"Oh, I say, you know!" observed Uncle George, as he finished the sixth chapter, and flung down the book.
"Rot, utter rot," I assented pleasantly; "puerile and futile trifling with fragments of the seventh commandment, as your sturdy common-sense instantly detected. In fact," I added, hopefully, "I think that chapter is trivial enough to send the book into a tenth edition. In Afield, you know, I tried a different tack. Actuated by the noblest sentiments, the heroine mixes prussic acid with her father's whiskey and water; and 'Old-Fashioned' and 'Fair Play' have been obliging enough to write to the newspapers about this harrowing instance of the deplorably low moral standards of to-day. Uncle George, do you think that a real lady is ever justified in obliterating a paternal relative? You ought to meditate upon that problem, for it is really a public question nowadays. Oh, and there was a quite lovely clipping last week I forgot to show you—all about Electra, as contrasted with Jonas Chuzzlewit, and my fine impersonal attitude, and the survival of the fittest, and so on."
But Uncle George refused to be comforted. "Look here, Bob!" said he, pathetically, "why don't you brace up and write something—well! we'll put it, something of the sort you can do. For you can, you know."
"Ah, but is not a judicious nastiness the market-price of a second edition before publication?" I softly queried. "I had no money. I was ashamed to beg, and I was too well brought up to steal anything adroitly enough not to be caught. And so, in view of my own uncle's deafness to the prayers of an impecunious orphan, I have descended to this that I might furnish butter for my daily bread." I refilled my glass and held the sparkling drink for a moment against the light. "This time next year," said I, as dreamily, "I shall be able to afford cake; for I shall have written As the Coming of Dawn."
Mr. Bulmer sniffed, and likewise refilled his glass. "You catch me lending you any money for your—brief Biblical words!" he said.
"For the reign of subtle immorality," I sighed, "is well-nigh over. Already the augurs of the pen begin to wink as they fable of a race of men who are evilly scintillant in talk and gracefully erotic. We know that this, alas, cannot be, and that in real life our peccadilloes dwindle into dreary vistas of divorce cases and the police-court, and that crime has lost its splendour. We sin very carelessly—sordidly, at times,—and artistic wickedness is rare. It is a pity; life was once a scarlet volume scattered with misty-coated demons; it is now a yellow journal, wherein our vices are the hackneyed formulas of journalists, and our virtues are the not infrequent misprints. Yes, it is a pity!"
"Dearest Robert!" remonstrated Mr. Bulmer, "you are sadly passé: that pose is of the Beardsley period and went out many magazines ago."
"The point is well taken," I admitted, "for our life of to-day is already reflected—faintly, I grant you,—in the best-selling books. We have passed through the period of a slavish admiration for wickedness and wide margins; our quondam decadents now snigger in a parody of primeval innocence, and many things are forgiven the latter-day poet if his botany be irreproachable. Indeed, it is quite time; for we have tossed over the contents of every closet in the menage à trois. And I—moi, qui vous parle,—I am wearied of hansom-cabs and the flaring lights of great cities, even as so alluringly depicted in Afield; and henceforth I shall demonstrate the beauty of pastoral innocence."
"Saul among the prophets," Uncle George suggested, helpfully.
"Quite so," I assented, "and my first prophecy will be As the Coming of Dawn."