The Author of "Trixie"/Chapter 3
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."
"Nevertheless"
"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 is" 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 marriage"
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 Archdeacon 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 and" 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."
Let us not prolong this agony. No sensitively minded person can take pleasure in the spectacle of a just man (however red his whiskers are) struggling in the toils. When those toils are largely of his own manufacture, the scene becomes only the more intolerable. To the pain of looking on while he is robbed by a rascal we add our sorrow that he should have given that rascal the opportunity of robbing him; were he, too, a rascal, it would be our duty to rejoice at the false step which has now landed him in trouble. But our tears alone may attend the false steps of the good; our tears alone their consequences greet.
Suffice it, then, that the Archdeacon gave presently in, as was, of course, what had to happen. The manuscript being in Dunkle's possession, it was not open to its author to put it in the fire and defy a villain to do his worst. But apart from this, even though the Pastor of Souls might more easily contemplate taking such a step than providing his daughter with seven hundred a year, the Pastor of Souls, I may remind you, was not the only person to be considered. You are forgetting the Artist Fellow.
What did that vain and improvident wastrel care for the pocket of the Archdeacon, if only his desire to be printed might be satisfied? What was it to him though the good gentleman with whom he resided should, with his whole family, be brought to a crust, so long as a certain unborn novel should first have seen the light? Put on the fire what he had toiled five months to make! Not so! Not so, by Heaven! "Trixie" must out at any cost. "And after all," he argued in the Archdeacon's ear, "Dunkle's right. You can afford it perfectly well. Those Belgian Distillery shares are worth double to-day what you gave for them. Don't wait for them to go any higher. If you sell out to-morrow you'll clear twenty thousand. And you can realise on that £10,000 of Ostend Casinos. You know you've been a bit doubtful of them lately. If you hold on you'll get stung as like as not. But what I say is, I'm going to see those press notices if it blinds me."
To be brief, he had his way. The Archdeacon capitulated.
"But," he said—and this was his last kick—"the book must appear before you and Chloë marry. On that I positively insist. You have gravely shaken my confidence in you, Dunkle, and I cannot risk having you draw back, when you have got all out of me that you want, and decline to complete your part of our bargain."
"I'm afraid," said Dunkle, "that you'll have to. For do you not see, my very dear sir, that if that book comes out with my name on it before the wedding, Chloë will refuse to marry me. And quite right too. What's more, nothing would induce me to marry a girl who would be willing to marry the author of your beastly tale. So if she didn't break our engagement, I should have to. But in either case, my bargain with you would go phut. So you see that you'll have to trust me, and that's all there is to it. But you needn't be afraid. I am not the man to break a bargain. In business I am the soul of probity. It is understood that if you do your part I will do mine, at whatever cost to myself. The odium of having written your novel shall rest upon me, not only when it is published, but for ever after. No living soul save us two shall ever know the truth. And now it only remains for me to point out to you that the sooner Chloë and I are wedded, the sooner 'Trixie' will make her bow to the public."
The Archdeacon sighed heavily. "So be it," he said.
"There's just one other thing," Dunkle observed. "Any money that the book may earn is to be mine. I sincerely hope it won't be much, but, whatever there is, I may as well have it. Do you agree?"
The Archdeacon had no more fight in him. "I agree," he said brokenly. "The wine is with you, Dunkle."
The door of the dining-room was opened with violence and Chloë came in, caparisoned for the taxi in a large cloak of ermine fur.
"Buck up, Bisham," she said crossly, "what the dickens do you think you're doing, boozing port in here with the governor? We ought to have been off ten minutes ago."
Dunkle got up. "Tuck in your shirt, old plum," he responded amiably. "I've been fixing things with your father—about us, you know. He's going to stand you seven hundred a year, settled, and we're to be married just as soon as you say."
He paused for congratulations.
"Oh, are we?" she said. "Well, see here: unless you're out of this and into the cab inside of three seconds, you can wash me out of any arrangements you may be making for the future. I don't have too much use for young men that I have to dig up to take me dancing, no matter how they've been fixing things with my father." She turned on her heel, and, still talking, followed her betrothed out of the room. The Archdeacon, seated at the table, heard her voice die away down the hall. A door slammed.
He smiled, a trifle wanly, and helped himself to port.