In the Mist of the Mountains Part 24

And then there were those shares he had taken in that Transvaal concern, suppose news had come of a fall or rise in them? He would not listen to the cold-headed remembrance that whispered that no English, nor American, nor African mail was due to-day. It was perfectly possible that in an undermanned country post office like this these important letters had been left over since last mail and only just delivered. It was really highly important that he should make sure.

He drew the little stack of envelopes towards him and tilted comfortably back while he opened them.

He owed his tailor thirteen pounds eleven and six, he discovered. He discovered that by employing the Reliance Carpet Company his Axminster carpets would be entirely freed from dust and in such a way that he need fear no microbes for his nursery.

The Mission to the Chinese of Wexford Street, and Lower George Street, would be glad of a subscription from him, he learnt.

A Consumptive Hospital, a Creche for Neglected Infants, a Convalescent Home, an Inebriates' Retreat all had a similar use for him. While slightly more cheerful, if less urgently necessary methods of spending his money were suggested by requests, (1) to take a few five-shilling tickets for a concert for the purpose of sending a deserving young singer to Italy; (2) to purchase at a reduction a calf-bound set of the _Encyclopaedia Cosmopolitana_ with which the owner, being short of money, was reluctantly compelled to part, and which he, as an author, would doubtless find it to his benefit to acquire; (3) to be present at the banquet of a fellow author, departing for the old country, tickets one guinea. Then there was one typewriting lady who offered to do his work at so much a thousand words, and submitted a sample of her work. And another typewriting lady, who submitted no sample, stated that reverses of fortune had driven her from a high position in the best society to the bitter one of a typist, and she was therefore compelled to solicit his work to enable her to keep herself.

It was quite a pleasant change to discover two people merely wanted his autograph. "Dear sir, I am collecting autographs and have 637; will you please send yours by return post as I enclose a stamp."

"She encloses a stamp," murmured Hugh admiringly.

The other seeker accompanied her request with a perfervid letter of praise about his work, but on the heavy autograph alb.u.m that accompanied the letter he noticed Kate had had to pay tenpence deficient postage and there were no stamps enclosed for the return of the precious volume.

A jeweller's catalogue provided a few minutes' lighter reading, and its diamond rings and its pearl and diamond necklets and pendants and brooches were so temptingly ill.u.s.trated, that they awoke the present-giving instinct in the man's heart and he revolved the question whether etiquette would permit him to give Dora and Beatrice a necklet apiece for their pretty necks and Miss Bibby a chaste brooch. Kate, he reluctantly remembered, cared nothing for jewellery.

But it was upon the last opened missive he wasted most of his time,--possibly because it was the last and Chapter eleven looked large on the horizon again.

It was an advertis.e.m.e.nt of enamel paint and was accompanied by a most pleasing picture of a gentleman in a frock coat and a lady in a most complicated costume, delicately engaged in making "better than new," by the aid of this enamel paint, a whole bedroom suite.

Something in the elegant _neglige_ of the att.i.tude of the gentleman in the frockcoat depicted pensively painting the bedstead stimulated Hugh marvellously.

He felt an insane desire to get a pot of the famous paint and set to work himself upon a similar labour.

Kate came gently across the floor and placed a jug of iced lemon water and a tumbler at his elbow.

She was about to withdraw in perfect silence, but he detained her.

"Kate," he said.

Her most motherly look was on her face.

"What is it, dear lad?" she said, for her heart was full of futile sympathy for his straits.

"Kate," he said yearningly. "Do you think Larkin could get me a pot of Perfect Perfection Enamel warranted to dry in ten minutes, all colours kept in stock? If I can't enamel a bedstead this very minute I won't answer for my reason."

Kate walked deliberately across the room and boxed his ears.

CHAPTER XVII

LITERATURE IS LOW

But after half an hour's further struggle he got up and drifted aimlessly out of the room, finally bringing up in the kitchen.

Kate was here concocting a savoury and an _entree_ and two or three other things for his dinner, for she had packed the depressed and depressing Ellen off to the bakers' picnic with Anna from "Greenways"

and was sole mistress of her hearth and home for the day.

Here she was when her brother found her, covered up in a spotless ap.r.o.n and, with sleeves rolled engagingly back over her plump white arms, energetically pounding up some anchovies. Hugh sat down heavily on the edge of the dresser.

"A writer's a miserable beast, K," he said dejectedly.

"Give it up to-day, boy," she said. "I can see you can't help yourself.

Go for a walk,--go and look up the little pets. Or have a romp with the children across the road. Don't break your back to-day over a load that another day you will snap your fingers at."

He took no notice of her suggestions.

"Can you deny that it is a miserable trade? A womanish sort of business?

You sit twiddling your pen, your nerves so a-stretch that if a door bangs the mood shuts down on you for the day. And there's that fellow across the road swinging away with his axe among the trees just as he has been ever since breakfast. He'll leave off presently and boil his billy and eat his bread and cheese and have his smoke, and then back he'll go to his work. There it is spread out straight before him, and the muscles on his arms--have you ever noticed the fellow's muscles?--tell him that he is equal to it. Do you ever see _him_ pacing distractedly about, wondering if the mood will come to him? Do you ever see _him_ sitting dejectedly twiddling his axe, and rendered quite incapable because he has been interrupted at a critical time and put out of vein? I tell you, my girl, that fellow's a man, and I'd like to go out and shake hands with him."

"And doubtless," said Kate, hastily sprinkling coral pepper over her savouries, "doubtless every time that fine fellow stops to wipe his beaded brow, he glances over here to envy a man who has nothing to do but sit in a comfortable chair in the shade and scribble any nonsense that comes into his head."

"Now, why," said Hugh addressing the rows of plates ranged beside him, "why does a woman feel it her bounden duty to clap down with a conventional remark like that every time a man lets off a little steam?

Besides I deny it,--the chair is _not_ comfortable."

Kate gave a sidelong glance at the clock and began to chop parsley as if against time.

"No," said Hugh, "I will _not_ take the hint, my good woman. I hold you with my glittering eye and listen to me you shall. 'Litteratoor is low',--Artemus Ward says so. Worse than that it's no longer exclusive,--Mr. Dooley maintains that it is not. Do you remember the verse and chapter, madam?"

"Something about turning Miranda into auth.o.r.een does her skirt sag,"

murmured Kate.

Hugh held up a hand commanding silence and rolled out his Irish with gusto: "'Th' longer th' wurruld lasts th' more books does be comin' out.

They's a publisher in ivry block an' in thousands iv happy homes some wan is plugging away at th' romantic novel or whalin' out a pome on th'

typewriter upstairs. A fam'ly without an author is as contemptible as wan without a priest. Is Malachi near-sighted, peevish, averse to th'

suds, an' can't tell whether th' three in th' front yard is blue or green? Make an author iv him! Does Miranda prisint no attraction to the young men iv th' neighbourhood, does her over-skirt dhrag an' is she poor with th' gas range? Make an auth.o.r.een iv her!' That's it, Kit, it's a poor sort of life at best, no manliness about it. Picture the contrast, girl--those fine fellows who stood at attention by their gun at Colenso when it was all up with them, and your blessed brother tinkering away at a pink and white muslin heroine that never was on land or sea."

"But, but, but," said Kate, "you can't have a world made up of axemen and fine soldiers. It seems to me Nature has made a use for your contemptible authors in letting them inspire others to fine deeds. Those men at Colenso, for instance,--I grant you it _was_ a fine thing to do, to stand at attention while awaiting death. But I believe if such a thing ever could have been inquired into with the minuteness that the Psychic Research Society brings to bear upon the problems that confront it, it would have been found that something far back in the minds of one or more of the three, some fine deed in a book, some shining act witnessed on a stage, gave the cue for the act at which the civilized world thundered applause."

"It's a pretty notion," said Hugh, "and a kind one to a writer sunk in a slough of despond. But I hae ma doots."

"I haven't," said Kate stoutly. "In point of fact I truly believe that one half of our actions--especially our better ones--spring from an unconscious desire to be like or unlike some character of some book or play. Where a sincere Christian struggles desperately to live like Christ of the Great Book, the less courageous aim lower and subst.i.tute a panorama of book characters that shift with their stages of growth. Many a meanness of life is left uncommitted, not solely because it is a meanness but because it would look execrable in the pages of a novel.

Why, only for being terrorized by the Old Maid of Fiction, I'd be keeping a cat and a parrot myself by this time, Hugh Kinross, and you know it."

"And what should I be doing?" asked Hugh, amused.

Kate cogitated for a moment.

"You would have been an Egoist, only Meredith made you ashamed to be one," she answered.

Hugh nodded approval at her hit.

"But I'm still a posturing, narrow-living a.s.s, ain't I?" he said, "like the rest of the writing tribe."

"Oh," said Kate comfortably, "of course one hates an author that's all author--how does it go? fellows in foolscap uniforms turned up with ink? But you're not that sort, Hughie. I will say for you that when you haven't the pen in your hand you are just plain man."