations”
 that you were a--a Catholic.’

‘Je l’etais a cette epoque. Perhaps I still am. Yes, I’m a Catholic
Diabolist.’

This profession he made in an almost cursory tone. I could see that what
was upmost in his mind was the fact that I had read ‘Negations.’ His
pale eyes had for the first time gleamed. I felt as one who is about to
be examined, viva voce, on the very subject in which he is shakiest. I
hastily asked him how soon his poems were to be published. ‘Next week,’
he told me.

‘And are they to be published without a title?’

‘No. I found a title, at last. But I shan’t tell you what it is,’ as
though I had been so impertinent as to inquire. ‘I am not sure that
it wholly satisfies me. But it is the best I can find. It suggests
something of the quality of the poems.... Strange growths, natural and
wild, yet exquisite,’ he added, ‘and many-hued, and full of poisons.’

I asked him what he thought of Baudelaire. He uttered the snort that
was his laugh, and ‘Baudelaire,’ he said, ‘was a bourgeois malgre lui.’
France had had only one poet: Villon; ‘and two-thirds of Villon were
sheer journalism.’ Verlaine was ‘an epicier malgre lui.’ Altogether,
rather to my surprise, he rated French literature lower than English.
There were ‘passages’ in Villiers de l’Isle-Adam. But ‘I,’ he summed up,
‘owe nothing to France.’ He nodded at me. ‘You’ll see,’ he predicted.

I did not, when the time came, quite see that. I thought the author of
‘Fungoids’ did--unconsciously, of course--owe something to the young
Parisian decadents, or to the young English ones who owed something to
THEM. I still think so. The little book--bought by me in Oxford--lies
before me as I write. Its pale grey buckram cover and silver lettering
have not worn well. Nor have its contents. Through these, with a
melancholy interest, I have again been looking. They are not much. But
at the time of their publication I had a vague suspicion that they MIGHT
be. I suppose it is my capacity for faith, not poor Soames’ work, that
is weaker than it once was....


              TO A YOUNG WOMAN.

     Thou art, who hast not been!
         Pale tunes irresolute
         And traceries of old sounds
         Blown from a rotted flute
     Mingle with noise of cymbals rouged with rust,
     Nor not strange forms and epicene
         Lie bleeding in the dust,
             Being wounded with wounds.

             For this it is
         That in thy counterpart
             Of age-long mockeries
         Thou hast not been nor art!


There seemed to me a certain inconsistency as between the first and last
lines of this. I tried, with bent brows, to resolve the discord. But I
did not take my failure as wholly incompatible with a meaning in Soames’
mind. Might it not rather indicate the depth of his meaning? As for the
craftsmanship, ‘rouged with rust’ seemed to me a fine stroke, and ‘nor
not’ instead of ‘and’ had a curious felicity. I wondered who the Young
Woman was, and what she had made of it all. I sadly suspect that Soames
could not have made more of it than she. Yet, even now, if one doesn’t
try to make any sense at all of the poem, and reads it just for the
sound, there is a certain grace of cadence. Soames was an artist--in so
far as he was anything, poor fellow!

It seemed to me, when first I read ‘Fungoids,’ that, oddly enough, the
Diabolistic side of him was the best. Diabolism seemed to be a cheerful,
even a wholesome, influence in his life.


                  NOCTURNE.

     Round and round the shutter’d Square
     I stroll’d with the Devil’s arm in mine.
     No sound but the scrape of his hoofs was there
     And the ring of his laughter and mine.
         We had drunk black wine.

     I scream’d, ‘I will race you, Master!’
     ‘What matter,’ he shriek’d, ‘to-night
     Which of us runs the faster?
     There is nothing to fear to-night
         In the foul moon’s light!’

     Then I look’d him in the eyes,
     And I laugh’d full shrill at the lie he told
     And the gnawing fear he would fain disguise.
     It was true, what I’d time and again been told:
         He was old--old.


There was, I felt, quite a swing about that first stanza--a joyous
and rollicking note of comradeship. The second was slightly hysterical
perhaps. But I liked the third: it was so bracingly unorthodox, even
according to the tenets of Soames’ peculiar sect in the faith. Not much
‘trusting and encouraging’ here! Soames triumphantly exposing the Devil
as a liar, and laughing ‘full shrill,’ cut a quite heartening figure,
I thought--then! Now, in the light of what befell, none of his poems
depresses me so much as ‘Nocturne.’

I looked out for what the metropolitan reviewers would have to say. They
seemed to fall into two classes: those who had little to say and those
who had nothing. The second class was the larger, and the words of the
first were cold; insomuch that

    Strikes a note of modernity throughout....  These tripping
    numbers.--Preston Telegraph

was the only lure offered in advertisements by Soames’ publisher. I had
hopes that when next I met the poet I could congratulate him on having
made a stir; for I fancied he was not so sure of his intrinsic greatness
as he seemed. I was but able to say, rather coarsely, when next I did
see him, that I hoped ‘Fungoids’ was ‘selling splendidly.’ He looked at
me across his glass of absinthe and asked if I had bought a copy. His
publisher had told him that three had been sold. I laughed, as at a
jest.

‘You don’t suppose I CARE, do you?’ he said, with something like a
snarl. I disclaimed the notion. He added that he was not a tradesman. I
said mildly that I wasn’t, either, and murmured that an artist who gave
truly new and great things to the world had always to wait long for
recognition. He said he cared not a sou for recognition. I agreed that
the act of creation was its own reward.

His moroseness might have alienated me if I had regarded myself as a
nobody. But ah! hadn’t both John Lane and Aubrey Beardsley suggested
that I should write an essay for the great new venture that was
afoot--‘The Yellow Book’? And hadn’t Henry Harland, as editor, accepted
my essay? And wasn’t it to be in the very first number? At Oxford I
was still in statu pupillari. In London I regarded myself as very much
indeed a graduate now--one whom no Soames could ruffle. Partly to show
off, partly in sheer good-will, I told Soames he ought to contribute to
‘The Yellow Book.’ He uttered from the throat a sound of scorn for that
publication.

Nevertheless, I did, a day or two later, tentatively ask Harland if he
knew anything of the work of a man called Enoch Soames. Harland paused
in the midst of his characteristic stride around the room, threw up his
hands towards the ceiling, and groaned aloud: he had often met ‘that
absurd creature’ in Paris, and this very morning had received some poems
in manuscript from him.

‘Has he NO talent?’ I asked.

‘He has an income. He’s all right.’ Harland was the most joyous of men
and most generous of critics, and he hated to talk of anything about
which he couldn’t be enthusiastic. So I dropped the subject of Soames.
The news that Soames had an income did take the edge off solicitude. I
learned afterwards that he was the son of an unsuccessful and deceased
bookseller in Preston, but had inherited an annuity of 300 pounds from
a married aunt, and had no surviving relatives of any kind. Materially,
then, he was ‘all right.’ But there was still a spiritual pathos about
him, sharpened for me now by the possibility that even the praises of
The Preston Telegraph might not have been forthcoming had he not been
the son of a Preston man. He had a sort of weak doggedness which I
could not but admire. Neither he nor his work received the slightest
encouragement; but he persisted in behaving as a personage: always
he kept his dingy little flag flying. Wherever congregated the
jeunes feroces of the arts, in whatever Soho restaurant they had just
discovered, in whatever music-hall they were most frequenting, there was
Soames in the midst of them, or rather on the fringe of them, a dim but
inevitable figure. He never sought to propitiate his fellow-writers,
never bated a jot of his arrogance about his own work or of his contempt
for theirs. To the painters he was respectful, even humble; but for the
poets and prosaists of ‘The Yellow Book,’ and later of ‘The Savoy,’ he
had never a word but of scorn. He wasn’t resented. It didn’t occur to
anybody that he or his Catholic Diabolism mattered. When, in the autumn
of ‘96, he brought out (at his own expense, this time) a third book, his
last book, nobody said a word for or against it. I meant, but forgot, to
buy it. I never saw it, and am ashamed to say I don’t even remember
what it was called. But I did, at the time of its publication, say to
Rothenstein that I thought poor old Soames was really a rather
tragic figure, and that I believed he would literally die for want of
recognition. Rothenstein scoffed. He said I was trying to get credit for
a kind heart which I didn’t possess; and perhaps this was so. But at the
private view of the New English Art Club, a few weeks later, I beheld a
pastel portrait of ‘Enoch Soames, Esq.’ It was very like him, and very
like Rothenstein to have done it. Soames was standing near it, in his
soft hat and his waterproof cape, all through the afternoon. Anybody who
knew him would have recognised the portrait at a glance, but nobody who
didn’t know him would have recognised the portrait from its bystander:
it ‘existed’ so much more than he; it was bound to. Also, it had not
that expression of faint happiness which on this day was discernible,
yes, in Soames’ countenance. Fame had breathed on him. Twice again in
the course of the month I went to the New English, and on both occasions
Soames himself was on view there. Looking back, I regard the close of
that exhibition as having been virtually the close of his career. He had
felt the breath of Fame against his cheek--so late, for such a little
while; and at its withdrawal he gave in, gave up, gave out. He, who had
never looked strong or well, looked ghastly now--a shadow of the shade
he had once been. He still frequented the domino room, but, having lost
all wish to excite curiosity, he no longer read books there. ‘You read
only at the Museum now?’ asked I, with attempted cheerfulness. He said
he never went there now. ‘No absinthe there,’ he muttered. It was the
sort of thing that in the old days he would have said for effect; but it
carried conviction now. Absinthe, erst but a point in the ‘personality’
he had striven so hard to build up, was solace and necessity now. He no
longer called it ‘la sorciere glauque.’ He had shed away all his French
phrases. He had become a plain, unvarnished, Preston man.

Failure, if it be a plain, unvarnished, complete failure, and even
though it be a squalid failure, has always a certain dignity. I avoided
Soames because he made me feel rather vulgar. John Lane had published,
by this time, two little books of mine, and they had had a pleasant
little success of esteem. I was a--slight but definite--‘personality.’
Frank Harris had engaged me to kick up my heels in The Saturday Review,
Alfred Harmsworth was letting me do likewise in The Daily Mail. I was
just what Soames wasn’t. And he shamed my gloss. Had I known that he
really and firmly believed in the greatness of what he as an artist
had achieved, I might not have shunned him. No man who hasn’t lost his
vanity can be held to have altogether failed. Soames’ dignity was an
illusion of mine. One day in the first week of June, 1897, that illusion
went. But on the evening of that day Soames went too.

I had been out most of the morning, and, as it was too late to reach
home in time for luncheon, I sought ‘the Vingtieme.’ This little
place--Restaurant du Vingtieme Siecle, to give it its full title--had
been discovered in ‘96 by the poets and prosaists, but had now been more
or less abandoned in favour of some later find. I don’t think it lived
long enough to justify its name; but at that time there it still was, in
Greek Street, a few doors from Soho Square, and almost opposite to that
house where, in the first years of the century, a little girl, and with
her a boy named De Quincey, made nightly encampment in darkness and
hunger among dust and rats and old legal parchments. The Vingtieme was
but a small whitewashed room, leading out into the street at one end and
into a kitchen at the other. The proprietor and cook was a Frenchman,
known to us as Monsieur Vingtieme; the waiters were his two daughters,
Rose and Berthe; and the food, according to faith, was good. The tables
were so narrow, and were set so close together, that there was space for
twelve of them, six jutting from either wall.

Only the two nearest to the door, as I went in, were occupied. On one
side sat a tall, flashy, rather Mephistophelian man whom I had seen from
time to time in the domino room and elsewhere. On the other side sat
Soames. They made a queer contrast in that sunlit room--Soames sitting
haggard in that hat and cape which nowhere at any season had I seen him
doff, and this other, this keenly vital man, at sight of whom I more
than ever wondered whether he were a diamond merchant, a conjurer, or
the head of a private detective agency. I was sure Soames didn’t want my
company; but I asked, as it would have seemed brutal not to, whether
I might join him, and took the chair opposite to his. He was smoking
a cigarette, with an untasted salmi of something on his plate and a
half-empty bottle of Sauterne before him; and he was quite silent. I
said that the preparations for the Jubilee made London impossible. (I
rather liked them, really.) I professed a wish to go right away till
the whole thing was over. In vain did I attune myself to his gloom. He
seemed not to hear me nor even to see me. I felt that his behaviour made
me ridiculous in the eyes of the other man. The gangway between the two
rows of tables at the Vingtieme was hardly more than two feet wide (Rose
and Berthe, in their ministrations, had always to edge past each other,
quarrelling in whispers as they did so), and any one at the table
abreast of yours was practically at yours. I thought our neighbour was
amused at my failure to interest Soames, and so, as I could not explain
to him that my insistence was merely charitable, I became silent.
Without turning my head, I had him well within my range of vision. I
hoped I looked less vulgar than he in contrast with Soames. I was sure
he was not an Englishman, but what WAS his nationality? Though his
jet-black hair was en brosse, I did not think he was French. To Berthe,
who waited on him, he spoke French fluently, but with a hardly native
idiom and accent. I gathered that this was his first visit to the
Vingtieme; but Berthe was off-hand in her manner to him: he had not made
a good impression. His eyes were handsome, but--like the Vingtieme’s
tables--too narrow and set too close together. His nose was predatory,
and the points of his moustache, waxed up beyond his nostrils, gave
a fixity to his smile. Decidedly, he was sinister. And my sense of
discomfort in his presence was intensified by the scarlet waistcoat
which tightly, and so unseasonably in June, sheathed his ample chest.
This waistcoat wasn’t wrong merely because of the heat, either. It was
somehow all wrong in itself. It wouldn’t have done on Christmas morning.
It would have struck a jarring note at the first night of ‘Hernani.’
I was trying to account for its wrongness when Soames suddenly and
strangely broke silence. ‘A hundred years hence!’ he murmured, as in a
trance.

‘We shall not be here!’ I briskly but fatuously added.

‘We shall not be here. No,’ he droned, ‘but the Museum will still be
just where it is. And the reading-room, just where it is. And people
will be able to go and read there.’ He inhaled sharply, and a spasm as
of actual pain contorted his features.

I wondered what train of thought poor Soames had been following. He did
not enlighten me when he said, after a long pause, ‘You think I haven’t
minded.’

‘Minded what, Soames?’

‘Neglect. Failure.’

‘FAILURE?’ I said heartily. ‘Failure?’ I repeated vaguely.
‘Neglect--yes, perhaps; but that’s quite another matter. Of course you
haven’t been--appreciated. But what then? Any artist who--who gives--’
What I wanted to say was, ‘Any artist who gives truly new and great
things to the world has always to wait long for recognition’; but the
flattery would not out: in the face of his misery, a misery so genuine
and so unmasked, my lips would not say the words.

And then--he said them for me. I flushed. ‘That’s what you were going to
say, isn’t it?’ he asked.

‘How did you know?’

‘It’s what you said to me three years ago, when “Fungoids” was
published.’ I flushed the more. I need not have done so at all, for
‘It’s the only important thing I ever heard you say,’ he continued.
‘And I’ve never forgotten it. It’s a true thing. It’s a horrible truth.
But--d’you remember what I answered? I said “I don’t care a sou for
recognition.” And you believed me. You’ve gone on believing I’m above
that sort of thing. You’re shallow. What should YOU know of the feelings
of a man like me? You imagine that a great artist’s faith in himself and
in the verdict of posterity is enough to keep him happy.... You’ve never
guessed at the bitterness and loneliness, the’--his voice broke; but
presently he resumed, speaking with a force that I had never known in
him. ‘Posterity! What use is it to ME? A dead man doesn’t know that
people are visiting his grave--visiting his birthplace--putting up
tablets to him--unveiling statues of him. A dead man can’t read the
books that are written about him. A hundred years hence! Think of it!
If I could come back to life then--just for a few hours--and go to the
reading-room, and READ! Or better still: if I could be projected, now,
at this moment, into that future, into that reading-room, just for this
one afternoon! I’d sell myself body and soul to the devil, for
that! Think of the pages and pages in the catalogue: “SOAMES,
ENOCH” endlessly--endless editions, commentaries, prolegomena,
biographies’--but here he was interrupted by a sudden loud creak of the
chair at the next table. Our neighbour had half risen from his place. He
was leaning towards us, apologetically intrusive.

‘Excuse--permit me,’ he said softly. ‘I have been unable not to hear.
Might I take a liberty? In this little restaurant-sans-facon’--he spread
wide his hands--‘might I, as the phrase is, “cut in”?’

I could but signify our acquiescence. Berthe had appeared at the kitchen
door, thinking the stranger wanted his bill. He waved her away with his
cigar, and in another moment had seated himself beside me, commanding a
full view of Soames.

‘Though not an Englishman,’ he explained, ‘I know my London well, Mr.
Soames. Your name and fame--Mr. Beerbohm’s too--very known to me. Your
point is: who am _I_?’ He glanced quickly over his shoulder, and in a
lowered voice said ‘I am the Devil.’

I couldn’t help it: I laughed. I tried not to, I knew there was nothing
to laugh at, my rudeness shamed me, but--I laughed with increasing
volume. The Devil’s quiet dignity, the surprise and disgust of his
raised eyebrows, did but the more dissolve me. I rocked to and fro, I
lay back aching. I behaved deplorably.

‘I am a gentleman, and,’ he said with intense emphasis, ‘I thought I was
in the company of GENTLEMEN.’

‘Don’t!’ I gasped faintly. ‘Oh, don’t!’

‘Curious, nicht wahr?’ I heard him say to Soames. ‘There is a type of
person to whom the very mention of my name is--oh-so-awfully-funny! In
your theatres the dullest comedian needs only to say “The Devil!” and
right away they give him “the loud laugh that speaks the vacant mind.”
 Is it not so?’

I had now just breath enough to offer my apologies. He accepted them,
but coldly, and re-addressed himself to Soames.

‘I am a man of business,’ he said, ‘and always I would put things
through “right now,” as they say in the States. You are a poet. Les
affaires--you detest them. So be it. But with me you will deal, eh? What
you have said just now gives me furiously to hope.’

Soames had not moved, except to light a fresh cigarette. He sat crouched
forward, with his elbows squared on the table, and his head just above
the level of his hands, staring up at the Devil. ‘Go on,’ he nodded. I
had no remnant of laughter in me now.

‘It will be the more pleasant, our little deal,’ the Devil went on,
‘because you are--I mistake not?--a Diabolist.’

‘A Catholic Diabolist,’ said Soames.

The Devil accepted the reservation genially. ‘You wish,’ he resumed, ‘to
visit now--this afternoon as-ever-is--the reading-room of the British
Museum, yes? but of a hundred years hence, yes? Parfaitement. Time--an
illusion. Past and future--they are as ever-present as the present, or
at any rate only what you call “just-round-the-corner.” I switch you
on to any date. I project you--pouf! You wish to be in the reading-room
just as it will be on the afternoon of June 3, 1997? You wish to find
yourself standing in that room, just past the swing-doors, this very
minute, yes? and to stay there till closing time? Am I right?’

Soames nodded.

The Devil looked at his watch. ‘Ten past two,’ he said. ‘Closing time in
summer same then as now: seven o’clock. That will give you almost five
hours. At seven o’clock--pouf!--you find yourself again here, sitting
at this table. I am dining to-night dans le monde--dans le higlif. That
concludes my present visit to your great city. I come and fetch you
here, Mr. Soames, on my way home.’

‘Home?’ I echoed.

‘Be it never so humble!’ said the Devil lightly.

‘All right,’ said Soames.

‘Soames!’ I entreated. But my friend moved not a muscle.

The Devil had made as though to stretch forth his hand across the table
and touch Soames’ forearm; but he paused in his gesture.

‘A hundred years hence, as now,’ he smiled, ‘no smoking allowed in the
reading-room. You would better therefore----’

Soames removed the cigarette from his mouth and dropped it into his
glass of Sauterne.

‘Soames!’ again I cried. ‘Can’t you’--but the Devil had now stretched
forth his hand across the table. He brought it slowly down on--the
tablecloth. Soames’ chair was empty. His cigarette floated sodden in his
wine-glass. There was no other trace of him.

For a few moments the Devil let his hand rest where it lay, gazing at me
out of the corners of his eyes, vulgarly triumphant.

A shudder shook me. With an effort I controlled myself and rose from my
chair. ‘Very clever,’ I said condescendingly. ‘But--“The Time Machine”
 is a delightful book, don’t you think? So entirely original!’

‘You are pleased to sneer,’ said the Devil, who had also risen, ‘but it
is one thing to write about an impossible machine; it is a quite other
thing to be a Supernatural Power.’ All the same, I had scored.

Berthe had come forth at the sound of our rising. I explained to her
that Mr. Soames had been called away, and that both he and I would be
dining here. It was not until I was out in the open air that I began to
feel giddy. I have but the haziest recollection of what I did, where I
wandered, in the glaring sunshine of that endless afternoon. I remember
the sound of carpenters’ hammers all along Piccadilly, and the bare
chaotic look of the half-erected ‘stands.’ Was it in the Green Park, or
in Kensington Gardens, or WHERE was it that I sat on a chair beneath a
tree, trying to read an evening paper? There was a phrase in the leading
article that went on repeating itself in my fagged mind--‘Little is
hidden from this august Lady full of the garnered wisdom of sixty years
of Sovereignty.’ I remember wildly conceiving a letter (to reach Windsor
by express messenger told to await answer):


‘MADAM,--Well knowing that your Majesty is full of the garnered wisdom
of sixty years of Sovereignty, I venture to ask your advice in the
following delicate matter. Mr. Enoch Soames, whose poems you may or may
not know,’....


Was there NO way of helping him--saving him? A bargain was a bargain,
and I was the last man to aid or abet any one in wriggling out of a
reasonable obligation. I wouldn’t have lifted a little finger to save
Faust. But poor Soames!--doomed to pay without respite an eternal price
for nothing but a fruitless search and a bitter disillusioning....

Odd and uncanny it seemed to me that he, Soames, in the flesh, in the
waterproof cape, was at this moment living in the last decade of the
next century, poring over books not yet written, and seeing and seen by
men not yet born. Uncannier and odder still, that to-night and evermore
he would be in Hell. Assuredly, truth was stranger than fiction.

Endless that afternoon was. Almost I wished I had gone with Soames--not
indeed to stay in the reading-room, but to sally forth for a brisk
sight-seeing walk around a new London. I wandered restlessly out of the
Park I had sat in. Vainly I tried to imagine myself an ardent tourist
from the eighteenth century. Intolerable was the strain of the
slow-passing and empty minutes. Long before seven o’clock I was back at
the Vingtieme.

I sat there just where I had sat for luncheon. Air came in listlessly
through the open door behind me. Now and again Rose or Berthe appeared
for a moment. I had told them I would not order any dinner till Mr.
Soames came. A hurdy-gurdy began to play, abruptly drowning the noise
of a quarrel between some Frenchmen further up the street. Whenever the
tune was changed I heard the quarrel still raging. I had bought another
evening paper on my way. I unfolded it. My eyes gazed ever away from it
to the clock over the kitchen door....

Five minutes, now, to the hour! I remembered that clocks in restaurants
are kept five minutes fast. I concentrated my eyes on the paper. I vowed
I would not look away from it again. I held it upright, at its full
width, close to my face, so that I had no view of anything but it....
Rather a tremulous sheet? Only because of the draught, I told myself.

My arms gradually became stiff; they ached; but I could not drop
them--now. I had a suspicion, I had a certainty. Well, what then?...
What else had I come for? Yet I held tight that barrier of newspaper.
Only the sound of Berthe’s brisk footstep from the kitchen enabled me,
forced me, to drop it, and to utter:

‘What shall we have to eat, Soames?’

‘Il est souffrant, ce pauvre Monsieur Soames?’ asked Berthe.

‘He’s only--tired.’ I asked her to get some wine--Burgundy--and whatever
food might be ready. Soames sat crouched forward against the table,
exactly as when last I had seen him. It was as though he had never
moved--he who had moved so unimaginably far. Once or twice in the
afternoon it had for an instant occurred to me that perhaps his journey
was not to be fruitless--that perhaps we had all been wrong in our
estimate of the works of Enoch Soames. That we had been horribly right
was horribly clear from the look of him. But ‘Don’t be discouraged,’ I
falteringly said. ‘Perhaps it’s only that you--didn’t leave enough time.
Two, three centuries hence, perhaps--’

‘Yes,’ his voice came. ‘I’ve thought of that.’

‘And now--now for the more immediate future! Where are you going to
hide? How would it be if you caught the Paris express from Charing
Cross? Almost an hour to spare. Don’t go on to Paris. Stop at Calais.
Live in Calais. He’d never think of looking for you in Calais.’

‘It’s like my luck,’ he said, ‘to spend my last hours on earth with
an ass.’ But I was not offended. ‘And a treacherous ass,’ he strangely
added, tossing across to me a crumpled bit of paper which he had been
holding in his hand. I glanced at the writing on it--some sort of
gibberish, apparently. I laid it impatiently aside.

‘Come, Soames! pull yourself together! This isn’t a mere matter of life
and death. It’s a question of eternal torment, mind you! You don’t mean
to say you’re going to wait limply here till the Devil comes to fetch
you?’

‘I can’t do anything else. I’ve no choice.’

‘Come! This is “trusting and encouraging” with a vengeance! This is
Diabolism run mad!’ I filled his glass with wine. ‘Surely, now that
you’ve SEEN the brute--’

‘It’s no good abusing him.’

‘You must admit there’s nothing Miltonic about him, Soames.’

‘I don’t say he’s not rather different from what I expected.’

‘He’s a vulgarian, he’s a swell-mobsman, he’s the sort of man who hangs
about the corridors of trains going to the Riviera and steals ladies’
jewel-cases. Imagine eternal torment presided over by HIM!’

‘You don’t suppose I look forward to it, do you?’

‘Then why not slip quietly out of the way?’

Again and again I filled his glass, and always, mechanically, he emptied
it; but the wine kindled no spark of enterprise in him. He did not eat,
and I myself ate hardly at all. I did not in my heart believe that any
dash for freedom could save him. The chase would be swift, the capture
certain. But better anything than this passive, meek, miserable waiting.
I told Soames that for the honour of the human race he ought to make
some show of resistance. He asked what the human race had ever done for
him. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘can’t you understand that I’m in his power?
You saw him touch me, didn’t you? There’s an end of it. I’ve no will.
I’m sealed.’

I made a gesture of despair. He went on repeating the word ‘sealed.’
I began to realise that the wine had clouded his brain. No wonder!
Foodless he had gone into futurity, foodless he still was. I urged him
to eat at any rate some bread. It was maddening to think that he, who
had so much to tell, might tell nothing. ‘How was it all,’ I asked,
‘yonder? Come! Tell me your adventures.’

‘They’d make first-rate “copy,” wouldn’t they?’

‘I’m awfully sorry for you, Soames, and I make all possible allowances;
but what earthly right have you to insinuate that I should make “copy,”
 as you call it, out of you?’

The poor fellow pressed his hands to his forehead. ‘I don’t know,’ he
said. ‘I had some reason, I know.... I’ll try to remember.’

‘That’s right. Try to remember everything. Eat a little more bread. What
did the reading-room look like?’

‘Much as usual,’ he at length muttered.

‘Many people there?’

‘Usual sort of number.’

‘What did they look like?’

Soames tried to visualise them. ‘They all,’ he presently remembered,
‘looked very like one another.’

My mind took a fearsome leap. ‘All dressed in Jaeger?’

‘Yes. I think so. Greyish-yellowish stuff.’

‘A sort of uniform?’ He nodded. ‘With a number on it, perhaps?--a number
on a large disc of metal sewn on to the left sleeve? DKF 78,910--that
sort of thing?’ It was even so. ‘And all of them--men and women
alike--looking very well-cared-for? very Utopian? and smelling rather
strongly of carbolic? and all of them quite hairless?’ I was right every
time. Soames was only not sure whether the men and women were hairless
or shorn. ‘I hadn’t time to look at them very closely,’ he explained.

‘No, of course not. But----’

‘They stared at ME, I can tell you. I attracted a great deal of
attention.’ At last he had done that! ‘I think I rather scared them.
They moved away whenever I came near. They followed me about at a
distance, wherever I went. The men at the round desk in the middle
seemed to have a sort of panic whenever I went to make inquiries.’

‘What did you do when you arrived?’

Well, he had gone straight to the catalogue, of course--to the S
volumes, and had stood long before SN--SOF, unable to take this volume
out of the shelf, because his heart was beating so.... At first,
he said, he wasn’t disappointed--he only thought there was some new
arrangement. He went to the middle desk and asked where the catalogue of
TWENTIETH-century books was kept. He gathered that there was still only
one catalogue. Again he looked up his name, stared at the three little
pasted slips he had known so well. Then he went and sat down for a long
time....

‘And then,’ he droned, ‘I looked up the “Dictionary of National
Biography” and some encyclopedias.... I went back to the middle desk
and asked what was the best modern book on late nineteenth-century
literature. They told me Mr. T. K. Nupton’s book was considered the
best. I looked it up in the catalogue and filled in a form for it. It
was brought to me. My name wasn’t in the index, but--Yes!’ he said with
a sudden change of tone. ‘That’s what I’d forgotten. Where’s that bit of
paper? Give it me back.’

I, too, had forgotten that cryptic screed. I found it fallen on the
floor, and handed it to him.

He smoothed it out, nodding and smiling at me disagreeably. ‘I found
myself glancing through Nupton’s book,’ he resumed. ‘Not very easy
reading. Some sort of phonetic spelling.... All the modern books I saw
were phonetic.’

‘Then I don’t want to hear any more, Soames, please.’

‘The proper names seemed all to be spelt in the old way. But for that, I
mightn’t have noticed my own name.’

‘Your own name? Really? Soames, I’m VERY glad.’

‘And yours.’

‘No!’

‘I thought I should find you waiting here to-night. So I took the
trouble to copy out the passage. Read it.’

I snatched the paper. Soames’ handwriting was characteristically dim.
It, and the noisome spelling, and my excitement, made me all the slower
to grasp what T. K. Nupton was driving at.

The document lies before me at this moment. Strange that the words
I here copy out for you were copied out for me by poor Soames just
seventy-eight years hence....


From p. 234 of ‘Inglish Littracher 1890-1900’ bi T. K. Nupton, publishd
bi th Stait, 1992:

‘Fr egzarmpl, a riter ov th time, naimd Max Beerbohm, hoo woz stil alive
in th twentieth senchri, rote a stauri in wich e pautraid an immajnari
karrakter kauld “Enoch Soames”--a thurd-rait poit hoo beleevz imself
a grate jeneus an maix a bargin with th Devvl in auder ter no wot
posterriti thinx ov im! It iz a sumwot labud sattire but not without
vallu az showing hou seriusli the yung men ov th aiteen-ninetiz took
themselvz. Nou that the littreri profeshn haz bin auganized az a
departmnt of publik servis, our riters hav found their levvl an hav
lernt ter doo their duti without thort ov th morro. “Th laibrer iz
werthi ov hiz hire,” an that iz aul. Thank hevvn we hav no Enoch
Soameses amung us to-dai!’


I found that by murmuring the words aloud (a device which I commend to
my reader) I was able to master them, little by little. The clearer they
became, the greater was my bewilderment, my distress and horror. The
whole thing was a nightmare. Afar, the great grisly background of what
was in store for the poor dear art of letters; here, at the table,
fixing on me a gaze that made me hot all over, the poor fellow
whom--whom evidently... but no: whatever down-grade my character might
take in coming years, I should never be such a brute as to----

Again I examined the screed. ‘Immajnari’--but here Soames was, no more
imaginary, alas! than I. And ‘labud’--what on earth was that? (To this
day, I have never made out that word.) ‘It’s all very--baffling,’ I at
length stammered.

Soames said nothing, but cruelly did not cease to look at me.

‘Are you sure,’ I temporised, ‘quite sure you copied the thing out
correctly?’

‘Quite.’

‘Well, then it’s this wretched Nupton who must have made--must be going
to make--some idiotic mistake.... Look here, Soames! you know me better
than to suppose that I.... After all, the name “Max Beerbohm” is not at
all an uncommon one, and there must be several Enoch Soameses running
around--or rather, “Enoch Soames” is a name that might occur to any
one writing a story. And I don’t write stories: I’m an essayist, an
observer, a recorder.... I admit that it’s an extraordinary coincidence.
But you must see----’

‘I see the whole thing,’ said Soames quietly. And he added, with a touch
of his old manner, but with more dignity than I had ever known in him,
‘Parlons d’autre chose.’

I accepted that suggestion very promptly. I returned straight to the
more immediate future. I spent most of the long evening in renewed
appeals to Soames to slip away and seek refuge somewhere. I remember
saying at last that if indeed I was destined to write about him, the
supposed ‘stauri’ had better have at least a happy ending. Soames
repeated those last three words in a tone of intense scorn. ‘In Life and
in Art,’ he said, ‘all that matters is an INEVITABLE ending.’

‘But,’ I urged, more hopefully than I felt, ‘an ending that can be
avoided ISN’T inevitable.’

‘You aren’t an artist,’ he rasped. ‘And you’re so hopelessly not an
artist that, so far from being able to imagine a thing and make it seem
true, you’re going to make even a true thing seem as if you’d made it
up. You’re a miserable bungler. And it’s like my luck.’

I protested that the miserable bungler was not I--was not going to be
I--but T. K. Nupton; and we had a rather heated argument, in the thick
of which it suddenly seemed to me that Soames saw he was in the wrong:
he had quite physically cowered. But I wondered why--and now I guessed
with a cold throb just why--he stared so, past me. The bringer of that
‘inevitable ending’ filled the doorway.

I managed to turn in my chair and to say, not without a semblance of
lightness, ‘Aha, come in!’ Dread was indeed rather blunted in me by
his looking so absurdly like a villain in a melodrama. The sheen of his
tilted hat and of his shirt-front, the repeated twists he was giving to
his moustache, and most of all the magnificence of his sneer, gave token
that he was there only to be foiled.

He was at our table in a stride. ‘I am sorry,’ he sneered witheringly,
‘to break up your pleasant party, but--’

‘You don’t: you complete it,’ I assured him. ‘Mr. Soames and I want
to have a little talk with you. Won’t you sit? Mr. Soames got
nothing--frankly nothing--by his journey this afternoon. We don’t wish
to say that the whole thing was a swindle--a common swindle. On the
contrary, we believe you meant well. But of course the bargain, such as
it was, is off.’

The Devil gave no verbal answer. He merely looked at Soames and pointed
with rigid forefinger to the door. Soames was wretchedly rising from
his chair when, with a desperate quick gesture, I swept together two
dinner-knives that were on the table, and laid their blades across
each other. The Devil stepped sharp back against the table behind him,
averting his face and shuddering.

‘You are not superstitious!’ he hissed.

‘Not at all,’ I smiled.

‘Soames!’ he said as to an underling, but without turning his face, ‘put
those knives straight!’

With an inhibitive gesture to my friend, ‘Mr. Soames,’ I said
emphatically to the Devil, ‘is a CATHOLIC Diabolist’; but my poor friend
did the Devil’s bidding, not mine; and now, with his master’s eyes again
fixed on him, he arose, he shuffled past me. I tried to speak. It was
he that spoke. ‘Try,’ was the prayer he threw back at me as the Devil
pushed him roughly out through the door, ‘TRY to make them know that I
did exist!’

In another instant I too was through that door. I stood staring all
ways--up the street, across it, down it. There was moonlight and
lamplight, but there was not Soames nor that other.

Dazed, I stood there. Dazed, I turned back, at length, into the little
room; and I suppose I paid Berthe or Rose for my dinner and luncheon,
and for Soames’: I hope so, for I never went to the Vingtieme again.
Ever since that night I have avoided Greek Street altogether. And for
years I did not set foot even in Soho Square, because on that same night
it was there that I paced and loitered, long and long, with some such
dull sense of hope as a man has in not straying far from the place where
he has lost something.... ‘Round and round the shutter’d Square’--that
line came back to me on my lonely beat, and with it the whole stanza,
ringing in my brain and bearing in on me how tragically different from
the happy scene imagined by him was the poet’s actual experience of that
prince in whom of all princes we should put not our trust.

But--strange how the mind of an essayist, be it never so stricken, roves
and ranges!--I remember pausing before a wide doorstep and wondering if
perchance it was on this very one that the young De Quincey lay ill and
faint while poor Ann flew as fast as her feet would carry her to Oxford
Street, the ‘stony-hearted stepmother’ of them both, and came back
bearing that ‘glass of port wine and spices’ but for which he might, so
he thought, actually have died. Was this the very doorstep that the old
De Quincey used to revisit in homage? I pondered Ann’s fate, the cause
of her sudden vanishing from the ken of her boy-friend; and presently I
blamed myself for letting the past over-ride the present. Poor vanished
Soames!

And for myself, too, I began to be troubled. What had I better do? Would
there be a hue and cry--Mysterious Disappearance of an Author, and all
that? He had last been seen lunching and dining in my company. Hadn’t I
better get a hansom and drive straight to Scotland Yard?... They would
think I was a lunatic. After all, I reassured myself, London was a
very large place, and one very dim figure might easily drop out of it
unobserved--now especially, in the blinding glare of the near Jubilee.
Better say nothing at all, I thought.

And I was right. Soames’ disappearance made no stir at all. He was
utterly forgotten before any one, so far as I am aware, noticed that he
was no longer hanging around. Now and again some poet or prosaist may
have said to another, ‘What has become of that man Soames?’ but I never
heard any such question asked. The solicitor through whom he was paid
his annuity may be presumed to have made inquiries, but no echo of
these resounded. There was something rather ghastly to me in the general
unconsciousness that Soames had existed, and more than once I caught
myself wondering whether Nupton, that babe unborn, were going to be
right in thinking him a figment of my brain.

In that extract from Nupton’s repulsive book there is one point which
perhaps puzzles you. How is it that the author, though I have here
mentioned him by name and have quoted the exact words he is going to
write, is not going to grasp the obvious corollary that I have invented
nothing? The answer can be only this: Nupton will not have read the
later passages of this memoir. Such lack of thoroughness is a serious
fault in any one who undertakes to do scholar’s work. And I hope these
words will meet the eye of some contemporary rival to Nupton and be the
undoing of Nupton.

I like to think that some time between 1992 and 1997 somebody will have
looked up this memoir, and will have forced on the world his inevitable
and startling conclusions. And I have reasons for believing that this
will be so. You realise that the reading-room into which Soames was
projected by the Devil was in all respects precisely as it will be on
the afternoon of June 3, 1997. You realise, therefore, that on that
afternoon, when it comes round, there the self-same crowd will be, and
there Soames too will be, punctually, he and they doing precisely what
they did before. Recall now Soames’ account of the sensation he made.
You may say that the mere difference of his costume was enough to make
him sensational in that uniformed crowd. You wouldn’t say so if you had
ever seen him. I assure you that in no period could Soames be anything
but dim. The fact that people are going to stare at him, and follow him
around, and seem afraid of him, can be explained only on the hypothesis
that they will somehow have been prepared for his ghostly visitation.
They will have been awfully waiting to see whether he really would come.
And when he does come the effect will of course be--awful.

An authentic, guaranteed, proven ghost, but--only a ghost, alas! Only
that. In his first visit, Soames was a creature of flesh and blood,
whereas the creatures into whose midst he was projected were but ghosts,
I take it--solid, palpable, vocal, but unconscious and automatic ghosts,
in a building that was itself an illusion. Next time, that building and
those creatures will be real. It is of Soames that there will be but
the semblance. I wish I could think him destined to revisit the world
actually, physically, consciously. I wish he had this one brief escape,
this one small treat, to look forward to. I never forget him for long.
He is where he is, and forever. The more rigid moralists among you may
say he has only himself to blame. For my part, I think he has been
very hardly used. It is well that vanity should be chastened; and Enoch
Soames’ vanity was, I admit, above the average, and called for special
treatment. But there was no need for vindictiveness. You say he
contracted to pay the price he is paying; yes; but I maintain that he
was induced to do so by fraud. Well-informed in all things, the Devil
must have known that my friend would gain nothing by his visit to
futurity. The whole thing was a very shabby trick. The more I think of
it, the more detestable the Devil seems to me.

Of him I have caught sight several times, here and there, since that day
at the Vingtieme. Only once, however, have I seen him at close quarters.
This was in Paris. I was walking, one afternoon, along the Rue d’Antin,
when I saw him advancing from the opposite direction--over-dressed as
ever, and swinging an ebony cane, and altogether behaving as though
the whole pavement belonged to him. At thought of Enoch Soames and the
myriads of other sufferers eternally in this brute’s dominion, a great
cold wrath filled me, and I drew myself up to my full height. But--well,
one is so used to nodding and smiling in the street to anybody whom one
knows that the action becomes almost independent of oneself: to prevent
it requires a very sharp effort and great presence of mind. I was
miserably aware, as I passed the Devil, that I nodded and smiled to him.
And my shame was the deeper and hotter because he, if you please, stared
straight at me with the utmost haughtiness.

To be cut--deliberately cut--by HIM! I was, I still am, furious at
having had that happen to me.



HILARY MALTBY AND STEPHEN BRAXTON


People still go on comparing Thackeray and Dickens, quite cheerfully.
But the fashion of comparing Maltby and Braxton went out so long ago as
1795. No, I am wrong. But anything that happened in the bland old days
before the war does seem to be a hundred more years ago than actually
it is. The year I mean is the one in whose spring-time we all went
bicycling (O thrill!) in Battersea Park, and ladies wore sleeves that
billowed enormously out from their shoulders, and Lord Rosebery was
Prime Minister.

In that Park, in that spring-time, in that sea of sleeves, there was
almost as much talk about the respective merits of Braxton and Maltby as
there was about those of Rudge and Humber. For the benefit of my younger
readers, and perhaps, so feeble is human memory, for the benefit of
their elders too, let me state that Rudge and Humber were rival makers
of bicycles, that Hilary Maltby was the author of ‘Ariel in Mayfair,’
and Stephen Braxton of ‘A Faun on the Cotswolds.’

‘Which do you think is REALLY the best--“Ariel” or “A Faun”?’ Ladies
were always asking one that question. ‘Oh, well, you know, the two are
so different. It’s really very hard to compare them.’ One was always
giving that answer. One was not very brilliant perhaps.

The vogue of the two novels lasted throughout the summer. As both were
‘firstlings,’ and Great Britain had therefore nothing else of Braxton’s
or Maltby’s to fall back on, the horizon was much scanned for what
Maltby, and what Braxton, would give us next. In the autumn Braxton
gave us his secondling. It was an instantaneous failure. No more was he
compared with Maltby. In the spring of ‘96 came Maltby’s secondling.
Its failure was instantaneous. Maltby might once more have been compared
with Braxton. But Braxton was now forgotten. So was Maltby.

This was not kind. This was not just. Maltby’s first novel, and
Braxton’s, had brought delight into many thousands of homes. People
should have paused to say of Braxton “Perhaps his third novel will be
better than his second,” and to say as much for Maltby. I blame people
for having given no sign of wanting a third from either; and I blame
them with the more zest because neither ‘A Faun on the Cotswolds’ nor
‘Ariel in Mayfair’ was a merely popular book: each, I maintain, was a
good book. I don’t go so far as to say that the one had ‘more of natural
magic, more of British woodland glamour, more of the sheer joy of life
in it than anything since “As You Like It,”’ though Higsby went so far
as this in the Daily Chronicle; nor can I allow the claim made for the
other by Grigsby in the Globe that ‘for pungency of satire there has
been nothing like it since Swift laid down his pen, and for sheer
sweetness and tenderness of feeling--ex forti dulcedo--nothing to be
mentioned in the same breath with it since the lute fell from the tired
hand of Theocritus.’ These were foolish exaggerations. But one must not
condemn a thing because it has been over-praised. Maltby’s ‘Ariel’ was
a delicate, brilliant work; and Braxton’s ‘Faun,’ crude though it was
in many ways, had yet a genuine power and beauty. This is not a mere
impression remembered from early youth. It is the reasoned and seasoned
judgment of middle age. Both books have been out of print for many
years; but I secured a second-hand copy of each not long ago, and found
them well worth reading again.

From the time of Nathaniel Hawthorne to the outbreak of the war, current
literature did not suffer from any lack of fauns. But when Braxton’s
first book appeared fauns had still an air of novelty about them. We had
not yet tired of them and their hoofs and their slanting eyes and their
way of coming suddenly out of woods to wean quiet English villages from
respectability. We did tire later. But Braxton’s faun, even now, seems
to me an admirable specimen of his class--wild and weird, earthy,
goat-like, almost convincing. And I find myself convinced altogether by
Braxton’s rustics. I admit that I do not know much about rustics,
except from novels. But I plead that the little I do know about them by
personal observation does not confirm much of what the many novelists
have taught me. I plead also that Braxton may well have been right about
the rustics of Gloucestershire because he was (as so many interviewers
recorded of him in his brief heyday) the son of a yeoman farmer at Far
Oakridge, and his boyhood had been divided between that village and the
Grammar School at Stroud. Not long ago I happened to be staying in the
neighbourhood, and came across several villagers who might, I assure
you, have stepped straight out of Braxton’s pages. For that matter,
Braxton himself, whom I met often in the spring of ‘95, might have
stepped straight out of his own pages.

I am guilty of having wished he would step straight back into them. He
was a very surly fellow, very rugged and gruff. He was the antithesis of
pleasant little Maltby. I used to think that perhaps he would have been
less unamiable if success had come to him earlier. He was thirty years
old when his book was published, and had had a very hard time since
coming to London at the age of sixteen. Little Maltby was a year
older, and so had waited a year longer; but then, he had waited under
a comfortable roof at Twickenham, emerging into the metropolis for no
grimmer purpose than to sit and watch the fashionable riders and
walkers in Rotten Row, and then going home to write a little, or to play
lawn-tennis with the young ladies of Twickenham. He had been the only
child of his parents (neither of whom, alas, survived to take pleasure
in their darling’s sudden fame). He had now migrated from Twickenham and
taken rooms in Ryder Street. Had he ever shared with Braxton the bread
of adversity--but no, I think he would in any case have been pleasant.
And conversely I cannot imagine that Braxton would in any case have been
so.

No one seeing the two rivals together, no one meeting them at Mr.
Hookworth’s famous luncheon parties in the Authors’ Club, or at Mrs.
Foster-Dugdale’s not less famous garden parties in Greville Place,
would have supposed off-hand that the pair had a single point in common.
Dapper little Maltby--blond, bland, diminutive Maltby, with his monocle
and his gardenia; big black Braxton, with his lanky hair and his square
blue jaw and his square sallow forehead. Canary and crow. Maltby had a
perpetual chirrup of amusing small-talk. Braxton was usually silent, but
very well worth listening to whenever he did croak. He had distinction,
I admit it; the distinction of one who steadfastly refuses to adapt
himself to surroundings. He stood out. He awed Mr. Hookworth. Ladies
were always asking one another, rather intently, what they thought of
him. One could imagine that Mr. Foster-Dugdale, had he come home from
the City to attend the garden parties, might have regarded him as
one from whom Mrs. Foster-Dugdale should be shielded. But the casual
observer of Braxton and Maltby at Mrs. Foster-Dugdale’s or elsewhere was
wrong in supposing that the two were totally unlike. He overlooked one
simple and obvious point. This was that he had met them both at Mrs.
Foster-Dugdale’s or elsewhere. Wherever they were invited, there
certainly, there punctually, they would be. They were both of them
gluttons for the fruits and signs of their success.

Interviewers and photographers had as little reason as had hostesses to
complain of two men so earnestly and assiduously ‘on the make’ as Maltby
and Braxton. Maltby, for all his sparkle, was earnest; Braxton, for all
his arrogance, assiduous.

‘A Faun on the Cotswolds’ had no more eager eulogist than the author of
‘Ariel in Mayfair.’ When any one praised his work, Maltby would lightly
disparage it in comparison with Braxton’s--‘Ah, if I could write like
THAT!’ Maltby won golden opinions in this way. Braxton, on the
other hand, would let slip no opportunity for sneering at Maltby’s
work--‘gimcrack,’ as he called it. This was not good for Maltby.
Different men, different methods.

‘The Rape of the Lock’ was ‘gimcrack,’ if you care to call it so; but it
was a delicate, brilliant work; and so, I repeat, was Maltby’s ‘Ariel.’
Absurd to compare Maltby with Pope? I am not so sure. I have read
‘Ariel,’ but have never read ‘The Rape of the Lock.’ Braxton’s
opprobrious term for ‘Ariel’ may not, however, have been due to jealousy
alone. Braxton had imagination, and his rival did not soar above fancy.
But the point is that Maltby’s fancifulness went far and well. In
telling how Ariel re-embodied himself from thin air, leased a small
house in Chesterfield Street, was presented at a Levee, played the part
of good fairy in a matter of true love not running smooth, and worked
meanwhile all manner of amusing changes among the aristocracy before he
vanished again, Maltby showed a very pretty range of ingenuity. In one
respect, his work was a more surprising achievement than Braxton’s. For
whereas Braxton had been born and bred among his rustics, Maltby knew
his aristocrats only through Thackeray, through the photographs and
paragraphs in the newspapers, and through those passionate excursions
of his to Rotten Row. Yet I found his aristocrats as convincing as
Braxton’s rustics. It is true that I may have been convinced wrongly.
That is a point which I could settle only by experience. I shift my
ground, claiming for Maltby’s aristocrats just this: that they pleased
me very much.

Aristocrats, when they are presented solely through a novelist’s sense
of beauty, do not satisfy us. They may be as beautiful as all that,
but, for fear of thinking ourselves snobbish, we won’t believe it. We do
believe it, however, and revel in it, when the novelist saves his face
and ours by a pervading irony in the treatment of what he loves. The
irony must, mark you, be pervading and obvious. Disraeli’s great ladies
and lords won’t do, for his irony was but latent in his homage, and
thus the reader feels himself called on to worship and in duty bound
to scoff. All’s well, though, when the homage is latent in the irony.
Thackeray, inviting us to laugh and frown over the follies of Mayfair,
enables us to reel with him in a secret orgy of veneration for those
fools.

Maltby, too, in his measure, enabled us to reel thus. That is mainly
why, before the end of April, his publisher was in a position to state
that ‘the Seventh Large Impression of “Ariel in Mayfair” is almost
exhausted.’ Let it be put to our credit, however, that at the same
moment Braxton’s publisher had ‘the honour to inform the public that
an Eighth Large Impression of “A Faun on the Cotswolds” is in instant
preparation.’

Indeed, it seemed impossible for either author to outvie the other in
success and glory. Week in, week out, you saw cancelled either’s every
momentary advantage. A neck-and-neck race. As thus:--Maltby appears as
a Celebrity At Home in the World (Tuesday). Ha! No, Vanity
Fair (Wednesday) has a perfect presentment of Braxton by ‘Spy.’
Neck-and-neck! No, Vanity Fair says ‘the subject of next week’s cartoon
will be Mr. Hilary Maltby.’ Maltby wins! No, next week Braxton’s in the
World.

Throughout May I kept, as it were, my eyes glued to my field-glasses.
On the first Monday in June I saw that which drew from me a hoarse
ejaculation.

Let me explain that always on Monday mornings at this time of year, when
I opened my daily paper, I looked with respectful interest to see what
bevy of the great world had been entertained since Saturday at Keeb
Hall. The list was always august and inspiring. Statecraft and Diplomacy
were well threaded there with mere Lineage and mere Beauty, with Royalty
sometimes, with mere Wealth never, with privileged Genius now and then.
A noble composition always. It was said that the Duke of Hertfordshire
cared for nothing but his collection of birds’ eggs, and that the
collections of guests at Keeb were formed entirely by his young
Duchess. It was said that he had climbed trees in every corner of every
continent. The Duchess’ hobby was easier. She sat aloft and beckoned
desirable specimens up.

The list published on that first Monday in June began ordinarily enough,
began with the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador and the Portuguese Minister.
Then came the Duke and Duchess of Mull, followed by four lesser Peers
(two of them Proconsuls, however) with their Peeresses, three Peers
without their Peeresses, four Peeresses without their Peers, and a dozen
bearers of courtesy-titles with or without their wives or husbands. The
rear was brought up by ‘Mr. A. J. Balfour, Mr. Henry Chaplin, and Mr.
Hilary Maltby.’

Youth tends to look at the darker side of things. I confess that my
first thought was for Braxton.

I forgave and forgot his faults of manner. Youth is generous. It does
not criticise a strong man stricken.

And anon, so habituated was I to the parity of those two strivers, I
conceived that there might be some mistake. Daily newspapers are printed
in a hurry. Might not ‘Henry Chaplin’ be a typographical error for
‘Stephen Braxton’? I went out and bought another newspaper. But Mr.
Chaplin’s name was in that too.

‘Patience!’ I said to myself. ‘Braxton crouches only to spring. He will
be at Keeb Hall on Saturday next.’

My mind was free now to dwell with pleasure on Maltby’s great
achievement. I thought of writing to congratulate him, but feared this
might be in bad taste. I did, however, write asking him to lunch with
me. He did not answer my letter. I was, therefore, all the more sorry,
next Monday, at not finding ‘and Mr. Stephen Braxton’ in Keeb’s week-end
catalogue.

A few days later I met Mr. Hookworth. He mentioned that Stephen Braxton
had left town. ‘He has taken,’ said Hookworth, ‘a delightful bungalow on
the east coast. He has gone there to WORK.’ He added that he had a great
liking for Braxton--‘a man utterly UNSPOILT.’ I inferred that he, too,
had written to Maltby and received no answer.

That butterfly did not, however, appear to be hovering from flower
to flower in the parterres of rank and fashion. In the daily lists of
guests at dinners, receptions, dances, balls, the name of Maltby figured
never. Maltby had not caught on.

Presently I heard that he, too, had left town. I gathered that he had
gone quite early in June--quite soon after Keeb. Nobody seemed to know
where he was. My own theory was that he had taken a delightful bungalow
on the west coast, to balance Braxton. Anyhow, the parity of the two
strivers was now somewhat re-established.

In point of fact, the disparity had been less than I supposed. While
Maltby was at Keeb, there Braxton was also--in a sense.... It was a
strange story. I did not hear it at the time. Nobody did. I heard it
seventeen years later. I heard it in Lucca.


Little Lucca I found so enchanting that, though I had only a day or two
to spare, I stayed there a whole month. I formed the habit of walking,
every morning, round that high-pitched path which girdles Lucca, that
wide and tree-shaded path from which one looks down over the city wall
at the fertile plains beneath Lucca. There were never many people there;
but the few who did come came daily, so that I grew to like seeing them
and took a mild personal interest in them.

One of them was an old lady in a wheeled chair. She was not less than
seventy years old, and might or might not have once been beautiful.
Her chair was slowly propelled by an Italian woman. She herself was
obviously Italian. Not so, however, the little gentleman who walked
assiduously beside her. Him I guessed to be English. He was a very stout
little gentleman, with gleaming spectacles and a full blond beard, and
he seemed to radiate cheerfulness. I thought at first that he might be
the old lady’s resident physician; but no, there was something subtly
un-professional about him: I became sure that his constancy was
gratuitous, and his radiance real. And one day, I know not how, there
dawned on me a suspicion that he was--who?--some one I had known--some
writer--what’s-his-name--something with an M--Maltby--Hilary Maltby of
the long-ago!

At sight of him on the morrow this suspicion hardened almost to
certainty. I wished I could meet him alone and ask him if I were not
right, and what he had been doing all these years, and why he had left
England. He was always with the old lady. It was only on my last day in
Lucca that my chance came.

I had just lunched, and was seated on a comfortable bench outside my
hotel, with a cup of coffee on the table before me, gazing across the
faded old sunny piazza and wondering what to do with my last afternoon.
It was then that I espied yonder the back of the putative Maltby. I
hastened forth to him. He was buying some pink roses, a great bunch of
them, from a market-woman under an umbrella. He looked very blank, he
flushed greatly, when I ventured to accost him. He admitted that his
name was Hilary Maltby. I told him my own name, and by degrees he
remembered me. He apologised for his confusion. He explained that he had
not talked English, had not talked to an Englishman, ‘for--oh, hundreds
of years.’ He said that he had, in the course of his long residence in
Lucca, seen two or three people whom he had known in England, but that
none of them had recognised him. He accepted (but as though he were
embarking on the oddest adventure in the world) my invitation that
he should come and sit down and take coffee with me. He laughed with
pleasure and surprise at finding that he could still speak his native
tongue quite fluently and idiomatically. ‘I know absolutely nothing,’ he
said, ‘about England nowadays--except from stray references to it in the
Corriere della Sera; nor did he show the faintest desire that I should
enlighten him. ‘England,’ he mused, ‘--how it all comes back to me!’

‘But not you to it?’

‘Ah, no indeed,’ he said gravely, looking at the roses which he had laid
carefully on the marble table. ‘I am the happiest of men.’

He sipped his coffee, and stared out across the piazza, out beyond it
into the past.

‘I am the happiest of men,’ he repeated. I plied him with the spur of
silence.

‘And I owe it all to having once yielded to a bad impulse. Absurd, the
threads our destinies hang on!’

Again I plied him with that spur. As it seemed not to prick him, I
repeated the words he had last spoken. ‘For instance?’ I added.

‘Take,’ he said, ‘a certain evening in the spring of ‘95. If, on that
evening, the Duchess of Hertfordshire had had a bad cold; or if she
had decided that it WOULDN’T be rather interesting to go on to that
party--that Annual Soiree, I think it was--of the Inkwomen’s Club; or
again--to go a step further back--if she hadn’t ever written that one
little poem, and if it HADN’T been printed in “The Gentlewoman,” and if
the Inkwomen’s committee HADN’T instantly and unanimously elected her an
Honorary Vice-President because of that one little poem; or if--well,
if a million-and-one utterly irrelevant things hadn’t happened,
don’t-you-know, I shouldn’t be here.... I might be THERE,’ he smiled,
with a vague gesture indicating England.

‘Suppose,’ he went on, ‘I hadn’t been invited to that Annual Soiree; or
suppose that other fellow,--

‘Braxton?’ I suggested. I had remembered Braxton at the moment of
recognising Maltby.

‘Suppose HE hadn’t been asked.... But of course we both were. It
happened that I was the first to be presented to the Duchess.... It was
a great moment. I hoped I should keep my head. She wore a tiara. I had
often seen women in tiaras, at the Opera. But I had never talked to
a woman in a tiara. Tiaras were symbols to me. Eyes are just a human
feature. I fixed mine on the Duchess’s. I kept my head by not looking
at hers. I behaved as one human being to another. She seemed very
intelligent. We got on very well. Presently she asked whether I should
think her VERY bold if she said how PERFECTLY divine she thought my
book. I said something about doing my best, and asked with animation
whether she had read “A Faun on the Cotswolds.” She had. She said it was
TOO wonderful, she said it was TOO great. If she hadn’t been a Duchess,
I might have thought her slightly hysterical. Her innate good-sense
quickly reasserted itself. She used her great power. With a wave of her
magic wand she turned into a fact the glittering possibility that had
haunted me. She asked me down to Keeb.

‘She seemed very pleased that I would come. Was I, by any chance, free
on Saturday week? She hoped there would be some amusing people to meet
me. Could I come by the 3.30? It was only an hour-and-a-quarter from
Victoria. On Saturday there were always compartments reserved for people
coming to Keeb by the 3.30. She hoped I would bring my bicycle with me.
She hoped I wouldn’t find it very dull. She hoped I wouldn’t forget to
come. She said how lovely it must be to spend one’s life among clever
people. She supposed I knew everybody here to-night. She asked me to
tell her who everybody was. She asked who was the tall, dark man, over
there. I told her it was Stephen Braxton. She said they had promised to
introduce her to him. She added that he looked rather wonderful. “Oh, he
is, very,” I assured her. She turned to me with a sudden appeal: “DO you
think, if I took my courage in both hands and asked him, he’d care to
come to Keeb?”

‘I hesitated. It would be easy to say that Satan answered FOR me; easy
but untrue; it was I that babbled: “Well--as a matter of fact--since you
ask me--if I were you--really I think you’d better not. He’s very odd in
some ways. He has an extraordinary hatred of sleeping out of London. He
has the real Gloucestershire LOVE of London. At the same time, he’s very
shy; and if you asked him he wouldn’t very well know how to refuse. I
think it would be KINDER not to ask him.”

‘At that moment, Mrs. Wilpham--the President--loomed up to us, bringing
Braxton. He bore himself well. Rough dignity with a touch of mellowness.
I daresay you never saw him smile. He smiled gravely down at the
Duchess, while she talked in her pretty little quick humble way. He made
a great impression.

‘What I had done was not merely base: it was very dangerous. I was in
terror that she might rally him on his devotion to London. I didn’t dare
to move away. I was immensely relieved when at length she said she must
be going.

‘Braxton seemed loth to relax his grip on her hand at parting. I feared
she wouldn’t escape without uttering that invitation. But all was
well.... In saying good night to me, she added in a murmur, “Don’t
forget Keeb--Saturday week--the 3.30.” Merely an exquisite murmur.
But Braxton heard it. I knew, by the diabolical look he gave me, that
Braxton had heard it.... If he hadn’t, I shouldn’t be here.

‘Was I a prey to remorse? Well, in the days between that Soiree and that
Saturday, remorse often claimed me, but rapture wouldn’t give me up.
Arcady, Olympus, the right people, at last! I hadn’t realised how good
my book was--not till it got me this guerdon; not till I got it this
huge advertisement. I foresaw how pleased my publisher would be. In some
great houses, I knew, it was possible to stay without any one knowing
you had been there. But the Duchess of Hertfordshire hid her light under
no bushel. Exclusive she was, but not of publicity. Next to Windsor
Castle, Keeb Hall was the most advertised house in all England.

‘Meanwhile, I had plenty to do. I rather thought of engaging a valet,
but decided that this wasn’t necessary. On the other hand, I felt a need
for three new summer suits, and a new evening suit, and some new white
waistcoats. Also a smoking suit. And had any man ever stayed at Keeb
without a dressing-case? Hitherto I had been content with a pair of
wooden brushes, and so forth. I was afraid these would appal the footman
who unpacked my things. I ordered, for his sake, a large dressing-case,
with my initials engraved throughout it. It looked compromisingly new
when it came to me from the shop. I had to kick it industriously, and
throw it about and scratch it, so as to avert possible suspicion. The
tailor did not send my things home till the Friday evening. I had to sit
up late, wearing the new suits in rotation.

‘Next day, at Victoria, I saw strolling on the platform many people,
male and female, who looked as if they were going to Keeb--tall,
cool, ornate people who hadn’t packed their own things and had reached
Victoria in broughams. I was ornate, but not tall nor cool. My porter
was rather off-hand in his manner as he wheeled my things along to
the 3.30. I asked severely if there were any compartments reserved for
people going to stay with the Duke of Hertfordshire. This worked an
instant change in him. Having set me in one of those shrines, he seemed
almost loth to accept a tip. A snob, I am afraid.

‘A selection of the tall, the cool, the ornate, the intimately
acquainted with one another, soon filled the compartment. There I
was, and I think they felt they ought to try to bring me into the
conversation. As they were all talking about a cotillion of the previous
night, I shouldn’t have been able to shine. I gazed out of the window,
with middle-class aloofness. Presently the talk drifted on to the topic
of bicycles. But by this time it was too late for me to come in.

‘I gazed at the squalid outskirts of London as they flew by. I doubted,
as I listened to my fellow-passengers, whether I should be able to shine
at Keeb. I rather wished I were going to spend the week-end at one of
those little houses with back-gardens beneath the railway-line. I was
filled with fears.

‘For shame! thought I. Was I nobody? Was the author of “Ariel in
Mayfair” nobody?

‘I reminded myself how glad Braxton would be if he knew of my
faint-heartedness. I thought of Braxton sitting, at this moment, in his
room in Clifford’s Inn and glowering with envy of his hated rival in the
3.30. And after all, how enviable I was! My spirits rose. I would acquit
myself well....

‘I much admired the scene at the little railway station where we
alighted. It was like a fete by Lancret. I knew from the talk of my
fellow-passengers that some people had been going down by an earlier
train, and that others were coming by a later. But the 3.30 had brought
a full score of us. Us! That was the final touch of beauty.

‘Outside there were two broughams, a landau, dog-carts, a phaeton, a
wagonette, I know not what. But almost everybody, it seemed, was going
to bicycle. Lady Rodfitten said SHE was going to bicycle. Year after
year, I had seen that famous Countess riding or driving in the Park.
I had been told at fourth hand that she had a masculine intellect and
could make and unmake Ministries. She was nearly sixty now, a trifle
dyed and stout and weather-beaten, but still tremendously handsome, and
hard as nails. One would not have said she had grown older, but merely
that she belonged now to a rather later period of the Roman Empire. I
had never dreamed of a time when one roof would shelter Lady Rodfitten
and me. Somehow, she struck my imagination more than any of these
others--more than Count Deym, more than Mr. Balfour, more than the
lovely Lady Thisbe Crowborough.

‘I might have had a ducal vehicle all to myself, and should have liked
that; but it seemed more correct that I should use my bicycle. On the
other hand, I didn’t want to ride with all these people--a stranger in
their midst. I lingered around the luggage till they were off, and then
followed at a long distance.

‘The sun had gone behind clouds. But I rode slowly, so as to be sure not
to arrive hot. I passed, not without a thrill, through the massive
open gates into the Duke’s park. A massive man with a cockade saluted
me--hearteningly--from the door of the lodge. The park seemed endless.
I came, at length, to a long straight avenue of elms that were almost
blatantly immemorial. At the end of it was--well, I felt like a gnat
going to stay in a public building.

‘If there had been turnstiles--IN and OUT--and a shilling to pay,
I should have felt easier as I passed into that hall--that
Palladio-Gargantuan hall. Some one, some butler or groom-of-the-chamber,
murmured that her Grace was in the garden. I passed out through the
great opposite doorway on to a wide spectacular terrace with lawns
beyond. Tea was on the nearest of these lawns. In the central group of
people--some standing, others sitting--I espied the Duchess. She sat
pouring out tea, a deft and animated little figure. I advanced firmly
down the steps from the terrace, feeling that all would be well so soon
as I had reported myself to the Duchess.

‘But I had a staggering surprise on my way to her. I espied in one of
the smaller groups--whom d’you think? Braxton.

‘I had no time to wonder how he had got there--time merely to grasp the
black fact that he WAS there.

‘The Duchess seemed really pleased to see me. She said it was TOO
splendid of me to come. “You know Mr. Maltby?” she asked Lady Rodfitten,
who exclaimed “Not Mr. HILARY Maltby?” with a vigorous grace that
was overwhelming. Lady Rodfitten declared she was the greatest of my
admirers; and I could well believe that in whatever she did she excelled
all competitors. On the other hand, I found it hard to believe she was
afraid of me. Yet I had her word for it that she was.

‘Her womanly charm gave place now to her masculine grip. She
eulogised me in the language of a seasoned reviewer on the staff of a
long-established journal--wordy perhaps, but sound. I revered and loved
her. I wished I could give her my undivided attention. But, whilst I sat
there, teacup, in hand, between her and the Duchess, part of my brain
was fearfully concerned with that glimpse I had had of Braxton. It
didn’t so much matter that he was here to halve my triumph. But suppose
he knew what I had told the Duchess! And suppose he had--no, surely if
he HAD shown me up in all my meanness she wouldn’t have received me
so very cordially. I wondered where she could have met him since that
evening of the Inkwomen. I heard Lady Rodfitten concluding her review
of “Ariel” with two or three sentences that might have been framed
specially to give the publisher an easy “quote.” And then I heard myself
asking mechanically whether she had read “A Faun on the Cotswolds.” The
Duchess heard me too. She turned from talking to other people and said
“I did like Mr. Braxton so VERY much.”

‘“Yes,” I threw out with a sickly smile, “I’m so glad you asked him to
come.”

‘“But I didn’t ask him. I didn’t DARE.”

‘“But--but--surely he wouldn’t be--be HERE if--” We stared at each other
blankly. “Here?” she echoed, glancing at the scattered little groups of
people on the lawn. I glanced too. I was much embarrassed. I explained
that I had seen Braxton “standing just over there” when I arrived, and
had supposed he was one of the people who came by the earlier train.
“Well,” she said with a slightly irritated laugh, “you must have
mistaken some one else for him.” She dropped the subject, talked to
other people, and presently moved away.

‘Surely, thought I, she didn’t suspect me of trying to make fun of her?
On the other hand, surely she hadn’t conspired with Braxton to make a
fool of ME? And yet, how could Braxton be here without an invitation,
and without her knowledge? My brain whirled. One thing only was clear.
I could NOT have mistaken anybody for Braxton. There Braxton had
stood--Stephen Braxton, in that old pepper-and-salt suit of his, with
his red tie all askew, and without a hat--his hair hanging over his
forehead. All this I had seen sharp and clean-cut. There he had stood,
just beside one of the women who travelled down in the same compartment
as I; a very pretty woman in a pale blue dress; a tall woman--but I had
noticed how small she looked beside Braxton. This woman was now walking
to and fro, yonder, with M. de Soveral. I had seen Braxton beside her as
clearly as I now saw M. de Soveral.

‘Lady Rodfitten was talking about India to a recent Viceroy. She seemed
to have as firm a grip of India as of “Ariel.” I sat forgotten. I wanted
to arise and wander off--in a vague search for Braxton. But I feared
this might look as if I were angry at being ignored. Presently Lady
Rodfitten herself arose, to have what she called her “annual look
round.” She bade me come too, and strode off between me and the
recent Viceroy, noting improvements that had been made in the grounds,
suggesting improvements that might be made, indicating improvements that
MUST be made. She was great on landscape-gardening. The recent Viceroy
was less great on it, but great enough. I don’t say I walked forgotten:
the eminent woman constantly asked my opinion; but my opinion, though of
course it always coincided with hers, sounded quite worthless, somehow.
I longed to shine. I could only bother about Braxton.

‘Lady Rodfitten’s voice sounded over-strong for the stillness of
evening. The shadows lengthened. My spirits sank lower and lower, with
the sun. I was a naturally cheerful person, but always, towards sunset,
I had a vague sense of melancholy: I seemed always to have grown weaker;
morbid misgivings would come to me. On this particular evening there was
one such misgiving that crept in and out of me again and again... a very
horrible misgiving as to the NATURE of what I had seen.

‘Well, dressing for dinner is a great tonic. Especially if one shaves.
My spirits rose as I lathered my face. I smiled to my reflection in
the mirror. The afterglow of the sun came through the window behind
the dressing-table, but I had switched on all the lights. My new
silver-topped bottles and things made a fine array. To-night _I_ was
going to shine, too. I felt I might yet be the life and soul of the
party. Anyway, my new evening suit was without a fault. And meanwhile
this new razor was perfect. Having shaved “down,” I lathered myself
again and proceeded to shave “up.” It was then that I uttered a sharp
sound and swung round on my heel.

‘No one was there. Yet this I knew: Stephen Braxton had just looked over
my shoulder. I had seen the reflection of his face beside mine--craned
forward to the mirror. I had met his eyes.

‘He had been with me. This I knew.

‘I turned to look again at that mirror. One of my cheeks was all covered
with blood. I stanched it with a towel. Three long cuts where the razor
had slipped and skipped. I plunged the towel into cold water and held it
to my cheek. The bleeding went on--alarmingly. I rang the bell. No one
came. I vowed I wouldn’t bleed to death for Braxton. I rang again. At
last a very tall powdered footman appeared--more reproachful-looking
than sympathetic, as though I hadn’t ordered that dressing-case
specially on his behalf. He said he thought one of the housemaids would
have some sticking-plaster. He was very sorry he was needed downstairs,
but he would tell one of the housemaids. I continued to dab and to
curse. The blood flowed less. I showed great spirit. I vowed Braxton
should not prevent me from going down to dinner.

‘But--a pretty sight I was when I did go down. Pale but determined, with
three long strips of black sticking-plaster forming a sort of Z on my
left cheek. Mr. Hilary Maltby at Keeb. Literature’s Ambassador.

‘I don’t know how late I was. Dinner was in full swing. Some servant
piloted me to my place. I sat down unobserved. The woman on either side
of me was talking to her other neighbour. I was near the Duchess’ end of
the table. Soup was served to me--that dark-red soup that you pour cream
into--Bortsch. I felt it would steady me. I raised the first spoonful to
my lips, and--my hand gave a sudden jerk.

‘I was aware of two separate horrors--a horror that had been, a horror
that was. Braxton had vanished. Not for more than an instant had he
stood scowling at me from behind the opposite diners. Not for more than
the fraction of an instant. But he had left his mark on me. I gazed down
with a frozen stare at my shirtfront, at my white waistcoat, both dark
with Bortsch. I rubbed them with a napkin. I made them worse.

‘I looked at my glass of champagne. I raised it carefully and drained
it at one draught. It nerved me. But behind that shirtfront was a broken
heart.

‘The woman on my left was Lady Thisbe Crowborough. I don’t know who was
the woman on my right. She was the first to turn and see me. I thought
it best to say something about my shirtfront at once. I said it to her
sideways, without showing my left cheek. Her handsome eyes rested on the
splashes. She said, after a moment’s thought, that they looked “rather
gay.” She said she thought the eternal black and white of men’s
evening clothes was “so very dreary.” She did her best.... Lady Thisbe
Crowborough did her best, too, I suppose; but breeding isn’t proof
against all possible shocks: she visibly started at sight of me and my
Z. I explained that I had cut myself shaving. I said, with an attempt at
lightness, that shy men ought always to cut themselves shaving: it
made such a good conversational opening. “But surely,” she said after a
pause, “you don’t cut yourself on purpose?” She was an abysmal fool. I
didn’t think so at the time. She was Lady Thisbe Crowborough. This fact
hallowed her. That we didn’t get on at all well was a misfortune
for which I blamed only myself and my repulsive appearance and--the
unforgettable horror that distracted me. Nor did I blame Lady Thisbe for
turning rather soon to the man on her other side.

‘The woman on my right was talking to the man on HER other side; so that
I was left a prey to secret memory and dread. I wasn’t wondering, wasn’t
attempting to explain; I was merely remembering--and dreading. And--how
odd one is!--on the top-layer of my consciousness I hated to be seen
talking to no one. Mr. Maltby at Keeb. I caught the Duchess’ eye once
or twice, and she nodded encouragingly, as who should say “You do look
rather awful, and you do seem rather out of it, but I don’t for a moment
regret having asked you to come.” Presently I had another chance of
talking. I heard myself talk. My feverish anxiety to please rather
touched ME. But I noticed that the eyes of my listener wandered. And
yet I was sorry when the ladies went away. I had a sense of greater
exposure. Men who hadn’t seen me saw me now. The Duke, as he came round
to the Duchess’ end of the table, must have wondered who I was. But he
shyly offered me his hand as he passed, and said it was so good of me
to come. I had thought of slipping away to put on another shirt and
waistcoat, but had decided that this would make me the more ridiculous.
I sat drinking port--poison to me after champagne, but a lulling
poison--and listened to noblemen with unstained shirtfronts talking
about the Australian cricket match....

‘Is Rubicon Bezique still played in England? There was a mania for it at
that time. The floor of Keeb’s Palladio-Gargantuan hall was dotted with
innumerable little tables. I didn’t know how to play. My hostess told me
I must “come and amuse the dear old Duke and Duchess of Mull,” and led
me to a remote sofa on which an old gentleman had just sat down beside
an old lady. They looked at me with a dim kind interest. My hostess had
set me and left me on a small gilt chair in front of them. Before going
she had conveyed to them loudly--one of them was very deaf--that I was
“the famous writer.” It was a long time before they understood that I
was not a political writer. The Duke asked me, after a troubled pause,
whether I had known “old Mr. Abraham Hayward.” The Duchess said I was
too young to have known Mr. Hayward, and asked if I knew her “clever
friend Mr. Mallock.” I said I had just been reading Mr. Mallock’s new
novel. I heard myself shouting a confused precis of the plot. The place
where we were sitting was near the foot of the great marble staircase.
I said how beautiful the staircase was. The Duchess of Mull said she had
never cared very much for that staircase. The Duke, after a pause, said
he had “often heard old Mr. Abraham Hayward hold a whole dinner table.”
 There were long and frequent pauses--between which I heard myself
talking loudly, frantically, sinking lower and lower in the esteem of my
small audience. I felt like a man drowning under the eyes of an elderly
couple who sit on the bank regretting that they can offer NO assistance.
Presently the Duke looked at his watch and said to the Duchess that it
was “time to be thinking of bed.”

‘They rose, as it were from the bank, and left me, so to speak, under
water. I watched them as they passed slowly out of sight up the marble
staircase which I had mispraised. I turned and surveyed the brilliant,
silent scene presented by the card-players.

‘I wondered what old Mr. Abraham Hayward would have done in my place.
Would he have just darted in among those tables and “held” them? I
presumed that he would not have stolen silently away, quickly and
cravenly away, up the marble staircase--as _I_ did.

‘I don’t know which was the greater, the relief or the humiliation of
finding myself in my bedroom. Perhaps the humiliation was the greater.
There, on a chair, was my grand new smoking-suit, laid out for me--what
a mockery! Once I had foreseen myself wearing it in the smoking-room
at a late hour--the centre of a group of eminent men entranced by the
brilliancy of my conversation. And now--! I was nothing but a small,
dull, soup-stained, sticking-plastered, nerve-racked recluse. Nerves,
yes. I assured myself that I had not seen--what I had seemed to see. All
very odd, of course, and very unpleasant, but easily explained. Nerves.
Excitement of coming to Keeb too much for me. A good night’s rest: that
was all I needed. To-morrow I should laugh at myself.

‘I wondered that I wasn’t tired physically. There my grand new silk
pyjamas were, yet I felt no desire to go to bed... none while it was
still possible for me to go. The little writing-table at the foot of my
bed seemed to invite me. I had brought with me in my portmanteau a sheaf
of letters, letters that I had purposely left unanswered in order that I
might answer them on KEEB HALL note-paper. These the footman had neatly
laid beside the blotting-pad on that little writing-table at the foot
of the bed. I regretted that the notepaper stacked there had no ducal
coronet on it. What matter? The address sufficed. If I hadn’t yet made a
good impression on the people who were staying here, I could at any rate
make one on the people who weren’t. I sat down. I set to work. I wrote a
prodigious number of fluent and graceful notes.

‘Some of these were to strangers who wanted my autograph. I was always
delighted to send my autograph, and never perfunctory in the manner of
sending it.... “Dear Madam,” I remember writing to somebody that night,
“were it not that you make your request for it so charmingly, I should
hesitate to send you that which rarity alone can render valuable.--Yours
truly, Hilary Maltby.” I remember reading this over and wondering
whether the word “render” looked rather commercial. It was in the act
of wondering thus that I raised my eyes from the note-paper and saw,
through the bars of the brass bedstead, the naked sole of a large human
foot--saw beyond it the calf of a great leg; a nightshirt; and the face
of Stephen Braxton. I did not move.


‘I thought of making a dash for the door, dashing out into the corridor,
shouting at the top of my voice for help. I sat quite still.

‘What kept me to my chair was the fear that if I tried to reach the door
Braxton would spring off the bed to intercept me. If I sat quite still
perhaps he wouldn’t move. I felt that if he moved I should collapse
utterly.

‘I watched him, and he watched me. He lay there with his body
half-raised, one elbow propped on the pillow, his jaw sunk on his
breast; and from under his black brows he watched me steadily.

‘No question of mere nerves now. That hope was gone. No mere optical
delusion, this abiding presence. Here Braxton was. He and I were
together in the bright, silent room. How long would he be content to
watch me?

‘Eleven nights ago he had given me one horrible look. It was this look
that I had to meet, in infinite prolongation, now, not daring to shift
my eyes. He lay as motionless as I sat. I did not hear him breathing,
but I knew, by the rise and fall of his chest under his nightshirt,
that he was breathing heavily. Suddenly I started to my feet. For he had
moved. He had raised one hand slowly. He was stroking his chin. And
as he did so, and as he watched me, his mouth gradually slackened to a
grin. It was worse, it was more malign, this grin, than the scowl that
remained with it; and its immediate effect on me was an impulse that was
as hard to resist as it was hateful. The window was open. It was nearer
to me than the door. I could have reached it in time....

‘Well, I live to tell the tale. I stood my ground. And there dawned on
me now a new fact in regard to my companion. I had all the while been
conscious of something abnormal in his attitude--a lack of ease in his
gross possessiveness. I saw now the reason for this effect. The pillow
on which his elbow rested was still uniformly puffed and convex; like
a pillow untouched. His elbow rested but on the very surface of it,
not changing the shape of it at all. His body made not the least furrow
along the bed.... He had no weight.

‘I knew that if I leaned forward and thrust my hand between those brass
rails, to clutch his foot, I should clutch--nothing. He wasn’t tangible.
He was realistic. He wasn’t real. He was opaque. He wasn’t solid.

‘Odd as it may seem to you, these certainties took the edge off my
horror. During that walk with Lady Rodfitten, I had been appalled by the
doubt that haunted me. But now the very confirmation of that doubt gave
me a sort of courage: I could cope better with anything to-night than
with actual Braxton. And the measure of the relief I felt is that I sat
down again on my chair.

‘More than once there came to me a wild hope that the thing might be an
optical delusion, after all. Then would I shut my eyes tightly, shaking
my head sharply; but, when I looked again, there the presence was, of
course. It--he--not actual Braxton but, roughly speaking, Braxton--had
come to stay. I was conscious of intense fatigue, taut and alert though
every particle of me was; so that I became, in the course of that
ghastly night, conscious of a great envy also. For some time before the
dawn came in through the window, Braxton’s eyes had been closed; little
by little now his head drooped sideways, then fell on his forearm and
rested there. He was asleep.

‘Cut off from sleep, I had a great longing for smoke. I had cigarettes
on me, I had matches on me. But I didn’t dare to strike a match. The
sound might have waked Braxton up. In slumber he was less terrible,
though perhaps more odious. I wasn’t so much afraid now as indignant.
“It’s intolerable,” I sat saying to myself, “utterly intolerable!”

‘I had to bear it, nevertheless. I was aware that I had, in some degree,
brought it on myself. If I hadn’t interfered and lied, actual Braxton
would have been here at Keeb, and I at this moment sleeping soundly. But
this was no excuse for Braxton. Braxton didn’t know what I had done. He
was merely envious of me. And--wanly I puzzled it out in the dawn--by
very force of the envy, hatred, and malice in him he had projected
hither into my presence this simulacrum of himself. I had known that he
would be thinking of me. I had known that the thought of me at Keeb Hall
would be of the last bitterness to his most sacred feelings. But--I had
reckoned without the passionate force and intensity of the man’s nature.

‘If by this same strength and intensity he had merely projected himself
as an invisible guest under the Duchess’ roof--if his feat had been
wholly, as perhaps it was in part, a feat of mere wistfulness and
longing--then I should have felt really sorry for him; and my conscience
would have soundly rated me in his behalf. But no; if the wretched
creature HAD been invisible to me, I shouldn’t have thought of Braxton
at all--except with gladness that he wasn’t here. That he was visible to
me, and to me alone, wasn’t any sign of proper remorse within me. It was
but the gauge of his incredible ill-will.

‘Well, it seemed to me that he was avenged--with a vengeance. There I
sat, hot-browed from sleeplessness, cold in the feet, stiff in the legs,
cowed and indignant all through--sat there in the broadening daylight,
and in that new evening suit of mine with the Braxtonised shirtfront
and waistcoat that by day were more than ever loathsome. Literature’s
Ambassador at Keeb.... I rose gingerly from my chair, and caught
sight of my face, of my Braxtonised cheek, in the mirror. I heard
the twittering of birds in distant trees. I saw through my window the
elaborate landscape of the Duke’s grounds, all soft in the grey bloom of
early morning. I think I was nearer to tears than I had ever been since
I was a child. But the weakness passed. I turned towards the personage
on my bed, and, summoning all such power as was in me, WILLED him to be
gone. My effort was not without result--an inadequate result. Braxton
turned in his sleep.

‘I resumed my seat, and... and... sat up staring and blinking, at a tall
man with red hair. “I must have fallen asleep,” I said. “Yessir,” he
replied; and his toneless voice touched in me one or two springs
of memory: I was at Keeb; this was the footman who looked after me.
But--why wasn’t I in bed? Had I--no, surely it had been no nightmare.
Surely I had SEEN Braxton on that white bed.

‘The footman was impassively putting away my smoking-suit. I was too
dazed to wonder what he thought of me. Nor did I attempt to stifle a
cry when, a moment later, turning in my chair, I beheld Braxton leaning
moodily against the mantelpiece. “Are you unwell sir?” asked the footman.
“No,” I said faintly, “I’m quite well.”--“Yessir. Will you wear the blue
suit or the grey?”--“The grey.”--“Yessir.”--It seemed almost incredible
that HE didn’t see Braxton; HE didn’t appear to me one whit more solid
than the night-shirted brute who stood against the mantelpiece and
watched him lay out my things.--“Shall I let your bath-water run
now sir?”--“Please, yes.”--“Your bathroom’s the second door to the left
sir.”--He went out with my bath-towel and sponge, leaving me alone with
Braxton.

‘I rose to my feet, mustering once more all the strength that was in
me. Hoping against hope, with set teeth and clenched hands, I faced him,
thrust forth my will at him, with everything but words commanded him to
vanish--to cease to be.

‘Suddenly, utterly, he vanished. And you can imagine the truly exquisite
sense of triumph that thrilled me and continued to thrill me till I went
into the bathroom and found him in my bath.

‘Quivering with rage, I returned to my bedroom. “Intolerable,” I heard
myself repeating like a parrot that knew no other word. A bath was just
what I had needed. Could I have lain for a long time basking in very
hot water, and then have sponged myself with cold water, I should have
emerged calm and brave; comparatively so, at any rate. I should have
looked less ghastly, and have had less of a headache, and something of
an appetite, when I went down to breakfast. Also, I shouldn’t have been
the very first guest to appear on the scene. There were five or six
round tables, instead of last night’s long table. At the further end
of the room the butler and two other servants were lighting the little
lamps under the hot dishes. I didn’t like to make myself ridiculous by
running away. On the other hand, was it right for me to begin breakfast
all by myself at one of these round tables? I supposed it was. But
I dreaded to be found eating, alone in that vast room, by the first
downcomer. I sat dallying with dry toast and watching the door. It
occurred to me that Braxton might occur at any moment. Should I be able
to ignore him?

‘Some man and wife--a very handsome couple--were the first to appear.
They nodded and said “good morning” when they noticed me on their way to
the hot dishes. I rose--uncomfortably, guiltily--and sat down again. I
rose again when the wife drifted to my table, followed by the husband
with two steaming plates. She asked me if it wasn’t a heavenly morning,
and I replied with nervous enthusiasm that it was. She then ate kedgeree
in silence. “You just finishing, what?” the husband asked, looking at
my plate. “Oh, no--no--only just beginning,” I assured him, and helped
myself to butter. He then ate kedgeree in silence. He looked like some
splendid bull, and she like some splendid cow, grazing. I envied them
their eupeptic calm. I surmised that ten thousand Braxtons would not
have prevented THEM from sleeping soundly by night and grazing steadily
by day. Perhaps their stolidity infected me a little. Or perhaps what
braced me was the great quantity of strong tea that I consumed. Anyhow
I had begun to feel that if Braxton came in now I shouldn’t blench nor
falter.

‘Well, I wasn’t put to the test. Plenty of people drifted in, but
Braxton wasn’t one of them. Lady Rodfitten--no, she didn’t drift, she
marched, in; and presently, at an adjacent table, she was drawing a
comparison, in clarion tones, between Jean and Edouard de Reszke. It
seemed to me that her own voice had much in common with Edouard’s. Even
more was it akin to a military band. I found myself beating time to it
with my foot. Decidedly, my spirits had risen. I was in a mood to face
and outface anything. When I rose from the table and made my way to the
door, I walked with something of a swing--to the tune of Lady Rodfitten.

‘My buoyancy didn’t last long, though. There was no swing in my walk
when, a little later, I passed out on to the spectacular terrace. I had
seen my enemy again, and had beaten a furious retreat. No doubt I should
see him yet again soon--here, perhaps, on this terrace. Two of the
guests were bicycling slowly up and down the long paven expanse, both of
them smiling with pride in the new delicious form of locomotion. There
was a great array of bicycles propped neatly along the balustrade. I
recognised my own among them. I wondered whether Braxton had projected
from Clifford’s Inn an image of his own bicycle. He may have done so;
but I’ve no evidence that he did. I myself was bicycling when next I saw
him; but he, I remember, was on foot.

‘This was a few minutes later. I was bicycling with dear Lady Rodfitten.
She seemed really to like me. She had come out and accosted me heartily
on the terrace, asking me, because of my sticking-plaster, with whom I
had fought a duel since yesterday. I did not tell her with whom, and
she had already branched off on the subject of duelling in general. She
regretted the extinction of duelling in England, and gave cogent
reasons for her regret. Then she asked me what my next book was to be.
I confided that I was writing a sort of sequel--“Ariel Returns to
Mayfair.” She shook her head, said with her usual soundness that sequels
were very dangerous things, and asked me to tell her “briefly” the lines
along which I was working. I did so. She pointed out two or three weak
points in my scheme. She said she could judge better if I would let
her see my manuscript. She asked me to come and lunch with her next
Friday--“just our two selves”--at Rodfitten House, and to bring my
manuscript with me. Need I say that I walked on air?

‘“And now,” she said strenuously, “let us take a turn on our bicycles.”
 By this time there were a dozen riders on the terrace, all of them
smiling with pride and rapture. We mounted and rode along together. The
terrace ran round two sides of the house, and before we came to the end
of it these words had provisionally marshalled themselves in my mind:


                      TO
                    ELEANOR
             COUNTESS OF RODFITTEN
           THIS BOOK WHICH OWES ALL
             TO HER WISE COUNSEL
          AND UNWEARYING SUPERVISION
            IS GRATEFULLY DEDICATED
                BY HER FRIEND
                  THE AUTHOR


‘Smiled to masonically by the passing bicyclists, and smiling
masonically to them in return, I began to feel that the rest of my visit
would run smooth, if only--

‘“Let’s go a little faster. Let’s race!” said Lady Rodfitten; and we did
so--“just our two selves.” I was on the side nearer to the balustrade,
and it was on that side that Braxton suddenly appeared from nowhere,
solid-looking as a rock, his arms akimbo, less than three yards ahead
of me, so that I swerved involuntarily, sharply, striking broadside the
front wheel of Lady Rodfitten and collapsing with her, and with a crash
of machinery, to the ground.

‘I wasn’t hurt. She had broken my fall. I wished I was dead. She
was furious. She sat speechless with fury. A crowd had quickly
collected--just as in the case of a street accident. She accused me now
to the crowd. She said I had done it on purpose. She said such terrible
things of me that I think the crowd’s sympathy must have veered towards
me. She was assisted to her feet. I tried to be one of the assistants.
“Don’t let him come near me!” she thundered. I caught sight of Braxton
on the fringe of the crowd, grinning at me. “It was all HIS fault,”
 I madly cried, pointing at him. Everybody looked at Mr. Balfour,
just behind whom Braxton was standing. There was a general murmur
of surprise, in which I have no doubt Mr. Balfour joined. He gave a
charming, blank, deprecating smile. “I mean--I can’t explain what I
mean,” I groaned. Lady Rodfitten moved away, refusing support, limping
terribly, towards the house. The crowd followed her, solicitous. I stood
helplessly, desperately, where I was.

‘I stood an outlaw, a speck on the now empty terrace. Mechanically
I picked up my straw hat, and wheeled the two bent bicycles to the
balustrade. I suppose Mr. Balfour has a charming nature. For he
presently came out again--on purpose, I am sure, to alleviate my misery.
He told me that Lady Rodfitten had suffered no harm. He took me for a
stroll up and down the terrace, talking thoughtfully and enchantingly
about things in general. Then, having done his deed of mercy, this Good
Samaritan went back into the house. My eyes followed him with gratitude;
but I was still bleeding from wounds beyond his skill. I escaped down
into the gardens. I wanted to see no one. Still more did I want to be
seen by no one. I dreaded in every nerve of me my reappearance among
those people. I walked ever faster and faster, to stifle thought; but in
vain. Why hadn’t I simply ridden THROUGH Braxton? I was aware of being
now in the park, among great trees and undulations of wild green ground.
But Nature did not achieve the task that Mr. Balfour had attempted; and
my anguish was unassuaged.

‘I paused to lean against a tree in the huge avenue that led to the huge
hateful house. I leaned wondering whether the thought of re-entering
that house were the more hateful because I should have to face my
fellow-guests or because I should probably have to face Braxton. A
church bell began ringing somewhere. And anon I was aware of another
sound--a twitter of voices. A consignment of hatted and parasoled ladies
was coming fast adown the avenue. My first impulse was to dodge behind
my tree. But I feared that I had been observed; so that what was left to
me of self-respect compelled me to meet these ladies.

‘The Duchess was among them. I had seen her from afar at breakfast,
but not since. She carried a prayer-book, which she waved to me as I
approached. I was a disastrous guest, but still a guest, and nothing
could have been prettier than her smile. “Most of my men this week,”
 she said, “are Pagans, and all the others have dispatch-boxes to go
through--except the dear old Duke of Mull, who’s a member of the Free
Kirk. You’re Pagan, of course?”

‘I said--and indeed it was a heart-cry--that I should like very much to
come to church. “If I shan’t be in the way,” I rather abjectly added.
It didn’t strike me that Braxton would try to intercept me. I don’t know
why, but it never occurred to me, as I walked briskly along beside the
Duchess, that I should meet him so far from the house. The church was in
a corner of the park, and the way to it was by a side path that branched
off from the end of the avenue. A little way along, casting its shadow
across the path, was a large oak. It was from behind this tree, when we
came to it, that Braxton sprang suddenly forth and tripped me up with
his foot.

‘Absurd to be tripped up by the mere semblance of a foot? But remember,
I was walking quickly, and the whole thing happened in a flash of
time. It was inevitable that I should throw out my hands and come down
headlong--just as though the obstacle had been as real as it looked.
Down I came on palms and knee-caps, and up I scrambled, very much hurt
and shaken and apologetic. “POOR Mr. Maltby! REALLY--!” the Duchess
wailed for me in this latest of my mishaps. Some other lady chased my
straw hat, which had bowled far ahead. Two others helped to brush me.
They were all very kind, with a quaver of mirth in their concern for me.
I looked furtively around for Braxton, but he was gone. The palms of my
hands were abraded with gravel. The Duchess said I must on no account
come to church NOW. I was utterly determined to reach that sanctuary. I
marched firmly on with the Duchess. Come what might on the way, I wasn’t
going to be left out here. I was utterly bent on winning at least one
respite.

‘Well, I reached the little church without further molestation. To be
there seemed almost too good to be true. The organ, just as we entered,
sounded its first notes. The ladies rustled into the front pew. I,
being the one male of the party, sat at the end of the pew, beside the
Duchess. I couldn’t help feeling that my position was a proud one. But I
had gone through too much to take instant pleasure in it, and was beset
by thoughts of what new horror might await me on the way back to
the house. I hoped the Service would not be brief. The swelling and
dwindling strains of the “voluntary” on the small organ were strangely
soothing. I turned to give an almost feudal glance to the simple
villagers in the pews behind, and saw a sight that cowed my soul.

‘Braxton was coming up the aisle. He came slowly, casting a tourist’s
eye at the stained-glass windows on either side. Walking heavily, yet
with no sound of boots on the pavement, he reached our pew. There,
towering and glowering, he halted, as though demanding that we should
make room for him. A moment later he edged sullenly into the pew.
Instinctively I had sat tight back, drawing my knees aside, in a shudder
of revulsion against contact. But Braxton did not push past me. What he
did was to sit slowly and fully down on me.

‘No, not down ON me. Down THROUGH me--and around me. What befell me
was not mere ghastly contact with the intangible. It was inclusion,
envelopment, eclipse. What Braxton sat down on was not I, but the seat
of the pew; and what he sat back against was not my face and chest, but
the back of the pew. I didn’t realise this at the moment. All I knew was
a sudden black blotting-out of all things; an infinite and impenetrable
darkness. I dimly conjectured that I was dead. What was wrong with me,
in point of fact, was that my eyes, with the rest of me, were inside
Braxton. You remember what a great hulking fellow Braxton was. I
calculate that as we sat there my eyes were just beneath the roof of his
mouth. Horrible!

‘Out of the unfathomable depths of that pitch darkness, I could yet hear
the “voluntary” swelling and dwindling, just as before. It was by this
I knew now that I wasn’t dead. And I suppose I must have craned my head
forward, for I had a sudden glimpse of things--a close quick downward
glimpse of a pepper-and-salt waistcoat and of two great hairy hands
clasped across it. Then darkness again. Either I had drawn back my head,
or Braxton had thrust his forward; I don’t know which. “Are you all
right?” the Duchess’ voice whispered, and no doubt my face was ashen.
“Quite,” whispered my voice. But this pathetic monosyllable was the last
gasp of the social instinct in me. Suddenly, as the “voluntary” swelled
to its close, there was a great sharp shuffling noise. The congregation
had risen to its feet, at the entry of choir and vicar. Braxton had
risen, leaving me in daylight. I beheld his towering back. The Duchess,
beside him, glanced round at me. But I could not, dared not, stand up
into that presented back, into that great waiting darkness. I did but
clutch my hat from beneath the seat and hurry distraught down the aisle,
out through the porch, into the open air.

‘Whither? To what goal? I didn’t reason. I merely fled--like Orestes;
fled like an automaton along the path we had come by. And was followed?
Yes, yes. Glancing back across my shoulder, I saw that brute some
twenty yards behind me, gaining on me. I broke into a sharper run. A few
sickening moments later, he was beside me, scowling down into my face.

‘I swerved, dodged, doubled on my tracks, but he was always at me. Now
and again, for lack of breath, I halted, and he halted with me. And
then, when I had got my wind, I would start running again, in the insane
hope of escaping him. We came, by what twisting and turning course
I know not, to the great avenue, and as I stood there in an agony of
panting I had a dazed vision of the distant Hall. Really I had quite
forgotten I was staying at the Duke of Hertfordshire’s. But Braxton
hadn’t forgotten. He planted himself in front of me. He stood between me
and the house.

‘Faint though I was, I could almost have laughed. Good heavens! was THAT
all he wanted: that I shouldn’t go back there? Did he suppose I wanted
to go back there--with HIM? Was I the Duke’s prisoner on parole? What
was there to prevent me from just walking off to the railway station? I
turned to do so.

‘He accompanied me on my way. I thought that when once I had passed
through the lodge gates he might vanish, satisfied. But no, he didn’t
vanish. It was as though he suspected that if he let me out of his
sight I should sneak back to the house. He arrived with me, this quiet
companion of mine, at the little railway station. Evidently he meant to
see me off. I learned from an elderly and solitary porter that the next
train to London was the 4.3.

‘Well, Braxton saw me off by the 4.3. I reflected, as I stepped up into
an empty compartment, that it wasn’t yet twenty-four hours ago since I,
or some one like me, had alighted at that station.

‘The guard blew his whistle; the engine shrieked, and the train jolted
forward and away; but I did not lean out of the window to see the last
of my attentive friend.

‘Really not twenty-four hours ago? Not twenty-four years?’


Maltby paused in his narrative. ‘Well, well,’ he said, ‘I don’t want you
to think I overrate the ordeal of my visit to Keeb. A man of stronger
nerve than mine, and of greater resourcefulness, might have coped
successfully with Braxton from first to last--might have stayed on till
Monday, making a very favourable impression on every one all the while.
Even as it was, even after my manifold failures and sudden flight, I
don’t say my position was impossible. I only say it seemed so to me. A
man less sensitive than I, and less vain, might have cheered up after
writing a letter of apology to his hostess, and have resumed his normal
existence as though nothing very terrible had happened, after all. I
wrote a few lines to the Duchess that night; but I wrote amidst the
preparations for my departure from England: I crossed the Channel next
morning. Throughout that Sunday afternoon with Braxton at the Keeb
railway station, pacing the desolate platform with him, waiting in
the desolating waiting-room with him, I was numb to regrets, and was
thinking of nothing but the 4.3. On the way to Victoria my brain worked
and my soul wilted. Every incident in my stay at Keeb stood out clear
to me; a dreadful, a hideous pattern. I had done for myself, so far as
THOSE people were concerned. And now that I had sampled THEM, what cared
I for others? “Too low for a hawk, too high for a buzzard.” That homely
old saying seemed to sum me up. And suppose I COULD still take pleasure
in the company of my own old upper-middle class, how would that class
regard me now? Gossip percolates. Little by little, I was sure, the
story of my Keeb fiasco would leak down into the drawing-room of Mrs.
Foster-Dugdale. I felt I could never hold up my head in any company
where anything of that story was known. Are you quite sure you never
heard anything?’

I assured Maltby that all I had known was the great bare fact of his
having stayed at Keeb Hall.

‘It’s curious,’ he reflected. ‘It’s a fine illustration of the loyalty
of those people to one another. I suppose there was a general agreement
for the Duchess’ sake that nothing should be said about her queer guest.
But even if I had dared hope to be so efficiently hushed up, I couldn’t
have not fled. I wanted to forget. I wanted to leap into some void,
far away from all reminders. I leapt straight from Ryder Street into
Vaule-la-Rochette, a place of which I had once heard that it was
the least frequented seaside-resort in Europe. I leapt leaving no
address--leapt telling my landlord that if a suit-case and a portmanteau
arrived for me he could regard them, them and their contents, as his own
for ever. I daresay the Duchess wrote me a kind little letter, forcing
herself to express a vague hope that I would come again “some other
time.” I daresay Lady Rodfitten did NOT write reminding me of my promise
to lunch on Friday and bring “Ariel Returns to Mayfair” with me. I
left that manuscript at Ryder Street; in my bedroom grate; a shuffle of
ashes. Not that I’d yet given up all thought of writing. But I certainly
wasn’t going to write now about the two things I most needed to forget.
I wasn’t going to write about the British aristocracy, nor about any
kind of supernatural presence.... I did write a novel--my last--while I
was at Vaule. “Mr. and Mrs. Robinson.” Did you ever come across a copy
of it?

I nodded gravely.

‘Ah; I wasn’t sure,’ said Maltby, ‘whether it was ever published. A
dreary affair, wasn’t it? I knew a great deal about suburban life.
But--well, I suppose one can’t really understand what one doesn’t love,
and one can’t make good fun without real understanding. Besides, what
chance of virtue is there for a book written merely to distract
the author’s mind? I had hoped to be healed by sea and sunshine and
solitude. These things were useless. The labour of “Mr. and Mrs.
Robinson” did help, a little. When I had finished it, I thought I might
as well send it off to my publisher. He had given me a large sum of
money, down, after “Ariel,” for my next book--so large that I was rather
loth to disgorge. In the note I sent with the manuscript, I gave no
address, and asked that the proofs should be read in the office. I
didn’t care whether the thing were published or not. I knew it would be
a dead failure if it were. What mattered one more drop in the foaming
cup of my humiliation? I knew Braxton would grin and gloat. I didn’t
mind even that.’

‘Oh, well,’ I said, ‘Braxton was in no mood for grinning and gloating.
“The Drones” had already appeared.’

Maltby had never heard of ‘The Drones’--which I myself had remembered
only in the course of his disclosures. I explained to him that it was
Braxton’s second novel, and was by way of being a savage indictment
of the British aristocracy; that it was written in the worst possible
taste, but was so very dull that it fell utterly flat; that Braxton
had forthwith taken, with all of what Maltby had called ‘the passionate
force and intensity of his nature,’ to drink, and had presently gone
under and not re-emerged.

Maltby gave signs of genuine, though not deep, emotion, and cited two
or three of the finest passages from ‘A Faun on the Cotswolds.’ He even
expressed a conviction that ‘The Drones’ must have been misjudged. He
said he blamed himself more than ever for yielding to that bad impulse
at that Soiree.

‘And yet,’ he mused, ‘and yet, honestly, I can’t find it in my heart
to regret that I did yield. I can only wish that all had turned out as
well, in the end, for Braxton as for me. I wish he could have won out,
as I did, into a great and lasting felicity. For about a year after I
had finished “Mr. and Mrs. Robinson” I wandered from place to place,
trying to kill memory, shunning all places frequented by the English.
At last I found myself in Lucca. Here, if anywhere, I thought, might a
bruised and tormented spirit find gradual peace. I determined to move
out of my hotel into some permanent lodging. Not for felicity, not for
any complete restoration of self-respect, was I hoping; only for peace.
A “mezzano” conducted me to a noble and ancient house, of which, he
told me, the owner was anxious to let the first floor. It was in much
disrepair, but even so seemed to me very cheap. According to the simple
Luccan standard, I am rich. I took that first floor for a year, had it
repaired, and engaged two servants. My “padrona” inhabited the ground
floor. From time to time she allowed me to visit her there. She was
the Contessa Adriano-Rizzoli, the last of her line. She is the Contessa
Adriano-Rizzoli-Maltby. We have been married fifteen years.’

Maltby looked at his watch. He rose and took tenderly from the table
his great bunch of roses. ‘She is a lineal descendant,’ he said, ‘of the
Emperor Hadrian.’



‘SAVONAROLA’ BROWN


I like to remember that I was the first to call him so, for, though he
always deprecated the nickname, in his heart he was pleased by it, I
know, and encouraged to go on.

Quite apart from its significance, he had reason to welcome it. He had
been unfortunate at the font. His parents, at the time of his birth,
lived in Ladbroke Crescent, XV. They must have been an extraordinarily
unimaginative couple, for they could think of no better name for their
child than Ladbroke. This was all very well for him till he went to
school. But you can fancy the indignation and delight of us boys at
finding among us a newcomer who, on his own confession, had been named
after a Crescent. I don’t know how it is nowadays, but thirty-five years
ago, certainly, schoolboys regarded the possession of ANY Christian name
as rather unmanly. As we all had these encumbrances, we had to wreak our
scorn on any one who was cumbered in a queer fashion. I myself, bearer
of a Christian name adjudged eccentric though brief, had had much to put
up with in my first term. Brown’s arrival, therefore, at the beginning
of my second term, was a good thing for me, and I am afraid I was very
prominent among his persecutors. Trafalgar Brown, Tottenham Court Brown,
Bond Brown--what names did we little brutes NOT cull for him from
the London Directory? Except how miserable we made his life, I do not
remember much about him as he was at that time, and the only important
part of the little else that I do recall is that already he showed
a strong sense for literature. For the majority of us Carthusians,
literature was bounded on the north by Whyte Melville, on the south by
Hawley Smart, on the east by the former, and on the west by the latter.
Little Brown used to read Harrison Ainsworth, Wilkie Collins, and other
writers whom we, had we assayed them, would have dismissed as ‘deep.’ It
has been said by Mr. Arthur Symons that ‘all art is a mode of escape.’
The art of letters did not, however, enable Brown to escape so far from
us as he would have wished. In my third term he did not reappear among
us. His parents had in some sort atoned. Unimaginative though they
were, it seems they could understand a tale of woe laid before them
circumstantially, and had engaged a private tutor for their boy. Fifteen
years elapsed before I saw him again.

This was at the second night of some play. I was dramatic critic for the
Saturday Review, and, weary of meeting the same lot of people over and
over again at first nights, had recently sent a circular to the managers
asking that I might have seats for second nights instead. I found that
there existed as distinct and invariable a lot of second-nighters as of
first-nighters. The second-nighters were less ‘showy’; but then, they
came rather to see than to be seen, and there was an air, that I liked,
of earnestness and hopefulness about them. I used to write a great deal
about the future of the British drama, and they, for their part, used
to think and talk a great deal about it. People who care about books
and pictures find much to interest and please them in the present. It
is only the students of the theatre who always fall back, or rather
forward, on the future. Though second-nighters do come to see, they
remain rather to hope and pray. I should have known anywhere, by the
visionary look in his eyes, that Brown was a confirmed second-nighter.

What surprises me is that I knew he was Brown. It is true that he
had not grown much in those fifteen years: his brow was still
disproportionate to his body, and he looked young to have become
‘confirmed’ in any habit. But it is also true that not once in the past
ten years, at any rate, had he flitted through my mind and poised on my
conscience.

I hope that I and those other boys had long ago ceased from recurring to
him in nightmares. Cordial though the hand was that I offered him, and
highly civilised my whole demeanour, he seemed afraid that at any moment
I might begin to dance around him, shooting out my lips at him and
calling him Seven-Sisters Brown or something of that kind. It was only
after constant meetings at second nights, and innumerable entr’acte
talks about the future of the drama, that he began to trust me. In
course of time we formed the habit of walking home together as far as
Cumberland Place, at which point our ways diverged. I gathered that he
was still living with his parents, but he did not tell me where, for
they had not, as I learned by reference to the Red Book, moved from
Ladbroke Crescent.

I found his company restful rather than inspiring. His days were
spent in clerkship at one of the smaller Government Offices, his
evenings--except when there was a second night--in reading and writing.
He did not seem to know much, or to wish to know more, about life. Books
and plays, first editions and second nights, were what he cared for. On
matters of religion and ethics he was as little keen as he seemed to be
on human character in the raw; so that (though I had already suspected
him of writing, or meaning to write, a play) my eyebrows did rise when
he told me he meant to write a play about Savonarola.

He made me understand, however, that it was rather the name than the
man that had first attracted him. He said that the name was in itself a
great incentive to blank-verse. He uttered it to me slowly, in a voice
so much deeper than his usual voice, that I nearly laughed. For the
actual bearer of the name he had no hero-worship, and said it was by a
mere accident that he had chosen him as central figure. He had
thought of writing a tragedy about Sardanapalus; but the volume of the
“Encyclopedia Britannica” in which he was going to look up the main
facts about Sardanapalus happened to open at Savonarola. Hence a sudden
and complete peripety in the student’s mind. He told me he had read the
Encyclopedia’s article carefully, and had dipped into one or two of
the books there mentioned as authorities. He seemed almost to wish he
hadn’t. ‘Facts get in one’s way so,’ he complained. ‘History is one
thing, drama is another. Aristotle said drama was more philosophic than
history because it showed us what men WOULD do, not just what they DID.
I think that’s so true, don’t you? I want to show what Savonarola WOULD
have done if--’ He paused.

‘If what?’

‘Well, that’s just the point. I haven’t settled that yet. When I’ve
thought of a plot, I shall go straight ahead.’

I said I supposed he intended his tragedy rather for the study than for
the stage. This seemed to hurt him. I told him that what I meant was
that managers always shied at anything without ‘a strong feminine
interest.’ This seemed to worry him. I advised him not to think about
managers. He promised that he would think only about Savonarola.

I know now that this promise was not exactly kept by him; and he may
have felt slightly awkward when, some weeks later, he told me he had
begun the play. ‘I’ve hit on an initial idea,’ he said, ‘and that’s
enough to start with. I gave up my notion of inventing a plot in
advance. I thought it would be a mistake. I don’t want puppets on wires.
I want Savonarola to work out his destiny in his own way. Now that I
have the initial idea, what I’ve got to do is to make Savonarola LIVE.
I hope I shall be able to do this. Once he’s alive, I shan’t interfere
with him. I shall just watch him. Won’t it be interesting? He isn’t
alive yet. But there’s plenty of time. You see, he doesn’t come on at
the rise of the curtain. A Friar and a Sacristan come on and talk about
him. By the time they’ve finished, perhaps he’ll be alive. But they
won’t have finished yet. Not that they’re going to say very much. But I
write slowly.’

I remember the mild thrill I had when, one evening, he took me aside and
said in an undertone, ‘Savonarola has come on. Alive!’ For me the MS.
hereinafter printed has an interest that for you it cannot have, so
a-bristle am I with memories of the meetings I had with its author
throughout the nine years he took over it. He never saw me without
reporting progress, or lack of progress. Just what was going on, or
standing still, he did not divulge. After the entry of Savonarola,
he never told me what characters were appearing. ‘All sorts of people
appear,’ he would say rather helplessly. ‘They insist. I can’t prevent
them.’ I used to say it must be great fun to be a creative artist; but
at this he always shook his head: ‘I don’t create. THEY do. Savonarola
especially, of course. I just look on and record. I never know what’s
going to happen next.’ He had the advantage of me in knowing at any rate
what had happened last. But whenever I pled for a glimpse he would again
shake his head:

‘The thing MUST be judged as a whole. Wait till I’ve come to the end of
the Fifth Act.’

So impatient did I become that, as the years went by, I used rather to
resent his presence at second nights. I felt he ought to be at his
desk. His, I used to tell him, was the only drama whose future ought
to concern him now. And in point of fact he had, I think, lost the true
spirit of the second-nighter, and came rather to be seen than to see.
He liked the knowledge that here and there in the auditorium, when he
entered it, some one would be saying ‘Who is that?’ and receiving the
answer ‘Oh, don’t you know? That’s “Savonarola” Brown.’ This sort of
thing, however, did not make him cease to be the modest, unaffected
fellow I had known. He always listened to the advice I used to offer
him, though inwardly he must have chafed at it. Myself a fidgety and
uninspired person, unable to begin a piece of writing before I know just
how it shall end, I had always been afraid that sooner or later Brown
would take some turning that led nowhither--would lose himself and come
to grief. This fear crept into my gladness when, one evening in the
spring of 1909, he told me he had finished the Fourth Act. Would he win
out safely through the Fifth?

He himself was looking rather glum; and, as we walked away from the
theatre, I said to him, ‘I suppose you feel rather like Thackeray when
he’d “killed the Colonel”: you’ve got to kill the Monk.’

‘Not quite that,’ he answered. ‘But of course he’ll die very soon now. A
couple of years or so. And it does seem rather sad. It’s not merely that
he’s so full of life. He has been becoming much more HUMAN lately. At
first I only respected him. Now I have a real affection for him.’

This was an interesting glimpse at last, but I turned from it to my
besetting fear.

‘Haven’t you,’ I asked, ‘any notion of HOW he is to die?’

Brown shook his head.

‘But in a tragedy,’ I insisted, ‘the catastrophe MUST be led up to,
step by step. My dear Brown, the end of the hero MUST be logical and
rational.’

‘I don’t see that,’ he said, as we crossed Piccadilly Circus. ‘In actual
life it isn’t so. What is there to prevent a motor-omnibus from knocking
me over and killing me at this moment?’

At that moment, by what has always seemed to me the strangest of
coincidences, and just the sort of thing that playwrights ought to
avoid, a motor-omnibus knocked Brown over and killed him.

He had, as I afterwards learned, made a will in which he appointed me
his literary executor. Thus passed into my hands the unfinished play by
whose name he had become known to so many people.


I hate to say that I was disappointed in it, but I had better confess
quite frankly that, on the whole, I was. Had Brown written it quickly
and read it to me soon after our first talk about it, it might in some
ways have exceeded my hopes. But he had become for me, by reason of that
quiet and unhasting devotion to his work while the years came and went,
a sort of hero; and the very mystery involving just what he was about
had addicted me to those ideas of magnificence which the unknown is said
always to foster.

Even so, however, I am not blind to the great merits of the play as it
stands. It is well that the writer of poetic drama should be a dramatist
and a poet. Here is a play that abounds in striking situations, and I
have searched it vainly for one line that does not scan. What I nowhere
feel is that I have not elsewhere been thrilled or lulled by the same
kind of thing. I do not go so far as to say that Brown inherited his
parents’ deplorable lack of imagination. But I do wish he had been less
sensitive than he was to impressions, or else had seen and read fewer
poetic dramas ancient and modern. Remembering that visionary look in
his eyes, remembering that he was as displeased as I by the work of all
living playwrights, and as dissatisfied with the great efforts of the
Elizabethans, I wonder that he was not more immune from influences.

Also, I cannot but wish still that he had faltered in his decision
to make no scenario. There is much to be said for the theory that a
dramatist should first vitalise his characters and then leave them
unfettered; but I do feel that Brown’s misused the confidence he reposed
in them. The labour of so many years has somewhat the air of being
a mere improvisation. Savonarola himself, after the First Act or so,
strikes me as utterly inconsistent. It may be that he is just complex,
like Hamlet. He does in the Fourth Act show traces of that Prince. I
suppose this is why he struck Brown as having become ‘more human.’ To me
he seems merely a poorer creature.

But enough of these reservations. In my anxiety for poor Brown’s sake
that you should not be disappointed, perhaps I have been carrying
tactfulness too far and prejudicing you against that for which I
specially want your favour. Here, without more ado, is



SAVONAROLA

A TRAGEDY

By L. Brown


  ACT I

  SCENE:    A Room in the Monastery of San Marco, Florence.
  TIME: 1490, A.D.  A summer morning.

  Enter the SACRISTAN and a FRIAR.

  SACR.
  Savonarola looks more grim to-day
  Than ever.  Should I speak my mind, I’d say
  That he was fashioning some new great scourge
  To flay the backs of men.

  FRI.
                             ‘Tis even so.
  Brother Filippo saw him stand last night
  In solitary vigil till the dawn
  Lept o’er the Arno, and his face was such
  As men may wear in Purgatory--nay,
  E’en in the inmost core of Hell’s own fires.

  SACR.
  I often wonder if some woman’s face,
  Seen at some rout in his old worldling days,
  Haunts him e’en now, e’en here, and urges him
  To fierier fury ‘gainst the Florentines.

  FRI.
  Savonarola love-sick!  Ha, ha, ha!
  Love-sick?  He, love-sick?  ‘Tis a goodly jest!
  The CONfirm’d misogyn a ladies’ man!
  Thou must have eaten of some strange red herb
  That takes the reason captive.  I will swear
  Savonarola never yet hath seen
  A woman but he spurn’d her.  Hist!  He comes.

  [Enter SAVONAROLA, rapt in thought.]

  Give thee good morrow, Brother.

  SACR.
                                   And therewith
  A multitude of morrows equal-good
  Till thou, by Heaven’s grace, hast wrought the work
  Nearest thine heart.

  SAV.
                        I thank thee, Brother, yet
  I thank thee not, for that my thankfulness
  (An such there be) gives thanks to Heaven alone.

  FRI. [To SACR.]
  ‘Tis a right answer he hath given thee.
  Had Sav’narola spoken less than thus,
  Methinks me, the less Sav’narola he.
  As when the snow lies on yon Apennines,
  White as the hem of Mary Mother’s robe,
  And insusceptible to the sun’s rays,
  Being harder to the touch than temper’d steel,
  E’en so this great gaunt monk white-visaged
  Upstands to Heaven and to Heav’n devotes
  The scarped thoughts that crown the upper slopes
  Of his abrupt and AUStere nature.

  SACR.
                                     Aye.

  [Enter LUCREZIA BORGIA, ST. FRANCIS OF ASSISI, and LEONARDO
   DA VINCI.  LUC. is thickly veiled.]

  ST. FRAN.
  This is the place.

  LUC. [Pointing at SAV.]
                      And this the man! [Aside.] And I--
  By the hot blood that courses i’ my veins
  I swear it ineluctably--the woman!

  SAV.
  Who is this wanton?
  [LUC. throws back her hood, revealing her face.  SAV. starts back,
  gazing at her.]

  ST. FRAN.
                       Hush, Sir!  ‘Tis my little sister
  The poisoner, right well-belov’d by all
  Whom she as yet hath spared.  Hither she came
  Mounted upon another little sister of mine--
  A mare, caparison’d in goodly wise.
  She--I refer now to Lucrezia--
  Desireth to have word of thee anent
  Some matter that befrets her.

  SAV. [To LUC.]
                                 Hence!  Begone!
  Savonarola will not tempted be
  By face of woman e’en tho’ ‘t be, tho’ ‘tis,
  Surpassing fair.  All hope abandon therefore.
  I charge thee: Vade retro, Satanas.

  LEONARDO
  Sirrah, thou speakst in haste, as is the way
  Of monkish men.  The beauty of Lucrezia
  Commends, not discommends, her to the eyes
  Of keener thinkers than I take thee for.
  I am an artist and an engineer,
  Giv’n o’er to subtile dreams of what shall be
  On this our planet.  I foresee a day
  When men shall skim the earth i’ certain chairs
  Not drawn by horses but sped on by oil
  Or other matter, and shall thread the sky
  Birdlike.

  LUC.
             It may be as thou sayest, friend,
  Or may be not. [To SAV.] As touching this our errand,
  I crave of thee, Sir Monk, an audience
  Instanter.

  FRI.
              Lo!  Here Alighieri comes.
  I had methought me he was still at Parma.

  [Enter DANTE.]

  ST. FRAN. [To DAN.]
  How fares my little sister Beatrice?

  DAN.
  She died, alack, last sennight.

  ST. FRAN.
                                   Did she so?
  If the condolences of men avail
  Thee aught, take mine.

  DAN.
                          They are of no avail.

  SAV. [To LUC.]
  I do refuse thee audience.

  LUC.
                              Then why
  Didst thou not say so promptly when I ask’d it?

  SAV.
  Full well thou knowst that I was interrupted
  By Alighieri’s entry.
  [Noise without.  Enter Guelfs and Ghibellines fighting.]
                         What is this?

  LUC.
  I did not think that in this cloister’d spot
  There would be so much doing.  I had look’d
  To find Savonarola all alone
  And tempt him in his uneventful cell.
  Instead o’ which--Spurn’d am I?  I am I.
  There was a time, Sir, look to ‘t!  O damnation!
  What is ‘t?  Anon then!  These my toys, my gauds,
  That in the cradle--aye, ‘t my mother’s breast--
  I puled and lisped at,--‘Tis impossible,
  Tho’, faith, ‘tis not so, forasmuch as ‘tis.
  And I a daughter of the Borgias!--
  Or so they told me.  Liars!  Flatterers!
  Currying lick-spoons!  Where’s the Hell of ‘t then?
  ‘Tis time that I were going.  Farewell, Monk,
  But I’ll avenge me ere the sun has sunk.
  [Exeunt LUC., ST. FRAN., and LEONARDO, followed by DAN.  SAV., having
  watched LUC. out of sight, sinks to his knees, sobbing.  FRI. and SACR.
  watch him in amazement.  Guelfs and Ghibellines continue fighting as
  the Curtain falls.]


  ACT II

  TIME: Afternoon of same day.
  SCENE:    Lucrezia’s Laboratory.  Retorts, test-tubes, etc.  On small
  Renaissance table, up c., is a great poison-bowl, the contents of
  which are being stirred by the FIRST APPRENTICE.  The SECOND APPRENTICE
  stands by, watching him.

  SECOND APP.
  For whom is the brew destin’d?

  FIRST APP.
                                  I know not.
  Lady Lucrezia did but lay on me
  Injunctions as regards the making of ‘t,
  The which I have obey’d.  It is compounded
  Of a malignant and a deadly weed
  Found not save in the Gulf of Spezia,
  And one small phial of ‘t, I am advis’d,
  Were more than ‘nough to slay a regiment
  Of Messer Malatesta’s condottieri
  In all their armour.

  SECOND APP.
                        I can well believe it.
  Mark how the purple bubbles froth upon
  The evil surface of its nether slime!

  [Enter LUC.]

  LUC. [To FIRST APP.]
  Is ‘t done, Sir Sluggard?

  FIRST APP.
                             Madam, to a turn.

  LUC.
  Had it not been so, I with mine own hand
  Would have outpour’d it down thy gullet, knave.
  See, here’s a ring of cunningly-wrought gold

  That I, on a dark night, did purchase from
  A goldsmith on the Ponte Vecchio.
  Small was his shop, and hoar of visage he.
  I did bemark that from the ceiling’s beams
  Spiders had spun their webs for many a year,
  The which hung erst like swathes of gossamer
  Seen in the shadows of a fairy glade,
  But now most woefully were weighted o’er
  With gather’d dust.  Look well now at the ring!
  Touch’d here, behold, it opes a cavity
  Capacious of three drops of yon fell stuff.
  Dost heed?  Whoso then puts it on his finger
  Dies, and his soul is from his body rapt
  To Hell or Heaven as the case may be.
  Take thou this toy and pour the three drops in.

  [Hands ring to FIRST APP. and comes down c.]

  So, Sav’narola, thou shalt learn that I
  Utter no threats but I do make them good.
  Ere this day’s sun hath wester’d from the view
  Thou art to preach from out the Loggia
  Dei Lanzi to the cits in the Piazza.
  I, thy Lucrezia, will be upon the steps
  To offer thee with phrases seeming-fair
  That which shall seal thine eloquence for ever.
  O mighty lips that held the world in spell
  But would not meet these little lips of mine
  In the sweet way that lovers use--O thin,
  Cold, tight-drawn, bloodless lips, which natheless I
  Deem of all lips the most magnifical
  In this our city--

  [Enter the Borgias’ FOOL.]

                      Well, Fool, what’s thy latest?

  FOOL
  Aristotle’s or Zeno’s, Lady--‘tis neither latest nor last.  For,
  marry, if the cobbler stuck to his last, then were his latest his last
  in rebus ambulantibus.  Argal, I stick at nothing but cobble-stones,
  which, by the same token, are stuck to the road by men’s fingers.

  LUC.
  How many crows may nest in a grocer’s jerkin?

  FOOL
  A full dozen at cock-crow, and something less under the dog-star, by
  reason of the dew, which lies heavy on men taken by the scurvy.

  LUC. [To FIRST APP.]
  Methinks the Fool is a fool.

  FOOL
  And therefore, by auricular deduction, am I own twin to the Lady
  Lucrezia!

  [Sings.]

  When pears hang green on the garden wall
    With a nid, and a nod, and a niddy-niddy-o
  Then prank you, lads and lasses all,
      With a yea and a nay and a niddy-o.

  But when the thrush flies out o’ the frost
    With a nid, [etc.]
  ‘Tis time for loons to count the cost,
      With a yea [etc.]

  [Enter the PORTER.]

  PORTER
  O my dear Mistress, there is one below
  Demanding to have instant word of thee.
  I told him that your Ladyship was not
  At home.  Vain perjury!  He would not take
  Nay for an answer.

  LUC.
                      Ah?  What manner of man
  Is he?

  PORTER
          A personage the like of whom
  Is wholly unfamiliar to my gaze.
  Cowl’d is he, but I saw his great eyes glare
  From their deep sockets in such wise as leopards
  Glare from their caverns, crouching ere they spring
  On their reluctant prey.

  LUC.
                            And what name gave he?

  PORTER [After a pause.]
  Something-arola.

  LUC.
                    Savon-? [PORTER nods.] Show him up.  [Exit PORTER.]

  FOOL
  If he be right astronomically, Mistress, then is he the greater dunce
  in respect of true learning, the which goes by the globe.  Argal,
  ‘twere better he widened his wind-pipe.

  [Sings.]
  Fly home, sweet self,
  Nothing’s for weeping,
  Hemp was not made
  For lovers’ keeping, Lovers’ keeping,
  Cheerly, cheerly, fly away.
  Hew no more wood
  While ash is glowing,
  The longest grass
  Is lovers’ mowing,
  Lovers’ mowing,
  Cheerly, [etc.]

  [Re-enter PORTER, followed by SAV.  Exeunt PORTER, FOOL, and FIRST and
  SECOND APPS.]

  SAV.
  I am no more a monk, I am a man
  O’ the world.
  [Throws off cowl and frock, and stands forth in the costume of a
  Renaissance nobleman.  LUCREZIA looks him up and down.]

  LUC.
                 Thou cutst a sorry figure.

  SAV.
                                             That
  Is neither here nor there.  I love you, Madam.

  LUC.
  And this, methinks, is neither there nor here,
  For that my love of thee hath vanished,
  Seeing thee thus beprankt.  Go pad thy calves!
  Thus mightst thou, just conceivably, with luck,
  Capture the fancy of some serving-wench.

  SAV.
  And this is all thou hast to say to me?

  LUC.
  It is.

  SAV.
          I am dismiss’d?

  LUC.
                           Thou art.

  SAV.
                                      ‘Tis well.
  [Resumes frock and cowl.]
  Savonarola is himself once more.

  LUC.
  And all my love for him returns to me
  A thousandfold!

  SAV.
                   Too late!  My pride of manhood
  Is wounded irremediably.  I’ll
  To the Piazza, where my flock awaits me.
  Thus do we see that men make great mistakes
  But may amend them when the conscience wakes.
  [Exit.]

  LUC.
  I’m half avenged now, but only half:
  ‘Tis with the ring I’ll have the final laugh!
  Tho’ love be sweet, revenge is sweeter far.
  To the Piazza!  Ha, ha, ha, ha, har!
  [Seizes ring, and exit.  Through open door are heard, as the Curtain
  falls, sounds of a terrific hubbub in the Piazza.]


  ACT III

  SCENE:    The Piazza.
  TIME: A few minutes anterior to close of preceding Act.

  The Piazza is filled from end to end with a vast seething crowd that
  is drawn entirely from the lower orders.  There is a sprinkling of
  wild-eyed and dishevelled women in it.  The men are lantern-jawed,
  with several days’ growth of beard.  Most of them carry rude weapons--
  staves, bill-hooks, crow-bars, and the like--and are in as excited a
  condition as the women.  Some of them are bare-headed, others affect a
  kind of Phrygian cap.  Cobblers predominate.

  Enter LORENZO DE MEDICI and COSIMO DE MEDICI.  They wear cloaks of scarlet
  brocade, and, to avoid notice, hold masks to their faces.

  COS.
  What purpose doth the foul and greasy plebs
  Ensue to-day here?

  LOR.
                      I nor know nor care.

  COS.
  How thrall’d thou art to the philosophy
  Of Epicurus!  Naught that’s human I
  Deem alien from myself. [To a COBBLER.] Make answer, fellow!
  What empty hope hath drawn thee by a thread
  Forth from the OBscene hovel where thou starvest?

  COB.
  No empty hope, your Honour, but the full
  Assurance that to-day, as yesterday,
  Savonarola will let loose his thunder
  Against the vices of the idle rich
  And from the brimming cornucopia
  Of his immense vocabulary pour
  Scorn on the lamentable heresies
  Of the New Learning and on all the art
  Later than Giotto.

  COS.
                      Mark how absolute
  The knave is!

  LOR.
                 Then are parrots rational
  When they regurgitate the thing they hear!
  This fool is but an unit of the crowd,
  And crowds are senseless as the vasty deep
  That sinks or surges as the moon dictates.
  I know these crowds, and know that any man
  That hath a glib tongue and a rolling eye
  Can as he willeth with them.
  [Removes his mask and mounts steps of Loggia.]
                                Citizens!
  [Prolonged yells and groans from the crowd.]
  Yes, I am he, I am that same Lorenzo
  Whom you have nicknamed the Magnificent.
  [Further terrific yells, shakings of fists, brandishings of bill-
  hooks, insistent cries of ‘Death to Lorenzo!’ ‘Down with the
  Magnificent!’ Cobblers on fringe of crowd, down c., exhibit especially
  all the symptoms of epilepsy, whooping-cough, and other ailments.]
  You love not me.
  [The crowd makes an ugly rush.  LOR. appears likely to be dragged down
  and torn limb from limb, but raises one hand in nick of time, and
  continues:]
                    Yet I deserve your love.
  [The yells are now variegated with dubious murmurs.  A cobbler down c.
  thrusts his face feverishly in the face of another and repeats, in a
  hoarse interrogative whisper, ‘Deserves our love?’]
  Not for the sundry boons I have bestow’d
  And benefactions I have lavished
  Upon Firenze, City of the Flowers,
  But for the love that in this rugged breast
  I bear you.
  [The yells have now died away, and there is a sharp fall in dubious
  murmurs.  The cobbler down c. says, in an ear-piercing whisper, ‘The
  love he bears us,’ drops his lower jaw, nods his head repeatedly, and
  awaits in an intolerable state of suspense the orator’s next words.]
               I am not a blameless man,
  [Some dubious murmurs.]
  Yet for that I have lov’d you passing much,
  Shall some things be forgiven me.
  [Noises of cordial assent.]
                                     There dwells
  In this our city, known unto you all,
  A man more virtuous than I am, and
  A thousand times more intellectual;
  Yet envy not I him, for--shall I name him?--
  He loves not you.  His name? I will not cut
  Your hearts by speaking it.  Here let it stay
  On tip o’ tongue.
  [Insistent clamour.]
                     Then steel you to the shock!--
  Savonarola.
  [For a moment or so the crowd reels silently under the shock.  Cobbler
  down c. is the first to recover himself and cry ‘Death to Savonarola!’
  The cry instantly becomes general.  LOR. holds up his hand and
  gradually imposes silence.]
               His twin bug-bears are
  Yourselves and that New Learning which I hold
  Less dear than only you.
  [Profound sensation.  Everybody whispers ‘Than only you’ to everybody
  else.  A woman near steps of Loggia attempts to kiss hem of LOR.’s
  garment.]
                            Would you but con
  With me the old philosophers of Hellas,
  Her fervent bards and calm historians,
  You would arise and say ‘We will not hear
  Another word against them!’
  [The crowd already says this, repeatedly, with great emphasis.]
                               Take the Dialogues
  Of Plato, for example.  You will find
  A spirit far more truly Christian
  In them than in the ravings of the sour-soul’d
  Savonarola.
  [Prolonged cries of ‘Death to the Sour-Souled Savonarola!’  Several
  cobblers detach themselves from the crowd and rush away to read the
  Platonic Dialogues.  Enter SAVONAROLA.  The crowd, as he makes his way
  through it, gives up all further control of its feelings, and makes a
  noise for which even the best zoologists might not find a good
  comparison.  The staves and bill-hooks wave like twigs in a storm.
  One would say that SAV. must have died a thousand deaths already.  He
  is, however, unharmed and unruffled as he reaches the upper step of
  the Loggia.  LOR. meanwhile has rejoined COS. in the Piazza.]

  SAV.
              Pax vobiscum, brothers!
  [This does but exacerbate the crowd’s frenzy.]

  VOICE OF A COBBLER
  Hear his false lips cry Peace when there is no
  Peace!

  SAV.
          Are not you ashamed, O Florentines,
  [Renewed yells, but also some symptoms of manly shame.]
  That hearken’d to Lorenzo and now reel
  Inebriate with the exuberance
  Of his verbosity?
  [The crowd makes an obvious effort to pull itself together.]
                     A man can fool
  Some of the people all the time, and can
  Fool all the people sometimes, but he cannot
  Fool ALL the people ALL the time.
  [Loud cheers.  Several cobblers clap one another on the back.  Cries
  of ‘Death to Lorenzo!’  The meeting is now well in hand.]
                                     To-day
  I must adopt a somewhat novel course
  In dealing with the awful wickedness
  At present noticeable in this city.
  I do so with reluctance.  Hitherto
  I have avoided personalities.
  But now my sense of duty forces me
  To a departure from my custom of
  Naming no names.  One name I must and shall
  Name.
  [All eyes are turned on LOR., who smiles uncomfortably.]
         No, I do not mean Lorenzo.  He
  Is ‘neath contempt.
  [Loud and prolonged laughter, accompanied with hideous grimaces at LOR.
  Exeunt LOR. and COS.]
                       I name a woman’s name,
  [The women in the crowd eye one another suspiciously.]
  A name known to you all--four-syllabled,
  Beginning with an L.
  [Pause.  Enter hurriedly LUC., carrying the ring.  She stands,
  unobserved by any one, on outskirt of crowd.  SAV. utters the name:]
                        Lucrezia!

  LUC. [With equal intensity.]
  Savonarola!
  [SAV. starts violently and stares in direction of her voice.]
               Yes, I come, I come!
  [Forces her way to steps of Loggia.  The crowd is much bewildered, and
  the cries of ‘Death to Lucrezia Borgia!’ are few and sporadic.]
  Why didst thou call me?
  [SAV. looks somewhat embarrassed.]
                           What is thy distress?
  I see it all!  The sanguinary mob
  Clusters to rend thee!  As the antler’d stag,
  With fine eyes glazed from the too-long chase,
  Turns to defy the foam-fleck’d pack, and thinks,
  In his last moment, of some graceful hind
  Seen once afar upon a mountain-top,
  E’en so, Savonarola, didst thou think,
  In thy most dire extremity, of me.
  And here I am!  Courage!  The horrid hounds
  Droop tail at sight of me and fawn away
  Innocuous.
  [The crowd does indeed seem to have fallen completely under the sway
  of LUC.’s magnetism, and is evidently convinced that it had been about
  to make an end of the monk.]
              Take thou, and wear henceforth,
  As a sure talisman ‘gainst future perils,
  This little, little ring.
  [SAV. makes awkward gesture of refusal.  Angry murmurs from the crowd.
  Cries of ‘Take thou the ring!’ ‘Churl!’ ‘Put it on!’ etc.
  Enter the Borgias’ FOOL and stands unnoticed on fringe of crowd.]
                             I hoped you ‘ld like it--
  Neat but not gaudy.  Is my taste at fault?
  I’d so look’d forward to--
 [Sob.] No, I’m not crying,
  But just a little hurt.
  [Hardly a dry eye in the crowd.  Also swayings and snarlings
  indicative that SAV.’s life is again not worth a moment’s purchase.
  SAV. makes awkward gesture of acceptance, but just as he is about to
  put ring on finger, the FOOL touches his lute and sings:--]

  Wear not the ring,
  It hath an unkind sting,
      Ding, dong, ding.
  Bide a minute,
  There’s poison in it,
    Poison in it,
      Ding-a-dong, dong, ding.

  LUC.
                           The fellow lies.
  [The crowd is torn with conflicting opinions.  Mingled cries of  ‘Wear
  not the ring!’ ‘The fellow lies!’  ‘Bide a minute!’  ‘Death to the
  Fool!’  ‘Silence for the Fool!’  ‘Ding-a-dong, dong, ding!’ etc.]

  FOOL [Sings.]
  Wear not the ring,
  For Death’s a robber-king,
      Ding, [etc.]
  There’s no trinket
  Is what you think it,
    What you think it,
      Ding-a-dong, [etc.]

  [SAV. throws ring in LUC.’s face.  Enter POPE JULIUS II, with Papal
  army.]
  POPE
  Arrest that man and woman!
  [Re-enter Guelfs and Ghibellines fighting.  SAV. and LUC. are arrested
  by Papal officers.  Enter MICHAEL ANGELO.  ANDREA DEL SARTO appears for a
  moment at a window.  PIPPA passes.  Brothers of the Misericordia go by,
  singing a Requiem for Francesca da Rimini.  Enter BOCCACCIO, BENVENUTO
  CELLINI, and many others, making remarks highly characteristic of
  themselves but scarcely audible through the terrific thunderstorm
  which now bursts over Florence and is at its loudest and darkest
  crisis as the Curtain falls.]


  ACT IV

  TIME: Three hours later.
  SCENE:    A Dungeon on the ground-floor of the Palazzo Civico.

  The stage is bisected from top to bottom by a wall, on one side of
  which is seen the interior of LUCREZIA’S cell, on the other that of
  SAVONAROLA’S.

  Neither he nor she knows that the other is in the next cell.  The
  audience, however, knows this.

  Each cell (because of the width and height of the proscenium) is of
  more than the average Florentine size, but is bare even to the point
  of severity, its sole amenities being some straw, a hunk of bread, and
  a stone pitcher.  The door of each is facing the audience.  Dimish
  light.

  LUCREZIA wears long and clanking chains on her wrists, as does also
  SAVONAROLA.  Imprisonment has left its mark on both of them.  SAVONAROLA’S
  hair has turned white.  His whole aspect is that of a very old, old
  man.  LUCREZIA looks no older than before, but has gone mad.

  SAV.
  Alas, how long ago this morning seems
  This evening!  A thousand thousand eons
  Are scarce the measure of the gulf betwixt
  My then and now.  Methinks I must have been
  Here since the dim creation of the world
  And never in that interval have seen
  The tremulous hawthorn burgeon in the brake,
  Nor heard the hum o’ bees, nor woven chains
  Of buttercups on Mount Fiesole
  What time the sap lept in the cypresses,
  Imbuing with the friskfulness of Spring
  Those melancholy trees.  I do forget
  The aspect of the sun.  Yet I was born
  A freeman, and the Saints of Heaven smiled
  Down on my crib.  What would my sire have said,
  And what my dam, had anybody told them
  The time would come when I should occupy
  A felon’s cell?  O the disgrace of it
  The scandal, the incredible come-down!
  It masters me.  I see i’ my mind’s eye
  The public prints--‘Sharp Sentence on a Monk.’
  What then?  I thought I was of sterner stuff
  Than is affrighted by what people think.
  Yet thought I so because ‘twas thought of me,
  And so ‘twas thought of me because I had
  A hawk-like profile and a baleful eye.
  Lo!  my soul’s chin recedes, soft to the touch
  As half-churn’d butter.  Seeming hawk is dove,
  And dove’s a gaol-bird now.  Fie out upon ‘t!

  LUC.
  How comes it?  I am Empress Dowager
  Of China--yet was never crown’d.  This must
  Be seen to.
  [Quickly gathers some straw and weaves a crown, which she puts on.]

  SAV.
               O, what a degringolade!
  The great career I had mapp’d out for me--
  Nipp’d i’ the bud.  What life, when I come out,
  Awaits me?  Why, the very Novices
  And callow Postulants will draw aside
  As I pass by, and say ‘That man hath done
  Time!’  And yet shall I wince?  The worst of Time
  Is not in having done it, but in doing ‘t.

  LUC.
  Ha, ha, ha, ha!  Eleven billion pig-tails
  Do tremble at my nod imperial,--
  The which is as it should be.

  SAV.
                                 I have heard
  That gaolers oft are willing to carouse
  With them they watch o’er, and do sink at last
  Into a drunken sleep, and then’s the time
  To snatch the keys and make a bid for freedom.
  Gaoler!  Ho, Gaoler!
  [Sounds of lock being turned and bolts withdrawn.  Enter the Borgias’
  FOOL, in plain clothes, carrying bunch of keys.]
                        I have seen thy face
  Before.

  FOOL
           I saved thy life this afternoon, Sir.

  SAV.
  Thou art the Borgias’ Fool?

  FOOL
                               Say rather, was.
  Unfortunately I have been discharg’d
  For my betrayal of Lucrezia,
  So that I have to speak like other men--
  Decasyllabically, and with sense.
  An hour ago the gaoler of this dungeon
  Died of an apoplexy.  Hearing which,
  I ask’d for and obtain’d his billet.

  SAV.
                                        Fetch
  A stoup o’ liquor for thyself and me.
  [Exit GAOLER.]
  Freedom!  there’s nothing that thy votaries
  Grudge in the cause of thee.  That decent man
  Is doom’d by me to lose his place again
  To-morrow morning when he wakes from out
  His hoggish slumber.  Yet I care not.
  [Re-enter GAOLER with a leathern bottle and two glasses.]
                                         Ho!
  This is the stuff to warm our vitals, this
  The panacea for all mortal ills
  And sure elixir of eternal youth.
  Drink, bonniman!
  [GAOLER drains a glass and shows signs of instant intoxication.  SAV.
  claps him on shoulder and replenishes glass.  GAOLER drinks again, lies
  down on floor, and snores.  SAV. snatches the bunch of keys, laughs
  long but silently, and creeps out on tip-toe, leaving door ajar.
  LUC. meanwhile has lain down on the straw in her cell, and fallen
  asleep.
  Noise of bolts being shot back, jangling of keys, grating of lock, and
  the door of LUC.’S cell flies open.  SAV. takes two steps across the
  threshold, his arms outstretched and his upturned face transfigured
  with a great joy.]
                     How sweet the open air
  Leaps to my nostrils!  O the good brown earth
  That yields once more to my elastic tread
  And laves these feet with its remember’d dew!
  [Takes a few more steps, still looking upwards.]
  Free!--I am free!  O naked arc of heaven,
  Enspangled with innumerable--no,
  Stars are not there.  Yet neither are there clouds!
  The thing looks like a ceiling! [Gazes downward.] And this thing
  Looks like a floor. [Gazes around.] And that white bundle yonder
  Looks curiously like Lucrezia.
  [LUC. awakes at sound of her name, and sits up sane.]
  There must be some mistake.

  LUC. [Rises to her feet.]
                               There is indeed!
  A pretty sort of prison I have come to,
  In which a self-respecting lady’s cell
  Is treated as a lounge!

  SAV.
                           I had no notion
  You were in here.  I thought I was out there.
  I will explain--but first I’ll make amends.
  Here are the keys by which your durance ends.
  The gate is somewhere in this corridor,
  And so good-bye to this interior!
  [Exeunt SAV. and LUC.  Noise, a moment later, of a key grating in a
  lock, then of gate creaking on its hinges; triumphant laughs of
  fugitives; loud slamming of gate behind them.
  In SAV.’s cell the GAOLER starts in his sleep, turns his face to the
  wall, and snores more than ever deeply.  Through open door comes a
  cloaked figure.]

  CLOAKED FIGURE
  Sleep on, Savonarola, and awake
  Not in this dungeon but in ruby Hell!
  [Stabs Gaoler, whose snores cease abruptly. Enter POPE JULIUS II, with
  Papal retinue carrying torches.  MURDERER steps quickly back into
  shadow.]

  POPE [To body of GAOLER.]
  Savonarola, I am come to taunt
  Thee in thy misery and dire abjection.
  Rise, Sir, and hear me out.

  MURD. [Steps forward.]
                               Great Julius,
  Waste not thy breath.  Savonarola’s dead.
  I murder’d him.

  POPE
                   Thou hadst no right to do so.
  Who art thou, pray?

  MURD.
                       Cesare Borgia,
  Lucrezia’s brother, and I claim a brother’s
  Right to assassinate whatever man
  Shall wantonly and in cold blood reject
  Her timid offer of a poison’d ring.

  POPE
  Of this anon.
  [Stands over body of GAOLER.]
                 Our present business
  Is general woe.  No nobler corse hath ever
  Impress’d the ground.  O let the trumpets speak it!
  [Flourish of trumpets.]
  This was the noblest of the Florentines.
  His character was flawless, and the world
  Held not his parallel.  O bear him hence
  With all such honours as our State can offer.
  He shall interred be with noise of cannon,
  As doth befit so militant a nature.
  Prepare these obsequies.
  [Papal officers lift body of GAOLER.]

  A PAPAL OFFICER
                            But this is not
  Savonarola.  It is some one else.

  CESARE
  Lo!  ‘tis none other than the Fool that I
  Hoof’d from my household but two hours agone.
  I deem’d him no good riddance, for he had
  The knack of setting tables on a roar.
  What shadows we pursue!  Good night, sweet Fool,
  And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

  POPE
  Interred shall he be with signal pomp.
  No honour is too great that we can pay him.
  He leaves the world a vacuum.  Meanwhile,
  Go we in chase of the accursed villain
  That hath made escapado from this cell.
  To horse!  Away!  We’ll scour the country round
  For Sav’narola till we hold him bound.
  Then shall you see a cinder, not a man,
  Beneath the lightnings of the Vatican!
  [Flourish, alarums and excursions, flashes of Vatican lightning, roll
  of drums, etc.  Through open door of cell is led in a large milk-white
  horse, which the POPE mounts as the Curtain falls.]


Remember, please, before you formulate your impressions, that saying
of Brown’s: ‘The thing must be judged as a whole.’ I like to think that
whatever may seem amiss to us in these Four Acts of his would have been
righted by collation with that Fifth which he did not live to achieve.

I like, too, to measure with my eyes the yawning gulf between stage and
study. Very different from the message of cold print to our imagination
are the messages of flesh and blood across footlights to our eyes and
ears. In the warmth and brightness of a crowded theatre ‘Savonarola’
might, for aught one knows, seem perfect. ‘Then why,’ I hear my gentle
readers asking, ‘did you thrust the play on US, and not on a theatrical
manager?’

That question has a false assumption in it. In the course of the past
eight years I have thrust ‘Savonarola’ on any number of theatrical
managers. They have all of them been (to use the technical phrase) ‘very
kind.’ All have seen great merits in the work; and if I added
together all the various merits thus seen I should have no doubt that
‘Savonarola’ was the best play never produced. The point on which all
the managers are unanimous is that they have no use for a play without
an ending. This is why I have fallen back, at last, on gentle readers,
whom now I hear asking why I did not, as Brown’s literary executor, try
to finish the play myself. Can they never ask a question without a false
assumption in it? I did try, hard, to finish ‘Savonarola.’

Artistically, of course, the making of such an attempt was indefensible.
Humanly, not so. It is clear throughout the play--especially perhaps in
Acts III and IV--that if Brown had not steadfastly in his mind the hope
of production on the stage, he had nothing in his mind at all. Horrified
though he would have been by the idea of letting me kill his Monk,
he would rather have done even this than doom his play to everlasting
unactedness. I took, therefore, my courage in both hands, and made out a
scenario....

Dawn on summit of Mount Fiesole. Outspread view of Florence (Duomo,
Giotto’s Tower, etc.) as seen from that eminence.--NICCOLO MACHIAVELLI,
asleep on grass, wakes as sun rises. Deplores his exile from Florence,
LORENZO’S unappeasable hostility, etc. Wonders if he could not somehow
secure the POPE’S favour. Very cynical. Breaks off: But who are these
that scale the mountain-side? | Savonarola and Lucrezia | Borgia!--Enter
through a trap-door, back c. [trap-door veiled from audience by a
grassy ridge], SAV. and LUC. Both gasping and footsore from their climb.
[Still, with chains on their wrists? or not?]--MACH. steps unobserved
behind a cypress and listens.--SAV. has a speech to the rising sun--Th’
effulgent hope that westers from the east | Daily. Says that his hope,
on the contrary, lies in escape To that which easters not from out
the west, | That fix’d abode of freedom which men call | America! Very
bitter against POPE.--LUC. says that she, for her part, means To start
afresh in that uncharted land | Which austers not from out the antipod,
| Australia!--Exit MACH., unobserved, down trap-door behind ridge, to
betray LUC. and SAV.--Several longish speeches by SAV. and LUC. Time is
thus given for MACH. to get into touch with POPE, and time for POPE and
retinue to reach the slope of Fiesole. SAV., glancing down across ridge,
sees these sleuth-hounds, points them out to LUC. and cries Bewray’d!
LUC. By whom? SAV. I know not, but suspect | The hand of that sleek
serpent Niccolo | Machiavelli.--SAV. and LUC. rush down c., but find
their way barred by the footlights.--LUC. We will not be ta’en Alive.
And here availeth us my lore | In what pertains to poison. Yonder herb
| [points to a herb growing down r.] Is deadly nightshade. Quick,
Monk! Pluck we it!--SAV. and LUC. die just as POPE appears over ridge,
followed by retinue in full cry.--POPE’S annoyance at being foiled
is quickly swept away on the great wave of Shakespearean chivalry and
charity that again rises in him. He gives SAV. a funeral oration similar
to the one meant for him in Act IV, but even more laudatory and more
stricken. Of LUC., too, he enumerates the virtues, and hints that the
whole terrestrial globe shall be hollowed to receive her bones. Ends
by saying: In deference to this our double sorrow | Sun shall not shine
to-day nor shine to-morrow.--Sun drops quickly back behind eastern
horizon, leaving a great darkness on which the Curtain slowly falls.


All this might be worse, yes. The skeleton passes muster. But in the
attempt to incarnate and ensanguine it I failed wretchedly. I saw that
Brown was, in comparison with me, a master. Thinking I might possibly
fare better in his method of work than in my own, I threw the skeleton
into a cupboard, sat down, and waited to see what Savonarola and those
others would do.

They did absolutely nothing. I sat watching them, pen in hand, ready to
record their slightest movement. Not a little finger did they raise.
Yet I knew they must be alive. Brown had always told me they were quite
independent of him. Absurd to suppose that by the accident of his
own death they had ceased to breathe.... Now and then, overcome with
weariness, I dozed at my desk, and whenever I woke I felt that these
rigid creatures had been doing all sorts of wonderful things while my
eyes were shut. I felt that they disliked me. I came to dislike them in
return, and forbade them my room.

Some of you, my readers, might have better luck with them than I. Invite
them, propitiate them, watch them! The writer of the best Fifth Act sent
to me shall have his work tacked on to Brown’s; and I suppose I could
get him a free pass for the second night.





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