"I am not God Almighty, nor do I come straight from Olympus. I have still a lot to learn."
"If you'll forgive me saying so, Mr. Campbell," said Jane Ross, "you're talking the most arrant nonsense. You're doing your best to break down what a few of us are trying to restore—some kind of a literary standard. At last there's an attempt being made to praise good work and leave the fools alone."
"And I'm one of the fools," broke in Campbell. "Oh, I know. But don't think there's personal feeling in this. There might have been ten years ago. I worried then a terrible deal about whether I were an artist or no; I cared what you people said, read your reviews and was damnably puzzled by the different decisions you gave. And then suddenly I said to myself: 'Why shouldn't I have some fun? Life's short. I'm not a great artist, and never shall be. I'll write to please myself.' And I did. And I've been happy ever since. You're just as divided about me as you used to be. And just as divided about one another. The only difference is that you still worry about one another and fight and scratch, and I bow to your superior judgment—and enjoy myself. I haven't much of an intellect, I'm not a good critic, but I'm nearer real life than you are, any of you. What you people are doing is not separating the sheep from the goats as you think you are—none of you are decided as to who the sheep really are—but you are simply separating Life from Art. We're not an artistic nation—nothing will ever make us one. We've provided some of the greatest artists the world has ever seen because of our vitality and our independence of cliques. How much about Art did Richardson and Fielding, Scott and Jane Austen, Thackeray and Dickens, Trollope and Hardy consciously know? When has Hardy ever written one single statement about Art outside his own prefaces, and in them he talks simply of his own books. But these men knew about life. Fielding could tell you what the inside of a debtor's prison is like, and Scott could plant trees, and Thackeray was no mean judge of a shady crowd at a foreign watering-place, and Hardy knew all about milking a cow. What do you people know about anything save literary values and over them you squabble all the while. There aren't any literary values until Time has spoken. But there is such a thing as responding to the beauty in something that you've seen or read and telling others that you've enjoyed it—and there are more things in this world to enjoy—even in the mess that it's in at this moment—than any of you people realize."
Campbell stopped. Seymour, who was standing just behind him, saw fit to remark: "How right you are, Campbell; Life's glorious it seems to me. What was it Stevenson said: 'Life is so full of a number of things.'"
Poor Campbell! Nothing more terrible than Seymour's appreciation was to be found in the London of that period.
"Oh, damn!" Campbell muttered. "I didn't see you were there, Seymour. Just my luck."
But Peter had been watching Grace Talbot's eyes. She had not listened to a word of the little discussion. The cessation of voices pulled her back. "You're a good fellow, Campbell," she said. "You've got a good digestion, a gift for narrative, very little intellect, and at fifty you'll be very fat and have purple veins in your nose. We all like you, but you really must forgive us for not taking you seriously."
Campbell laughed. "Perhaps you're right," he said. "But which is better? To be a second-rate artist and free or to be a second-rate artist and bound? Your little stories are very nice, Grace, but they aren't as good as either Tchehov or Maupassant. Monteith's poetry is clever, but it isn't as good as T. E. Brown on one side or Clough on the other, and neither T. E. Brown or Clough were first-rate poets. So can't we, all of us, second-raters as we are, afford to be generous to one another and take everything a little less solemnly? Life's passing, you know. Happiness and generosity are worth having."
"We will now sing Hymn 313: 'Onward Christian Soldiers.'" said Jane Ross, laughing. "Next Sunday being the Third after Trinity the sermon at Evensong will be preached by the Rev. Amos Campbell, Rector of Little Marrow Pumpernickel. He will take as his text 'Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth.' The Collection will be for Church Expenses."
Every one laughed but Grace Talbot moved restlessly in her chair.