The House by the River

by A. P. Herbert

If he didn't acquiesce; if he made trouble, or if the police made trouble—but Stephen preferred not to think of that. Yet if it did happen he would be ready. If it was oath against oath, with the scales weighted already against John, he knew who would be believed.

And, after all, John Egerton, good fellow as he was, would leave but a tiny gap in the world. What were his claims on life? What had he to give to mankind? A single man, parents dead, an obscure Civil Servant, at five hundred a year—a mere machine, incapable of creation, easily replaced, perhaps not even missed. What was he worth to the world beside the great Stephen Byrne? Supposing they both died now, how would their obituary notices compare? John's—but John would not have one; his death would be announced on the front page of the newspapers. But about himself there would be half-columns. He knew what they would say: "Tragic death of a young poet still in his prime ... Keats ... unquestionable stamp of genius ... a loss that cannot be measured ... best work still unwritten ... engaged, we understand ... new poem ... would have set the seal ..." and so on.

And it would all be true. Wasn't it right, then, that if the choice had ever to be made, he, Stephen Byrne, should be chosen, should be allowed to live and enrich the world? It was curious that never before had he so clearly appreciated his own value to humanity. Somehow, he had never thought of himself in that way. This business had brought it home to him.

Anyhow, he must get on with this poem. It was going to be a big thing. The more he wrote, the more it excited him; and the more contented he became with the work he was doing, the more satisfied he was with his material circumstances, the more sure that all would be well for him with the Emily affair.

This is the way of many writers. Their muses and their moods react upon each other in a kind of unending circle. When they are unhappy they cannot write; but when they are busy with writing, and they know that it is good, they grow happier and happier. Then when they have finished and the first intoxication of achievement has worked itself out, depression comes again. And then, while they are yet too exhausted for a new effort, all their work seems futile and worthless, and all life a meaningless blank. And until the next creative impulse restores their confidence and vigour they are, comparatively, miserable.

Stephen Byrne was peculiarly sensitive to these reactions. He had that creative itch which besets especially the young writer with his wings still strange and wonderful upon him. At the end of a day in which he had written nothing new, he went to bed with a sense of frustration, of failure and emptiness. There was something missing. For weeks on end he wrote something every day, some new created thing, if it was only a single verse, apart from the routine work of criticism and review-writing and odd journalism with which he helped to keep his family alive. But ideas do not come continually to any man; and when they come, the weary mind is not always ready to shape them. There were long periods of barrenness or stagnancy when Stephen could write nothing. Sometimes the ideas came copiously enough, but hovered like maddening ghosts just out of his grasp, clearly seen, but unattainable. Sometimes they came not at all. In either case, like a good artist, Stephen made no attempt to force the unwilling growth, but let himself lie fallow for a little. But all these fallow times he was restless and half-content. He had the sense, somehow, of failure. He became moody and irritable, and silent at meals. But when the creative fit was upon him, when he had made some little poem, or was still hot and busy at a long one, the world was benevolent and good, life was a happy adventure, and Stephen talked like a small boy at dinner-time.

So this poem he was working at was an important thing. The "idea" was comparatively old. It had come to him in a fallow time, and had been stored somewhere away. When the policeman's visit restored his tranquillity, the fallow time was over. The idea was ready to hand, and he had only to take it out and sow it and water it. And as it grew and blossomed under his hand, it commanded him. It made him superior to circumstance; it decorated his fortunes and made them hopeful and benign. Nothing could be harmful or disturbing while he was doing such good work every day. It made him sure that he was right—sure that his decisions were wise. It made him see that no good purpose would be served by telling the world the truth about Emily Gaunt and about John Egerton. So he went on writing.

But there was another curious thing about this poem. It was a kind of epic, an immensely daring, ambitious affair. The war came into it, but it was not about the war. Rather it was a great song of the chivalry and courage of the men and women of our time wherever these have appeared. There were battles in it, and the sea was in it, and something of the obscure gallantry of hidden or humble men; and something also of the imperishable heroisms that did not belong to the war—Scott's last voyage and Shackleton's voyage, and the amazing braveries of the air.

And day by day, as he sat there in the sun, glorifying, page by page, the high qualities of these men, their courage and their truth and straightness, he was conscious distantly of the strange contradiction between what he was doing and what he was. He stopped sometimes and thought, "This is sincere work that I am doing; I mean it; it excites me; the critics, whatever they say, will say that it is sincere and noble writing. Parents in the days to come may make their children read it as an exhortation to manliness and truth. They may even say that I was a noble character myself.... And all the time I am doing a mean and dirty thing—a cowardly thing. And I don't care. My life is a lie, and this poem is a lie, but I don't care; it is good work."

All that June the weather was very lovely. In the busy streets the air grew heavy and stifling, full of dust and the vile fumes of motor buses. They were like prisons. But by the river there was always a sense of freshness and freedom; and when the great tide swept up in the evenings a gentle breeze came in light breaths from the west and fingered and fondled the urgent water, making it into a patchwork of rippled places and smooth places, where there swam for a little in a fugitive glow of amber and rose the small clouds over the Richmond Hills. Then it was cool and strengthening to sit in a small boat and drink the breeze, and Stephen always, when the tide was up, would row out into the ripples to see the big sun go down behind Hammerton Church. And while the boat rocked gently on the wash of tugs, he would sit motionless, trying to store the sunset in his mind. He would look at the lights in the water, the unimaginable pattern and colouring of the clouds, fretted like the sand when the sea goes out, consciously realizing, consciously memorizing, thinking, "I must remember how that looked!" For he was not naturally observant, and often, he knew, made up for his lack of observation by his power of imagining. But the critics said he was observant, and observant he was determined to be.