CHAPTER XXI
"THAT BOOK"
Adrian Grant had gone away to Sardinia, but he had left Henry urged to the point of writing "that book." At first Henry approached the task with but little taste, for he had the good sense to doubt whether his talent lay in the direction of creative work, as the writing of fiction is so comically miscalled. But the thing had to be done, and as well now as again. At first progress was slow, as book-reviewing for the Watchman kept him busy most nights at home, while sub-editorial duties filled out all too amply his office hours. There was agony of mind in the writing of the early chapters, and he had not gone far when the rupture with Flo came to disturb his thoughts and to agitate his feelings. But it had the effect of setting him almost savagely to his novel again, and gloomy was the atmosphere he created in his chapters. It was a romance of town and country life, and was entitled provisionally, "Grey Life."
For a while after Flo's exit from his life the book went ahead rapidly; then he set it aside almost afraid to go on after reading what he had written; it was so savage, so unlike anything he had ever hoped to write. If at that time he could have been impersonal enough in his criticism, he would have seen at a glance that Adrian Grant was not only responsible for his having essayed the task, but that he had projected something of his pessimism into the mind of the writer.
The unfolding young editor, who had meant to write such a scathing review of "Ashes," would have been as incensed by the unhealthy gloom, the wintry sadness, of "Grey Life." Of course, it is to be remembered that the said young editor had never delivered the terrible slating he intended to devote to Adrian Grant's popular work, but he had at least thought it, and believed it would have been justified, even after he had written something different. Though the morbidity of sex was entirely absent from "Grey Life," it contained a good deal that was as deserving of ban as anything in "Ashes."
When Mr. P. returned in the late autumn of the year from his sojourn in the South, he asked to be shown the manuscript, incomplete as it was; and pronounced it good.
"You've stuck almost in sight of the end," he said.
"Wrecked in port," replied Henry, laughing.