CHAPTER XVIII

During the greater part of that summer Lucian had been working steadily on two things: the tragedy which Mr. Harcourt was to produce at the Athen?um in December, and a new poem which Mr. Robertson intended to publish about the middle of the autumn season. Lucian was flying at high game in respect of both. The tragedy was intended to introduce something of the spirit and dignity of Greek art to the nineteenth-century stage—there was to be nothing common or mean in connection with its production; it was to be a gorgeous spectacle, but one of high distinction, and Lucian’s direct intention in writing it was to set English dramatic art on an elevation to which it had never yet been lifted. The poem was an equally ambitious attempt to revive the epic; its subject, the Norman Conquest, had filled Lucian’s mind since boyhood, and from his tenth year onwards he had read every book and document procurable which treated of that fascinating period. He had begun the work during his Oxford days; the greater part of it was now in type, and Mr. Robertson was incurring vast expense in the shape of author’s corrections. Lucian polished and rewrote in a fashion that was exasperating; his publisher, never suspecting that so many alterations would be made, had said nothing about them in drawing up a formal agreement, and he was daily obliged to witness a disappearance of profits.

‘What a pity that you did not make all your alterations and corrections before sending the manuscript to press!’ he exclaimed one day, when Lucian called with a bundle of proofs which had been hacked about in such{159} a fashion as to need complete resetting. ‘It would have saved a lot of trouble—and expense.’

Lucian stared at him with the eyes of a young owl, round and wondering.

‘How on earth can you see what a thing looks like until it’s in print?’ he said irritably. ‘What are printers for?’

‘Just so—just so!’ responded the publisher. ‘But really, you know, this book is being twice set—every sheet has had to be pulled to pieces, and it adds to the expense.’

Lucian’s eyes grew rounder than ever.

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ he answered. ‘That is your province—don’t bother me about it.’

Robertson laughed. He was beginning to find out, after some experience, that Lucian was imperturbable on certain points.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘By the bye, how much more copy is there—or if copy is too vulgar a word for your mightiness, how many more lines or verses?’

‘About four hundred and fifty lines,’ answered Lucian.

‘Say another twenty-four pages,’ said Robertson. ‘Well, it runs now to three hundred and fifty—that means that it’s going to be a book of close upon four hundred pages.’

‘Well?’ questioned Lucian.

‘I was merely thinking that it is a long time since the public was asked to buy a volume containing four hundred pages of blank verse,’ remarked the publisher. ‘I hope this won’t frighten anybody.’

‘You make some very extraordinary remarks,’ said Lucian, with unmistakable signs of annoyance. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing!’ answered Robertson, who was on sufficient terms of intimacy with Lucian to be able to chaff him a little. ‘I was merely thinking of trade considerations.’

‘You appear to be always “merely thinking” of{160} something extraordinary,’ said Lucian. ‘What can trade considerations have to do with the length of my poem?’

‘What indeed?’ said the publisher, and began to talk of something else. But when Lucian had gone he looked rather doubtfully at the pile of interlineated proof, and glanced from it to the thin octavo with which the new poet had won all hearts nearly five years before. ‘I wish it had been just a handful of gold like that!’ he said to himself. ‘Four hundred pages of blank verse all at one go!—it’s asking a good deal, unless it catches on with the old maids and the dowagers, like the Course of Time and the Epic of Hades. Well, we shall see; but I’d rather have some of your earlier lyrics than this weighty performance, Lucian, my boy—I would indeed!’

Lucian finished his epic before the middle of July, and fell to work on the final stages of his tragedy. He had promised to read it to the Athen?um company on the first day of the coming October, and there was still much to do in shaping and revising it. He began to feel impatient and irritable; the sight of his desk annoyed him, and he took to running out of town into the country whenever the wish for the shade of woods and the peacefulness of the lanes came upon him. Before the end of the month he felt unable to work, and he repaired to Sprats for counsel and comfort.

‘I don’t know how or why it is,’ he said, telling her his troubles, ‘but I don’t feel as if I had a bit of work left in me. I haven’t any power of concentration left—I’m always wanting to be doing something else. And yet I haven’t worked very hard this year, and we have been away a great deal. It’s nearly time for going away again, too—I believe Haidee has already made some arrangement.’

‘Lucian,’ said Sprats, ‘why don’t you go down to Simonstower? They would be so glad to have you at the vicarage—there’s heaps of room. And just think{161} how jolly it is there in August and September—I wish I could go!’

Lucian’s face lighted up—some memory of the old days had suddenly fired his soul. He saw the familiar scenes once more under the golden sunlight—the grey castle and its Norman keep, the winding river, the shelving woods, and, framing all, the gold and purple of the moorlands.

‘Simonstower!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, of course—it’s Simonstower that I want. We’ll go at once. Sprats, why can’t you come too?’

Sprats shook her head.

‘I can’t,’ she answered. ‘I shall have a holiday in September, but I can’t take a single day before. I’m sure it will do you good if you go to Simonstower, Lucian—the north-country air will brighten you up. You haven’t been there for four years, and the sight of the old faces and places will act like a tonic.’

‘I’ll arrange it at once,’ said Lucian, delighted at the idea, and he went off to announce his projects to Haidee. Haidee looked at him incredulously.

‘Whatever are you thinking of, Lucian?’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember that we’re cramful of engagements from the beginning of August to the end of September?’ She recited a list of arrangements already entered into, which included a three-weeks’ sojourn on Eustace Darlington’s steam-yacht, and a fortnight’s stay at his shooting-box in the Highlands. ‘Had you forgotten?’ she asked.

‘I believe I had!’ he replied; ‘we seem to have so many engagements. Look here: do you know, I think I’ll back out. I must have this tragedy finished for Harcourt and his people by October, and I can’t do it if I go rushing about from one place to another. I think I shall go down to Simonstower and have a quiet time and finish my work there—I’ll explain it all to Darlington.’

‘As you please,’ she answered. ‘Of course, I shall keep my engagements.’{162}

‘Oh, of course,’ he said. ‘You won’t miss me, you know. I suppose there are lots of other people going?’

‘I suppose so,’ she replied carelessly, and there was an end of the conversation. Lucian explained to Darlington that night that he would not be able to keep his engagement, and set forth the reasons with a fine air of devotion to business. Darlington sympathised, and applauded Lucian’s determination—he knew, he said, what a lot depended upon the success of the new play, and he’d no doubt Lucian wouldn’t feel quite easy until it was all in order. After that he must have a long rest—it would be rather good fun to winter in Egypt. Lucian agreed, and next day made his preparations for a descent upon Simonstower. At heart he was rather more than glad to escape the yacht, the Highland shooting-box, and the people whom he would have met. He cared little for the sea, and hated any form of sport which involved the slaying of animals or birds; the thought of Simonstower in the last weeks of summer was grateful to him, and all that he now wanted was to find himself in a Great Northern express gliding out of King’s Cross, bound for the moorlands.

He went round to the hospital on the morning of his departure, and told Sprats with the glee of a schoolboy who is going home for the holidays, that he was off that very afternoon. He was rattling on as to his joy when Sprats stopped him.

‘And Haidee?’ she asked. ‘Does she like it?’

‘Haidee?’ he said. ‘But Haidee is not going. She’s joining a party on Darlington’s yacht, and they’re going round the coast to his place in the Highlands. I was to have gone, you know, but really I couldn’t have worked, and I must work—it’s absolutely necessary that the play should be finished by the end of September.’

Sprats looked anxious and troubled.

‘Look here, Lucian,’ she said, ‘do you think it’s quite right to leave Haidee like that?—isn’t it rather neglecting your duties?’{163}

‘But why?’ he asked, with such sincerity that it became plain to Sprats that the question had never even entered his mind. ‘Haidee’s all right. It would be beastly selfish on my part if I dragged her down to Simonstower for nearly two months—you know, she doesn’t care a bit for the country, and there would be no society for her. She needs sea air, and three weeks on Darlington’s yacht will do her a lot of good.’

‘Who are the other people?’ asked Sprats.

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ Lucian replied. ‘The usual Darlington lot, I suppose. Between you and me, Sprats, I’m glad I’m not going. I get rather sick of that sort of thing—it’s too much of a hot-house existence. And I don’t care about the people one meets, either.’

‘And yet you let Haidee meet them!’ Sprats exclaimed. ‘Really, Lucian, you grow more and more paradoxical.’

‘But Haidee likes them,’ he insisted. ‘That’s just the sort of thing she does like. And if she likes it, why shouldn’t she have it?’

‘You are a curious couple,’ said Sprats.

‘I think we are to be praised for our common-sense view of things,’ he said. ‘I am often told that I am a dreamer—you’ve said so yourself, you know—but in real, sober truth, I’m an awfully matter-of-fact sort of person. I don’t live on illusions and ideals and things—I worship the God of the Things that Are!’

Sprats gazed at him as a mother might gaze at a child who boasts of having performed an impossible task.

‘Oh, you absolute baby!’ she said. ‘Is your pretty head stuffed with wool or with feathers? Paragon of Common-Sense! Compendium of all the Practical Qualities! I wonder I don’t shrivel in your presence like a bit of bacon before an Afric sun. Do you think you’ll catch your train?’

‘Not if I stay here listening to abuse. Seriously, Sprats, it’s all right—about Haidee, I mean,’ he said appealingly.

‘If you were glissading down a precipice at a hundred{164} miles a minute, Lucian, everything would be all right with you until your head broke off or you snapped in two,’ she answered. ‘You’re the Man who Never Stops to Think. Go away and be quiet at Simonstower—you’re mad to get there, and you’ll probably leave it within a week.’

In making this calculation, however, Sprats was wrong. Lucian went down to Simonstower and stayed there three weeks. He divided his time between the vicarage and the farm; he renewed his acquaintance with the villagers, and had forgotten nothing of anything relating to them; he spent the greater part of the day in the open air, lived plainly and slept soundly, and during the second week of his stay he finished his tragedy. Mr. Chilverstone read it and the revised proofs of the epic; as he had a great liking for blank verse, rounded periods, and the grand manner, he prophesied success for both. Lucian drank in his applause with eagerness—he had a great belief in his old tutor’s critical powers, and felt that whatever he stamped with the seal of his admiration must be good. He had left London in somewhat depressed and irritable spirits because of his inability to work; now that the work was completed and praised by a critic in whom he had good reason to repose the fullest confidence, his spirits became as light and joyous as ever.

Lucian would probably have remained longer at Simonstower but for a chance meeting with Lord Saxonstowe, who had got a little weary of the ancestral hall and had conceived a notion of going across to Norway and taking a long walking tour in a district well out of the tourist track. He mentioned this to Lucian, and—why, he could scarcely explain to himself at the moment—asked him to go with him. Lucian’s imagination was fired at the mere notion of exploring a country which he had never seen before, and he accepted the invitation with fervour. A week later they sailed from Newcastle, and for a whole month they spent nights and days side by side amidst comparative solitudes. Each began to{165} understand the other, and when, just before the end of September, they returned to England, they had become firm friends, and were gainers by their pilgrimage in more ways than one.