I. Bagging a Hero
II. The Suitor and the Sued
III. On the Road
IV. A 'Heavy' Father
V. The Art of Proposing
VI. Lee Enjoys Himself
VII. The Unexpected
VIII. Briscoe Sees Things in a New Light
IX. Dempster Apologizes
X. The Night Breeze
XI. Conclusion
CHAPTER I
BAGGING A HERO
'WELL, but the novel is played out, Carry. It has run to seed. Anybody can get the seed; anybody can sow it. If it goes on at this rate, novel-writers will soon be in a majority, and novel-reading will become a lucrative employment.'
'What are you going to do, then, Maxwell? Here's Peter out of work, and my stitching can't support three.'
The three in question were Maxwell Lee, his wife Caroline, and her brother, Peter Briscoe. Lee was an unsuccessful literary man; his brother-in-law, Briscoe, an unsuccessful business-man. Caroline, on the other hand, was entirely successful in an arduous endeavour to be a man, hoping and working for all three.
We have nothing whatever to do with the past of these people. We start with the conversation introduced in the first sentence. Caroline had urged on Lee the advisability of accepting an offer from the editor of a country weekly. But Lee, who had composed dramas and philosophical romances which no publisher, nor editor could be got to read, refused scornfully the task of writing an 'ordinary, vulgar, sentimental and sensational story of the kind required.'
'What am I going to do?' he said. 'I'll tell you: I am going to create a novel. Practical joking is the new novel in its infancy. The end of every thought is an action; and the centuries of written fiction must culminate in an age of acted fiction. We stand upon the threshold of that age, and I am destined to open the door.'
Caroline sighed, and Briscoe shot out his underlip: evidence that they were accustomed to this sort of thing.
Lee continued: 'You shall collaborate with me in the production of this novel. Think of it! Novel-writing is effete; novel-creation is about to begin. We shall cause a novel to take place in the world. We shall construct a plot; we shall select a hero; we shall enter into his life, and produce the series of events before determined on. Consider for a minute. We can do nothing else now. The last development, the naturalist school, is a mere copying, a bare photographing of life—at least, that is what it professes to be. This is not art. There can never be an art of novel-writing. But there can be—there shall be, you will aid me to begin the art of novel-creation.'