Part 8

Glancing at the parcel he had given me, I found it was addressed to myself. It contained a small diamond ring without word or comment. At the time when we found the jewellery at Attenborough’s, this ring had been missing, and, as it belonged to me, I had said nothing to the others about it. I might easily have lost it, and at any rate I gladly gave Bindo the benefit of the doubt. He had pledged it apparently at a different shop; perhaps because it was mine, and he did not wish it to be discovered with the rest; perhaps to remind him more vividly of the task he had set himself during the year to come. Till this ring could be redeemed, he must wait and work in London, and though all his hopes were centred in life abroad, it must not be thought of till this one act of reparation had been done. I never saw or heard from him directly again.

Two years later he died of yellow fever in hospital at Rio; and his last act, while he still had strength to hold a pen, was to write me a loving letter of farewell, enclosing a cheque that covered the sums I had expended on his account. The letter was forwarded to me by the nurse who attended him.

“Is it well with the lad? It is well.”

* * * * *

‘Declined with Thanks’ A Postscript

“READ and rejected” would be a more satisfying formula. But the Oracle is discreetly vague, and condescends not to particulars. Editorial reticence is surely a queer anomaly in these days when a reason is required for everything. When my own effusions have come back to me with the trite ascription, I could have welcomed enthusiastically the scantiest information, the liveliest abuse, in exchange for that exasperating commonplace.

Sometimes even this amount of formal recognition was deferred. At first I augured hopefully from the delay, till experience taught me otherwise. Once, when an editor had kept my MS kicking about in this way, I actually wrote him my mind in free and unorthodox language. “Unwise, most unwise,” you will say. “Yes, but oh! _so_ satisfactory.” Add to which, my letter effected its purpose. He made up his mind then and there on the merits of my article and “declined it _with thanks_.” (The italics are his own.)

But the mystery remains a mystery. He did not reveal it to me, in spite of his gratitude for my contribution, and I still hold to my opinion that such delay is discourteous to a male contributor, and ungallant to a lady. Besides, what is the reason? Is it that the editor waits to see what space he has got left at the finish, and then accepts an article, not for its merits, but for its length, on much the same principle as a lady will ask you at breakfast for _just_ the amount of bread that will suit a remnant of butter, or _vice versa_? If so, Aristophanes had anticipated the process, or one very nearly resembling it—“Man, man,” he says, “they are weighing my tragedy as if it were a pound of beef!”

By the way, why shouldn’t the editorial chair be thrown open to competition? It is thus we elect our Professors, or some of them, at Cambridge. Let a candidate for the office be required to compose an “Exercise”—say a complete story for the magazine he aspires to conduct. So should we respect an editor more, or (possibly) fear him less. At any rate, no order of men, least of all one which examines others, should be debarred now-a-days from the privilege of being examined in its turn.

The fear is that, if my suggestion were acted upon, it would empty the Universities of their Professors. Who could resist the attraction of a post which limits the bulk of its correspondence to one conventional formula? Besides, to a tired Tripos examiner, the duty of looking over a few hundred magazine articles per month would be a frolic—a light and airy holiday task. But he’d think the rules of the competition a trifle rough on the candidates, and might be tempted to violate decorum by an occasional word of encouragement and help.

Apart from the suspense they inflicted upon me, due no doubt to the care they bestowed on the investigation, I think the editors were not far out in their judgment of my work. It always looked so heavy, even to a partial critic like myself, on the morning after I had written it. Once, in despair, I showed an article to a great novelist, who is happily also a great friend. “What _is_ the reason,” I asked him, “that it always looks so lumpy and devoid of wit and smartness?”

I wonder he had patience to read it through. Perhaps it was my presence that inspired him. Then he said, “Not so bad in sense, but, as you say, terribly cumbrous in form. Let’s see what’s the matter with it. Why, it’s description, description, description, instead of action, action, action, as Demosthenes recommended in a kindred art. It’s an essay—good enough so far as the matter goes—but wearisome and heavy almost beyond _my_ endurance.”

“Well, what’s to be done with it?”

“Break it up,” was the reply, “and make them talk. See, here’s a man called Fred. Make him talk to the first woman he meets—Susan, I see, you’ve called her—let him ask her how she is, and where she’s going, and whether it’s a fine day. Do this with every proper name you can find, and you’ll soon see the mass disintegrate and look promising for the printer’s hands.”

I followed his advice, and (triumph of triumphs) the article was accepted. But I felt unhappy and disquieted even in my hour of success. The fact is, the plot of my story was a dream. Yes; it came straight to me at midnight from the god Oneiros himself, complete to the very smallest detail, and where was I to look for another? I very seldom dream at all, and never, before or afterwards, a complete story; and, as I can never originate a plot, my chances for the future are the reverse of promising. Yet I labour on with a persistency beyond all praise, and always during the night—a detrimental practice, involving great expenditure of candles and tissue. By daylight my ideas entirely evaporate, and I have abandoned the attempt as hopeless. The sight, too, of a fair blank sheet of paper makes my thoughts take wing on the instant. They can only be arrested on scraps of waste paper or (best of all) on the pages of a novel.

It is said that the criticisms on Corelli are literally “given to the dogs.” But my revenge upon a dull novel is, I flatter myself, more recondite still. I punish a poor story by using it as the palimpsest for a poorer one. Hence the highest tribute I can pay to my heroes in literature is an unspoken (I mean an unwritten) one. I leave their pages immaculate. My mind might be teeming at midnight with the noblest of thoughts, yet I could not bring myself to record them, even in thought, upon the pages of “Quentin Durward,” “Esmond,” “Silas Marner,” the “Return of the Native,” or “Wuthering Heights.”

Judging it for power alone—power that never flags from the first page to the last—I know of nothing that approaches “Wuthering Heights,” except the preface Charlotte Bronte wrote for it. Yet I never read the book without compassionating the authoress. The creation of a character like Heathcliff must have been one long struggle against herself, to be faced without flinching, as one of the penalties of genius. What her own choice would have been is shown by the relief with which she flings behind her the nightmare of the past to picture the hope and happiness of Earnshaw’s love. Her second book, if she had lived to write it, would certainly have been more genial; it could scarcely have been so great.

* * * * *

THE END

* * * * *

CAMBRIDGE PRINTED BY JONATHAN PALMER ALEXANDRA STREET