Tongues of Conscience Part 18

"Mark, I want you to prove to her--to everyone--that it is not so."

"How?"

"By writing a different kind of book--a n.o.ble book. You can do it. Where others have failed, you can succeed."

He laughed at her, gaily.

"Perhaps, some day, I'll try," he said. "But I can only write at present what I have conceived. Till this book is done, I can think of nothing else. I see you are interested, Kitty. I must tell you all I am intending to do."

He continued, until it was quite evening, expatiating on the force with which he intended to realise in literature the terrors that trooped in his imagination. And by the time he had finished and darkness stood under the trees, Catherine was carried away by the pagan spirit. She thought no more of the possible harm the projected book might work in sensitive natures. She thought only of its power, which she acclaimed.

Mark kissed her with a solemnity of pa.s.sion he had never shown before, and they went back to the house.

It was an immense relief to Mark to open his book of revelation and to allow Catherine to read these pages in it. But he could not be continuously unreserved to any human being. And that evening he subsided into his former light-hearted gaiety, and shrouded the stranger man in an impenetrable veil. Catherine sat with him in wonderment, while the moon came up behind the trees and shone over the clearing before the house. She did not yet understand the inflexible secrecies of genius. A nightingale sang. Its voice was so sweet that Catherine felt as if the whole world were full of tenderness and of sympathy. She said so to Mark, just as she was turning from him to go to bed.

"Ah, Kitty," he said, "there are other things in the world besides tenderness and sympathy, thank Heaven. There are terrors, there are crimes, there are strange and fearful things both within us and outside of us."

"How sad that is, Mark!" said Catherine.

He smiled at her gaily--cruelly, she thought a moment afterwards when she was alone in her bedroom.

"Sad?" he said. "I don't think so, for I love drama. Life is dramatic.

If it were not it would be intolerable."

And still the nightingale sang. But he did not hear it. Catherine heard it till she fell asleep.

Now Mark began to write with a.s.siduity. Catherine busied herself with her household duties, with the garden and with charities in the neighbouring Parish. Her mother's rather hysterical beliefs lost their hysteria in her, at this period, and were softened and rendered large hearted. Catherine's sympathy with the world was indeed a living thing, not simply a fine idea. While Mark was shut up every morning with his writing she visited the poor, sat by the sick, and played with the village children. The Parish--this came out forcibly at her trial,--grew to love her. She was the prettiest Lady Bountiful. The impress made upon her by her mother was visible in all this. For Mrs. Ardagh, rigid, melancholy as she was sometimes, was genuinely charitable, genuinely dutiful. If she adored the forms of religion she loved also its essence,--the doing of good. In these many mornings Catherine was like her mother--improved. But in the evenings she no longer resembled Mrs.

Ardagh, but rather, in a degree, echoed her father, and responded to his vehement, if furtive, teachings. For in the evenings Mark read to her what he had written during the day and discussed it with her in all its bearings. He recognised the clear quickness of Catherine's intellect.

Yet she very soon noticed that he was exceedingly inflexible with regard to his work. He liked to discuss, he did not like to alter, it.

One night, when he had finished the last completed chapter, he laid down the ma.n.u.script and said,

"Well, Kitty?"

Catherine was lying on a couch near the open French window. She did not speak until Mark repeated,

"Well?"

Then she said,

"I think that far the finest chapter of your book----"

Mark smiled triumphantly.

"But it seems to me terribly immoral," she finished.

"Oh, that's all right, dear. So long as it is properly worked out, inevitable."

"It teaches----"

"Nothing, Kitty--nothing. It merely describes what is."

"But surely it may do harm."

"Not if it is truly artistic. And you think----"

"It that? Yes, I do. But, Mark, art is not all."

"Your father would say so."

"My father--yes."

"And he is right. I neither inculcate nor do I condemn. I only produce, or try to produce, a work of art. You admire the chapter? You think it truly dramatic?"

"Indeed I do--that's just why I am afraid of it."

"Little timorous bird."

He came over to the sofa and kissed her tenderly. She shivered. She thought his lips had never been dry and cold like that before.

The book was finished by the end of the summer. It was published in November and created a considerable sensation. Mark issued it under the name of "William Foster." Only Catherine and his friend Frederic Berrand knew who William Foster really was. The newspapers praised the workmanship of the book almost universally. But many of them severely condemned it as dangerous, morbidly imaginative, horrible in subject, and likely to do great mischief because of its undoubted power and charm. It was forbidden at some libraries.

Mark was delighted with its reception. Now, that he had brought forth his child, he seemed more light-hearted, gay and boyish than ever. His too vivid imagination had been toiling. It rested now. Catherine and he came up to town for the winter. They meant to spend only their summers in Surrey. They took a house in Chester Street, and often dined with the Ardaghs in Eaton Square. At one of these dinners Jenny Levita was present. Mark, remembering what Catherine had told him about her in Surrey, looked at her with some interest, and talked to her a little in his most light-hearted way. She replied briefly and without much apparent animation, seeming indeed rather absent-minded and distraite.

Presently Mr. Ardagh said,

"This new man, William Foster, is that very rare thing in England--a pitiless artist. He has the audacity of genius and the fine impersonality."

Catherine started and flushed violently. As she did so she saw Jenny's long dark eyes fixed earnestly upon her. Mark smiled slightly. Mrs.

Ardagh looked pained.

"His book is doing frightful harm, I am sure," she said.

"Nonsense, my dear," said her husband. "Nothing so absolutely right, so absolutely artistic, can do harm."

An obstinate expression came into Mrs. Ardagh's face, but she said nothing. Catherine looked down at her plate. She felt as if small needles were p.r.i.c.king her all over.

"Have you read the book?" said Mr. Ardagh to his wife.

"Yes," she replied. "It was recommended to me, I began it not knowing what sort of book it was."

"And did you finish it?" asked her husband, with rather a satirical smile.

"Yes. I confess I could not leave off reading it. That is why it is so dangerous. It is both powerful and evil."

Then the subject dropped. Mark was still smiling quietly, but Catherine's face was grave. When she and her mother and Jenny went up into the drawing-room, leaving the men to their cigarettes, Catherine recurred to the subject of "William Foster's" book.

"Do you really think that a novel can do serious harm, mother?" she began. "After all, it is only a work of the imagination. Surely people read it and forget it, as they would not forget an actual fact."

Mrs. Ardagh sighed wearily. She was a pale woman with feverish eyes. The expression in them grew almost fierce as she answered,