“It’s typewritten. Will you take a look at it? I’ve been trying to get to work again,” he explained, thrusting the manuscript into my hand.
“What? Poetry, I hope?” I exclaimed.
He shook his head with a gleam of derision. “No—just general considerations. The fruit of fifty years of inexperience.”
He showed me to my room and said good-night.
The following afternoon we took a long walk inland, across the hills, and I said to Merrick what I could of his book. Unluckily there wasn’t much to say. The essays were judicious, polished and cultivated; but they lacked the freshness and audacity of his youthful work. I tried to conceal my opinion behind the usual generalisations, but he broke through these feints with a quick thrust to the heart of my meaning.
“It’s worn down—blurred? Like the figures in the Cumnors’ tapestry?”
I hesitated. “It’s a little too damned resigned,” I said.
“Ah,” he exclaimed, “so am I. Resigned.” He switched the bare brambles by the roadside. “A man can’t serve two masters.”
“You mean business and literature?”