The Call of the Town Part 22

But Laysford had entirely lost interest for Henry now. To fancy one has been in love is almost as serious a condition as to be in love.

CHAPTER XXI

"THAT BOOK"

ADRIAN GRANT had gone away to Sardinia, but he had left Henry urged to the point of writing "that book." At first Henry approached the task with but little taste, for he had the good sense to doubt whether his talent lay in the direction of creative work, as the writing of fiction is so comically miscalled. But the thing had to be done, and as well now as again. At first progress was slow, as book-reviewing for the _Watchman_ kept him busy most nights at home, while sub-editorial duties filled out all too amply his office hours. There was agony of mind in the writing of the early chapters, and he had not gone far when the rupture with Flo came to disturb his thoughts and to agitate his feelings. But it had the effect of setting him almost savagely to his novel again, and gloomy was the atmosphere he created in his chapters.

It was a romance of town and country life, and was ent.i.tled provisionally, "Grey Life."

For a while after Flo's exit from his life the book went ahead rapidly; then he set it aside almost afraid to go on after reading what he had written; it was so savage, so unlike anything he had ever hoped to write. If at that time he could have been impersonal enough in his criticism, he would have seen at a glance that Adrian Grant was not only responsible for his having essayed the task, but that he had projected something of his pessimism into the mind of the writer.

The unfolding young editor, who had meant to write such a scathing review of "Ashes," would have been as incensed by the unhealthy gloom, the wintry sadness, of "Grey Life." Of course, it is to be remembered that the said young editor had never delivered the terrible slating he intended to devote to Adrian Grant's popular work, but he had at least thought it, and believed it would have been justified, even after he had written something different. Though the morbidity of s.e.x was entirely absent from "Grey Life," it contained a good deal that was as deserving of ban as anything in "Ashes."

When Mr. P. returned in the late autumn of the year from his sojourn in the South, he asked to be shown the ma.n.u.script, incomplete as it was; and p.r.o.nounced it good.

"You've stuck almost in sight of the end," he said.

"Wrecked in port," replied Henry, laughing.

"Not quite wrecked, but floating rudderless. There's no reason why this shouldn't hit--if you want to make a hit. But it's generally books that are published without intent to 'boom' that stumble into success. At least, it's been so with mine."

"But I'm uneasy about it all. Don't you think the picture intolerably grey?"

"None too grey, my lad--grey is the colour of life," said the man who had just come back from cloudless blue skies and gorgeous sunsets.

"Somehow I felt like that when writing, but when I read it I have an inkling that life is brighter than I have shown it to be; that it's worth while living both in country and in town."

"It's not for me to advise one who has done so well off his own bat, but I would suggest that you work the thing out to its bitter end, keeping true to the artistic impulse which will settle each of the characters for you, and without you, if you but let it have its sway."

"But it would be a bitter end for two of them."

"Precisely. For all of them, probably. It is for most of us."

"There I don't agree with you. Don't you think the bitter end is at the beginning? The book ends bitterly at the start, so to speak."

"I do, and I don't object to that in the least. The fact is, you have subordinated your Philistine nature most wonderfully, and are in a fair way to produce a work of art, but here the Philistine part of you comes uppermost at a critical moment, and has its usual fit of remorse at a piece of genuine art. I would not have credited you with the capacity to produce such a work as this ma.n.u.script contains. That is frank, isn't it?"

"And I ought to be flattered, I suppose. But I'm not. I've been disillusioned all along the line, but surely when the illusions fall away life is not merely a corner for moping in. Besides, is it a worthy work to disillusionise others?"

"It is. It is the business of sane men to expose for what they are the fools' paradises of the world."

"Surely not. Let the fools find it out themselves; and if they never do, the better for them."

"Look here, my young friend, your best plan is to take a holiday at once and go down home for two or three weeks, to get over this mood of contrariness. I'm surprised that you've been slogging away in London all through the stifling summer. It was mere madness. You're suffering from mental clog. Shake free of Fleet Street for a week or two, and the book will finish, never fear. Whatever you do, don't have one of those maudlin, barley-sugar ends. Be true to life, and let all else go.

Perhaps a visit home would supply the contrast necessary to re-start the mind."

"I've been thinking of that this very day."

"Then my advice is: Go. You're not looking well. London is a hard task-master, and the slave who runs to the eternal crack of his whip is by way of being untimely worn out."

The idea of spending an autumn holiday at home had been with Henry for some time, even to the exclusion of plans for a visit to the Continent, and it was evidence of the influence this strange friend had over him, that so soon as he suggested it the project was distinctly forwarded.

In another week he was to be homeward-bound: heart-free, but disappointed. Successful in a sense, and a failure in the light of his inner desires. London had not brought him peace of mind, and Hampton, he feared, would only bore him into accepting the life of the City as the lesser of two evils.

If Henry could have looked inward then he would have seen that all his uneasiness came from the dragging of the old anchor of faith which began long ago at Laysford on his first meeting with Mr. Puddephatt. That, and naught else. Edward John believed in the Bible _verbatim et litteratim_; worshipped it with the superst.i.tious awe wherewith a sentimental woman bobs to tuppenceworth of stucco and a penn'orth of paint fashioned into a Bambino; would have believed it implicitly had the story ran that Jonah swallowed the whale; and often, indeed, expressed his readiness for that supreme test of faith.

To Henry, as to every young man who thinks, came the inevitable collision between inherited belief and acquired knowledge. Also the inevitable wreckage. Many thousands had gone his road before him, and more will follow. To the father the roads of Knowledge and of Faith ran neatly parallel, the one narrow and the other broad; but as the son laboured at the widening of the former, the road of Faith, trodden less and less, was dwindling into a crooked and uncertain footway. It's an old, old story--why say more than that the miraculous basis of belief is a mere quicksand when Knowledge attempts to stand upon it?

But Edward John was as much a man as his son would ever be, and Henry could see that his father was as important a unit in the Kingdom of Heaven as he could hope to become. Was Ignorance, then, the kindest friend? No, there must be a way for the cultured as for the unlettered; but was it a different way?

Thus and so forth went the unrestful soul of the young man, who was even then writing his undecided mind into a novel, and by that token giving evidence of an ignorance as essential as his father's, different in kind but not in degree.

CHAPTER XXII

HOME AGAIN

TWO days before Henry had planned to leave London for his holiday at home, Adrian Grant looked in upon him hurriedly at the _Watchman_ office to ask if it were possible for him to secure accommodation at Hampton.

"You!" exclaimed Henry, in surprise, and something akin to a feeling of shame for the meagre possibilities of entertainment at his home flushed his face.

"Why not?" said his friend, with a smile. "I know less than nothing of English rural life, and it came to me as an inspiration this morning that here was a chance to try the effect of country quiet at home. I have a bit of work to finish, and most of my writing has been done abroad in drowsy places. Strange I have never tried our own rural shades, though I produce but little either in London or at Laysford."

"It's an idea, certainly," Henry observed, in a very uncertain tone.

"I'm sorry my people--"

"Of course, I would not dream of troubling your folk, but I suppose there's such a thing as a village inn even in your secluded corner of earth."

"There's the 'Wings and Spur,' to be sure, but I am doubtful of its comfort."

"It's an inn, and that's enough for one who has wandered strange roads,"

and the bright earnestness of the novelist proved to Henry that he really meant to carry out this whim of his.

Nor did he fail to notice a strange elation of manner in Mr. P. for which he could not satisfactorily account.

The incident, however, was the matter of a moment, and the novelist went away as hurriedly as he entered after ascertaining the train by which Henry purposed travelling from St. Pancras, leaving the journalist with the uncomfortable sense of being party to some absurd freak.

His wits were not nimble enough, thus suddenly taxed, to see all sides of the project, and he swayed between the pleasant thought of visiting his old home in the company of one so distinguished as Adrian Grant, and the dubious fear of the impression which his humble relatives might make upon this polished man of the world. His father's doubtful h's sounded uncomfortably on the ear of his memory; the prospect of his toil-worn mother entertaining such a guest, if only for an occasional meal, seemed too unlikely a thing to contemplate. He turned again to his work with the wish that Adrian Grant might stay in London, or find some other rural retreat to suit his capricious taste.

But it was necessary to warn the folks at home, and to make the best of what might well prove an awkward business. So Henry wrote to his father that night, explaining that he was bringing a distinguished visitor to the village, and though he would reside at the inn, he would no doubt be a good deal at their house. This he did after having seriously debated with himself the idea of writing to his friend and framing a set of excuses or plausible reasons why he should not go. Henry's ingenuity was not equal to that.

All this explains why on a certain autumn afternoon the Post Office of Hampton Bagot, and indeed the whole of the village street, exhaled an air of expectancy. There were hurried traffickings between the shop of Edward John Charles, the "Wings and Spur," the butcher's, and sundry others. Perhaps the loudest note of warning that an event of unusual interest portended was struck by the bright red necktie which Edward John Charles had donned at the urgent request of his daughters. This was truly a matter for surprise, for while he had been seen occasionally on weekdays wearing a collar, the tie had always been a Sunday vanity. His clothes, too, were his Sunday best. His appearances at the door were frequent and short, with no pleasant play of the coat-tails; and his earnest questing glances towards the road from the station, which opened into the main street of the village some little distance east of the Post Office, were foolishly unjustified before the dinner hour, as there was no possibility of the visitors arriving until the late afternoon.