The story was to be called "The Beggar." He had even got the title! It was one of those half-psychological, half-transcendental stories, in the turnings and twistings of which he liked to give his fancy scope. His fault was not too little imagination, but too much. The task of keeping it within due bounds was not only a task which he hated, but possibly it was a task which was beyond his strength. There are impressionists in painting. He was an impressionist in literature. He was fond of large effects—effects which were dashed in by a single movement of the brush. To descend to details was, he thought, a descent indeed. He was conscious that there was a public which would read a volume which, from first to last, only dealt with the minutest particularity, with a couple of days in the life of a single individual. That was a public he despised. He preferred to deal with a whole life in the course of a couple of pages.
He was, in short, a genius. And when I say a genius, I mean, in this connection, a wholly unmanageable person. As you read his work, you felt that you were in the presence of an exceptional mind—in the presence of a man who saw things, great things, things worth seeing, which were hidden from other men—who saw them, as it were, by flashes of lightning. That was just how he did see them—by flashes of lightning. He saw them for an instant, then no more. Partially, and not the whole. In a lurid light, which almost blinded the beholder. So, when you read a work of his, you were startled, first by the light, then by the darkness. It seemed strange that a man who one moment could be so light, the next could be so dull. Soon you began to be irritated. Then you were bored. When you reached the end—if you ever reached the end—you wondered if the man was mad, or if he was merely stupid. But he was neither mad nor stupid. He was a genius, who, so far, declined to allow himself to be managed. When he became manageable, he would cease to be a genius—in the sense in which the word is here being used. Then, if he wrote at all, he would write what the plainest of plain men could plainly read.
The idea of his story was not an unattractive one—to a certain sort of writer. It was to be the story of a beggar, of a man who asked for alms in the streets, and who, by the exercise of certain arts, which verged upon the marvellous, amassed a fortune. Geoffrey Ford proposed to follow the beggar, as he amassed his fortune, and to show what he did with his fortune, when he once had gained it. And in the little room upstairs, the wife sat with the children, watching over their every movement to see that they made no unnecessary sound. They were good children. When papa was writing, even the baby seemed to do her best to keep the peace. The little ones seemed willing to give up the birthright of the child—the right to enter into the heritage of life with a rush of happy noise. And, below, the husband, and the father, wrote, and wrote, and wrote, and rushed about the room, chasing his dreams, so that he might imprison them, with ink, on paper.
"HE FELT THAT SHE WAS TREMBLING."
The days went by, and the story grew. And so wrapped up was the writer in its growth, that he failed to notice that about his wife there was something unusual, and even a little strange. She was interested in his work, there could be no doubt of that. But she did not, as he was inclined to think that she was apt to do, worry him with continual questions as to how it was getting on, and inquiries into this, or that. She let him go his own way, without making so much as even one suggestion. She was wont to be a little too free with her suggestions, he sometimes fancied. For her suggestions hampered him. And—but this he did not notice—she went her own way too. Rather an odd way it seemed to be. For one thing, she seemed to be unusually busy. She did not come into the room in which he was working even after the children had gone to bed. She seemed to have something on her mind. She became distinctly paler. It might have been illness, or it might have been anxiety, or it might have been overwork. A queer look came into her eyes. Sometimes it was almost like a look of apprehension. Then there would come a timidity in all her movements, as if she were even afraid of him. Then it would be like a look of vacancy, as if her thoughts were far away. When that vacant look was there, she seemed to be unconscious of her husband's presence—just as he had a trick, in his meditative moods, when he was thinking of his work, of becoming unconscious of her. Then again, as one looked into her eyes, one would have thought that she was possessed by some mastering excitement—a flaming fire which glowed within.
One afternoon her husband came in from his daily visit to the Library Reading Room. He was not in his happiest mood. He was a man of moods. When the black mood was upon him, all the world was black.
"On my word, I do not know what things are coming to. There's Graham, of The Leviathan, sends back everything I send him. That MS. which came back this morning, he has had two months, and it's a first-rate thing. Then he goes and fills his pages with stuff which I wouldn't put my name to. The new number's out, and there's another story in it by that man Philip Ayre. I never read such rubbish in my life."
His wife had looked up at him, as he came in, with a smile of welcome. When he began to speak of The Leviathan, her face dropped again. It went paler than even it was wont to do. There was a tremor in her voice.
"I thought you said that that other story of his was rather good."