‘Do you think I should give my first dinner party without inviting your father and mother, Celia?’ asked Laura, reproachfully. ‘They will be my most honoured guests.’
‘Heaven knows how the mater is to get a new gown,’ ejaculated Celia; ‘but I’m sure she can’t come in the old one. That gray satin of hers has been to so many dinner parties that I should think it could go by itself, and would know how to behave, without having poor mother inside it. How well all the servants hereabouts must know the back of that dress, and the dark patch on the shoulder, where Lady Barker’s butler spilt some lobster sauce. It is like the blood-stain on Lady Macbeth’s hand. All the benzine in the world won’t take it out. Oh, by-the-bye,’ pursued Celia, rattling on breathlessly, ‘if you really don’t mind being overrun with the Clare family, would you write a card for Ted?’
‘With pleasure,’ said Laura; ‘but is he not in London?’
‘At this present moment he is; but we are expecting him daily at the Vicarage. The fact is he has not made his mark, poor fellow, and he is rather tired of London. I suppose there are too many young men there, all wanting to make their mark.’
CHAPTER XXII.
A VILLAGE IAGO.
Edward Clare came back to his native village a few days later, looking somewhat dilapidated by his campaign in the great metropolis. He had found the gates of literature so beset with aspirants, many of them as richly endowed as himself, that the idea of pushing his way across the threshold seemed almost hopeless, indeed quite hopeless, for a young man who wanted to succeed in life without working very hard, or with at most a little spasmodic industry. His verses, when he was lucky, had earned him something like five pounds a month; when luck was against him he had earned nothing. A newspaper man, whose acquaintance he made at the Cheshire Cheese, had advised him to learn shorthand, and try his fortune as a reporter, working upwards from that platform to the editorial chair. This was an honest drudgery which might do very well for your dull plodders, but against which the fiery soul of Edward Clare revolted.
‘I am a poet, or I am nothing,’ he told his friend. ‘Aut Cæsar aut nullus.’
‘That was a first-rate motto——for Cæsar,’ said the journalist, ‘but I think it’s rather misleading for fellows of average talent. The result is so often nullus.’
Mr. Clare was on the point of asking his friend to take another brandy and soda, but at this remark he coiled up, as the Yankees say! Average talent, indeed. Imagine one of Mr. Swinburne’s most facile plagiarists hearing himself called a fellow of average talent!