"You romancers are privileged to talk nonsense anywhere," the colonel estimated, "and I suppose that in the Lichfield you have made famous, Jack, you have a double right."
"Ah, but I never wrote a line concerning Lichfield. I only wrote about the Lichfield whose existence you continue to believe in, in spite of the fact that you are actually living in the real Lichfield," Charteris returned. "The vitality of the legend is wonderful."
He cocked his head to one side—an habitual gesture with Charteris—and the colonel noted, as he had often done before, how extraordinarily reminiscent Jack was of a dried-up, quizzical black parrot. Said Charteris:
"I love to serve that legend. I love to prattle of 'ole Marster' and 'ole Miss,' and throw in a sprinkling of 'mockin'-buds' and 'hants' and 'horg-killing time,' and of sweeping animadversions as to all 'free niggers'; and to narrate how 'de quality use ter cum'—you spell it c-u-m because that looks so convincingly like dialect—'ter de gret hous.' Those are the main ingredients. And, as for the unavoidable love-interest—" Charteris paused, grinned, and pleasantly resumed: "Why, jes arter dat, suh, a hut Yankee cap'en, whar some uv our folks done shoot in de laig, wuz lef on de road fer daid—a quite notorious custom on the part of all Northern armies—un Young Miss had him fotch up ter de gret hous, un nuss im same's he one uv de fambly, un dem two jes fit un argufy scanlous un never spicion huccum dey's in love wid each othuh till de War's ovuh. And there you are! I need not mention that during the tale's progress it is necessary to introduce at least one favorable mention of Lincoln, arrange a duel 'in de low grouns' immediately after day-break, and have the family silver interred in the back garden, because these points will naturally suggest themselves."
"Jack, Jack!" the colonel cried, "it is an ill bird that fouls its own nest."
"But, believe me, I don't at heart," said Charteris, in a queer earnest voice. "There is a sardonic imp inside me that makes me jeer at the commoner tricks of the trade—and yet when I am practising that trade, when I am writing of those tender-hearted, brave and gracious men and women, and of those dear old darkies, I very often write with tears in my eyes. I tell you this with careful airiness because it is true and because it would embarrass me so horribly if you believed it."
Then he was off upon another tack. "And wherein, pray, have I harmed Lichfield by imagining a dream city situated half way between Atlantis and Avalon and peopled with superhuman persons—and by having called this city Lichfield? The portrait did not only flatter Lichfield, it flattered human nature. So, naturally, it pleased everybody. Yes, that, I take it, is the true secret of romance—to induce the momentary delusion that humanity is a superhuman race, profuse in aspiration, and prodigal in the exercise of glorious virtues and stupendous vices. As a matter of fact, all human passions are depressingly chicken-hearted, I find. Were it not for the police court records, I would pessimistically insist that all of us elect to love one person and to hate another with very much the same enthusiasm that we display in expressing a preference for rare roast beef as compared with the outside slice. Oh, really, Rudolph, you have no notion how salutary it is to the self-esteem of us romanticists to run across, even nowadays, an occasional breach of the peace. For then sometimes—when the coachman obligingly cuts the butler's throat in the back-alley, say—we actually presume to think for a moment that our profession is almost as honest as that of making counterfeit money…."
The colonel did not interrupt his brief pause of meditation. Then the novelist said:
"Why, no; if I were ever really to attempt a tale of Lichfield, I would not write a romance but a tragedy. I think that I would call my tragedy Futility, for it would mirror the life of Lichfield with unengaging candor; and, as a consequence, people would complain that my tragedy lacked sustained interest, and that its participants were inconsistent; that it had no ordered plot, no startling incidents, no high endeavors, and no especial aim; and that it was equally deficient in all time-hallowed provocatives of either laughter or tears. For very few people would understand that a life such as this, when rightly viewed, is the most pathetic tragedy conceivable."
"Oh, come, now, Jack! come, recollect that your reasoning powers are almost as worthy of employment as your rhetorical abilities! We are not quite so bad as that, you know. We may be a little behind the times in Lichfield; we certainly let well enough alone, and we take things pretty much as they come; but we meddle with nobody, and, after all, we don't do any especial harm."