ACCORDING TO PLATO
By Frank Frankfort Moore
Dodd, Mead & Company
1900
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
No one who has not been bankrupt at least twice could afford to be so careful about his dress as Mr. Richmond is,” said Josephine.
“He admits a solitary bankruptcy,” said Amber. “Bankruptcy is the official recognition of genius.”
“It certainly is the shortest way to distinction,” said Josephine. “Bankruptcy’s a sort of English Legion of Honour, isn’t it?—a kind of bourgeois decoration.”
“To genius,” said Amber, with the nod of one who completes a quotation that some one else has begun. “Mr. Richmond is really very clever.”
“Now you contradict yourself—a moment ago you said he was a genius—and being a genius is just the opposite to being clever,” laughed Josephine. “Is this your syllogism: Geniuses become bankrupt, Mr. Richmond becomes bankrupt, therefore he is a genius?”
“Well, that wasn’t quite what was in my mind. I suppose that to have the Homeric attribute of nodding scarcely makes one a Homer?”
“If it did there would be no need for people to learn Greek, But you must forgive me for distrusting your Mr. Richmond—no, I shouldn’t make use of so strong a word—I don’t distrust him. What I mean to say is that I am rarely convinced by a man who is so scrupulous about his coats. Genius—in man—is rarely found in association with silk linings where silk linings are not imperative.”
“Now you are becoming commonplace, my dear Joe; you give one the idea that you cannot imagine genius without a darn. A darn—maybe a patch—and a soft hat have floated many a mediocrity upon the public under the name of a genius. But brains can work just as actively within the drum of a silk hat as within the bowl of a bowler.”
“Just as a true heart may beat beneath a silk lining as fervently as under a moleskin waistcoat. Well, I’ll approach Mr. Richmond with an open mind. After all it’s only a universal genius who is a man that has failed in everything; and no man has yet hinted that Mr. Richmond is a universal genius. By the way, I heard of an adroit Irishman who got a great name as a poet solely by reason of his wearing an old cloak and turning up at awkward hours for dinner.”
“Mr. Richmond is—well, perhaps I had better say, a bit of a genius.”
“That sounds more companionable. I like the nodding of Homer—it makes him more human.”
“If you wish I’ll withdraw the genius altogether and merely say that he is a man of ideas.”
“I think I shall like him: a man of ideas is a man of ideals. I am nearly sure that I shall like him. There must be something good about a man who can be praised by his friends in diminuendo.”
“In diminuendo? Oh, I understand: yes, I began by calling him a man of genius and now I am perfectly satisfied to hear you say that you think you will like him. Well, that’s not a crescendo of praise anyhow. Oh, really, he’s not half a bad sort of man when you come to know him.”
“Now you are becoming crescendo, my Amber. One only says of the best men what you have said of Mr. Richmond. I know that it represents the flood-tide of one man’s praise of another. Personally I don’t see why the papers should have made such fun of Mr. Richmond.”
“Oh, my dear Joe, that wasn’t his doing, believe me. Oh, no; that was Willie Bateman’s idea. He’s becoming the great authority on advertising, you know. Yes, he said that you can ridicule any man into success.”
“I fancy he’s not far wrong in that. You remember the horrid man who got on—for a time—by pretending that he was the original of one of Mr. du Maurier’s pictures in Punch?”
“I have heard of him. He was a sort of painter, only he had a habit of dabbing in the eyes outside the face. Mr. Richmond is not an impostor, however; he is only a theorist.”
“Now you are hair-splitting, Amber, the Sophist.” Amber frowned and then laughed—freely—graciously—not the laugh of Ananias and Sapphira his wife, who kept back part of their possessions.
“Well, I admit that—no, I admit nothing. I say that Mr. Richmond deserves to succeed on his own merits, and that he would succeed even without being ridiculed in the papers. His theories are thoroughly scientific—papa admits so much.”
“He not only admits the theorist but the theories as well, into his house. And yet Sir Creighton is a practical man.”
“And a scientific man. It is because Mr. Richmond works on such a scientific basis and in such a practical manner we are so anxious to do all we can for him. Why shouldn’t there be a Technical College of Literature as well as one of Wool-combing, or one of Dyeing, or one of Turning?”
“Why shouldn’t there be one? You have reason and analogy on your side. I suppose it needs quite as much skill to turn a Sonnet as to turn a Sofa-leg, and yet it is thought necessary to serve an apprenticeship to the one industry and not to the other.”
“That’s exactly what I say—exactly what Mr. Richmond says. He once edited a magazine, and he would have made it pay too, if the people who wrote for him had been able to write. But they didn’t. It was reading the fearful stuff he used to get by every post that caused him to think of the great need there was for a Technical School of Literature. Now, suppose you want to write a History of any period, how would you set about it?”
“I haven’t the remotest idea of writing a history of even the remotest period, Amber.”
“Yes, that’s because you are unfortunate enough to be the daughter of so wealthy a man as Mr. West, the Under Secretary for the Arbitration Department. You have no need to do anything for a living—to do anything to distinguish yourself in the world. But take the case that you were dependent upon writing histories of certain periods for your daily bread, wouldn’t you like to have some place to go in order to learn the technicalities of history-writing?”
“There’s no doubt in my mind that I would. The writing of histories of periods has long ago been placed among the great industries of the country, I know.”
“I was appalled the other day when I began to think how utterly at sea I should be if I had to write a history, or for that matter, a biography; and history and biography, mind you, are the branches that do not need any imagination for their working up.”
“Oh, do they not?”
“Well, of course—but I mean that if one has to write a play——”
“What, is there a play department too? What on earth have plays got to do with literature?”
“The connection just now is faint enough, I admit. And why?—why, I ask?”
“Let me guess. Is it because up to the present there has not been a Technical School of Literature?”
“Of course it is. But at one time plays formed a very important part of the literature of the day.”
“Undoubtedly. The author of Shakespeare’s plays, whoever he was, was certainly a literary man. I wonder, by the way, if there was a Technical School in his time.”
“There wasn’t. That’s how it comes that he knew so little about the technicalities of the modern stage. Take my word for it, Josephine, Mr. Richmond will prevent the possibility of a recurrence of such mistakes as those Shakespeare made. And then there are the departments of fiction and poetry. Could anything be worse than the attempts at fiction and poetry which one meets nowadays?”
“Impossible, I admit.”
“The poor things who make those poor attempts are really not to be blamed. If they were set down to make a pair of boots should any one blame them if they failed? Now I hear it said that there is no market for poetry in these days. I don’t believe it.”
“I believe that if a paper pattern were to be given away with every volume the public would buy as many volumes of poetry as could be printed, if only the patterns were of a high class.”
“The public would buy poetry if a first-class article were offered to them, but as only one first-class volume appears for every five hundred of a second-class or a third-class or no class at all, the public are content to go mad over the merest doggerel, provided it is technically good doggerel.”
“Mr. Richmond will guarantee that his third year pupils will turn out good doggerel, I’m sure. And what department do you mean to graduate in, my Amber?”
Amber paused before replying. A line—a delicate little crayon line—appeared across her forehead, suggesting earnest thought as she said:
“I have a great hope to graduate in every department. But I think for the present I shall confine myself to the ‘Answers to Correspondents.’”
“Oh, the school is actually so technical as that?” cried Josephine.
“It is nothing if not practical, Joe; and I think you will agree with Mr. Richmond that there’s no branch of magazine literature that requires to be more practical than the ‘Answers to Correspondents.’ The ‘Aunt Dorothy’ branch is also one that demands considerable technical skill to be exercised if it is to be done properly. Mr. Richmond thinks I might begin upon the Aunt Dorothy branch and work my way up to the true Petrarchian Sonnet Department, through the Rondel, Rondeau, Vilanelle, and Triolet classes.”
“It’s a far cry from Aunt Dorothy to Petrarch. And pray what does Mr. Galmyn think of the scheme?”
“He wasn’t very enthusiastic at first, but I fancy that I have persuaded him to look at it in its true light. But you see, being a poet, he is hardly open to reason.”
“That is what it is to be a poet. A poet does not reason: he sings. And has Mr. Overton any ideas on the subject: he cannot be accused of singing.”
“He has an open mind, he says.”
“Oh, a man with an open mind is just as disagreeable as a man without prejudices. And Willie Bateman—ah, I forgot; you said that he had had something to do with pushing the school.”
“Yes; he took care that the scheme was properly ridiculed in the papers. Oh, yes; he has been extremely useful to us.”
“What, you have actually come to talk of the school as ‘us’? I had no idea that you meant to hang up the scalp of this Mr. Richmond in your wigwam.”
“I do not even want his scalpet, Josephine; at the same time...”
“I see. You don’t want his scalp, but if he insists on sending you a tuft of his hair, you will not return it to him.”
“Well, perhaps that is what is in my mind. Though really I am sincerely anxious to see what will come of so daring, and at the same time, so scientific an experiment.”
“You are a child of science, and to be a child of science is to be the parent of experiments. It was a child of science who modelled toys in dynamite, was it not? Pretty little clay pigs and elephants and poets and millionaires, but one day she thought she would try the experiment of putting a light to the cigar that she had struck into the mouth of the dynamite figure that she was playing with.”
“And what happened?”
“Let me think. Oh, nothing happened because a live man appeared on the scene and quickly dropped all the little toys of the scientific little girl into a bucket of water.”
“And then?”
“Well, then the scientific little girl cried for a while but when she grew up she married the live little man and they lived happily ever after.”
Amber was blushing like a peony before her friend had finished her parable. When Josephine had begun to speak Amber was beginning to fold her serviette, and now she continued folding it as if she were endeavouring to carry out one of the laborious designs of napkin folding given in the Lady’s columns of some weekly paper. Suddenly, while her friend watched her, she pulled the damask square out of its many folds and tossed its crumpled remains on the tablecloth.
“Psha!” she cried, “there’s not a grain of dynamite among all my little boys.”
“Is there not? You just ask your father to give you an analysis of any little boy, and you’ll find that the result will be something like this:”
(She wrote with her chatelaine pencil on the back of the menu card.)
Amber read the card with blushes and laughter.
“It’s very good fun,” she said. “And there is my motor at the door. You will come with me and see how things are managed?”
“Why should I go?”
“Why should not you go?”
“Oh, I’ll go: whatever it may be it is still a topic.”
“It is much more than a topic: it is a revolution.”
“Then I shall go if only to see it revolve.”
CHAPTER II
The two girls left Sir Creighton Severn’s house in Kensington Palace Gardens, and the dainty little motor Victoria made its way eastwards under the skilful guidance of a young coachman engineer trained by Sir Creighton himself.
Every one has heard of Sir Creighton Severn, the great inventor. A large number of people, if asked what Sir Creighton had invented, would reply “Electricity,” so closely has his name become associated with the development of this power and its adaptation to the various necessities of modern life.
Some time ago there was a general feeling throughout the country that he had gone too far in this direction. There should surely be a limit, people said, to the many humiliations to which scientific men were subjecting that power which after all was nothing less than lightning made captive, and under that name, the most imposing attribute of great Jove himself. It was not so bad to ask it to light a well-appointed drawing-room or to annihilate distance when applied to the end of a few thousand miles of telegraph cable—there was a heroic aspect of its employment in such ways: there was something of the dignity of an international treaty in the relationship existing between civilisation and electricity up to a certain point; but it was going quite too far to set it to cook chump chops for the servants’ dinner, or to heat the irons in the laundry.
People began to feel for electricity, just as they did when they heard the story of King Alfred in the swineherd’s cottage. If the nations had ceased to offer oblations to the leven of Jove that was no reason why it should be degraded to the level of a very scullion.
But when Sir Creighton, after inventing the electric kitchener, and the electric ironer, brought out an electric knife cleaner, an electric boot-black, and an electric mouse trap—nay, when he destroyed the very black-beetles in the kitchen by electricity, people ceased to protest. They only shook their heads and said no good could come of such things.
Of course, these adaptations of the power of which Sir Creighton was looked upon as the legitimate owner in succession to Jupiter (deceased), represented only his hours of relaxation. They were the gleanings, so to speak, of his electric harvest—the heel-taps of his electric banquet: they only brought him in about five thousand a year in royalties. The really great adaptations for which he was responsible filled the world with admiration and his own pockets with money. He had lived so long in close association with electricity that he had come to know every little phase of its nature just as a man—after thirty years or so of married life—comes to have an inkling of his wife’s character. He had invented the electric ship that picked up broken cables at sea by merely passing over where they were laid. He had invented the air purifier which instantly destroyed every injurious element in the atmosphere of large manufacturing towns, making them as pleasant to live in as London itself. He had also produced a fog disperser; but he was not sufficiently satisfied with its operation to give it to the public. It was quite equal to the duty of giving fresh air and sunshine to his own house and gardens, at times when people outside were choking with sulphur and knocking their heads against lamp posts, but this was not enough for Sir Creighton, and he withheld his discovery until he should have so perfected it as to make it applicable to the widest areas.
He had sufficient confidence in his powers and in the ductility of his partner—he had long ago come to allude to electricity as his conjux placens—to feel certain that in the course of a year or two, he would be in a position to clear the Atlantic Ocean of fogs and even to do something with London itself.
But there was another discovery which Sir Creighton hoped he was on the eve of perfecting—the greatest of all the long list already standing to his credit—this was the Electric Digester. He had proved to the satisfaction of every one except himself the possibility of treating not only flesh meat but every form of diet in such a way as practically to obviate the necessity for it to undergo the various tedious processes of digestion before it became assimilated with the system.
He had early in life become impressed with the need of making a departure from the old-fashioned methods of preparing food for human consumption. In the early days of man—he put the date roughly at 150000 b. c., though he admitted that the recent discovery of a fossil scorpion in the Silurian rocks left him about a million years to come and go upon—there was probably no need for an Artificial Digestive. The early man had plenty of exercise. It is quite conceivable that, with such things as the Mammoth, the Mastodon, the Pterodactyl and the Ichtheosaurus roaming about with empty stomachs, the human race should have a good deal of exercise (Scoffers said that the human race was properly so called). But the human race had won the race, and had then settled down for a period of well-earned repose.
This was all very well, but their doing so had changed the most important of the conditions under which they had lived, until, as civilisation strengthened the human digestion had weakened. But instead of openly acknowledging this fact and acting accordingly, physicians had kept trying to tinker up the obsolete machinery with, naturally, the most deplorable results. Instead of frankly acknowledging that man’s digestion had gone the way of the tail, the supplemental stomach, and the muscle that moved the ears, attempts were daily made to stimulate the obsolete processes of digestion, but the result was not stimulating.
Sir Creighton Severn, however, frankly assumed that man had got rid of his digestion to make way for his civilisation, and set about the task of accommodating his diet to his altered conditions of life.
He had not yet succeeded in satisfying himself that his invention of the Electric Digester would do all that he meant it to do; so, in spite of the bitter cry that came from the great pie regions of North America, imploring him to help them, he withheld it from the world for the present.
Sir Creighton was wise enough to make a fool of himself every now and again, and the fools said in their haste that his daughter was the agency which he usually employed for effecting his purpose in this direction. But while some said that it was his daughter who made a fool of him others said that it was he who made a fool of his daughter.
No one seemed to fancy that it was quite possible for both statements to be correct.
However this may be it may at once be said that Sir Creighton treated his daughter as if she were a rational person, capable of thinking for herself and of pronouncing a moderately accurate judgment of such minor problems of life as were suggested to her. Without knowing why—though her father could have told her all about it—she was most pleased when she was trying certain experiments—not in electricity, but in sociology.
And yet people said, simply because they saw that she was invariably well dressed, that she had no scientific tendencies.
She had a certain indefinite beauty of her own that made people—some people: mostly men—wonder where they had seen a flower like her—a lily, they were nearly sure it was—or perhaps it was a white clematis—the one with the star centre that swung so gracefully. They continued looking at her and thinking of flowers, and happy is the girl who makes people think of flowers when they see her!
Having very few delusions she knew that there was something of a flower about her nature. And being well aware that flowers are the most practical things in Nature, she had aspirations as boundless as those of a lily.
That was why she was delighted when she attracted to her various forms of idle insect life, male and female. Her aspirations were to attract rather than to retain, for she had the lily’s instincts as well as the lily’s industry. She knew that when youth made a bee-line to her (speaking in a phrase of the garden) they did so for their own advantage. And she awaited their departure with interest, knowing as she did that it is when the insect leaves the lily that the latter is most benefited; but without prejudice to the possibilities of the insect being also benefited. She had no sympathy with the insectivorous plants of womankind, though at the same time she knew that she was born with a passion for experiments. She hoped, however, that her curiosity was founded on a scientific basis.
She had, as it were, taken Love into her father’s laboratory, and with his assistance subjected it to the most careful analysis. She was able to assign to it a chemical symbol, and so she fancied that she knew all there was to be known about love.
She knew a good deal less about it than does the flower of the lily when the summer is at its height.
And now this offspring of the most modern spirit of investigation and the most ancient femininity that existed before the scorpion found his way into the Silurian rocks to sting, after the lapse of a hundred thousand years, the biologists who had nailed their faith to a theory—this blend of the perfume of the lily and the fumes of hydrochlorate of potassium, was chatting to her friend Josephine West as her motor-victoria threaded its silent way through the traffic of Oxford Street to that region where Mr. Richmond had established his Technical School of Literature.
Josephine West was the daughter of the right honourable Joseph West, Under Secretary of State for the Department of Arbitration.
CHAPTER III
The “forced draught” conversation—the phrase was Sir Creighton’s—which the two girls exchanged at lunch and which has been in some measure recorded, formed excellent exercise for their wits, Sir Creighton thought, though he had not the privilege of listening to their latest battledore and shuttlecock in this direction, the fact being that he and Lady Severn were partaking of a more exciting meal aboard the new electric turbine yacht which Sir Creighton had just perfected. It was certainly a stimulating reflection that for the first time since the waters were spread over a portion of the surface of the earth, a meal was partaken of in comfort aboard a vessel moving at the rate of forty-two miles an hour. Even the conversation of the two girls in the dining-room at home could scarcely beat that Sir Creighton remarked to his wife as she clutched at her cap on the hurricane deck and gasped. (There was a pretty fair amount of cap clutching and gasping aboard that boat while it was flying over the measured mile.)
But when the girls were being motored to the Technical School of Literature, their chat was of such commonplaces as the new evening dress bodice with the lace up to the throat, and the future of the Khaki dresses which every one was wearing as a token of respect to the Colonial office. They had not exhausted the latter question when they arrived at the school.
It was located in an interesting house in Hanover Square for the present, Amber explained to her friend; and her friend cordially opined with her that it would be foolish to enter into possession of an important building before the school had taken a sure hold upon the affections of the people of Great Britain.
Mr. Richmond was just opening the fiction class in the largest room when Miss Severn and Miss West entered. Mr. Richmond, who represented the latest of Amber’s experiments, had met Miss West a few days before. He knew that her father was a member of the Government and he hoped to be able to squeeze a grant out of the Government with his assistance, therefore—the logic was Mr. Richmond’s and thoroughly sound—he thought it well to pay as little attention as was consistent with good manners to Miss West, and even to her friend and his friend, Miss Severn. He had a pretty fair working knowledge of a world in which woman has at all times played a rather prominent part, and he knew that while some young women are affected by flattery, those who are most potent in getting grants from their fathers in favour of certain enterprises resent being singled out for attention.
He paid no attention to the entrance of the two girls, but commenced his lesson—he refused to make use of the commonplace word “lecture”: the mention of such a word should be enough to frighten people away from the school, he said; and on the same principle he chose to call his undertaking a school, not a college.
Josephine and Amber took seats at one of the desks, with paper and pens in front of them, and the former glanced round the class. It was composed of some interesting units. At a desk well to the front sat bolt upright a gentleman of rather more than middle-age. Half-pay was writ large all over him. There was not a wrinkle in his coat that did not harbour a little imp that shrieked out “half pay—half pay!” for all the world to hear. His hair was thin in places, but at no place was it too thin to afford cover to half a dozen of those frolicsome demons with their shriek of “half pay!” His over-brushed frock coat (of the year before last), his over-blackened boots, and the general air of over-tidiness that he carried about with him proclaimed the elderly officer of correct habits who after trying for a year or two to obtain congenial employment as the secretary to a club and for another year or two to persuade people to drink the wines of Patagonia, for the sale of which he had been appointed sole agent for Primrose Hill, had resolved to commence life again as a popular novelist.
Not far off sat a youth with receding forehead and chin, and a face like a marmot of the Alps. He kept his small eyes fixed upon the head of a drowsily pretty girl, with towzled hair of an orange tint unknown to nature but well known to art—the art of the second class coiffure. She did the reviews for a humble paper but hoped to qualify to be herself the reviewed one some day. It was clear that she would not ruin her chances by a misalliance with the well-balanced scheme of retrocession observable in his profile.
Two interested young girls sat at another desk guardianed by a governess—they, at any rate, Josephine thought, possessed the first qualification for success in fiction, for they observed every one about them, and made rude remarks to each other respecting their fellow-creatures. The governess took notes by the aid of a stumpy pencil the blunt end of which she audibly touched with the tip of her tongue after every few words; and Josephine perceived that she was anaemic.
Her simple methods contrasted with the elaborate batterie d’’écriture of a young lady who sat at the desk next to that at which Josephine and Amber had placed themselves; for she had placed in front of her a silver-mounted case, monstrously monogrammed, with double ink-bottles, each containing something under half a pint. A rack holding half a dozen pens of varying shapes and sizes, stood imposingly at one side, and on the other lay a neat ream of letter paper, crested and monogrammed, and a pronouncing dictionary. The apparatus certainly seemed quite adequate to the demands of the occasion; and as it turned out, it contained a good deal that was absolutely unnecessary, for the young lady slipped into an unobtrusive doze, the moment the lecturer began to address his class.
A young woman who had removed her hat in order to show that she had a brow with generous bumps scattered about it, resembling Kopjes above a kloof, lounged with an ungracefulness that a plebiscite had pronounced to have a distinct literary flavour about it, half across her desk. It was understood that she had once written a column in a lady’s paper on something and so could afford to be careless.
A youth with a cloak and a yellow smile was understood to be a poet. People said that his smile would work off. But he had never tried.
A well-dressed man of middle age looked, Josephine thought, as if he were something in the city; but that was just where she was mistaken. It was only when he was out of the city that he was something; in the city he was nothing. He was on the eve of drafting a prospectus; and so had joined the fiction class to gain the necessary finish.
Two or three younger men and a few young women who seemed to have come straight from the hands of a confectioner’s artist in frosting and almond icing, had taken up positions of prominence. They looked as if they were anxious to be commented on, and they were commented on.
Mr. Owen Glendower Richmond, the founder of the school was not a well-dressed man, only an expensively dressed man. He was young but not so very young as to be able to disregard the tendency to transparency in that portion of his hair which covered (indifferently) the crown of his head. He had the art of making one hair do duty for two over this area.
He had also a very persuasive voice.
Many men have gone with success through life with fewer endowments. But Mr. Richmond had never been quite successful in anything that he had attempted, and at thirty-four he had occasional regrets that earlier in life he had not let his hair grow curiously, or acquired a reputation for a profile—a profile like that of Dante in the picture.
He had published a book or two; but people about him were good-natured and had agreed to ignore the incident and to give him another chance. He proved that their benevolence had not been misplaced by becoming bankrupt over a scheme for regulating the output of fiction. The public had subscribed generously to his bureau, and it might possibly have succeeded but for the discovery of the new element to which the name of neurosis was given.
Taking advantage of his position on the summit of a base of bankruptcy, he had no difficulty in finding a sufficient number of friends to assist him in the realisation of his scheme for establishing on a permanent basis a School of Literature; and among his friends he would have permission to include Sir Creighton Severn and his daughter. He knew that their appetite for experiments was insatiable, and he had at one time taught Archie Severn—Amber’s only brother—all that he knew on the subject of exotic forms of verse—a science in which the young man had been greatly interested at one period of his life. He was not altogether free from a suspicion that his claims upon the family were somewhat attenuated; but when he had an interview with them he felt that such a suspicion was unworthy of him. Sir Creighton told his daughter that she was free to experiment with the experimenter, and Mr. Richmond found that his year’s rent was guaranteed.
Although the school had only been established for six months it was already a paying concern and Mr. Richmond was in such prosperous circumstances that he felt at liberty to dress less expensively, so he bought a frock coat at seven pounds instead of the one at seven guineas—the one which Josephine West had first seen him wear: the one with the silk quilted lining where most men were quite contented to have a material bearing the trade name of satinette.
It was the cheaper garment that he was wearing on the afternoon of this first visit of Josephine’s to the school, and being an observant young woman, she had really no trouble in perceiving that his aspirations for the moment were to assume that pose which offered the greatest chance of permanency to the impression that he carried his frock coat as easily as a Greek god carried his drapery.
She was a very observant young woman and she admired the adroitness of Mr. Owen Glendower Richmond in associating himself, even though he did so only through the agency of a crease that began at the waist and ended short of the knee, with classical tradition.
And then she admired herself for the subtlety of her observation, and thus was in a psychological frame of mind to yield to the persuasive charm of Mr. Richmond’s voice.
CHAPTER IV
It has been suggested to the Council,” said Mr. Richmond—the name Council was the one by which he desired to be known to the pupils of the school upon occasions—“that, as the Slum Novel is that branch of fiction by which it is easiest to make a reputation for profound thought, at the least expenditure of thought, I should deal with the technicalities of such a composition.
“I think the suggestion an excellent one, and I trust that I shall succeed in enabling you to produce, after a little practice, such a book as will certainly be reviewed to the extent of a full column in more than one of the leading newspapers.”
There was a general movement of attention throughout the class at this point. The lady with the two ink bottles, who lived in an atmosphere strongly impregnated with monograms done in silver, carefully chose a pen from her rack.
“In addition to the novel receiving a lengthy review or two, it may even sell,” continued Mr. Richmond. “But if it should not sell, the writer will, in the estimation of a certain circle—a circle which I do not say it is impossible to ‘square’—I speak paradoxically—have constituted a still stronger claim to be regarded as a profound thinker.
“Now at the outset I ask you to write at the head of your notes the word ‘Dulness.’ This is the goal to which you must press forward in the Slum Novel. You must be dull at all hazards. No matter what you have to sacrifice to produce this impression you must aim at being dull. Now it is not generally recognised that there are many ways of being dull. There is genial dulness and there is jocular dulness. There is dulness of diction and dulness of characterisation. There is dulness of morality and dulness of criminality. There is dulness of Socialism and dulness of Suburbanism. Now, if you succeed in making a blend of all these forms of dulness you will have gone far in making a successful Slum Novel.
“The next note which I will beg of you to make is this: ‘The Slum Novel must neither embody lessons nor suggest Remedies.’
“You must invent your characters, add if you will, a plot, but the latter is by no means essential, and then you must get up your topography. Too great emphasis cannot be laid upon the necessity for a minute topographical scheme—with a map, if possible. I must remind you that a map in a work of fiction imparts to it an aspect of dulness which even the most brilliant writer might fail to achieve in a dozen pages.
“Next in importance to imaginary topography is imaginary dialect. I will ask you to write the word Dialect large in your notes. The Argot of the Slums cannot be made too unintelligible, nor can its inconsistency be over-emphasised. An excellent recipe for true Cockney is to mix with the broadest Lancashire a phrase or two of Norfolk, a word or two of stage Irish, and all the oaths in daily use in the mining districts. The result will be pure Cockney. But you must be very careful of your oaths. Swearing is to a Slum Novel what vinegar is to salad—what the sulphur tip is to the lucifer match. On the whole I think that those ladies who are desirous of writing dialogue that can scarcely fail to receive the heartiest recognition from critics, would do well to allow no character to make even the simplest remark without intruding at least two of those words which a few years ago a printer would refuse to print. The effect will be startling at first, more especially if the coarsest words are put into the mouths of women and children; but you must remember that the object of a Slum Novel is to startle a reader without interesting a reader. It is in furtherance of this aim that you must so disguise the everyday words spoken by your characters as to make them quite unintelligible to the most adroit of readers. If the least clue is obtainable to the simplest words you may be sure that there is something wrong in your technique.
“Now I come to the important element known as Cruelty. Will you kindly write down the word Cruelty. Respecting the technicalities of this element a good deal of advice might be given. But I shall have said enough on this point to give you a good working acquaintance with its place in the Slum Novel when I assure you that you cannot make it too revolting, and that you cannot describe the details of any revolting act too closely. Your blood stains cannot be too large or dark or damp—you must be careful that the blood stains are kept damp.
“The entire technique of the plot may be included in this precept: Make your heroine a woman with fists like those of a man and let her be murdered by the man whom she loves and let her die in the act of assuring the policeman that she did it herself. Her last words must be ‘S’elp me Gawd.’ This is understood to be genuine pathos. It is not for me to say that it is otherwise. When I shall have the honour of dealing with the technicalities of pathos you may depend on my not neglecting the important branch of Slum Pathos.”
Mr. Owen Glendower Richmond paused and took a glass of water with the air of a connoisseur of vintages. He seemed to trust that it would be understood that the water was of a delicate cru. There was another distinct movement among his audience that almost suggested relief. There were whispers. It seemed to be understood that the relaxing of the strain put upon the members of the class meant a period of complete repose.
“He kept it up wonderfully, did he not?” remarked Josephine.
“Kept it up?” cried Amber, assuming the wrinkle of the one who is puzzled.
“Yes; the tennis ball of satire and the shuttlecock of irony,” said Josephine. “Do these folks take him seriously?”
“We do,” replied Amber with a touch of dignity. “We do. He will prevent a good many of us from making fools of ourselves.”
“But I thought that you had only reached the Aunt Dorothy stage of machine-made literature,” said Josephine. “Have you already mastered the technique of Aunt Dorothy?”
“I am occasionally allowed to join the higher fiction class as a treat,” said Amber. “You see, Mr. Overton comes to this class.”
“I see. You are leading him to higher things by the primrose path of technical literature,” said Josephine. “This primrose path seems to me to resemble the mule track through the valley from Stalden to Saas Fée. It does not admit of much independence of travelling.”
“Hush! Mr. Richmond is going to set us our home exercise,” said Amber as the teacher gave a little tap to his desk with the stem of a quill pen, holding it by the feather end. The sound that it made was curious and its effect was electrical: all faces were instantly turned toward him.
“Last week I made you acquainted with the technique of the Historical Novel,” said Mr. Richmond, “and I am naturally anxious to learn to what extent you have availed yourselves of suggestions. I will therefore offer you for home exercise the following problem: ‘Given Richelieu and a dark alley in a Seventeenth Century Continental city, with a cold damp wind blowing through it when the hero of the story takes shelter in one of the doorways, describe the fight in the cellar when he descends on hearing the shrieks of a girl with fair hair and a curious cross set with pearls and sapphires on her breast, proceeding from that portion of the building.
“You may do me the honour to recollect that I made you acquainted with the technique of the brawl of the historical romance, with its three motives—Cardinal Richelieu, the marked pack of cards, and the girl with fair hair and the cross with pearls and sapphires on her breast. You are at perfect liberty in the exercise to make the young woman either haughty or humble, but I need scarcely remind you, I hope, that she must be either the one or the other to an extravagant degree, but Richelieu must always be old. Now I will read out the terms of the problem once more: ‘Given a dark alley—a dark alley’—have you got that down?”
Mr. Richmond repeated slowly with praiseworthy distinctness, the terms of the problem and the members of the class scratched away at their notes with pencils of varying shapes and sizes—all except the young lady with the big silver monograms and the blotter inside them: she used a pen which she dipped alternately into the bottle of red and the bottle of black ink, such is the absent-mindedness of authorship even in the jelly-fish period of its evolution.
“Is it possible that you are taking it all down?” asked Josephine of Amber.
“It is only to encourage the others,” replied Amber. “If Guy Overton did not see me taking it all down he wouldn’t write a line.”
“And will you make the attempt to work out the problem at home?” asked Josephine.
“Perhaps I may have a shot at it. After all it’s no more difficult than an ordinary equation: given the hero, the cold damp wind and the shrieks, to find the girl—I think I shall make her simple, not haughty; the haughty ones are a little boring, are they not?”
“And now we shall proceed to the dialect lesson,” said Mr. Richmond. “Having dealt with Somersetshire during the past week I will now offer you for translation a few sentences containing the fundamental words necessary to the dialogue of the Lowland Scotch novel. You will observe that these words are really not numerous. But, as you can ring some thousands of changes upon a peal of eight bells so by the free use of a dozen dialect words you can impart a strong local colour to any commonplace story. Of course it ceases to be commonplace when the characters speak in the dialect of the Lowlands.” He then wrote a few sentences on the black board embodying such words as “muckle,” “mickle,” “hoot awa’,” “bonnie—bonnie—bonnie”—“you cannot have too many ‘bonnies,’” he remarked—“wee” in its direct application, and “wee” when combined with another diminutive, such as “wee bit.” He explained the significance of every phrase and pointed out how directly it appealed to the heart of a reader. He applied a critical stethoscope, as it were, to every phrase, showing the strong manly heart of a sturdy people beating through such sentences as he had placed before his class.
“I will now, with your permission,” said Mr. Richmond, “conclude the business of the class with a time study. A short time ago I brought under your notice the technicalities of the novel of phrases. You will, I hope, recollect that I laid considerable emphasis upon the effect capable of being produced by a startling definition of something that, in common acceptation, in no way stands in need of being defined. Now, you all know what Platonic Love means; well, a definition or a series of definitions of Platonic Love, will form the ten minutes time study for to-day. Ladies and gentlemen, Platonic Love—a definition for the purpose of the Novel of Phrases.”
There was nothing like a smile on Mr. Richmond’s face at any part of his lecture. He treated every technical point which he suggested in the most serious way. He handled every portion of the subject with the freedom and the gravity of a surgeon in the dissecting room. There was a certain frankness in his assumption that any one could be taught how to make the great mass of the people smile or laugh or weep or feel—that the production of certain effects in prose was as entirely a matter of machinery as the effects produced by the man at the throttle-valve of the locomotive when he jerks the piece of metal with the handle. Some people might have called this frankness cynicism; but Josephine could not see that there was anything cynical about it.
She had attended for some years a life-class at the studio of a painter of distinction and he had lectured to his pupils on the technical aspects of the art of painting, referring occasionally to what he called the depth of feeling in certain chromatic combinations. He had also showed them how to produce the effect of tears on a face, by making a little smudge on the cheeks. If it was possible to teach such technicalities why should not one do as Mr. Richmond was doing, and teach a crowd of students how to write so as to draw tears or compel smiles?
“I don’t think that I will trouble myself with the time-study,” said Amber.
Josephine looked at her and gave a laugh.
“Platonic affection,” she said musingly. “I wonder why you should shirk a paper on that question. You are supposed to be an exponent of that virtue. I should like to know what Mr. Guy Overton thinks about it. I should like to know what Mr. Galmyn thinks about it. The definition of Mr. Willie Bateman’s opinion might also possess some element of interest.”
“Write down what you think of it,” cried Amber, pushing the paper towards her.
Josephine shook her head at first, smiling gently. Then she made a sudden grab at the pencil that hung to one of the chains of her chatelaine.
“I’ll define Platonic affection for you, my dear,” she whispered, “for you—not for Mr. Richmond: he needs no definition of that or anything else.”
She began to write a good deal more rapidly than the others in the class-room. So rapidly did she write that she was unable to see how great was the interest in Mr. Richmond’s face while he watched her and how great was the interest in the face of a young man who sat at the most distant desk while he watched Amber.
CHAPTER V
Platonic affection is the penalty which one pays in old age for procrastination in one’s youth. It is the phrase that one employs to restore one’s self-respect when suffering from the watchful care of a husband. It is the theory of a Greek Sophist to define the attitude of a sculptor in regard to his marble. It defines the attitude of the marble in regard to the sculptor. It was the attribute of Galatea just before she began to live, and it is the attitude of the moralist just before he begins to die. It is the triumph of Logic over Love. It is the consolation of the man who is content with roses cut out of tissue paper. It is the comfort of the woman who thinks that a quill and a glass of water make an entirely satisfactory substitute for a nightingale in June. It is the banquet of the Barmecides. It is the epitaph on the grave of manhood. It is the slab on the grave of womanhood. It is the phrase that is shrieked out every hour from the cuckoo clock. It is an ode by Sappho written in water. It is the egg-shell that is treasured by a man when some one else is eating the omelette. It is the affection of the Doge of Venice for the Adriatic. It is a salad without vinegar. It is the shortest way to the Divorce Court. It is a perpetual menace to a man and the severest threat that one can hold over the head of a woman. It is a lion with the toothache. It is the Sword of Damocles. It is Apollo in pyjamas. It is the fence upon which a man sits while he waits to see which way the cat will jump. It is a song the words of which have been lost and the music mislaid. It is entering on a property the title deeds of which are in the possession of some one else. It is offering a woman a loaf of bread when she is dying of thirst. It is offering a man a cup of water when he is dying of hunger. It is the smoke of an extinct volcano. It is the purchase price paid by a fool for the fee-simple of a Castle in Spain. It is the fraudulent prospectus of a bogus company. It is the only thing that Nature abhors more than a vacuum. It is the triumph of the Vacuum over Nature. It is the last refuge of the roue. It is presenting a diet of confectionery for carnivora. It is the experiment which my dear friend Amber Severn is trying in order that every one who knows her may be warned in time.”
She folded up the paper carefully and handed it to Amber saying:
“There is not only a definition but a whole treatise for you, my dear Amber. It is for you alone, however, and it is not written to dissuade you from your experiment.”
“My experiment? What is my experiment?” cried Amber.
Josephine looked at her and smiled vaguely, benevolently.
“The experiment of feeding carnivora on confectionery,” said she.
“You mean that—that—— Oh, no; you cannot say that, whatever happens, I have not improved them all.”
“I would not dare even to think so. If, however, you succeed in convincing any two of them that you are quite right in marrying the third you will have proved conclusively that confectionery is a most satisfactory diet.”
“I don’t believe that any one of the three wishes to marry me. Not one of them has even so much hinted at that. Oh, no; we are far too good friends ever to become lovers. They are all nice and are getting nicer every day.”
“I really think that they are. At any rate you were born to try experiments. You can no more avoid experimenting than your father can. Here comes an elementary principle with an empty notebook in his hand.”
A youth of twenty-four or twenty-five with a good figure and a pleasantly plain face and unusually large hands and feet sauntered up—the members of the class were trooping out, some of them handing in their time studies to Mr. Richmond who stood at the head of the room.
“How do you do, Miss West? How are you, Amber?” he said. “I saw you working like a gas-engine, Miss West. What on earth could you find to say on that subject?”
“What subject, Mr. Guy Overton?” said Josephine.
The young man looked puzzled—pleasantly puzzled.
“The subject you were writing about,” he replied cautiously.
“You don’t even remember the title of the time study,” said Amber severely.
“I don’t,” he cried defiantly. “What would be the good of remembering it? I saw at once that it was all Thomas.”
“All Thomas?” said Amber enquiringly.
“All Thomas—all Tommy rot. You didn’t bother yourself writing a big heap Injin about it yourself, my fine lady.”
“That was because she is really scientific in her methods, Mr. Overton,” said Josephine. “She doesn’t write out the result of an experiment until she has analysed the residuum in the crucible.”
The young man looked into her face very carefully. He was never quite sure of this particular girl. She required a lot of looking at, and even then he was never quite certain that she had not said something that would make him look like a fool if any one clever enough to understand her was at hand. Luckily for him there were, he knew, not many such people likely to be about.
He looked at her very carefully and then turned to Amber saying:
“I came across a chippie of a cornstalk yesterday who says his dad used to know Sir Creighton before he went to Australia. May I bring him with me one day?”
“Of course you may,” cried Amber, her face brightening. Josephine knew that her face brightened at the prospect of acquiring some fresh materials for her laboratory. “What is his name?”
“His name is Winwood—Pierce Winwood, if it so please you.”
“I’ll ask the pater, and keep him up to the date,” said Amber. “I suppose his father’s name was Winwood too.”
“Why shouldn’t it be? Oh, there’s nothing the matter with him. My dad used to know his dad out there. They were in the same colony and pretty nearly cleaned it out between them. But Winwood died worth a good bit more than my poor old dad. Oh, he’s all right.”
“I’m sure you have said enough to convince any one that the son is all right,” said Josephine.
“Three-quarters of a million at least,” remarked Guy Overton with the wink of sagacity.
“What, so right as all that?” exclaimed Josephine with the uplifted eyebrows of incredulity.
“Every penny,” said the youth with the emphasis of pride.
“Oh, money is nothing!” said Amber with the head shake of indifference.
“Nothing in the world,” acquiesced Guy, with a heartiness that carried with it absolute conviction of insincerity to the critical ears.
“Have you made any progress, Guy?” enquired Amber.
“Among this racket?” he asked. “Not much. I think if I’ve made any progress it’s backwards. Two months ago I could read a novel—if it was the right sort—without trouble. But since I have been shown the parts of the machine that turns them out, blest if I can get beyond the first page.”
“That’s a good sign; it shows that you are becoming critical,” cried Amber.
“Does it? Well... I don’t know. If attending a Technical School of Novel-writing makes a chippie incapable of reading a book, I don’t think the show can be called a success. Anyway I don’t believe that prose fiction—that’s how it’s called—is the department for me. I believe that the poetry shop is the one I’m meant to shine in. You see, there’s only one sort of poetry nowadays, and it’s easily taught; whereas there are a dozen forms of prose fiction—I never guessed that the business was so complicated before I came here. Oh, yes, I’ll join the poetry shop next week.”
“You’ll do nothing of the sort: it’s twice as complicated as this,” said Amber severely.
“Don’t tell me that,” he retorted. “I’ve heard the best poetry of the day—yes, in the Music Halls, and I believe that with a little practice I could turn it out by the web. All the people want is three verses and a good kick in the chorus—something you remember easily, with a good word about Tommy Atkins and two for good old Mother England. I know the swing of the thing. Oh, yes; I’ll get seconded to the poetry shop. Here comes Barnum himself.”
His final words were delivered in a furtive whisper while Mr. Richmond strolled across the room to the group—it was the last group that remained.
When he had come up Mr. Guy Overton was extremely respectful in his attitude to Mr. Richmond and called him “Sir.” He looked at his watch, however, a moment later and said he was an hour late for a particular appointment that he had, so he reckoned he should make himself distant.
Mr. Richmond smiled socially, not officially, and added a nod, before turning to greet the girls. He was not very impressive while saying that he felt greatly honoured to see Miss West in the class-room. He was sure that she understood his aims. Then Miss West said she was certain that it must be a great pleasure to him to lecture before a sympathetic audience. He evaded her evasion and enquired of Miss Severn if he might include her among the sympathetic members of his audience, and Miss Severn declared that she had learned more in ten minutes from him respecting the literary value of certain Scotch words than she had acquired by reading the two novels in the Scotch tongue which she had mastered in the previous four years of her life, and she hoped Mr. Richmond considered the attendance satisfactory. He assured her that sanguine though he had been as to the number of persons anxious to write novels the attendance at the fiction class amazed him.
“And many who were present to-day were actually attentive,” remarked Josephine.
“And one of the ladies defines Platonic Friendship as the reason why Brutus killed Cæsar—I hold the document in my hand,” said the master.
Both girls cried “How funny!” and smiled their way to the door, which Mr. Richmond held open for them.
On the way to Kensington Palace Gardens they agreed that the Khaki frocks then so popular would not survive another season.
CHAPTER VI
Lady Severn had survived the measured mile. Sir Creighton was jubilant. His daughter flew to him. How did the electric turbine work? What was the coefficient of energy developed over the measured mile? Was forty miles actually touched and what about the depression in the stern? Did the boat steer all right on the progressive principle? Did the Admiral grumble as usual?
Her father gave her a detailed account of the strong points of the new system of propulsion, which every one had recognised, and of the weak points, which he alone had detected, and then she was able to drink her tea, and so was Sir Creighton.
Lady Severn said the lunch was excellent; only when travelling by water at the rate of forty-two knots every one seemed inclined to eat at the rate of fifty knots.
After drinking a cup of tea Sir Creighton looked at the clock and sighed.
“The day is gone before one gets any work done,” he said. “I have not been in my room since yesterday afternoon, Joe,” he added, looking at Josephine as if hoping to find in her a sympathetic audience.
“You’ll get no sympathy from me, Sir Creighton,” she laughed. “You have done more to-day than all the men of your craft—I suppose that a turbine boat may be called a craft—have succeeded in accomplishing during the past hundred years—forty knots!—just think of it!—and yet you complain of not being able to get anything done! Oh, no; you’ll get no sympathy from me.”
Sir Creighton went across the room to her and his scientific skill enabled him to squeeze between his finger and thumb that part of her arm where all the sensitive nerves meet.
She shrieked.
“I will force you to sympathise with me,” he said. “You have still another arm. What! they are actually taking your part?”
Sir Creighton had a pretty wit. It was most exuberant when he had discovered a new torture founded on a purely scientific basis. That was how he kept himself young.
“Oh, by the way,” said Amber, when he was going once more towards the door, “Guy has picked up with some one from New South Wales whose father said he had once known you. His name is—now what on earth did he say his name was?”
“Wasn’t it Mr. Winwood?” said Josephine.
“Of course. Pierce Winwood. Do you remember any man of that name—long ago—it must have been long ago. He made a big fortune in the meantime?”
“Winwood—Winwood? No, I don’t remember any one bearing that name,” said Sir Creighton. “Better tell Guy to bring him out and I dare say he’ll draw the threads together.”
“I told Guy I was sure that you would like to have a chat with him—the son, I mean; he said the father, who claimed to know you, was dead.”
“There’s cause and effect for you,” said Sir Creighton. “Better ask him to dinner with Guy—the son, I mean.”
He spoke with his hand on the handle of the door, and then went whistling down the corridor to his study which opened out upon the garden of roses at the back of the house. The long table was covered with scale drawings and the smell of the tracing paper filled the room. Sir Creighton stood for a few moments looking down at those tracings of the sections of wheels—wheels within wheels—and the profiles of pinions.
“What the Nightingale sang to the Rose,” said the man of science. “Pah, what can any one say about the Nightingale and the Rose that has not been said before?”
He turned over several of the drawings critically, and counted the leaves of one of the pinions.
“He has made no allowance for end-shake,” he muttered. “A sixteenth on each pivot. Was it in the Garden of Gulistan? I rather think not. An English rose-garden—why not within the four-mile radius?”
He stood at the glass door leading out to his own garden, and remained there for some minutes looking out upon the great clusters of mixed blooms. Then he turned to one of the desks and unlocking one of the drawers and, drawing it out some way, slipped his hand inside, relieving the spring of a secret compartment that seemed to be a fixture. He drew out a sheaf of papers, covered with verses with many erasures and those countless corrections which commonly occur in the manuscripts of poets who are not only inspired but who add to the original impulse of inspiration a fastidiousness of phrase quite unknown to the older poets.
The topmost leaf of the sheaf contained a stanza and a half of a poem in an original metre describing how a nightingale came nightly to visit a certain rose, but the rose being only a bud, failed to understand what was the meaning of the music, until on the evening of a burning day, when the Star of Love shed the only light that came from the sky through the heavy scented air that hovered on the rose-garden, “The faithful nightingale sang this song: “....
That was where the manuscript ended. There was space enough on the paper for two more stanzas. All that was needed was to put into words the song that the nightingale sang to stir the rosebud into the bloom of passion.
That was the reflection of the man of science as he read the ambitious prelude which he had written the previous day just when the leader writers on all the newspapers in England were pointing out how the adaptation of electricity to the turbine boat marked the most important epoch in the history of marine engineering.
“That’s all I have got to do,” he muttered now, when the cables were carrying to all parts of the world the news that Sir Creighton Severn’s electric turbine had just been tested over the measured mile with the most surprising results, a record speed of forty-two knots having been noted. “Only the song of the nightingale,” said the man of science, seating himself at the desk with the unfinished poem in front of him.
He wrote for two hours, completing the poem entitled “What the Nightingale sang to the Rose,” which when published above the name “Alençon Hope” in a magazine three months later was so widely commented on, some critics going so far as to declare with that confidence which is the chief part of the equipment of the critic, that in all the recently published volume by the same author nothing more exquisite could be found.
It was Sir Creighton’s little fun to publish, unknown to any one in the world, a volume of verse that had achieved a brilliant success in the world and even in his own household where its apt lines were frequently quoted both by Amber and her brother. That was how it came about that Sir Creighton smiled quite vaguely when people remarked how strange it was that young Severn had shown an early taste for writing verse. Who was it that he took after, they enquired. They felt that the exigencies of the theory of heredity were fully satisfied when Lady Severn explained that there was a tradition in her family that her father had once sent a valentine to her mother. Still it was funny, they said, to find the son of a father who was a practical “scientist”—that was what they called Sir Creighton: a “scientist”—having a tendency to write verse.
Sir Creighton, when he had finished writhing at the word “scientist,” smiled quite vaguely; for no one seemed to entertain the idea that the inspiration which had enabled the man of science to look into the future and see ships moving silently over the water at a speed of forty-two knots an hour was precisely the same quality which permitted of his translating into English metre the passionate song sung by the Nightingale to the Rose.
No one knew how refreshed he felt on returning to his electrical designs after spending an hour or two over those exquisite fabrics of verse which appeared in the volume by “Alençon Hope” Rhythm and arithmetic seem to many people to be the positive and negative poles of a magnet, but both mean the same thing in the language from which they are derived.
“Poor old pater!” said Amber when the girls were left alone with Lady Severn. “He is back again at one of those problems which he has set himself to solve for the good of the world. Poor old pater!”
“Old!” cried Josephine. “I never met any one so young in the whole course of my life. In his presence I feel quite mature.”
“The greatest problem that he has solved is the science of living,” said Lady Severn. “If he has not discovered the secret of perpetual youth, he has mastered the more important mystery of perpetual happiness.”
“He knows that it is best seen through another’s eye,” said Josephine.
At this point a young man with a very shiny hat in his hand was shown in. He was greeted by Amber by the name of Arthur and by the others as Mr. Galmyn. He was a somewhat low-sized youth with very fair hair breaking into curls here and there that suggested the crests of a wave blown by the wind. It was not his curls, however, but his eyes that attracted the attention of most people; for his eyes were large and delicately blue. Sentimentalists who sat opposite him in an omnibus—an omnibus is full of sentimental people, six on each side—were accustomed to see a certain depth of sadness in Arthur Galmyn’s eyes. He would have felt greatly disappointed if they had failed to think them sad. He had long ago formed a definite opinion about their expression. They had caused him a great deal of thought and some trouble in his time, but he had long ago come to feel every confidence in their sadness. It was his aim to see that his life was congenially tinged with a mild melancholy.
He quoted from “The Lotus Eaters” and tried to realise a life “in which it always seemed afternoon.”
He took tea punctually at five.