The Master Mummer

Sheets of virgin manuscript paper littered my desk, the smoke of much uselessly consumed tobacco hung about the room in a little cloud. Many a time I had dipped my pen in the ink, only to find myself a few minutes later scrawling ridiculous little figures upon the margin of my blotting-pad. It was not at all an auspicious start for one who sought immortality.
There came a growl presently from the other side of the room, where Mabane, attired in a disreputable smock, with a short black pipe in the corner of his mouth, was industriously defacing a small canvas. Mabane was tall and fair and lean, with a mass of refractory hair which was the despair of his barber; a Scotchman with keen blue eyes, and humorous mouth amply redeeming his face from the plainness which would otherwise have been its lot. He also was in search of immortality.
Make a start for Heaven's sake, Arnold, he implored. To look at you is an incitement to laziness. The world's full of things to write about. Make a choice and have done with it. Write something, even if you have to tear it up afterwards.
I turned round in my chair and regarded Mabane reproachfully.
Get on with your pot-boiler, and leave me alone, Allan, I said. You do not understand my difficulties in the least. It is simply a matter of selection. My brain is full of ideas—brimming over. I want to be sure that I am choosing the best.
There came to me from across the room a grunt of contempt.
Pot-boiler indeed! What about short stories at ten guineas a time, must begin in the middle, scented and padded to order, Anthony Hopeish, with the sugar of Austin Dobson and the pepper of Kipling shaken on ad lib. ? Man alive, do you know what pot-boilers are? It's a perfect conservatory you're living in. Got any tobacco, Arnold?
I jerked my pouch across the room, and it was caught with a deft little backward swing of the hand. Allan Mabane was an M.C.C. man, and a favourite point with his captain.
You've got me on the hip, Allan, I answered, rising suddenly from my chair and walking restlessly up and down the large bare room. The devil himself might have put those words into your mouth. They are pot-boilers, every one of them, and I am sick of it. I want to do something altogether different. I am sure that I can, but I have got into the way of writing those other things, and I can't get out of it. That is why I am sitting here like an owl.