"Now you can understand why I was jumpy at the theatre to-night," he answered in parenthesis.
He told me the story as we walked along Fleet Street, and we had reached Ludgate Circus and turned down New Bridge Street before the fantastic tangle was straightened out.
Acting on the advice I had given him when he stayed with me in Morocco, he had sought mental distraction in the composition of "Gretchen," and had offered it to the publishers under an assumed name through the medium of a solicitor. We three alone were acquainted with the carefully guarded secret. His subsequent books appeared in the same way: even the Heir-at-Law I had just witnessed came to a similar cumbrous birth, and was rehearsed and produced without criticism or suggestion from the author.
I could see no reason for a nom de plume in the case of "Gretchen" or the other novel of nonage; with the "Child of Misery" it was different. I suspect the first volume of being autobiographical; the second, to my certain knowledge, embodies a slice torn ruthlessly out of the Seraph's own life. An altered setting, the marriage of Rupert and Kathleen, were two out of a dozen variations from the actual; but the touching, idyllic boy and girl romance, with its shattering termination, had taken place a few months—a few weeks, I might say—before our first meeting in Morocco. I imagine it was because I was the only man who had seen him in those dark days, that he broke through his normal reserve and admitted me to his confidence.
"When do you propose to avow your own children?" I asked.
He shook his head without answering. I suppose it is what I ought to have expected, but in the swaggering, self-advertising twentieth century it seemed incredible that I had found a man content for all time to bind his laurels round the brow of a lay figure.
"In time...." I began, but he shook his head again.
"You can stop me with a single sentence. I'm in your hands. 'Gordon Tremayne' dies as soon as his identity's discovered."
Years ago I remember William Sharp using the same threat with "'Fiona Macleod.'"
"You think it's just self-consciousness," he went on in self-defence. "You think after what's passed...."