The Author of "Trixie"/Chapter 8
"I asked you to come round, my dear Bisham," said the Archdeacon; "I asked you to come round, because I want your advice on a matter of conscience."
"It's hardly for me, sir" Dunkle began diffidently.
"Yes, it is;" said the Archdeacon: "Indeed it is for you or nobody. You alone can do what is required to set my mind at rest. And so, not to waste words, let me tell you that it is my wish to take the world into our secret, to confess, in short, that I am the author of 'Trixie.'"
"Now," thought Dunkle, "what the deuce is all this? This won't do at all."
"My dear Archdeacon," he said, "your offer is most generous; but, believe me, I have no wish to go back upon our bargain. I have lived through the worst of it by now. My reputation as a serious writer is gone beyond recall. I cannot permit you to make yourself uneasy about me."
The Archdeacon coughed behind his hand. "You mistake me, Bisham," he said. "It's about myself that I am uneasy. The time has come, my dear boy, for me to remember that I am an Archdeacon of the Church of England. It's a lie that we're acting, Bisham, and, come what may, I am resolved to proclaim the truth. My conscience will let me do no other."
Dunkle decided to abandon his scheme of threatening to expose his father-in-law unless he wrote him another novel. Otherwise than thus must he achieve his purpose.
"That's all very well for you, Archdeacon," he said, "but how about me? Why am I to be branded a liar in order that your conscience may be relieved of a burden? I tell you I'm reconciled by now to being thought the author of 'Trixie.' I've got Chloë by this deal of ours, and a whole hill of money as well, and I'm quite satisfied. I strongly object to this idea of yours. It's bad enough to be known as the author of 'Trixie,' but to be known as the poet who agreed to be known as the author of 'Trixie,' no matter for what consideration, will be intolerable. I'd much rather appear in the eyes of the world as an honest, if rotten, novelist than as an artist who has sold his fair reputation for lucre. I say, be hanged to your conscience!"
"All right," said the Archdeacon, "be hanged to it by all means. Here's the truth, Bisham: I can no longer go lacking the fame which is my due. I wrote 'Trixie,' and 'Trixie' is by far the best Best Seller that's ever been seen. I want to be known as its author. I must be known as its author, Bisham. And what's more, Bisham, I will be known as its author."
"But," said Dunkle, "what's happened to you, Archdeacon? What's caused you to turn round like this? I can't understand?"
"I can't understand it myself, Bisham. I only know that it is so. Six months ago my one wish was to keep my authorship hidden. To-day I can neither eat nor sleep for the longing which possesses me to declare it. To-day when I read a complimentary account of my book and find you being loaded with praises, I can hardly contain myself. When I see a picture of you labelled 'The world-famous author of "Trixie,"' I am ready to beat my head against the wall. Oh! I was a fool and worse than a fool ever to yield to the temptation to write a novel. An archidiaconal Jekyll, I called from the depths of my being (where he had slumbered since my birth and where he might well have continued to slumber till my death) that Hyde whose popular and facile pen a mysterious fate has appointed to be the instrument of my destruction."
"Yes," said Dunkle eagerly, "if you make this thing public, it's all up with your advancement in the Church. Absolutely all U.P. it is."
"I don't care," said the Archdeacon, as he jumped up and began to stride about the room. "I can't go on like this. I can no longer endure hearing people tell me what a clever fellow you are. I dare say I'm mad, but there it is. I must and will have the fame that is my due. Yes, though the sky fall and crush me!"
"I won't do it," said Dunkle. "Think of the scandal. Think of your family. Think of Chloë. It'll just about kill her with shame. Her father the author of 'Trixie'! She'll simply wilt and fade away."
"Well, but," said the Archdeacon, acutely, while he right-about-faced at the door, "it hasn't killed her to have her husband the author of it."
"No," Dunkle explained, "because I told her I wrote it as a joke, a burlesque, a parody on the Novel of Soupiness. But she'll never believe that you wrote it with any humorous intention. She's told me a hundred times that you've no sense of humour whatever. I don't say you have or you haven't. I only say that you'll never be able to persuade Chloë that you meant to be funny with that book and that she will die of shame at being shown up as the child of its author. Now I don't want to have Chloë dying, or even crying. So I refuse to have anything to do with this nonsense of telling the truth. Of course I can't prevent you from doing it, if you insist; but I give you fair warning, Archdeacon, that I shall flatly deny your allegation that you are the author of 'Trixie.' And how you propose to get over that I don't quite see, for since your original manuscript is burnt, you haven't a scrap of proof that you wrote the book. It'll just be your unsupported word against mine, only I shall be able to point to the rather telling fact that you've said nothing hitherto and have let me take all the royalties and all the notoriety. Why, Archdeacon, they'll simply think that you've suddenly gone off your castors—that's all they'll think. There's not a living soul that'll accept your story."
The Archdeacon halted by the window to stare distastefully at his son-in-law. "Bisham," he said at last, "you have your price. Name it." And off he went again at five miles an hour.
"Another novel," said Dunkle. "A manuscript on which I can raise ten thousand pounds advance royalties from Cappers. A book which will bring me in another fifty or sixty thousand to clear Chloë and me of debt and set us on our feet for the rest of our lives. Once we're out of debt we shall draw in our horns considerably. We've had our fling, and we'll be content to live much more simply from now on. So write me a successor to 'Trixie,' Archdeacon, and I promise that, six months after its publication, I'll back you up in any story you care to tell about the true authorship of it and of 'Trixie.' But it's understood, of course, that I get all royalties on both books for ever."
"A new novel, eh?" said the Archdeacon reflectively. Again he halted—this time by the chimney-piece. "A new novel, eh?"
"That's the idea," said Dunkle. "Think," he went on, encouragingly, "how fine it'll be for you to have a lot more favourable reviews to read. You'll like that, sir."
The Archdeacon licked his lips. "Yes, Bisham," he said, "you're right. I shall like that excellently. Nor, having regard to the disclosure that will be about to be made, shall I, I believe, grudge you any of the praise that may at first come your way. As for the money, you'll be extremely welcome to it. You swear to confess, though?"
"I swear," said Dunkle, and he thought; "And I shouldn't wonder if I do it, too, for what an advertisement it'll be! It'll boom that successor to 'Trixie' into the second half-million in no time."
"Good," said the Archdeacon. "I'll begin it at once. It'll take me something like six months, I expect. Allow it another three to be published, and another three of sale. Then we'll confess. Is that right?"
"That's right," said Dunkle. "I said six, but three'll do. And who knows? By that time you may have been given your bishopric."
It took the Archdeacon but three months to write the successor to "Trixie," so eagerly did he pant to begin hearing people tell him what a splendid novelist he was.
To account during this period to his household for his renewed absorption in literary toil, he gave out, unblushingly, that he was once more busy upon his "Lactantius."
The moment he had written the last word of "Edgar and Lilian" (as the new book was called), he telephoned to Dunkle that the manuscript was ready for him.
Dunkle was at the Vicarage twenty minutes after replacing his receiver upon its hook.