Finally I dared the question I had come here to ask, which had burned upon my tongue, indeed, from the moment I heard of Pogson's death.
"What about the novel? Might we hope for speedy, though posthumous, publication? We were greedy; the world should know how great a literary genius it had lost. Was it ready for press, as—did she remember?—she'd assured me it would certainly be by the time I came back?"
Mrs. Pogson did not betray any sign of emotion. Her thin hands remained perfectly still in her crape-covered lap.
"There is no novel," she calmly told me. "There never has been any novel. Heber did not finish it because he never began it. He did not possess the creative faculty. You were not content with what he gave. You asked of him that which he could not give. At first he played with you—it amused him. You were so gullible, so absurdly ignorant. Then he hesitated to undeceive you—in that, I admit, he was weak. But he suffered for his weakness. It made him unhappy. Oh I how I have hated—how I still hate you!—for I saved him from poverty, from hard work. I secured him a peaceful, beautiful life, till you came and spoilt it.... All the money was mine," she said.
"GENIUS" — By ELINOR MORDAUNT
(From Hutchinson's Magazine and The Century Magazine)
1921, 1922
I have written before of Ben Cohen, with his eternal poring and humming over the scores of great masters; of the timber-yard at Canning Town, for ever changing and for ever the same, devouring forests with the eternal wind-like rush of saws, slide of gigantic planes; practical and chill; wrapped in river-fogs, and yet exotic with the dust of cedar, camphor, paregoric.