Trewlove drew himself up with fine reserve and dignity. "There is such a thing, sir, I 'ope, as Libbaty of Conscience."
With that I let him go. The colloquy had not only done me no service, but had positively emboldened him—or so I seemed to perceive as the weeks went on—in his efforts to cast off his old slough and become a travesty of me, as he had been a travesty of my uncle. I am willing to believe that they caused him pain. A crust of habit so inveterate as his cannot be rent without throes, to the severity of which his facial contortions bore witness whenever he attempted a witticism. Warned by them, I would sometimes admonish him—
"Mirth without vulgarity, Trewlove!"
"Yessir," he would answer, and add with a sigh, "it's the best sort, sir— ad-mittedly."
But if painful to him, this metamorphosis was torture to my nerves. I should explain that, flushed with the success of Larks in Aspic, I had cheerfully engaged myself to provide the Duke of Cornwall's with a play to succeed it. At the moment of signing the contract my bosom's lord had sat lightly on its throne, for I felt my head to be humming with ideas. But affluence, or the air of the Cromwell Road, seemed uncongenial to the Muse.
Three months had slipped away. I had not written a line. My ideas, which had seemed on the point of precipitation, surrendering to some centrifugal eddy, slipped one by one beyond grasp. I suppose every writer of experience knows these vacant terrifying intervals; but they were strange to me then, and I had not learnt the virtue of waiting. I grew flurried, and saw myself doomed to be the writer of one play.
In this infirmity the daily presence of Trewlove became intolerable. There arrived an evening when I found myself toying with the knives at dinner, and wondering where precisely lay the level of his fifth rib at the back of my chair.
I dropped the weapon and pushed forward my glass to be refilled. "Trewlove," said I, "you shall pack for me to-morrow, and send off the servants on board wages. I need a holiday. I—I trust this will not be inconvenient to you?"
"I thank you, sir; not in the least." He coughed, and I bent my head, some instinct forewarning me.
"I shall be away for three months at least," I put in quickly. (Five minutes before I had not dreamed of leaving home.)