Paul’s coffee went the wrong way, and his cough caused a momentary diversion. But when Dick had vigorously thumped him on the back, and he had resumed his seat at table, Armstrong read the article aloud.
‘Ay, ay!’ he said at the close, ‘it’s certainly my own opinion, and vary cleanly put.’
Paul’s coffee went the wrong way again, and again Dick thumped him on the back. When the paper had gone the round of the household the anonymous writer stole it, and carried it, neatly folded beneath his waistcoat, to the office. He knew it by heart already, but he read it insatiably over and over again. He was in print, and to be in print for the first time is to experience as fine a delirium as is to be found in love or liquor. The typed column ravished his senses, and the editorial ‘we’ looked imperial. He was ‘we’ in spite of shirt-sleeves and ink-smeared apron of herden. In those days the Times could uproot a Ministry, but its editor in his proudest hour would have been a dwarf if he had measured himself by Paul’s self-appreciation. Sweet are the uses of a boy’s vanity, sweeter than honey and the honeycomb.
The dreamer in his mountain eyrie felt his heart warm with a sort of fatherly pity over these bumpkin raptures. The lad blows a bubble of foolery, and it glitters and floats and bursts, and who is the worse for it? The man carves folly in brass, and breaks his head on his own monument; or forges it in steel, and stabs his own heart with it. The vanities of youth are yeast in wholesome ale. The follies of later life are mildew in the cask. The lad who never tasted Paul’s intoxication may make a worthy citizen, but he will never set the Thames afire.
Paul went on writing, and thundered from the editorial pulpit weekly. He gave the Crusher a policy. Castle Barfield was to be a borough at the next redistribution of seats. Its watchwords were ‘Peace, Retrenchment, and Reform.’ It was to uphold the traditions of Manchester in a curious blend with the philosophy, or the want of it, of Thomas Carlyle. It assailed the Vicar of All Saints’ for the introduction of a surpliced choir, and it showed a bared arm and a clenched fist to Popery.
The Jovian wielder of the Crusher’s lightnings got used to being discussed at the Saturday morning table, and encountered praise and blame there with an equal countenance. In his own unplummeted depths he was Scott before the discovery of the authorship of the Waverley series; he was Junius; he was S. G. O. And not a soul ever guessed at the truth, for just as Paul had resolved to reveal his identity and claim his fame the Crusher died.
Then for a long time he was voiceless, and, having no paper balloon to float him, he went about in his own thoughts, quite like a common person. A year later, routing out the whole series of printed articles from one of his jackdaw hiding-places, he was inspired by an intense disdain, and burned them in the office stove.
All the time the world he lived in was the world he took least heed of. Until Ralston crossed him—Ralston, his man of men, and king, and deity—the only real creature was the gray old man who had begotten him. Father and son had grown to a curious sympathy, in which age never domineered because of age, or youth presumed because of youth. Armstrong the elder was a poet, though he had never printed a line; and he and Paul brought their verses to each other. They used to print at times the productions of the local bard, and their first bond of genial and equal laughter (which is one of the best bonds in life) came of their joint reading of one of his effusions. Paul had given it the dignity of type. Armstrong was his own proof-reader, and Paul read the MS. aloud, whilst his father, with balanced pen, ticked off the lines. They were headed ‘Lines on a Walk I once took in the Country,’ and they opened thus:
‘It was upon a day in May When through the field I took my way, It was delightful for to see The sheep and lambs—they did agree.
‘And as I went forth on that day I met a stile within my way, That stile which did give rest to me Again I may not no more see.