The Author of "Trixie"

Front matter

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THE AUTHOR OF "TRIXIE"

|What this story is about

Chapter I

THE AUTHOR OF "TRIXIE"

Every man and woman," said the Bishop of Pontefract, "has one novel in them."

There are not many clubs where you can hear things as good as that, things so original, so profound, so well expressed. In fact there is but one—the Athenæum. I need not fear to say this, for I am not a member.

They were chatting over their after luncheon coffee, the Bishop, the Master of the Buckhounds, the King's Remembrancer and old Mr. Lucas-Gore. Not far away sat Archdeacon Roach, listening to what they were saying while he pretended to read the Church Times.

"I wonder," he thought, "if I have a novel in me," and smiled.

The idea was indeed sufficiently fantastic. Anyone less likely than the Archdeacon to give birth to so lewd a thing as a work of fiction can not readily be imagined.

Notorious throughout England alike for his learning (he had edited the Commentaries of Lactantius on the Epistles of Dolens) and for his piety (vide that immensely successful little book of his, "Thoughts About Heaven"), he demon- strated his respectability by living with a wife and seven daughters in a great big Queen Anne house in the heart of Old Kensington, of which parish he was the Vicar. An admirable man. A splendid fellow. Rich, too, very, through his wife, who had been a Whitley of Bradford. Yes, a very fine type of clergyman. And he looked it. He was big and burly—almost, indeed, beefy—copiously chinned, generously curved in front, with large, shapely legs which filled out his gaiters as gaiters ought to be filled out. He had heaps of beautiful wavy hair, partly white and partly red, in streaks. His eyebrows were huge—almost they suggested toothbrushes—and quite red. His round and wide-set eyes were pale blue, a very unusual tint. His nose was a promontory. His whiskers were burning bushes. His vast mouth—but I waste our time in thus cataloguing the features of a face whose true glory was its saintly yet genial expression. Here was no rigid ascetic; here no fanatical persecutor. When you looked on Archdeacon Roach you were apt to be reminded neither of Simeon on his pillar nor of Torquemada tightening his thumbscrews. Did you think of St. Francis of Assisi? But this is unprofitable. I only want to make it clear to you that Archdeacon Roach was both a very good and a very broad man; he could, I mean, temper if not with tolerance, at least with sympathy that uncompromising attitude towards the vices and follies of other men which, as a clergyman, he was bound to maintain. But this is not to say that he was the sort of clergyman whom you would expect to find writing a novel. Emphatically, he wasn't. Emphatically, too, he never expected to find himself doing such a thing. That is why he smiled a moment ago behind the Church Times, just as anyone else would have smiled at the idea of Archdeacon Roach coming out as a fictioneer.

"I wonder," he thought, "if I have a novel in me," and smiled and slowly broke off the ash of his Corona against the edge of the ash-tray and slowly sipped from his glass of very old cognac. "I wonder," he thought, and smiled again. But this time the smile was a trifle fatuous. The idea now pleased rather than amused him. He dismissed it (for old Mr. Lucas-Gore had started out upon an anecdote concerning Henry James, the point of which escaped him just as he got there), and it sank quietly into his subconscious mind. About an hour later, while he strolled back to Kensington (he was, to be precise, passing the Albert Memorial), it rose again as quietly, and this time the smile which it provoked was definitely a friendly one. Familiarity with this idea had bred in the Archdeacon not contempt but affection. He was beginning, you perceive, to toy with it. This time he didn't dismiss it. He thought, "And why not?"

He was lost.

From that moment he had no peace. I don't propose to detail his struggles. They would not repay our examination. Everybody has gone through something of the kind. I don't mean that everybody has written a novel. That, of course, would not be quite true. But everybody has at least thought of doing it, and nearly everybody has tried. Of those who have tried, only about ten per cent. have failed, while of the ninety per cent. who have carried the adventure through I suppose a generous three-quarters must have been published. So it would be foolish of me to dwell at any length upon the gestation and genesis of the Archdeacon's book, since practically everybody who reads this one of mine has first-hand experience of these uncomfortable processes.

It is enough if I say that, five months later, the good man's tale was written and that no living soul but himself knew it. Yes, clandestine had been his dallying with the Muse, clandestine and therefore exquisite. Not a moment but had been delicious that he had filched, for this doubtful purpose, from hours properly attributable to the performance of his archidiaconal functions. And how many of such moments there were his recording angel—not the Archdeacon—had noted. Yes, this great Churchman, this pattern father and husband, had listened to the voice of the inward tempter and was now, poor wretch, no better than a secret novelist.

Worse.

Since he could not conceal from his wife and daughters the fact that he was spending several hours each day behind the locked door of his study, and since he realised that they must be curious as to what the business might be which so steadily occupied him, he gave out to them that he was engaged upon a careful revision of his Lactantius, preliminary to producing a second edition of that work. In other words, he lied to them in the most barefaced and detestable fashion.

This is a miserable beginning to what you hoped was to be a pleasant story; but I can't help it. And there is far worse to come: far, far worse. I am very sorry, but what am I to do? Abandon my project and take another theme? Impossible! This tale is in me and has got to come out if it will. One does not abandon one's themes, though it is a fact that now and then they abandon one—and what a relief that is! No, even if I drive you into the arms of a rival my tale must forth.

The Archdeacon, then, having done this dreadful thing, found that two courses were open to him: (1) to suppress by fire the bright creature of his fancy, or (2) to give it to the world. The first alternative, for reasons which I shall tell you in a moment, was unthinkable. The second, however, seemed to be impossible; for not without exciting a horrible scandal, not without furnishing to the enemy cause most joyously to blaspheme, might the reputable Vicar of Old Kensington proclaim himself a romancer, if ever, at any rate, he meant to be a bishop. And he meant most resolutely to be a bishop; if not an archbishop. His wife wished it. But that was nothing. He wished it himself.

He was sufficiently well read to be aware that at least two of England's greatest novelists have been clergymen of her Church; but what, he felt, was all very well for cock-fighting, three-bottle, eighteenth-century clerics (a Dean though one of them might be) was not at all well for a modern metropolitan archdeacon, who had edited Lactantius and published his thoughts about Heaven and meant to be a bishop.

No.

Even had his novel been of a religious character the thing was impossible. And the character of his novel was not in the least religious. Its morals, he trusted, were sound; vice didn't triumph over virtue or anything like that; but he could not pretend that his story was in the least calculated to turn anybody's feet from the broad into the narrow path. While preparing it, he had allowed the Artist (whom he had so happily discovered within him) to have his way entirely. The Pastor of souls had strictly not been allowed to collaborate.

No, it was out of the question for the name of Archdeacon Roach to appear upon the cover of "Trixie." Quite absolutely not to be thought of.

Yet it was equally out of the question that the story should not appear. There was that Artist fellow to be reckoned with. Was he the man to allow the fruit of his five months' labour to be abolished or hidden away in a drawer? He was not. Out the book must come, to court the verdict of the public—the verdict which that Artist rather flattered himself was going to be not wholly unfavourable. Not wholly. No.

He suggested to the Pastor of Souls the adoption of an alias. The Pastor shook his head. He gravely misdoubted the security of an alias. To adopt an alias is to set every busybody to the work of discovering whom it conceals; and sooner or later the truth is ferreted out. And this particular truth must, simply, not be ferreted out.

Anonymity, then? How about anonymity?

No, thought the Pastor; anonymity wouldn't do either. Anonymity was just as dangerous as pseudonymity. Equally calculated to set the busybodies going. Sooner or later, sooner or later, the cloak of anonymity was sure to be torn away. Sure. Absolutely.

"Why, then," said the Artist; "I'll tell you what."

"What?" inquired the Pastor of Souls.

"Do," said the Artist, "as Bacon did. Get a Shakespeare. Publish 'Trixie' under the name of some other man, someone who can actually be pointed out as the author, someone whose photograph can be published in the magazines, someone who can be interviewed and run after. If you do that there will be nothing to excite the curiosity of the busybodies. Your secret will be as safe as houses."

"Now," said the Pastor of Souls," that's a very clever idea of yours. Very clever indeed. It certainly seems to deserve consideration. Yes. I should say that it is decidedly worth thinking about. Decidedly."

The Archdeacon proceeded to think about it.

Chapter II

He had not thought about it very long before he had come to the conclusion that young Bisham Dunkle was his man.

This Dunkle was one of the numerous young gentlemen who came to the rich Archdeacon's house in order to converse with his daughters. He came oftener than anybody else, for he was a prime favourite with the ladies of the household. It seemed, indeed, to the Archdeacon that Dunkle must take all his meals at the Vicarage.

He was a youth of astonishing, though not very masculine, comeliness. He had quite black hair, which he wore plastered evenly rearwards from his forehead, to remind the observer, with its fine polish and its longitudinal corrugations, of the back of a slug, and to develop at last into a thick mane which just cleared the collar of his coat. His eyes were large and lustrous, and in the socket of the left one he carried habitually a monocle rimmed with black bone. His nose was straight and slender, his lips were thin but beautifully fashioned, his teeth were splendid, and his chin was magnificent. He was tall and slight—the manly Archdeacon could have broken him with one hand—and he had a fluting voice and a bleating laugh, and long, delicate, exquisitely manicured fingers; and he was always dressed very carefully and very becomingly. As a ball-room dancer he was without his peer. He had a private annual income of some three hundred pounds, and he wrote little poems which he sold to the magazines for anything between five shillings and a guinea a time. He had financed the publication of two collections of these things, one called Bouchées and the other called Chrysoliths. His age was twenty-four.

The Archdeacon loathed him. He thought him—and rightly—decadent, poor, ill-mannered and vapid.

Yet he was forced to admit that no one whom he knew seemed so well fitted as was Dunkle to play Shakespeare to an archidiaconal Bacon.

A poet with two published volumes to his credit—what more natural or proper than that his name should appear on the back of a novel?

Since he had as yet published nothing but poetry, the critics were quite unfamiliar with his prose style. Dunkle would be accepted without question as the author of what the hand of Roach had written.

The youth, moreover, was poor. That is to say, pliable. That is to say, purchasable.

The Archdeacon supposed that he would be able to come to terms with him for a matter of fifty pounds, or a hundred at the outside.

"I'll put it to the fellow," he decided, "to-day, after luncheon, or if, by any chance, he's not in to luncheon, to-night, after dinner."

Dunkle dropped in to luncheon, and he was the only young man to do so. Thus the opportunity which the Archdeacon desired was given him with the least possible delay. He took it with the least possible hesitation.

No sooner were the girls and their mother safely on the other side of the closed dining-room door than the Archdeacon, as he pushed the port across the table, said: "Did you ever think, Dunkle, of writing a novel?"

Dunkle filled himself out a glass in silence, for the liquor he was about to quaff was worthy of all reverence. He sipped, rolled his tongue, swallowed, rolled his eyes, and said: "No, Archdeacon, not particularly. Why do you ask?"

"In order," said the Archdeacon, "to bring the subject of novels and novel-writing upon the tapis."

"I see," said Dunkle. "But you must have some good reason for introducing so very dull a topic. May I ask what, precisely, it is?"

"I'll tell you," said the Archdeacon, "if you'll give me your word of honour as a gentleman that what I say shall go no further."

"Yes," said Dunkle, "I'll do that. Proceed, my dear sir. Proceed."

"Well," said the Archdeacon, "I have written one."

"You?" cried the young man, opening his eyes very wide. "You, Archdeacon? You have written a novel? Well, I'm blowed! What on earth possessed you to do such a frightfully commonplace thing?"

The Archdeacon, beginning with the observation of the Bishop of Pontefract in the Athenæum Club, told him all about it. Dunkle sipped port and listened without saying a word.

But—"Why," he kept asking himself, "is the old cock telling me this? Why me?" He was soon to learn.

"Of course," the Archdeacon concluded, "a clergyman of my position and repute cannot come out as the author of a fiction. The thing's not to be done. You appreciate its hopeless impropriety? Yes? I thought you must. To publish anonymously or under a pseudonym won't do, either. The secret would not fail to leak out. What, then, is to be done, my dear Dunkle?"

"Why," said Dunkle, "the simplest and best thing is to put the manuscript on the fire. It is, you tell me, a hundred and fifty thousand words long. I should say that such a manuscript might be destroyed in half an hour or a little less. I have nothing to do this afternoon. Let me give you a hand. I will tear up the sheets and feed the flames with them, and you shall stir them with the poker. Or we can do it up in a parcel with some good big stones and sink. it over Chelsea Bridge. Or we can2"

"No, Dunkle," the Archdeacon interrupted, "you're on the wrong tack, my boy, entirely. I have written this story, and I have got to see it in print. I have simply got to. You, too, are an author. You understand how it is with me. Supposing anyone were to suggest to you that you should burn or drown one of your lyrics."

"Forgive me, Archdeacon," said Dunkle stiffly, "but my lyrics are not in question here. It is only your novel that we are considering. Of course, if you are resolved to have the thing published, there's no more to be said. But if you can't publish it either anonymously or under a pen-name or under your own, how, exactly, do you propose to go to work?"

"I propose," said the Archdeacon, "to publish it under yours."

Dunkle paled. "My dear sir," he observed, "there is surely a limit to what one is required to accept from one's host, even in the way of mistaken humour. Shall we not both forget what you have just said? Shall we not join the ladies?" He made as if to rise.

"Keep your seat, Dunkle," said the Archdeacon. "Believe me, I never was less inclined to be humorous. This is a business proposal that I'm making to you, my dear boy. I am asking you to do something for me. In return I am prepared to make it worth your while. I fancy that fifty pounds2"

Dunkle rose. "My poor gentleman," he said, "have you taken leave of your senses? Do you really imagine that for fifty pounds, or anything like it, I am going to blast my literary reputation by pretending to be the author of your or any novel? Yet2" he hesitated—"on second thoughts, I'm not sure that it is altogether beyond the bounds of2"

"Come," said the Archdeacon, "say seventy-five."

"I will say nothing at present," Dunkle replied, "except that I may, after all, perhaps be not unwilling to fall in with this immoral plan of yours. But it will be at a price, and that price will be my own. To enable me to estimate the value of my services to you, or perhaps I should say the extent of the damage to myself, I must, before I go any further into this tenebrous affair, have a look at your manuscript. I shall be dining here to- night, for I am escorting one of your daughters to a dance. Let me take your novel away now. I will read as much of it as I can bear, and to-night, after dinner, I will state my terms or definitely reject your proposal."

"I will fetch the manuscript," said the Archdeacon.

Chapter III

It was six hours later.

Again the ladies rose and left the Archdeacon and Dunkle together. Again the Archdeacon passed the port to his visitor. "Well?" he inquired.

Again Dunkle filled his glass. He sipped and sighed his satisfaction.

"I have read quite enough of your novel," he said, "to form an opinion of its merits."

"Ah!" said the Archdeacon. "Ah, hah! Yes?" He smiled hopefully.

"Your grammar," said Dunkle, "is generally correct, and with your spelling I have no fault to find. Your punctuation is, I believe, faultless. But these things do not, my dear Archdeacon, make a great novel. As for your tale, it is soupy, prolix and ordinary, while it lacks verisimilitude and abounds in the grossest faults of construction. It is, moreover, in a number of places, timidly erotic. The effect is quite nauseating. Were you to publish this book under your own name, your reputation would sustain a blow from which it would never recover. It seems to me that you would pretty certainly be compelled to resign not only your Archdeaconry, but your Vicarship, and that, of course, would never do."

He paused to sip at his glass and readjust his monocle.

The Archdeacon, with his napkin, wiped away the foam which had gathered at the corners of his mouth. He was ready to break the port decanter upon Dunkle's skull. But he would not have been an Archdeacon had he not learnt to control his feelings. So he swallowed down his rage, made his voice as soft as silk, and said: "I have told you, Dunkle, that there is no question of publishing my story under my own name. I fear, from what you have said, that there is not much chance of my publishing it under yours. Or am I wrong?"

"As to that," said Dunkle, "all depends on what price you are prepared to pay for the accommodation. I suppose you are determined to produce this book."

"Absolutely," said the Archdeacon. "I may add that your adverse and, I believe, jealous criticism doesn't weigh a hair with me. I am not to be convinced that 'Trixie' is valueless by the verdict of one reader. The public, I am determined, shall have its opportunity of judging how I write fiction."

"Oh!" said Dunkle gloomily, "the public will probably like your book very much. It's a novel that any publisher will see his money in. But this is not to say that it is a work which I am precisely bursting to have attributed to me."

"Nevertheless2"

"As you say, Archdeacon—nevertheless. If you will pay my price, I will incur this shameful responsibility. But only for the sake of your family. I would not have Mrs. Roach and your daughters (who have been immensely kind to me) made the laughing-stock of London society by reason of your conduct."

The Archdeacon again controlled himself.

"And your price is2" he inquired icily.

"Chloë," said Dunkle.

The Archdeacon gasped. "My daughter?" he cried.

"Even so," Dunkle assured him. "Your fifth daughter, to whom I have been engaged for the last three weeks. If you will consent to our marriage2"

The Archdeacon snorted. "My dear fellow," he said, "please talk sense. How do you propose to keep a wife? What is your income?"

"Three hundred a year," said Dunkle, "as near as makes no matter. By my poetry, though, I earn, most years, an extra seven or eight pounds."

The Archdeacon threw himself back in his chair. "And do you suppose," he enquired, "that Chloë is the girl to set up house with you on three hundred and seven or eight pounds a year?"

"No," said Dunkle. "We shall require at least a thousand. But that will be all right. You shall settle an annual seven hundred on her."

"Believe me, my dear boy," said the Archdeacon impressively, "I shall do no such thing."

"Then, believe me, my dear Archdeacon," said Dunkle quite pleasantly, "I shall not lend you my name for your novel."

Silence fell upon the dining-room.

Here—since she is my heroine—it may not come amiss if I provide you with a trifle of information concerning this girl Chloë.

Fifth of the Archdeacon's bouquet of daughters, she was just turned seventeen years old. In an elfin way, with her pointed chin, long nose and big, green eyes, she was pretty. She had her father's red hair and she wore it bobbed in a great crinkling fuzz, out of which, as out of a fiery mist, her little face palely peered. Her teeth were small, even and very white. Her figure was as lithe as a serpent's and almost as slender. She was just fifty-nine inches long. Her hands and feet were very little ones. Her voice was very soft. She wore her clothes very perfectly and they were always just six months ahead.

Her father found her a terrifying little creature. When she was near he could never be quite happy. She always made him feel that she was licking her lips over him. It was his pleasure and habit to hold forth at table (when, at any rate, guests were present) upon current topics, Art, Letters, Music and other things. Sometimes, in the very middle of a period, he would become conscious that Chloë was watching him, and he would not be encouraged to proceed. She had never yet actually dried him up, but now and then it had been rather a near thing. Somehow the gaze of those huge green eyes was very disconcerting to the Archdeacon. They gave him an awkward sensation of being transparent.

None of her sisters had ever affected him in this way; not Lesbia, not Lalage, not Julia not Virginia, her elders; still less her juniors, Atalanta and Oenone. He almost wished the girl would marry. Yes, he felt that he could spare Chloë more easily than any of the others. Nevertheless, she must marry the right kind of man. He didn't want to see her throw herself away, poor child. He could not spare her so easily as all that. But only let her get engaged to some really good, sterling, manly fellow with a heart of gold and about ten thousand a year, and he, the Archdeacon, was not going to raise any difficulties whether on the score of the young man's social position or his lack of intelligence or anything else. And if he lived in America, why, so much the better.

The news, therefore, that the girl had engaged herself—actually engaged herself to this cheap poet, this decadent, unsubstantial organ-grinder of a Dunkle, impressed the Archdeacon very disagreeably. That Chloë should be engaged was good, since it was a step in the direction of her departure from her girlhood's home; but that she should be engaged to a man with only three hundred and sixpence a year was bad, very. As for the proposal that he, her father, should endow her with an income of seven hundred pounds, it was satisfactorily susceptible of characterisation in no single form of words which the Arch- deacon had anywhere at his lawful command.

He did not, as we have seen, attempt to characterise it. He simply declined to entertain it. Of course, if Chloë intended to marry this Dunkle, marry Dunkle she would; he didn't flatter himself that he could do anything whatever to stop her, the time for that sort of thing having long gone by for fathers. He was, therefore, ready to give his consent to this marriage, crazy though he felt it to be, if Dunkle would in return agree to figure before the eyes of the world as the author of "Trixie." But this seven hundred a year he did not propose to disgorge. That was a bit too much altogether. Rather than that, he felt he would be willing to consign his novel to oblivion. Yes. But he trusted that it wouldn't come to that. Dunkle was not the only hard-up scribbler in London.

He decided to say this, or something like it, to Dunkle and crush him.

"My dear fellow," he said, thus putting an end to that silence which began a page or so back, "I shall, of course, be very sorry if you decide not to help me, but I may remind you that, besides yourself, there are other literary young geniuses about. In point of fact, such people are, in London, ten a penny. I shall suit myself very easily. Let us agree to forget this abortive negotiation. Unless, that is to say, you will take Chloë with a couple of hundred pounds down and2" he smiled, "my blessing."

"No, Archdeacon," said Dunkle. "It's seven hundred a year or nothing; and unless you disgorge it there won't be any wedding. In fact, it'll be a bit more than seven hundred a year, because we shall require you to set us up with furniture, say five hundred pounds' worth of it. You can't expect us to start housekeeping without any sticks, can you? Yes—seven hundred a year, and five hundred in furniture's my minimum. Chloë and I can rub along all right enough on a thousand between us, but not a penny less. I want to marry Chloë, and she wants to marry me; but were not such a pair of mutts as to expect to be happy together if we have to be poor. Our generation looks facts in the face, my dear sir. We don't blink 'em and trust to luck, as lovers did in good Queen Victoria's day. We like to see just what we're in for, and unless Chloë and I can see that we're in for a thousand a year, there's nothing doing absolutely. So throw up your hands and take your medicine, Archdeacon, for you've gone too far to turn back."

"What do you mean by that?" the Archdeacon enquired.

"Why," said Dunkle, "I mean that if you don't accept my terms, I'll give you away to the journalists, that's all. Be pleased to remember that I've read quite two-thirds of your novel and that the manuscript, all in your handwriting, is still in my possession."

The Archdeacon could not turn pale; so he turned purple.

"But," he shouted indignantly, "you can't do that, you know. You gave me your word of honour as a gentleman."

"So I did," Dunkle agreed, "but that was before I knew that you wanted to do business with me. The moment you turned what I imagined to be an after-luncheon chat into what you wanted to be a business deal, we ceased to be gentlemen and became mere bargainers, for whom such things as words of honour do not exist. No, you have given yourself into my hands, Archdeacon, and I propose to use my advantage quite ruthlessly. So settle seven hundred a year on Chloë and, as soon as we are married, I will accept responsibility for your awful novel. My position among writers will, of course, be seriously compromised; but I would suffer worse than that to obtain Chloë, and I am young enough, thank Heaven, to live the disgrace down. At least, I hope and believe so."

The Archdeacon turned black. "You unscrupulous young scoundrel," he cried. "Would you extort money from me by threats?"

"Certainly," said Dunkle, "I would commit any crime to get Chloë, short of marrying her on an insufficient income. Aren't I ready to conspire with you to launch that piffling product of yours on the book market? What's a little honest extortion by the side of that? Besides, if I were some Jew with fifty thousand a year, you'd be only too glad to do the right thing by Chloë, because you'd know you wouldn't get me for her if you didn't. It isn't, moreover, as if you couldn't easily afford it. So come, my dear Archdeacon, realise that I have you cold and that the wisest thing you can do is to pay up and look pleasant; for as sure as you wear gaiters down your legs, if you don't accept my terms, I'll put the Press wise to what you've been up to and that no later than to-night."