“Well, I’ve been down once or twice to—to see the captain. You remember the captain?”
“Oh, yes—queer, stiff old chap!—I remember him very well. I—I suppose the place hasn’t changed much?” He had walked across to a table, had picked up a cigarette, and was lighting it.
“No, very little,” replied Comethup. “People die, and get married, and live the same lives that other people did before them; nothing very exciting ever happens there.”
“I suppose not. I’ve half a mind to run down there myself one of these days, just to dream among the old streets where I lived when I was a boy; it would be rather inspiring, I should think. Let me see: there was a little girl—what the deuce was her name?—used to live there in a house we thought was haunted. Do you remember?”
“Yes, I remember,” said Comethup. “She lives there still; her father’s dead, you know.”
“Really, I don’t think I ever met him. But I see you’re impatient to be gone, so I won’t detain you. By the way”—this as Comethup was moving toward the door—“I wish you would let me have—say a fiver. I hate to ask you; but, you know, I haven’t a shilling to bless myself with, and although I get all I want here, still there are some additional things which——”
“I’m very sorry,” said Comethup; “I never thought of that. Here you are. I’ll come round and see you again. I suppose you’re working pretty hard now?”
“Well, not what you would call working; as a matter of fact, I’m waiting for an idea. I can feel it coming. I know that at any moment of the night or day I may wake up with the whole thing complete in my mind, ready to put down on paper. But these things can’t be forced—one has to wait for them.”
“And the other books?” asked Comethup. “I suppose they’re going well?”
“Very well,” replied Brian. “From a point of view of fame, they’re going very well indeed; people are talking about me, and I’ve even been preached at from some rather popular pulpits. Of course I get a little money from them, and that money will increase as time goes on. I don’t mind confessing that I was in the depths of despair this morning. Now I shall go out, and look my fellow-man in the face, and enjoy the sunshine, and slap myself on the breast and say, ‘Brian Carlaw, you are once again a free man!’”