The Author of "Trixie"/Chapter 2
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 can"
"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 pounds"
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? Yet" he hesitated—"on second thoughts, I'm not sure that it is altogether beyond the bounds of"
"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 tonight, 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.