_Dear Price_,--

As you have seen, I am hard at work at my new novel. The leisure of a novelist is so scanty that I know you'll forgive my writing only a line. I am in no way a.s.sociated with James Orlebar Cloyster, nor do I wish to be. Rather I would forget his very existence.

You are aware of the interests which I have at heart: social reform, the education of the submerged, the physical needs of the young--there is no necessity for me to enumerate my ideals further. To get quick returns from philanthropy, to put remedial organisation into speedy working order wants capital. Cloyster's system was one way of obtaining some of it, but when that failed I had to look out for another. I'm glad I helped in the system, for it made me realise how large an income a novelist can obtain.

I'm glad it failed because its failure suggested that I should try to get for myself those vast sums which I had been getting for the selfish purse of an already wealthy man. Unconsciously, he has played into my hands. I read his books before I signed them, and I find that I have thoroughly absorbed those tricks of his, of style and construction, which opened the public's coffers to him. _The Browns of Brixton_ will eclipse anything that Cloyster has previously done, for this reason, that it will out-Cloyster Cloyster. It is Cloyster with improvements.

In thus abducting his novel-reading public I shall feel no compunction. His serious verse and his society dialogues bring him in so much that he cannot be in danger of financial embarra.s.sment.

_Yours sincerely, John Hatton_.

Now this letter set my brain buzzing like the engine of a stationary Vanguard. I, too, had been in the habit of reading Mr. Cloyster's dialogues before I signed and sent them off. I had often thought to myself, also, that they couldn't take much writing, that it was all a knack; and the more I read of them the more transparent the knack appeared to me to be. Just for a lark, I sat down that very evening and had a go at one. Taking the Park for my scene, I made two or three theatrical celebrities whose names I had seen in the newspapers talk about a horse race. At least, one talked about a horse race, and the others thought she was ga.s.sing about a new musical comedy, the name of the play being the same as the name of the horse, "The Oriental Belle."

A very amusing muddle, with lots of _doubles entendres_, and heaps of adverbial explanation in small print. Such as:

Miss Adeline Genee (with the faint, incipient blush which Mrs. Adair uses to test her Rouge Imperial).

That sort of thing.

I had it typed, and I said, "Price, my boy, there's more Mr. Cloyster in this than ever Mr. Cloyster could have put into it." And the editor of the _Strawberry Leaf_ printed it next issue as a matter of course. I say, "as a matter of course" with intention, because the fellows at the "Moon" took it as a matter of course, too. You see, when it first appeared, I left the copy about the desk in the New Business Room, hoping Tommy Milner or some of them would rush up and congratulate me. But they didn't. They simply said, "Don't litter the place up, old man. Keep your papers, if you _must_ bring 'em here, in your locker downstairs." One of them _did_ say, I fancy, something about its "not being quite up to my usual." They didn't know it was my maiden effort at original composition, and I couldn't tell them. It was galling, you'll admit.

However, I quickly forgot my own troubles in wondering what Mr.

Cloyster was doing. No editor, I foresaw, would accept his society stuff as long as mine was in the market. They wouldn't pay for Cloyster whilst they were offered the refusal of super-Cloyster. Wasn't likely.

You must understand I wasn't over-easy in my conscience about the affair. I had, in a manner of speaking, pinched Mr. Cloyster's job. But then, I argued to myself, he was earning quite as much as was good for any one man by his serious verse.

And at that very minute our slavey, little Ethelbertina, knocked at my bedroom door and gave me a postcard. It was addressed to me in thick, straggly writing, and was so covered with thumb-marks that a Bertillon expert would have gone straight off his nut at the sight of it. "My usbend," began the postcard, "as received yourn. E as no truk wif the other man E is a pots imself an e can do a job of potry as orfen as e 'as a mine to your obegent servent Ada Blake. P.S. me an is ole ant do is writin up for im."

So then I saw how that "Cry" thing in the _St. Stephen's_ had come there.

You heard me give my opinion about telling Norah my past life. Well, you'll agree with me now that there's practically nothing to tell her.

There _is_, of course, little Miss Richards, the waitress in the smoking-room of the Piccadilly Cabin. Her, I mean, with the fuzzy golden hair done low. You've often exchanged "Good evening" with her, I'm sure. Her hair's done low: she used to make rather a point of telling me that. Why, I don't know, especially as it was always tidy and well off her shoulders.

And then there was the haughty lady who sold programmes in the Haymarket Amphitheatre--but she's got the sack, so Cookson informs me.

Therefore, as I shall tell Norah plainly that I disapprove of the Cabin, the past can hatch no egg of discord in the shape of the Cast-Off Glove.

The only thing that I can think of as needing suppression is the part I played in Mr. Cloyster's system.

There's no doubt that the Reverend, Blake and I have, between us, put a fairly considerable spoke in Mr. Cloyster's literary wheel. But what am I to do? To begin with, it's no use my telling Norah about the affair, because it would do her no good, and might tend possibly to lessen her valuation of my capabilities. At present, my dialogues dazzle her; and once your _fiancee_ is dazzled the basis of matrimonial happiness is a.s.sured. Again, looking at it from Mr. Cloyster's point of view, what good would it be to him if I were to stop writing? Both the editor and the public have realised by now that his work is only second-rate.

He can never hope to get a tenth of his original prices, even if his work is accepted, which it won't be; for directly I leave his market clear, someone else will collar it slap off.

Besides, I've no right to stop my dialogues. My duty to Norah is greater than my duty to Mr. Cloyster. Unless I continue to be paid by literature I shall not be able to marry Norah until three years next quarter. The "Moon" has pa.s.sed a rule about it, and an official who marries on an income not larger than eighty pounds per annum is liable to dismissal without notice.

Norah's mother wouldn't let her wait three years, and though fellows have been known to have had a couple of kids at the time of their official marriage, I personally couldn't stand the wear and tear of that hole-and-corner business. It couldn't be done.

_(End of Sidney Price's narrative_.)

Julian Eversleigh's Narrative

Chapter 21

THE TRANSPOSITION OF SENTIMENT

It is all very, very queer. I do not understand it at all. It makes me sleepy to think about it.

A month ago I hated Eva. Tomorrow I marry her by special licence.

Now, what _about_ this?

My brain is not working properly. I am becoming jerky.

I tried to work the thing out algebraically. I wrote it down as an equation, thus:--

HATRED, denoted by x + Eva.

REVERSE OF HATRED, " " y + Eva ONE MONTH " " z.

From which we get:--

x + Eva = (y + Eva)z.

And if anybody can tell me what that means (if it means anything--which I doubt) I shall be grateful. As I said before, my brain is not working properly.

There is no doubt that my temperament has changed, and in a very short s.p.a.ce of time. A month ago I was soured, cynical, I didn't brush my hair, and I slept too much. I talked a good deal about Life. Now I am blithe and optimistic. I use pomade, part in the middle, and sleep eight hours and no more. I have not made an epigram for days. It is all very queer.

I took a new att.i.tude towards life at about a quarter to three on the morning after the Gunton-Cresswells's dance. I had waited for James in his rooms. He had been to the dance.

Examine me for a moment as I wait there.

I had been James' friend for more than two years and a half. I had watched his career from the start. I knew him before he had located exactly the short cut to Fortune. Our friendship embraced the whole period of his sudden, extraordinary success.

Had not envy by that time been dead in me, it might have been pain to me to watch him accomplish unswervingly with his effortless genius the things I had once dreamt I, too, would laboriously achieve.

But I grudged him nothing. Rather, I had pleasure in those triumphs of my friend.

There was no confidence we had withheld from one another.

When he told me of his relations with Margaret Goodwin he had counted on my sympathy as naturally as he had requested and received my advice.

To no living soul, save James, would I have confessed my own tragedy--my hopeless love for Eva.