CHAPTER XVI
DRIFTING
When Henry's review of "Ashes" appeared, it was not so violent an attack on the author as he had meant it to be. Indeed, he was half-ashamed when he read in print what he had written about that much-discussed book; in certain passages it sounded suspiciously like Mr. P.'s own phrases.
"We shall admit that it is no business of art to concern itself with morals." Where did we hear the words before? "It is, alas, only too true that life is not all sweetness: it has more than a dash of bitter." A platitude; and borrowed at that. "But we must not suppose that only beauty is true and artistic: ugliness may still be of the very essence of art." Really, the fiddler fellow might have done the review himself. No doubt, when he read it, he felt that it was mainly his.
Henry had yet to discover that the opinions he gave forth with so much pomp and circumstance had been unconsciously pilfered. The mind of every young man is an unblushing thief. It drifts into honest ways in due time, however, and when it does not, the aged plagiarist may argue that he still remains young.
In a word, the influence of Mr. Puddephatt fell upon Henry at a most critical moment in his zigzag journey towards sober common-sense, and the modified tone of the review indicated a similar change in the inner thoughts of the young journalist—too sudden, perhaps, to be alarming.
But it was apparent that he had become unsettled in his religious convictions as the result of frequent subsequent meetings with his fellow-lodger, who exercised a conscious fascination over the younger man, and could induce Henry to reveal his inmost thoughts without himself volunteering much about his own personal history. Mr. P. was actuated, no doubt, mainly by sheer interest in his friend, and had no sinister end—as he conceived it—in view. So the friendship grew, to the no small annoyance of Flo Winton, who had frequent cause to chide her lover for giving more of his scanty leisure to Mr. P. than to one—mentioning no names—who had perhaps more claim upon it.
At the Leader office he was finding things less to his mind than he had hoped. Five years ago the editorship of a daily paper was a golden dream to him; a year ago, his brightest hope; to-day, a post involving much drudgery, more diplomacy and temporising; small satisfaction.
He imagined that his case was exceptional. "If this," and "granted that," the editorship of the Leader was an ideal post. Minus the ifs, it was not a bed of roses. The cyclist who is bumping along a rough road notices that his friend is wheeling smoothly on the other side, and steers across to get on the smooth track, just as his friend leaves it for the same reason reversed.
We all suppose our trials to be exceptional, and the chances are that the people we are envying are envying us. Conceivably, the editorship of the Times is not heavenly. There were some hundreds of ambitious journalists ready to rush for Henry's post the moment he showed signs of quitting. A newspaper that has had fifteen editors in five years will have five hundred candidates for the job when the fifteenth gives up the struggle. Henry had learned at the rate of a year a week since he became editor.
That leader yesterday had displeased the chairman of directors, as it was somewhat outspoken in favour of municipal trams, and the chairman was a shareholder in the existing company. Another director wanted to see more news from the colliery districts than the paper usually contained, and a third fancied that the City news was not full enough. Yet another, a wealthy hosiery manufacturer, who was wont to boast himself a "self-made man," pointed out that they didn't like leaders to be humorous, and he was open to bet as the heditor was wrong in saying "politics was tabu," when everybody knoo as 'ow the word was "tabooed." He'd looked it hup in the dictionary 'imself. Politics and newspaper-editorship bring us strange bedfellows.
The simple truth was that Henry, all too soon, had learned what an editor's responsibility meant. It meant supporting the political programme of the party which the paper represented, temporising with selfish interests, humouring ignorance when it wore diamond rings, toiling for others to take the credit, and blundering for oneself to bear the blame.
Many of these worries would have been absent from the editorship of a really first-class newspaper; but first-class journals are seldom edited by young men of twenty-two or thereby. Henry had no financial control—a good thing for him, perhaps—and the manager had won the confidence of the directors through procuring dividends by cutting down expenses. He saved sixpence a week by insisting on the caretaker, who made tea for the staff every evening, buying in a less quantity of milk. He pointed out to the poor woman that she was unduly severe on scrubbing-brushes, and after refusing to sign a bill for a sixpenny ball of string required in the packing department, on the plea that "there was a deal of waste going on," he went out to dine with Sir Henry Field, the chairman of directors, to the tune of a guinea a head "for the prestige of the paper." He had even stopped the Spectator and the Saturday Review, which had been bought for the editor in the past, urging that it was dangerous to read them, as that might interfere with the editor's originality in his leaders. Besides, it saved a shilling a week, and really one didn't know what journalistic competition was coming to.
Yet Henry had "succeeded," though he had not "arrived." Best evidence of his success was the jealousy which he created among the older members of the staff, and the contempt in which his name was held in the rival newspaper offices. But he was not satisfied. In less than a year he had ceased to thrill with pride when he was spoken of as editor of the Leader. The political party of which his paper was the avowed local mouthpiece had won a splendid victory at the School Board election, "thanks in no small degree to the able support of the Leader," the orators averred when they performed the mutual back-patting at the Liberal Club meeting. Sir Henry Field bowed his acknowledgments of the praise when he rose; and the manager of the Leader was much in evidence. Henry was at that moment writing away at his desk with his coat off. This is the pathetic side of journalism and of life—one man sows, another reaps.
Nor was Henry's love affair progressing more happily than his experience of editing. The swelled head was subsiding; perhaps the swelled heart also. He heard frequently from home, and there was occasional mention of Eunice; and when his eye caught the name in his sister's letters he had a momentary twinge of a regret which he could not express, and did not quite understand.
Flo Winton had in no wise altered so far as he was capable of judging. She was still the bright, attractive young woman he had grown suddenly conscious of a few years ago. Nothing had been whispered of "engagement," but she had indicated in many unmistakable little ways that she regarded Henry's future as bound up with her own. Yet he now began to wonder if he were wise to let things drift on as they were shaping. He wondered, and let things drift. Flo was quite clear in her mind that they were "as good as engaged." She understood that the woman who hesitates is lost.
Mr. P. was away from Laysford for the winter, the second he had spent in London and on the Continent since Henry and he became acquainted, when the journalist had the first real glimpse into the mysteriousness of his friend.
While compiling his weekly column of literary gossip for the Leader—a feature which more than one director had stigmatised as shameful waste of good space that might have been filled with real news or market reports—Henry found a short paragraph in the personal column of a London weekly which made him stare at the print:
"I understand that Adrian Grant, whose book 'Ashes' was so widely discussed last autumn, is the pen-name of a Mr. Phineas Pudifant, a country gentleman who is well known in certain select circles of London's literary and musical world. His previous novel, 'The Corrupter,' published two years before 'Ashes,' had a distinct artistic success; but the great popularity of his later book was as remarkable as it was unexpected and unsought. Adrian Grant is essentially a writer for art's sake, and not for so much per thousand words."
Henry doubted the evidence of his eyes as he read the startling news. The journal in which the paragraph appeared, and the chroniqueur responsible for it, were noted for the authoritative character of their information, and he knew that such a statement could not have been made so deliberately unless it were true to the facts. The very misspelling of the name was in its favour. There were queer names in England, but Mr. P.'s was especially odd, and even wrongly spelt it retained its peculiarity. Still, it was a tremendous strain on his mind to accept the statement as accurate. Never, so far as he could remember, had Mr. P. given him cause to couple his name with that of the author of "Ashes," but after the first shock of surprise, he began to recall how warmly his reticent friend had defended the book on the evening when they first met. It must be true, and now his wonder was that "Adrian Grant"—he began to think of him under the more euphonious name—could have suppressed "the natural man," which is in every author and prides him on the work of his pen. The mysterious Mr. P. had deepened in mystery; the more Henry's acquaintance with him progressed, the less he knew him.
Henry was tempted to make a paragraph out of this newly acquired information, and to add thereto some references of a local nature which would have been widely quoted from the Leader. But he had second thoughts that the subject of the paragraph would not be pleased, and heroically he restrained himself, avoiding all mention of the matter. The ordinary person who has no means other than word of mouth for advertising abroad some choice bit of gossip that has come his way, can but vaguely estimate the personal restraint which the journalist possessed of a tit-bit of news must exercise in keeping the information to himself. It is the journalist's business to blab, and he is as fidgety as a woman with a secret. Henry, however, had the consolation that perhaps after all the statement might not be correct. There were frequent cases of coincidence in the most absurd cognomens.
He had to nurse his mystery for the remainder of that winter and into the early summer, as Mr. P. remained away from Laysford, and his movements for a time were quite unknown even to Mrs. Arkwright, who usually received periodical cheques for reserving his rooms while he was absent. A brief note to that lady early in the year had explained that her well-paying guest would be longer in returning than he had intended, as he was making a stay of some months in Sardinia. Another paragraph with the name properly spelt had found its way into the newspaper where Henry saw the first. The second was even briefer, and merely mentioned that Mr. P. was at present staying in the Mediterranean island, "where probably some scenes in his next novel would be laid."
Doubt as to the identity of Adrian Grant had finally left Henry's mind, and he had even persuaded himself that there were many passages both in "The Corrupter" and "Ashes" which revealed the man behind the book. It is surprisingly easy to find the man in his style when you start by knowing him.
And now the man himself was back in Laysford once more. Henry heard the strains of his 'cello before he met the player again. It was a Saturday night, and Mr. P. had come downstairs for a chat with him.
"You must have thought that I had gone away for good," he said, after warmly greeting his young friend. "I had it often on my mind to write, but I am a bad correspondent. The most of my time away I spent in Sardinia. My mother was a native of that country, and I find it most interesting."
"I had heard you were making a prolonged stay there. Indeed, I saw some mention of your movements in the Weekly Review."
Henry thought this an adroit remark, and fancied it must lead to a confession, but his companion merely inclined his head as if he had not quite caught the words, and went on:
"Ah, but Browning has expressed with grand simplicity the impulse that sends the wanderer back—'Oh, to be in England now that April's there!'"
The chance had gone, "conversational openings" were valueless to one pitted against Adrian Grant. Henry fumbled nervously among the commonplaces of speech, and his friend, with scarcely another reference to himself, was presently making the young journalist talk of—Henry Charles.
"You seem to have been burning the midnight oil too assiduously, I think. A trifle paler than when I saw you last. Still grinding away, I suppose."
"Yes; it is grinding. I have moments when I think journalism sheer hack-work. The glamour of the thing is as delusive as the ignis fatuus."
"And there you have life itself. Ergo, to journalise is to live."
"I begin to believe you are right, but I could have wished to make the discovery later."
"It's never too early to know the truth. But come, you are surely thriving professionally, for I heard your study of the Brontë's which you wrote for the Lyceum highly praised by the editor when I was in London last week."
"That is indeed welcome news. You know Swainton, then?"
"A little. You see, I have done some work for him myself. The fact is—"
"Are you Adrian Grant?"
Henry blurted out the question and eyed his friend eagerly, nervously, ashamed of his clumsiness and desperate to have done with it. Without a tremor of his eyelids the other replied:
"Since you put it so bluntly—I am. But I have peculiar ideas of authorship, and you will search my rooms in vain for any book or article I have written. My conception of literature is an artistic expression of what life has told me. I say my say and have done with that work. I say it as it pleases my artistic sense, and I pass to some other phase of life that attracts me and asks me to express it. To the profession of letters I have no strong attachment. To live is better than to write. I know some Sardinian peasants who are kings compared with Tennyson—yes, I will say Tennyson."
Henry was dumb at the vagaries of the man.
"The craft of letters," he went on, "I know only as a branch of life, and far from the noblest."
Adrian Grant could make a thousand pounds, perhaps two, out of any novel he now cared to write. The thought flashed through Henry's mind and left confusion in its tract. What were fame, success, fortune, if one who had won them set such small store thereby?
"I have no wish to be associated with my books," he continued. "The reverse. All great art should be anonymous. Think of the precious sculptures of Greece, the work of unknown men who knew that the joy of expressing truth was immortal fame. It is a stupid convention of a stupid age that a book should bear an author's name. My own name is scarcely pleasant to eye or ear; but I do not quarrel with a scurvy trick of Fate. It tickets the man, and that is enough. My pen-name has served its purpose in securing a sort of impersonal appeal for my books, which cease to be mine once the printer has done his work. You will never, I hope, identify me with my works in anything you may write. I am taking steps to prevent such senseless twaddle about Adrian Grant as appeared in the Weekly Review from becoming general. Who betrayed my secret I know not."
"You will find it difficult to contradict."
"No doubt, but once contradicted by my solicitors, who shall be able to swear to its truth?"
"But why suppress truth, since your aim is to express it?" asked Henry laughingly.
"Ah, there we have to use the word in its common commercial sense. The truth that my name is what it is, and the truth that life is an Armageddon, a phantasmagoria, have no relationship."
Mr. P. had risen to the passionate height of his unforgotten first meeting with Henry, whose mind was now swaying in a chaos of wild and whirling thought at the touch of this strange creature.
"But there," exclaimed the novelist savagely, "let us talk of simpler things," and he threw himself into the chair he had vacated to pace the room. "You say you are less enamoured of your work than you used to be. I can understand it, and I should like to help you. From what I have seen of you, the more literary work of a high-class journal would suit you better; give you the chance to express yourself—if you have anything to express—and I think you have some sense of style, though your ideas are deplorably British—that is to say, Philistine."
"Do you really think I might succeed in London?" Henry asked, ignoring the sneer at his ideas.
"Succeed as the world accounts success, most probably. You have the dogged British quality of sticking to a thing, or you'd never have been where you are so soon. But it's soulless work churning out this political twaddle."
"I realise that, and I'm no politician; only one by force, so to speak. You see, I write for a living."
"A terrible condition, but there is worse. Well, there is some zest, at least, in getting into handgrips with London. If you've a stomach for the fray, I could help. The whole scheme of life there is different. The provinces have nothing to compare with it, as you would soon discover."
"But I believe it would be best to try my fortune as soon as I could."
"Yes, it's well to know the worst early," and Mr. P. gave a melancholy smile. "If you care, I shall mention you to Swainton of the Lyceum. I have some influence with him, I fancy; and he knows you already as a promising contributor."
"I should be most grateful," said Henry, not without misgivings.
But his mind was now trained direct on London, his earliest ambition. He had made his way with surprising quickness in the provinces, and still he was not happy.
"Who is happy?" asked his friend. "Call no man happy until he is dead!—Solon was at his wisest there."
"Happiness is worth pursuing, all the same," Henry returned, lamely enough, since he allowed the pagan fallacy to pass unquestioned. "I shan't be happy till I try my luck in London; and if not then—well, we'll see."
Truly, his mind was seriously unsettled by the spell of this man's strange personality.
Henry's eyes were turned to London, but he was soon to find that there was one person who did not relish the prospect, for reasons of her own.