Mike Fletcher Part 7

"As time goes on, poetry, history, philosophy, will so multiply that the day will come when the learned will not even know the names of their predecessors. There is nothing that will not increase out of all reckoning except the naturalistic novel. A man may write twenty volumes of poetry, history, and philosophy, but a man will never be born who will write more than two, at the most three, naturalistic novels. The naturalistic novel is the essence of a phase of life that the writer has lived in and a.s.similated. If you take into consideration the difficulty of observing twice, of the time an experience takes to ripen in you, you will easily understand _a priori_ that the man will never be born who will write three realistic novels."

Coffee and cigars were ordered, and Harding extolled the charm and grace of pastels.

Thompson said--"I keep pastels for my hours of idleness--cowardly hours, when I have no heart to struggle with nature, and may but smile and kiss my hand to her at a distance. For dreaming I know nothing like pastel; it is the painter's opium pipe.... Latour was the greatest pastellist of the eighteenth century, and he never attempted more than a drawing heightened with colour. But how suggestive, how elegant, how well-bred!"

Then in reply to some flattery on the personality of his art, Thompson said, "It is strange, for I a.s.sure you no art was ever less spontaneous than mine. What I do is the result of reflection and study of the great masters; of inspiration, spontaneity, temperament--temperament is the word--I know nothing. When I hear people talk about temperament, it always seem to me like the strong man in the fair, who straddles his legs, and asks some one to step upon the palm of his hand."

Drake joined in the discussion, and the chatter that came from this enormous man was as small as his head, which sat like a pin's-head above his shoulders. Platt drifted from the obscene into the incomprehensible. The room was fast emptying, and the waiter loitered, waiting to be paid.

"We must be getting off," said Mike; "it is nearly eleven o'clock, and we have still the best part of the paper to read through."

"Don't be in such a d.a.m.ned hurry," said Frank, authoritatively.

Harding bade them good-night at the door, and the editors walked down Fleet Street. To pa.s.s up a rickety court to the printer's, or to go through the stage-door to the stage, produced similar sensations in Mike. The white-washed wall, the glare of the raw gas, the low monotonous voice of the reading-boy, like one studying a part, or perhaps like the murmur of the distant audience; the boy coming in asking for "copy" or proof, like the call-boy, with his "Curtain's going up, gentlemen." Is there not a.n.a.logy between the preparation of the paper that will be before the public in the morning, and the preparation of the play that will be before its eyes in the evening?

From the gla.s.s closet where they waited for the "pages," they could see the compositors bending over the forms. The light lay upon a red beard, a freckled neck, the crimson of the volutes of an ear.

In the gla.s.s closet there were three wooden chairs, a table, and an inkstand; on the shelf by the door a few books--the _London Directory_, an _English Dictionary_, a _French Dictionary_--the t.i.tles of the remaining books did not catch the eye. As they waited, for no "pages" would be ready for them for some time, Mike glanced at stray numbers of two trade journals. It seemed to him strange that the same compositors who set up these papers should set up the _Pilgrim_.

Presently the "pages" began to come in, but long delays intervened, and it transpired that some of the "copy" was not yet in type. Frank grew weary, and he complained of headache, and asked Mike to see the paper through for him. Mike thought Frank selfish, but there was no help for it. He could not refuse, but must wait in the paraffin-like smell of the ink, listening to the droning voice of the reading-boy.

If he could only get the proof of his poem he could kill time by correcting it; but it could not be obtained. Two hours pa.s.sed, and he still sat watching the red beard of a compositor, and the crimson volutes of an ear. At last the printer's devil, his short sleeves rolled up, brought in a couple of pages. Mike read, following the lines with his pen, correcting the literals, and he cursed when the "devil" told him that ten more lines of copy were wanting to complete page nine. What should he write?

About two o'clock, holding her ball-skirts out of the dirt, a lady entered.

"How do you do, Emily?" said Mike. "Just fancy seeing you here, and at this hour!" He was glad of the interruption; but his pleasure was dashed by the fear that she would ask him to come home with her.

"Oh, I have had such a pleasant party; So-and-so sang at Lady Southey's. Oh, I have enjoyed myself! I knew I should find you here; but I am interrupting. I will go." She put her arm round his neck.

He looked at her diamonds, and congratulated himself that she was a lady.

"I am afraid I am interrupting you," she said again.

"Oh no, you aren't, I shall be done in half an hour; I have only got a few more pages to read through. Escott went away, selfish brute that he is, and has left me to do all the work."

She sat by his side contentedly reading what he had written. At half-past two all the pages were pa.s.sed for press, and they descended the spiral iron staircase, through the grease and vinegar smell of the ink, in view of heads and arms of a hundred compositors, in hearing of the drowsy murmur of the reading-boy. Her brougham was at the door. As she stepped in Mike screwed up his courage and said good-bye.

"Won't you come?" she said, with disappointment in her eyes.

"No, not to-night. I have been slaving at that paper for the last four hours. Thanks; not to-night. Good-bye; I'll see you next week."

The brougham rolled away, and Mike walked home. The hands of the clocks were stretching towards three, and only a few drink-disfigured creatures of thirty-five or forty lingered; so horrible were they that he did not answer their salutations.

CHAPTER IV

Mike was in his bath when Frank entered.

"What, not dressed yet?"

"All very well for you to talk. You left me at eleven to get the paper out as best I could. I did not get away from the printer's before half-past two."

"I'm very sorry, but you've no idea how ill I felt. I really couldn't have stayed on. I heard you come in. You weren't alone."

The room was pleasant with the Eau de Lubin, and Mike's beautiful figure appealed to Frank's artistic sense; and he noticed it in relation to the twisted oak columns of the bed. The body, it was smooth and white as marble; and the pectoral muscles were especially beautiful when he leaned forward to wipe a lifted leg. He turned, and the back narrowed like a leaf, and expanded in shapes as subtle. He was really a superb animal as he stepped out of his bath.

"I wish to heavens you'd dress. Leave off messing yourself about.

I want breakfast. Lizzie's waiting. What are you putting on those clothes for? Where are you going?"

"I am going to see Lily Young. She wrote to me this morning saying she had her mother's permission to ask me to come."

"She won't like you any better for all that scent and was.h.i.+ng."

"Which of these neckties do you like?"

"I don't know.... I wish you'd be quick. Come on!"

As he fixed his tie with a pearl pin he whistled the "Wedding March."

Catching Frank's eyes, he laughed and sang at the top of his voice as he went down the pa.s.sage.

Lizzie was reading in one of the arm-chairs that stood by the high chimney-piece tall with tiles and blue vases. The stiffness and glare of the red cloth in which the room was furnished, contrasted with the soft colour of the tapestry which covered one wall. The round table shone with silver, and an agreeable smell of coffee and sausages pervaded the room. Lizzie looked up astonished; but without giving her time to ask questions, Mike seized her and rushed her up and down.

"Let me go! let me go!" she exclaimed. "Are you mad?"

Frank caught up his fiddle. At last Lizzie wrenched herself from Mike.

"What do you mean? ... Such nonsense!"

Laughing, Mike placed her in a chair, and uncovering a dish, said--

"What shall I give you this happy day?"

"What do you mean? I don't like being pulled about."

"You know what tune that is? That's the 'Wedding March.'"

"Who's going to be married? Not you."

"I don't know so much about that. At all events I am in love. The sensation is delicious--like an ice or a gla.s.s of Chartreuse. Real love--all the others were coa.r.s.e pa.s.sions--I feel it here, the genuine article. You would not believe that I could fall in love."

"Listen to me," said Lizzie. "You wouldn't talk like that if you were in love."

"I always talk; it relieves me. You have no idea how nice she is; so frail, so white--a white blonde, a Seraphita. But you haven't read Balzac; you do not know those white women of the North. '_Plus blanche que la blanche hermine_,' etc. So pure is she that I cannot think of kissing her without sensations of sacrilege. My lips are not pure enough for hers. I would I were chaste. I never was chaste."

Mike laughed and chattered of everything. Words came from him like flour from a mill.

The _Pilgrim_ was published on Wednesday. Wednesday was the day, therefore, for walking in the Park; for lunching out; for driving in hansoms. Like a fish on the crest of a wave he surveyed London--mult.i.tudinous London, circulating about him; and he smiled with pleasure when he caught sight of trees spreading their summer green upon the curling whiteness of the clouds. He loved the Park.