Big Game Part 1

Big Game.

by Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey.

CHAPTER ONE.

PLANS.

It was the old story of woman comforting man in his affliction; the trouble in this instance appearing in the shape of a long blue envelope addressed to himself in his own handwriting. Poor young poet! He had no more appet.i.te for eggs and bacon that morning; he pushed aside even his coffee, and buried his head in his hands.

"Back again!" he groaned. "Always back, and back, and back, and these are my last verses: the best I have written. I felt sure that these would have been taken!"

"So they will be, some day," comforted the woman. "You have only to be patient and go on trying. I'll re-type the first and last pages, and iron out the dog's ears, and we will send it off on a fresh journey.

Why don't you try the _Pinnacle Magazine_? There ought to be a chance there. They published some awful bosh last month."

The poet was roused to a pa.s.sing indignation.

"As feeble as mine, I suppose! Oh, well, if even you turn against me, it is time I gave up the struggle."

"Even you" was not in this instance a wife, but "only a sister," so instead of falling on her accuser's neck with explanations and caresses, she helped herself to a second cup of coffee, and replied coolly--

"Silly thing! You know quite well that I do nothing of the sort, so don't be high-falutin. I should not encourage you to waste time if I did not know that you were going to succeed in the end. I don't think; I _know_!"

"How?" queried the poet. "How?" He had heard the reason a dozen times before, but he longed to hear it again. He lifted his face from his hands--an ideal face for a poet; clean-cut, sensitive, with deep-set eyes, curved lips, and a finely-modelled chin. "How do you know?"

"I feel!" replied the critic simply. "Of course, I am prejudiced in favour of your work; but that would not make it haunt me as if it were my own. I can see your faults; you are horribly uneven. There are lines here and there which make me cold; lines which are put in for the sake of the rhyme, and nothing more; but there are other bits,"--the girl's eyes turned towards the window, and gazed dreamily into s.p.a.ce--"which sing in my heart! When it is fine, when it is dark, when I am glad, when I am in trouble, why do your lines come unconsciously into my mind, as if they expressed my own feelings better than I can do it myself? That's not rhyme--that's poetry! It is the real thing; not pretence."

A glad smile pa.s.sed over the boy's face; he stretched out his hand towards the neglected cup, and quaffed coffee and hope in one reviving draught. "But no one seems to want poetry nowadays!"

"True! I think you may have to wait until you have made a name in the other direction. Why not try fiction? Your prose is excellent, almost as good as your verse."

"Can't think of a plot!"

"Bah! you are behind the times, my dear! You don't need a plot. Begin in the middle, meander back to the beginning, and end in the thick of the strife. Then every one wonders and raves, and the public--'mostly fools!'--think it must be clever, because they don't understand what it's about."

"Like the lady and the tiger,--which came out first?"

"Ah! if you could think of anything as baffling as that, your future would be made. Write a novel, Ron, and take me for the heroine. You might have a poet, too, and introduce some of your own love-songs. I'd coach you in the feminine parts, and you could give me a royalty on the sales."

But Ronald shook his head.

"I might try short stories, perhaps--I've thought of that--but not a novel. It's too big a venture; and we can't spare the time. There are only four months left, and unless I make some money soon, father will insist upon that hateful partnership."

The girl left her seat and strolled over to the window. She was strikingly like her brother in appearance, but a saucy imp of humour lurked in the corners of her curving lips, and danced in her big brown eyes.

Margot Vane at twenty-two made a delightful picture of youth and happiness, and radiant, unbroken health. Her slight figure was upright as a dart; her cheeks were smooth and fresh as a petal of a rose; her hair was thick and luxuriant, and she bore herself with the jaunty, self-confident gait of one whose lines have been cast in pleasant places, and who is well satisfied of her own ability to keep them pleasant to the end.

"Anything may happen in four months--and everything!" she cried cheerily. "I don't say that you will have made your name by September, but if you have drawn a reasonable amount of blood-money, father will have to be satisfied. It is in the bond! Work away, and don't worry.

You are improving all the time, and spring is coming, when even ordinary people like myself feel inspired. We will stick to the ordinary methods yet awhile, but if matters get desperate, we will resort to strategy.

I've several lovely plans simmering in my brain!"

The boy looked up eagerly.

"Strategy! Plans! What plans? What can we possibly do out of the ordinary course?"

But Margot only laughed mischievously, and refused to be drawn.

The cruel parent in the case of Ronald Vane was exemplified by an exceedingly worthy and kind-hearted gentleman, who followed the profession of underwriter at Lloyd's. His family had consisted of three daughters before Ronald appeared to gratify a long ambition. Now, Mr Vane was a widower, and his son engrossed a large share in his affections, being at once his pride, his hope, and his despair. The lad was a good lad; upright, honourable, and clean-living; everything, in fact, that a father could wish, if only,--but that "if" was the mischief! It was hard lines on a steady-going City man, who was famed for his level-headed sobriety, to possess a son who eschewed fact in favour of fancy, and preferred rather to roam the countryside composing rhymes and couplets, than to step into a junior partnership in an established and prosperous firm.

It is part of an Englishman's creed to appreciate the great singers of his race,--Shakespeare, Milton, Tennyson, not to mention a dozen lesser fry; but, strange to say, though he feels a due pride in the row of poets on his library shelves, he yet regards a poet by his own fireside as a humiliation and an offence. A budding painter, a sculptor, a musician, may be the boast of a proud family circle, but to give a youth the reputation of writing verses is at once to call down upon his head a storm of ridicule and patronising disdain! He is credited with being effeminate, sentimental, and feeble-minded; his failure is taken as a preordained fact; he becomes a b.u.t.t and a jest.

Mr Vane profoundly hoped that none of the underwriters at Lloyd's would hear of Ronald's scribbling. It would handicap the boy in his future work, and make it harder for him to get rid of his "slips"! No one could guess from the lad's appearances that there was anything wrong,-- that was one comfort! He kept his hair well cropped, and wore as high and glossy collars as any fellow in his right mind.

"You don't know when you are well off!" cried the irate father. "How many thousands would be thankful to be in your shoes, with a place kept warm to step into, and an income a.s.sured from the start! I am not asking you to sit mewed up at a desk all day. If you want to use your gift of words, you couldn't have a better chance than as a writer at Lloyd's. There's scope for imagination too,--judiciously applied! And you would have your evenings _free_ for scribbling, if you haven't had enough of it in the daytime."

Ronald's reply dealt at length with the subject of environment, and his father was given to understand that the conditions in which his life was spent were mean, sordid, demoralising; fatal to all that was true and beautiful. The lad also gave it as his opinion that, so far from regarding money as a worthy object for a life's ambition, the true lover of Nature would be c.u.mbered by the possession of more than was absolutely necessary for food and clothing. And as for neglecting a G.o.d-given gift--

"What authority have you for asking me to believe that the gift exists at all, except in your own imagination? Tell me that, if you please!"

cried the father. "You spend a small income in stamps and paper, but so far as I know no human creature can be induced to publish your G.o.d-given rhymes!"

At this point matters became decidedly strained, and a serious quarrel might have developed, had it not been for the diplomatic intervention of Margot, the youngest and fairest of Mr Vane's three daughters.

Margot pinched her father's ears and kissed him on the end of his nose, a form of caress which he seemed to find extremely soothing.

"He is only twenty-one, darling," she said, referring to the turbulent heir. "You ought to be thankful that he has such good tastes, instead of drinking and gambling, like some other young men. Really and truly I believe he is a genius, but even if he is not, there is nothing to be gained by using force. Ron has a very strong will--you have yourself, you know, dear, only of course in your case it is guided by judgment and common sense--and you will never drive him into doing a thing against his will. Now just suppose you let him go his own way for a time! Six months or a year can't matter so very much out of a lifetime, and you will never regret erring on the side of kindness."

"Since when, may I ask, have you set yourself up as your father's mentor?" cried that gentleman with a growl; but he was softening obviously, and Margot knew as much, and pinched his nose for a change.

"You must try to remember how you felt yourself when you were young. If you wanted a thing, how _badly_ you wanted it, and how _soon_, and how terribly cruel every one seemed who interfered! Give Ron a chance, like the dear old sportsman as you are, before you tie him down for life!

It's a pity I'm not a boy--I should have loved to be at Lloyd's. Even now--if I went round with the slips, and coaxed the underwriters, don't you think it might be a striking and lucrative innovation?"

Mr Vane laughed at that, and reflected with pride that not a man in the room could boast such a taking little witch for his daughter. Then he grew grave, and returned to the subject in hand.

"In what way do you propose that I shall give the boy a chance?"

"Continue his allowance for a year, and let him give himself up to his work! If at the end of the year he has made no headway, it should be an understanding that he joins you in business without any more fuss; but if he _has_ received real encouragement,--if even one or two editors have accepted his verses, and think well of them--"

"Yes? What then?"

"Then you must consider that Ron has proved his point! It is really a stiff test, for it takes mediocre people far longer than a year to make a footing on the literary ladder. You would then have to continue his allowance, and try to be thankful that you are the father of a poet, instead of a clerk!"

Mr Vane growled again, and, what was worse, sighed into the bargain, a sigh of real heartache and disappointment.

"I have looked forward for twenty years to the time when my son should be old enough to help me! I have slaved all my life to keep a place for him, and now he despises me for my pains! And you will want to be off with him, I suppose, rambling about the country while he writes his rhymes. I shall have to say good-bye to the pair of you! It doesn't matter how dull or lonely the poor old father may be."

Margot looked at him with a reproving eye.

"That's not true, and you know it isn't! I love you best of any one on earth, and I am only talking to you for your own good. I'd like to stay in the country with Ronald in summer, for he does so hate the town, but I'll strike a bargain with you, too! Last year I spent three months in visiting friends. This year I'll refuse all invitations, so that you shan't be deprived of any more of my valuable society."