But it was the old house, dying even then, that touched our imaginations; full of memories of brave days past, when the little lady’s great-grandfather, “Splendid Ned,” had been a leading blade in “The County of Corke Militia Dragoons,” and his son, her grandfather, had raised a troop of yeomanry to fight the Whiteboys, and, when the English Government disbanded the yeomen, had, in just fury, pitched their arms over the cliff into the sea, rather than yield them to the rebels, and had then drunk the King’s health, with showy loyalty, in claret that had never paid the same King a farthing.
We had ridden the long thirteen miles in gorgeous October sunshine; before we had seen the gardens, and the old castle on the cliff, and the views generally, the sun was low in the sky, but we were not allowed to leave until a tea, as colossal as our lunch had been, was consumed. Our protests were unheeded, and we were assured that we should be “no time at all springing through the country home.” (A suggestion that moved Martin so disastrously, that only by means of hasty and forced facetiousness was I enabled to justify her reception of it.) The sunset was red in the west when our horses were brought round to the door, and it was at that precise moment that into the Irish Cousin some thrill of genuineness was breathed. In the darkened façade of the long grey house, a window, just over the hall-door, caught our attention. In it, for an instant, was a white face. Trails of ivy hung over the panes, but we saw the face glimmer there for a minute and vanish.
As we rode home along the side of the hills, and watched the fires of the sunset sink into the sea, and met the crescent moon coming with faint light to lead us home, we could talk and think only of that presence at the window. We had been warned of certain subjects not to be approached, and knew enough of the history of that old house to realise what we had seen. An old stock, isolated from the world at large, wearing itself out in those excesses that are a protest of human nature against unnatural conditions, dies at last with its victims round its death-bed. Half-acknowledged, half-witted, wholly horrifying; living ghosts, haunting the house that gave them but half their share of life, yet withheld from them, with half-hearted guardianship, the boon of death.
The shock of it was what we had needed, and with it “the Shocker” started into life, or, if that is too much to say for it, its authors, at least, felt that conviction had come to them; the insincere ambition of the “Penny Dreadful” faded, realities asserted themselves, and the faked “thrills” that were to make our fortunes were repudiated for ever. Little as we may have achieved it, an ideal of Art rose then for us, far and faint as the half-moon, and often, like her, hidden in clouds, yet never quite lost or forgotten.
* * * * *
Probably all those who have driven the pen, in either single or double harness, are familiar with the questions wont to be propounded by those interested, or anxious to appear interested, in the craft of letters. It is strange how beaten a track curiosity uses. The inquiries vary but little. One type of investigator regards the métier of book-maker as a kind of cross between the trades of cook and conjurer. If the recipe of the mixture, or the trick of its production, can be extracted from those possessed of the secret, the desired result can be achieved as simply as a rice pudding, and forced like a card upon the publishers. The alternative inquirer approaches the problem from the opposite pole, and poses respectfully that conundrum with which the Youth felled Father William:
“What makes you so awfully clever?” “How do you think of the things?” And again, “How can you make the words come one after the other?” And yet another, more wounding, though put in all good feeling, “But how do you manage about the spelling? I suppose the printers do that for you?”
With Martin and me, however, the fact of our collaboration admitted of variants. I have found a fragment of a letter of mine to her that sets forth some of these. As it also in some degree expounds the type of the examiner, I transcribe it all.
E. Œ. S. to V. F. M. (circa 1904).
“She was wearing white kid gloves, and was eating heavily buttered teacake and drinking tea, with her gloves buttoned, and her veil down, and her loins, generally, girded, as if she were keeping the Passover. She began by discussing Archdeacon Z——’s wife.