‘I don’t know; I may perhaps sell it some day.’
‘In the meantime,’ said Reardon, laying down his pipe, ‘suppose we eat a morsel of something. I’m rather hungry.’
In the early days of his marriage Reardon was wont to offer the friends who looked in on Sunday evening a substantial supper; by degrees the meal had grown simpler, until now, in the depth of his poverty, he made no pretence of hospitable entertainment. It was only because he knew that Biffen as often as not had nothing whatever to eat that he did not hesitate to offer him a slice of bread and butter and a cup of tea. They went into the back room, and over the Spartan fare continued to discuss aspects of fiction.
‘I shall never,’ said Biffen, ‘write anything like a dramatic scene. Such things do happen in life, but so very rarely that they are nothing to my purpose. Even when they happen, by-the-bye, it is in a shape that would be useless to the ordinary novelist; he would have to cut away this circumstance, and add that. Why? I should like to know. Such conventionalism results from stage necessities. Fiction hasn’t yet outgrown the influence of the stage on which it originated. Whatever a man writes FOR EFFECT is wrong and bad.’
‘Only in your view. There may surely exist such a thing as the ART of fiction.’
‘It is worked out. We must have a rest from it. You, now—the best things you have done are altogether in conflict with novelistic conventionalities. It was because that blackguard review of “On Neutral Ground” clumsily hinted this that I first thought of you with interest. No, no; let us copy life. When the man and woman are to meet for a great scene of passion, let it all be frustrated by one or other of them having a bad cold in the head, and so on. Let the pretty girl get a disfiguring pimple on her nose just before the ball at which she is going to shine. Show the numberless repulsive features of common decent life. Seriously, coldly; not a hint of facetiousness, or the thing becomes different.’
About eight o’clock Reardon heard his wife’s knock at the door. On opening he saw not only Amy and the servant, the latter holding Willie in her arms, but with them Jasper Milvain.
‘I have been at Mrs Yule’s,’ Jasper explained as he came in. ‘Have you anyone here?’
‘Biffen.’
‘Ah, then we’ll discuss realism.’