CHAPTER I.
Notes On The Building Of Bridges.
Within the limits of this short section of our story we shall cram two months of history, taking but a furtive peep or two at our personages as they plod through it.
This is well within our power, since the position of the novelist in regard to his characters may be compared with that of the destiny which in the largest comedy moves to and fro mankind its actors. As destiny moves its puppets, so the novelist moves his—upraising, debasing; favouring, tormenting; creating, wiping from the page.
And of the pair the novelist is the more just. Has villainy in a novel ever gone unpunished? Has virtue ever failed of its reward? Your novelist is of all autocrats the most zealous of right and wrong. Villain may through two-thirds of his career enjoy his wicked pleasures, exceedingly prosper despite his baseness; but ever above him the cold eye of his judge keeps watch, and in the end he is apportioned the most horrible deserts that any could wish. Virtue may by the gods be hounded and harried till the reader's heart is wrung. But spare your tears; before Finis is written, down swoops the judge; the dogs are whipped off; Virtue is led to fair pastures and there left smiling.
Contrasted with this autocrat of the printed page, the destiny whose comedy began with the world and is indefinitely continued makes sorry show. Here the wicked exceedingly flourish and keep at it to the end of their chapter; here virtue, battling with tremendous waves of adversity, is at last engulfed and miserably drowned. Truly, their fit rewards are apportioned, we are instructed, after death. But there is something of a doubt; the novelist, in regard to his characters, takes no risks.
Upon another head, moreover, the novelist shows himself the more kindly autocrat. There is his power, so freely exercised, to bridge time. Whereas destiny makes us to watch those in whom we are interested plod every inch and step of their lives-over each rut, through each swamp, up each hill,-the novelist, upon his characters coming to places dull or too difficult, immediately veils from us their weary struggles. Destiny will never grant such a boon: we must watch our friends even when they bore us, even when they cause us pain. Yet this boon is the commonest indulgence of the novelist-as it now (to become personal) is mine.
I bridge two months.