It was when they came together that something else also became apparent. This was their slightly derisive attitude towards the means by which I had attained my success. It was not the less noticeable that it took the form of compliments on the outward and visible results. Singly I could manage them; together they were inclined to get a little out of hand.
I would have taxed them fairly and squarely with this, singly or together, but for one thing—the beautiful ease with which the "Life" was proceeding. Never had I felt so completely en rapport with my subject. So beautifully was the thing running that I had had the idle fancy of some actual urge from Andriaovsky himself; and each night, before sitting down to work, I set his portrait at my desk's end, as if it had been some kind of an observance. The most beautiful result of all was, that I felt what I had not felt for five years—that I too was not "doing" my work, but actually living and being it. At times I took up the sheets I had written as ignorant of their contents as if they had proceeded from another pen—so freshly they came to me. And once, I vow, I found, in my own handwriting, a Polish name, that I might (it is true) have subconsciously heard at some time or other, but that stirred no chord in my memory even when I saw it written. Maschka checked and confirmed it afterwards; and I did not tell her by what odd circumstance it had issued from my pen.
The day did come, however, when I found I must have it out with Schofield about this superciliousness I have mentioned. The Falchion had just begun to print the third series of my Martin Renard; and this had been made the occasion of another of Schofield's ponderous compliments. I acknowledged it with none too much graciousness; and then he said:
"I've na doubt, Harrison, that by this time the famous sleuth-hound of crime has become quite a creature of flesh and blood to ye."
It was the tone as much as the words that riled me; and I replied that his doubts or the lack of them were a privacy with which I did not wish to meddle. From being merely a bore the fellow was rapidly becoming insolent.
"But I opine he'll get wearisome now and then, and in that case poor
Michael's 'Life' will come as a grand relaxation," he next observed.
If I meant to have it out, here was my opportunity.
"I should have thought you'd have traced a closer connection than that between the two things," I remarked.
He shot a quick glance at me from beneath his shaggy russet brows.
"How so? I see varry little connection," he said suspiciously.
"There's this connection—that while you speak with some freedom of what I do, you are quite willing to take advantage of it when it serves your turn."
"'Advantage,' Harrison?" he said slowly.
"Of the advertisement Martin Renard gives you. I must point out that you condone a thing when you accept the benefit of it. Either you shouldn't have come to me at all, or you should deny yourself the gratification of these slurs."
"Slurrrrs?" he repeated loweringly.
"Both of you—you and Miss Andriaovsky, or Maschka as I call her, tout court. Don't suppose I don't know as well as you do the exact worth of my 'sleuth-hound,' as you call him. You didn't come to me solely because I knew Andriaovsky well; you came because I've got the ear of the public also; and I tell you plainly that, however much you dislike it, Michael's fame as far as I'm of any use to him, depends on the popularity of Martin Renard."
He shook his big head. "This is what I feared," he said.
"More," I continued, "you can depend upon it that Michael, wherever he is, knows all about that."
"Ay, ay," he said sagely, "I misdoubt your own artistic soul's only to be saved by the writing of poor Michael's 'Life,' Harrison."
"Leave that to me and Michael; we'll settle that. In the meantime, if you don't like it, write and publish the 'Life' yourself."
He bent his brows on me.
"It's precisely what I wanted to do from the varry first," he said. "If you'd cared to accept my symposium in the spirit in which it was offered, I cannot see that the 'Life' would have suffered. But now, when you're next in need of my services, ye'll mebbe send for me."
He took up his hat. I assured him, and let him take it in what sense he liked, that I would do so; and he left me.
Not for one single moment did I intend that they should bounce me like that. With or without their sanction and countenance, I intended to write and publish that "Life." Schofield—in my own house too—had had the advantage that a poor and ill-dressed man has over one who is not poor and ill-dressed; but my duty first of all was neither to him nor to Maschka, but to my friend.
The worst of it was, however, that I had begun dimly to suspect that the Lancastrian had hit at least one nail on the head. "Your artistic soul's only to be saved by writing poor Michael's 'Life,'" he had informed me… and it was truer than I found it pleasant to believe. Perhaps, after all, my first duty was not to Andriaovsky, but to myself. I could have kicked myself that the fool had been perspicacious enough to see it, but that did not alter the fact. I saw that in the sense in which Andriaovsky understood Sin, I had sinned….
My only defence lay in the magnitude of my sin. I had sinned thoroughly, out-and-out, and with a will. It had been the only respectable way—Andriaovsky's own way when he had cut the company of an Academician to hobnob with a vagabond. I had at least instituted no comparison, lowered no ideal, was innocent of the accursed attitude of facing-both-ways that degrades all lovely and moving things. I was, by a paradox, too black a sinner not to hope for redemption….
I fell into a long musing on these things….
Had any of the admirers of Martin Renard entered the library of his author that night he would have seen an interesting thing. He would have seen the creator of that idol of clerks and messenger-lads and fourth-form boys frankly putting the case before a portrait propped up on a chair. He would have heard that popular author haranguing, pleading, curiously on his defence, turning the thing this way and that.
"If you'd gone over, Michael," that author argued, "you'd have done precisely the same thing. If I'd stuck it out, we were, after all, of a kind; We've got to be one thing or the other—isn't that so, Andriaovsky? Since I made up my mind, I've faced only one way—only one way. I've kept your ideal and theirs entirely separate and distinct. Not one single beautiful phrase will you find in the Martin Renards; I've cut 'em out, every one. I may have ceased to worship, but I've profaned no temple…. And think what I might have done—what they all do! They deal out the slush, but with an apologetic glance at the Art Shades; you know the style!—'Oh, Harrison; he does that detective rubbish, but that's not Harrison; if Harrison liked to drop that he could be a fine artist!'—I haven't done that. I haven't run with the hare and hunted with the hounds. I am just Harrison, who does that detective rubbish!… These other chaps, Schofield and Connolly, they're the real sinners, Michael—the fellows who can't make up their minds to be one thing or the other ('artists of considerable abilities'—ha! ha!)…. Of course you know Maschka's going to marry that chap? What'll they do, do you think? He'll scrape up a few pounds out of the stew where I find thousands, marry her, and they'll set up a salon and talk the stuff the chairs talked that night, you remember!… But you wait until I finish your 'Life.'…"
I laid it all before him, almost as if I sought to propitiate him. I might have been courting his patronage for his own "Life." Then, with a start, I came to, to find myself talking nonsense to the portrait that years before Andriaovsky had refused to sell me.
IV
The first check I experienced in the hitherto so easy flow of the "Life" came at the chapter that dealt with Andriaovsky's attitude towards "professionalism" in Art. He was inflexible on this point; there ought not to be professional artists. When it was pointed out that his position involved a premium upon the rich amateur, he merely replied that riches had nothing to do with the question, and that the starver in the garret was not excused for his poverty's sake from the observance of the implacable conditions. He spoke literally of the "need" to create, usually in the French term, besogne; and he was inclined to regard the imposition of this need on a man rather as a curse laid upon him than as a privilege and a pleasure. But I must not enlarge upon this further than to observe that this portion of his "Life" which I was approaching coincided in point of time with that period of my own life at which I had been confronted with the alternative of starving for Art's sake or becoming rich by supplying a clamorous trade demand.
It came, this check I have spoken of, one night, as I was in the very middle of a sentence; and though I have cudgelled my brains in seeking how best I can describe it, I am reduced to the simple statement that it was as arresting, as sharp, actual and impossible to resist, as if my hand had been seized and pinned down in its passage across the paper. I can even see again the fragment of the sentence I had written: "… and the mere contemplation of a betrayal so essential—" Then came that abrupt and remarkable stop. It was such an experience as I had formerly known only in nightmare.
I sat there looking blankly and stupidly at my own hand. And not only was my hand arrested, but my brain also had completely ceased to work. For the life of me I could not recall the conclusion of the sentence I had planned a moment before.
I looked at my hand, and looked again; and as I looked I remembered something I had been reading only a few days before—a profoundly unsettling description of an experiment in auto-suggestion. The experiment had consisted of the placing of a hand upon a table, and the laying upon it the conjuration that, the Will notwithstanding, it should not move. And as I watched my own hand, pale on the paper in the pearly light, I knew that, by some consent to the nullification of the Will that did not proceed from, the Self I was accustomed to regard as my own, that injunction was already placed upon it. My conscious and deliberate Will was powerless. I could only sit there and wait until whatever inhibition had arrested my writing hand should permit it to move forward again.
It must have been several minutes before such a tingling of the nerves as announces that the blood is once more returning to a cramped member warned me that I was about to be released. Warily I awaited my moment; then I plucked my hand to myself again with a suddenness that caused a little blot of ink to spurt from my fountain-pen on to the surface of the paper. I drew a deep breath. I was free again. And with the freedom came a resolve—that whatever portion of myself had been responsible for this prank should not repeat it if I could possibly prevent it.
But scarcely had I come, as I may say (and not without a little gush of alarm now that it was over), to myself, when I was struck by a thought. It was a queer wild sort of thought. It fetched me out of my chair and set me striding across the library to a lower shelf in the farthest corner. This shelf was the shelf on which I kept my letter-files. I stooped and ran my fingers along the backs of the dusty row. I drew out the file for 1900, and brought it back to my writing-table. My contracts, I ought to say, reposed in a deed-box at my agent's office; but my files contained, in the form of my agent's letters, a sufficient record of my business transactions.
I opened the file concertina-wise, and turned to the section lettered "R." I drew out the correspondence that related to the sale of the first series of the Martin Renards. As I did so I glanced at the movable calendar on my table. The date was January 20th.
The file contained no letters for January of any significance whatever.
The thought that had half formed in my brain immediately became nonsense. I replaced the letters in their compartment, and took the file back to its shelf again. For some minutes I paced the library irresolutely; then I decided I would work no more that night. When I gathered together my papers I was careful to place that with the half-finished sentence on the top, so that with the first resting of my eyes upon it on the morrow my memory might haply be refreshed.
I tried again to finish that sentence on the morrow. With certain modifications that I need not particularise here, my experience was the same as on the previous night.
It was the same when I made the attempt on the day after that.
At ten o'clock of the night of the fourth day I completed the sentence without difficulty. I just sat down in my chair and wrote it.
With equal ease I finished the chapter on professional artists.
It was not likely that Schofield would have refrained from telling Maschka of our little difference on our last meeting; and within a week of the date I have just mentioned I learned that she knew all about it. And, as the circumstances of my learning this were in a high degree unusual, I will relate them with such clearness as I am able.
I ought first to say, however, that the selection of the drawings that were to illustrate the book having been made (the drawings for which my own text was to serve as commentary would be the better expression), the superintendence of their production had been left to Schofield. He, Maschka, and I passed the proofs in consultation. The blocks were almost ready; and the reason for their call that evening was to consider the possibility of having all ready for production in the early spring—a possibility which was contingent on the state of advancement of my own share of the book.
That evening I had experienced my second check. (I omit those that had immediately succeeded the first one, as resembling that one so closely in the manner of their coming.) It had not come by any means so completely and definitively as the former one, but it had sufficed to make my progress, both mentally and mechanically, so sluggish and struggling a performance that for the time being I had given up the attempt, and was once more regarding with a sort of perturbed stupor my hand that held the pen. Andriaovsky's portrait stood in its usual place, on the chair at the end of my writing-table; but I had eyes for nothing but that refractory hand of mine.
Now it is true that during the past weeks I had studied Andriaovsky's portrait thoroughly enough to be able to call up the vivid mental image of it at will; but that did not entirely account for the changed aspect with which it now presented itself to that uncomprehended sense within us that makes of these shadows such startling realities. Flashing and life-like as was the presentation on the canvas (mind you, I was not looking at it, but all the time at my own hand), it was dead paint by comparison with that mental image which I saw (if I may so use a term of which custom has restricted the meaning to one kind of seeing) as plainly as I ever saw Andriaovsky in his life. I know now that it was by virtue of that essential essence that bound us heart and brain and soul together that I so saw him, eyes glittering, head sardonically wagging, fine mouth shaping phrases of insight and irony. And the strange thing was, that I could not have located this so living image by confining it to any portion of the space within the four walls of my library. It was before me, behind me, within my head, about me, was me, invading and possessing the "me" that sat at the table. At one moment the eyes mockingly invited me to go on with my work; the next, a frown had seated itself on that massive pylon of his forehead; and then suddenly his countenance changed entirely…. A wave of horror broke over me. He was suddenly as I had seen him that last time in the Hampstead "Home"—sitting up on his pillow, looking into my eyes with that terrible look of profundity and familiarity, and asking me who I was…. "Harrison—ha ha!… You shall very soon know that I know you, if …"
It is but by the accidence of our limited experience that sounds are loud or soft to that inner ear of us; these words were at one and the same time a dreadful thunder and a voice interstellarly inaccessible and withdrawn. They, too, were before, behind, without, and within. And incorporated (I know not how else to express it) with these words were other words, in the English I knew, in the Hebrew in which he had quoted them from the sacred Books of his People, in all languages, in no language save that essential communication of which languages are but the inessential husk and medium—words that told me that though I took the Wings of the Morning and fled into the uttermost parts of the earth, yea, though I made my bed in Hell, I could not escape him….
He had kept his word. I did know that he knew who and what I was….
I cannot tell whether my lips actually shaped the question that even in that moment burst from me.
"But Form—and Forms? It is then true that all things are but aspects of One thing?…"
"Yes—in death," the voice seemed to reply.
My next words, I know, were actually spoken aloud.
"Then tell me—tell me—do you not wish me to write it?"
Suddenly I leapt out of my chair with a gulping cry. A voice had spoken….
"Of course we wish you to write it…."
For one instant of time my vision seemed to fold on itself like smoke; then it was gone. The face into which I was wildly staring was Maschka's, and behind her stood Schofield. They had been announced, but I had heard nothing of it.
"Were you thinking of not writing it?" she demanded, while Schofield scowled at me.
"No—no—," I stammered, as I got up and tardily placed them chairs.
Schofield did not speak, but he did not remove his eyes from me. Somehow
I could not meet them.
"Well," she said, "Jack had already told me that you seemed in two minds about it. That's what we've called about—to know definitely what it is you propose to do."
I saw that she had also called, if necessary, to quarrel. I began to recover a little.
"Did you tell her that?" I demanded of Schofield. "If you did, you—misinterpreted me."
In my house, he ignored the fact that I was in the room. He replied to
Maschka.
"I understood Mr. Harrison to say definitely, and in those words, that if I didn't like the way in which he was writing Michael's 'Life,' I might write and publish one myself," he said.
"I did say that," I admitted; "but I never said that whatever you did I should not go on with mine."
"Yours!" cried Maschka. "What right have you in my brother's 'Life'?"
I quickly told her.
"I have the right to write my recollections of him, and, subject to certain provisions of the Law, to base anything on them I think fit," I replied.
"But," she cried aghast, "there can't be two 'Lives'!…"
"It's news to me that two were contemplated," I returned. "The point is, that I can get mine published, and you can't."
Schofield's harsh voice sounded suddenly—but again to Maschka, not to me.
"Ye might remind Mr. Harrison that others have capabilities in business besides himself. Beyond a doubt our sales will be comparatively small, but they'll be to such as have not made the great refusal."
Think of it!… I almost laughed.
"Oh!… Been trying it?" I inquired.
He made no reply.
"Well, those who have made the refusal have at least had something to refuse," I said mildly. Then, realising that this was mere quarrelling, I returned to the point. "Anyhow, there's no question of refusing to write the 'Life.' I admit that during the last fortnight I've met with certain difficulties; but the task isn't so easy as perhaps it looks…. I'm making progress."
"I suppose," she said hesitatingly, after a pause, "that you don't care to show it as far as it is written?"
For a moment I also hesitated. I thought I saw where she was. Thanks to that Lancashire jackanapes, there was division between us; and I had pretty well made up my mind, not only that he thought himself quite capable of writing Andriaovsky's "Life," himself, but that he had actually made an attempt in that direction. They had come in the suspicion that I was throwing them over, and, though that suspicion was removed, Maschka wished, if there was any throwing over to be done, to do it herself. In a word, she wanted to compare me with Schofield.
"To see it as far as it is written," I repeated slowly…. "Well, you may. That is, you, Michael's sister, may. But on the condition that you neither show it to anybody else nor speak of it to anybody else."
"Ah!" she said…. "And only on those conditions?"
"Only on those conditions."
I saw a quick glance between them. "Shall we tell him?" it seemed to say….
"Including the man Michael's sister is going to marry?" she said abruptly.
My attitude was deeply apologetic, but, "Including anybody whomsoever," I answered.
"Then," she said, rising, "we won't bother. But will you at least let us know, soon, when we may expect your text?"
"I will let you know," I replied slowly, "one week from to-day."
On that assurance they left; and when they had gone I crossed once more to the lower shelf that contained my letter-files. I turned up the file for 1900 once more. During their visit I had had an idea.
I ran through the letters, and then replaced them….
Yes, I ought to be able to let them know within the week.
V
Against the day when I myself shall come to die, there are in the pigeon-holes of the newspaper libraries certain biographical records that deal roughly with the outward facts of my life; and these, supplemented by documents I shall place in the hands of my executors, will tell the story of how I leaped at a bound into wealth and fame with the publication of The Cases of Martin Renard. I will set down as much of that story as has its bearing on my present tale.
Martin Renard was not immediately accepted by the first editor to whom it was offered. It does not suffice that in order to be popular a thing shall be merely good—or bad; it must be bad—or good—in a particular way. For taking the responsibility when they happen to miss that particular way editors are paid their salaries. When they happen to hit it they grow fat on circulation-money: Since it becomes me ill to quarrel with the way in which any man earns his money, I content myself with merely stating the fact.
By the time the fourth editor had refused my series I was about at my last gasp. To write the things at all I had had to sink four months in time; and debts, writs and pawnshops were my familiars. I was little better off than Andriaovsky at his very worst. I had read the first of the Martin Renards to him, by the way; the gigantic outburst of mirth with which he had received it had not encouraged me to read him a second. I wrote the others in secret.
I wrote the things in the spring and summer of 1900; and by the last day of September I was confident that I had at last sold them. Except by a flagrant breach of faith, the editor in whose desk they reposed could hardly decline them. As it subsequently happened, I have now nothing but gratitude for him that he did, after all, decline them; for I had a duplicate copy "on offer" in another quarter.
He declined them, I say; and I was free to possess my soul again among my writs, debts and pawnshops.
But four days later I received the alternative offer. It was from the Falchion. The Falchion, as you may remember, has since run no less than five complete series of Martin Renards. It bought "both sides," that is to say, both British and American serial rights. Of the twelve Martin Renards I had written, my wise agent had offered the Falchion six only. On his advice I accepted the offer.
Instantaneously with the publication of those six stories came my success. In two continents I was "home"—home in the hearts of the public. I had my small cheque—it was not much more than a hundred pounds—but "Wait," said my agent; "let's see what we can do with the other six…."
Precisely what he did with them only he and I know; but I don't mind saying that £3000 did not buy my first serial rights. Then came second and third rights, and after them the book rights, British, American, and Colonial. Then came the translation rights. In French, my creation is, of course, as in English, Martin Renard; in German he is Martin Fuchs; and by a similar process you can put him—my translators have put him—into Italian, Swedish, Norwegian, Russian, and three-fourths of the tongues of Europe. And this was the first series only. It was only with the second series that the full splendour of my success appeared. My very imitators grew rich; my agent's income from his comparatively small percentage on my royalties was handsome; and he chuckled and bade me wait for the dramatic rights and the day when the touring companies should get to business….
I had "got there."
And I remember, sadly enough now, my first resolution when the day came when I was able to survey the situation with anything approaching calm. It was, "Enough." For the rest of my days I need not know poverty again. Thenceforward I need not, unless I chose, do any but worthy work. Martin Renard had served his purpose handsomely, and I intended to have nothing more to do with him.
Then came that dazzling offer for the second series….
I accepted it.
I accepted the third likewise; and I have told you about the fourth….
I have tried to kill Martin Renard. He was killing me. I have, in the pages of the Falchion, actually killed him; but I have had to resuscitate him. I cannot escape from him….
I am not setting down one word more of this than bears directly on my tale of Andriaovsky's "Life." For those days, when my whole future had hung in the balance, were the very days covered by that portion of Andriaovsky's life at which I had now arrived. I had reached, and was hesitating at, our point of divergence. Those checks and releases which I had at first found so unaccountable corresponded with the vicissitudes of the Martin Renard negotiations.
The actual dates did not, of course, coincide—I had quickly discovered the falsity of that scent. Neither did the intervals between them, with the exception of those few days in which I had been unable to complete that half-written sentence—the few days immediately prior to my (parallel) acceptance by the Falchion. But, by that other reckoning of time, of mental and spiritual experience, they tallied exactly. The gambling chances of five years ago meant present stumblings and haltings; the breach of faith of an editor long since meant a present respite; and another week should bring me to that point of my so strangely reduplicated experience that, allowing for the furious mental rate at which I was now living, would make another node with that other point in the more slowly lived past that had marked my acceptance of the offer for the second half-dozen of the Martin Renards.
It had been on this hazardous calculation that I had made my promise to
Maschka.
I passed that week in a state of constantly increasing apprehension. True, I worked at the "Life," even assiduously; but it was plain sailing, mere cataloguing of certain of Andriaovsky's works, a chapter I had deliberately planned pour mieux sauter—to enhance the value of the penultimate and final chapters. These were the real crux of the "Life." These were what I was reserving myself for. These were to show that only his body was dead, and that his spirit still lived and his work was still being done wherever a man could be found whose soul burned within him with the same divine ardour.
But I was now realising, day by day, hour by hour more clearly, what I was incurring. I was penning nothing less than my own artistic damnation. Self-condemned, indeed, I had been this long time; but I was now making the world a party to the sentence. The crowning of Andriaovsky involved my own annihilation; his "Life" would be my "Hic Jacet." And yet I was prepared, nay, resolved, to write it. I had started, and I would go forward. I would not be spewed with the lukewarm out of the mouth of that Spirit from which proceeds all that is bright and pure and true. The vehemence with which I had rejected its divine bidding should at least be correspondent with my adoration of it. The snivelling claims of the Schofields I spurned. If, as they urged, "an artist must live," he must live royally or starve with a tight mouth. No complaining….
And one other claim I urged in the teeth of this Spirit, which, if it was a human Spirit at all, it could not disregard. Those pigeon-holed obituaries of mine will proclaim to the world, one and all, the virtues of my public life. In spite of my royal earnings, I am not a rich man. I have not accepted wealth without accepting the personal responsibility for it. Sick men and women in more than one hospital lie in wards provided by Martin Renard and myself; and I am not dishonoured in my Institution at Poplar. Those vagrant wanderings with Andriaovsky have enabled me to know the poor and those who help the poor. My personal labours in the administration of the Institute are great, for outside the necessary routine I leave little to subordinates. I have declined honours offered to me for my "services to Literature," and I have never encouraged a youth, of parts or lacking them, to make of Literature a profession. And so on and so forth. All this, and more, you will read when the day comes; and I don't doubt the Falchion will publish my memoir in mourning borders…
But to resume.
I finished the chapter I have mentioned. Maschka and her fiancé kept punctiliously away. Then, before sitting down to the penultimate chapter, I permitted myself the relaxation of a day in the country.
I can't tell you precisely where I went; I only know it was somewhere in Buckinghamshire, and that, ordering the car to await me a dozen miles farther on, I set out to walk. Nor can I tell you what I saw during that walk; I don't think I saw anything. There was a red wintry disc of a sun, I remember, and a land grey with rime; and that is all. I was entirely occupied with the attempt I was about to make. I think that even then I had the sense of doom, for I know not how otherwise I should have found myself several times making little husbandings of my force, as if conscious that I should need it all. For I was determined, as never in my life have I been determined, to write that "Life." And I intended, not to wait to be challenged, but to challenge…. I met the car, returning in search of me; and I dined at a restaurant, went home to bed, and slept dreamlessly.
On the morrow I deliberately refrained from work until the evening. My challenge to Andriaovsky and the Powers he represented should be boldly delivered at the very gates of their own Hour. Not until half-past eight, with the curtains drawn, the doors locked, and orders given that on no account whatever was I to be disturbed, did I switch on the pearly light, place Andriaovsky's portrait in its now accustomed place, and draw my chair up to my writing-table.
VI
But before I could resume the "Life" at the point at which I had left it, I felt that there were certain preliminaries to be settled. It was not that I wished to sound a parley with any view of coming to terms; I had determined what the terms were to be. As a boxer who leaps from his corner the moment the signal is given, astounding with suddenness his less prompt antagonist, so I should be ready when the moment came. But I wished the issue to be defined. I did not propose to submit the whole of my manhood to the trial. I was merely asserting my right to speak of certain things which, if one chose to exaggerate their importance by a too narrow and exclusive consideration of them, I might conceivably be thought to have betrayed.
I drew a sheet of paper towards me, and formally made out my claim. It occupied not more than a dozen lines, and its nature has already been sufficiently indicated. I put my pen down again, leaned back in my chair, and waited.
I waited, but nothing happened. It seemed that if this was my attempt to justify myself, the plea was certainly not disallowed. But neither had I any sign that it was allowed; and presently it occurred to me that possibly I had couched it in terms too general. Perhaps a more particular claim would meet with a different reception.
During the earlier stages of the book's progress I had many times deliberated on the desirability of a Preface that should state succinctly what I considered to be my qualifications for the task. Though I had finally decided against any such statement, the form of the Preface might nevertheless serve for the present occasion. I took another sheet of paper, headed it "Preface," and began once more to write.
I covered the page; I covered a second; and half-way down the third I judged my statement to be sufficient. Again I laid down my pen, leaned back, and waited.
The Preface also produced no result whatever.
Again I considered; and then I saw more clearly. It came to me that, both in the first statement and in the Preface, I was merely talking to myself. I was convincing myself, and losing both time and strength in doing so. The Power with which I sought to come to grips was treating my vapourings with high disregard. To be snubbed thus by Headquarters would never, never do….
Then I saw more clearly still. It seemed that my right to challenge was denied. I was not an adversary, with the rights and honours of an adversary, but a trangressor, whose trangression had already several times been sharply visited, and would be visited once more the moment it was repeated. I might, in a sense, please myself whether I brought myself into Court; but, once there, I was not the arraigner in the box, but the arraigned in the dock.
And I rebelled hotly. Did I sit there, ready for the struggle, only to be told that there could be no struggle? Did that vengeful Angel of the Arts ignore my very existence?… By Yea and Nay I swore that he should take notice of me! Once before, a mortal had wrestled a whole night with an angel, and though he had been worsted, it had not been before he had compelled the Angel to reveal himself! And so would I…
Challenge, title to challenge, tentatives, preliminaries, I suddenly cast them all aside. We would have it in deeds, not in further words. I opened a drawer, took out the whole of the "Life" so far written, and began to read. I wanted to grasp once more the plan of it in its entirety.
Page after page, I read on, with deepening attention. Quickly I ran through half of it. Then I began to concentrate myself still more closely. There would come a point at which I should be flush with the stream of it again, again feel the force of its current; I felt myself drawing nearer to that point; when I should reach it I would go ahead without a pause…
I read to the end of Chapter Fifteen, the last completed chapter. Then instantly I took my pen and wrote, "Chapter Sixteen…."
I felt the change at the very first word.
* * * * *
I will not retraverse any ground I have covered before. If I have not already made clear my former sensations of the petrefaction of hand and brain, I despair of being able to do so any better now. Suffice it that once more I felt that inhibition, and that once more I was aware of the ubiquitous presence of the image of the dead artist. Once more I heard those voices, near as thunder and yet interstellarly remote, crying that solemn warning, that though I took the Wings of the Morning, made my bed in Hell, or cried aloud upon the darkness to cover me, there was one Spirit from which I could not hope to escape. I felt the slight crawling of my flesh on my bones as I listened.
But there was now a difference. On the former occasion, to hear again those last horrible words of his, "You shall very soon know I know who you are if…" had been the signal for the total unnerving of me and for that uncontrollable cry, "Don't you then want me to write it?" But now I intended to write it if I could. In order that I might tell him so I was now seeking him out, in what heights or depths I knew not, at what peril to myself I cared not. I cared not, since I now felt that I could not continue to live unless I pressed to the uttermost attempt. And I must repeat, and repeat again, and yet repeat, that in that hour Andriaovsky was immanent about me, in the whole of me, in the last fibre and cell of me, in all my thoughts, from my consciousness that I was sitting there at my own writing-table to my conception of God Himself.
It may seem strange—whether it does so or not will depend on the kind of man you yourself are—that as long as I was content to recognise this immanence of Andriaovsky's enlarged and liberated spirit, and not to dispute with it, I found nothing but mildness and benignity in my hazardous experience. More, I felt that, in that clear region to which in my intensified state of consciousness I was lifted, I was able to move (I must trust you to understand the word aright) without restraint, nay, with an amplitude and freedom of movement past setting down, as long as I was satisfied to possess my soul in quiescence. The state itself was inimical neither to my safety nor to my sanity. I was conscious of it as a transposition into another register of the scale of life. And, as in this life we move in ignorance and safety only by accepting the hair-balance of stupendous forces, so now I felt that my safety depended on my observation of the conditions that governed that region of light and clarity and Law.
Of clarity and Law; save in the terms of the great abstractions I may not speak of it. And that is well-nigh equal to saying that I may not speak of it at all. The hand that would have written of it lay (I never for one moment ceased to be conscious) heavy as stone on a writing-table in some spot quite accidental in my new sense of locality; the tongue that would have spoken of it seemed to slumber in my mouth. And I knew that both dumbness and stillness were proper. Their opposites would have convicted me (the flat and earthly comparison must be allowed) of intrusion into some Place of beauty and serenity for which the soilure of my birth disqualified me.
For beauty and serenity, austerity and benignity and peace, were the conditions of that Place. To other Places belonged the wingy and robed and starry and golden things that made the heavens of other lives than that which I had shared with Andriaovsky; here, white and shapely Truth alone reigned. None questioned, for all knew; none sinned, for sin was already judged and punished in its committal; none demonstrated, for all things were evident; and those eager to justify themselves were permitted no farther than the threshold….
And it was to justify, to challenge, to maintain a right, that I was there. I was there to wrestle, if needs be, with the Angel of that Place, to vanquish him or to compel him to reveal himself. I had not been summoned; I had thrust myself there unbidden. There was a moment in which I noticed that my writing-table was a little more than ordinarily removed from me, but very little, not more than if I had been looking over the shoulder of another writer at it; and I saw my chapter heading. At the sight of it something of the egotism that had prompted me to write it stirred in me again; everywhere was Andriaovsky's calm face, priest and Angel himself; and I became conscious that I was trying to write a phrase. I also became conscious that I was being pitifully warned not to do so…
Suddenly my whole being was flooded with a frightful pang of pain.
It was not local. It was no more to be located than the other immanences of which I have spoken. It was Pain, pure, essential, dissociated; and with the coming of it that fair Place had grown suddenly horrible and black.
And I knew that the shock came of my own resistance, and that it would cease to afflict me the moment I ceased to resist.
I did cease. Instantly the pain passed. But as when a knife is plucked from a wound, so only with its passing did I shriek aloud….
For I know not how many minutes I sat in stupefaction. Then, as with earthly pains, that are assuaged with the passing of accidental time, the memory of it softened a little. Blunderingly and only half consciously, I cast about to collect my dispersed force.
For—already I was conscious of it—there still remained one claim that even in thought I had not advanced. I would, were I permitted, still write that "Life," but, since it was decreed so, I would no longer urge that in writing it I justified myself. So I might but write it, I would embrace my own portion, the portion of doom; yea, though it should be a pressing of the searing-iron to my lips, I would embrace it; my name should not appear. For the mere sake of the man I had loved I would write it, in self-scorn and abasement, humbly craving not to be denied….
"Oh, let me but do for Love of you what a sinful man can!" I groaned….
A moment later I had again striven to do so. So do we all, when we think that out of a poor human Love we can alter the Laws by which our state exists. And with such a hideous anguish as was again mine are we visited….
And I knew now what that anguish was. It was the twining of body from spirit that is called the bitterness of Death; for not all of the body are the pangs of that severance. With that terrible sword of impersonal Pain the God of Peace makes sorrowful war that Peace may come again. With its flame He ringed the bastions of Heaven when Satan made assault. Only on the Gorgon-image of that Pain in the shield may weak man look; and its blaze and ire had permeated with deadly nearness the "everywhere" where I was…
"Oh, not for Love? Not even for Love?" broke the agonised question from me….
The next moment I had ceased, and ceased for ever, to resist. Instantaneously the terrible flashing of that sword became no more than the play of lightning one sees far away in the wide cloudfields on a peaceful summer's twilight. I felt a gentle and overpowering sleep coming over me; and as it folded me about I saw, with the last look of my eyes, my own figure, busily writing at the table.
Had I, then, prevailed? Had Pain so purged me that I was permitted to finish my task? And had my tortured cry, "Oh, not even for Love?" been heard?
I did not know.
* * * * *
I came to myself to find that my head had fallen on my desk. The light still shone within its pearly shade, and in the penumbra of its shadow the portrait of Andriaovsky occupied its accustomed place. About me were my papers, and my pen lay where it had fallen from my hand.
At first I did not look at my papers. I merely saw that the uppermost of them was written on. But presently I took it up, and looked at it stupidly. Then, with no memory at all of how I had come to write what was upon it, I put it down again.
It was indeed a completion.
But it was not of Andriaovsky's "Life" that it was the completion. As you may or may not know, Andriaovsky's "Life" is written by "his friend John Schofield." I had been allowed to write, but it was my own condemnation that, in sadness and obedience, in the absence of wrath but also in the absence of mercy, I had written. By the Law I had broken I was broken in my turn. It was the draft for the fifth series of The Cases of Martin Renard.
No, not for Love—not even for Love….