The Death of the Lion.........................................................................................................................................1

Henry James .............................................................................................................................................1

I HAD simply, I suppose, a change of heart, and it must have begun when I received my manuscript back

from Mr. Pinhorn. Mr. Pinhorn was my "chief," as he was called in the office: he had the high mission of

bringing the paper up. This was a weekly periodical, which had been supposed to be almost past redemption

when he took hold of it. It was Mr. Deedy who had let the thing down so dreadfully: he was never mentioned

in the office now save in connexion with that misdemeanour. Young as I was I had been in a manner taken

over from Mr. Deedy, who had been owner as well as editor; forming part of a promiscuous lot, mainly plant

and officefurniture, which poor Mrs. Deedy, in her bereavement and depression, parted with at a rough

valuation. I could account for my continuity but on the supposition that I had been cheap. I rather resented the

practice of fathering all flatness on my late protector, who was in his unhonoured grave; but as I had my way

to make I found matter enough for complacency in being on a "staff." At the same time I was aware of my

exposure to suspicion as a product of the old lowering system. This made me feel I was doubly bound to have

ideas, and had doubtless been at the bottom of my proposing to Mr. Pinhorn that I should lay my lean hands

on Neil Paraday. I remember how he looked at me quite, to begin with, as if he had never heard of this

celebrity, who indeed at that moment was by no means in the centre of the heavens; and even when I had

knowingly explained he expressed but little confidence in the demand for any such stuff. When I had

reminded him that the great principle on which we were supposed to work was just to create the demand we

required, he considered a moment and then returned: "I see you want to write him up."

"Whatever there is we should have it all to ourselves, for he hasn't been touched."

This argument was effective and Mr. Pinhorn responded. "Very well, touch him." Then he added: "But where

"You want me to go down and see him?" I asked when I had enjoyed his visible search for the obscure suburb

"I don't 'want' anything the proposal's your own. But you must remember that that's the way we do things

Unregenerate as I was I could read the queer implications of this speech. The present owner's superior virtue

as well as his deeper craft spoke in his reference to the late editor as one of that baser sort who deal in false

representations. Mr. Deedy would as soon have sent me to call on Neil Paraday as he would have published a

"holidaynumber"; but such scruples presented themselves as mere ignoble thrift to his successor, whose own

sincerity took the form of ringing doorbells and whose definition of genius was the art of finding people at

home. It was as if Mr. Deedy had published reports without his young men's having, as Pinhorn would have

said, really been there. I was unregenerate, as I have hinted, and couldn't be concerned to straighten out the

journalistic morals of my chief, feeling them indeed to be an abyss over the edge of which it was better not to

peer. Really to be there this time moreover was a vision that made the idea of writing something subtle about

Neil Paraday only the more inspiring. I would be as considerate as even Mr. Deedy could have wished, and

yet I should be as present as only Mr. Pinhorn could conceive. My allusion to the sequestered manner in

which Mr. Paraday lived it had formed part of my explanation, though I knew of it only by hearsay was, I

could divine, very much what had made Mr. Pinhorn nibble. It struck him as inconsistent with the success of

his paper that any one should be so sequestered as that. And then wasn't an immediate exposure of everything

just what the public wanted? Mr. Pinhorn effectually called me to order by reminding me of the promptness

with which I had met Miss Braby at Liverpool on her return from her fiasco in the States. Hadn't we

published, while its freshness and flavour were unimpaired, Miss Braby's own version of that great

international episode? I felt somewhat uneasy at this lumping of the actress and the author, and I confess that

after having enlisted Mr. Pinhorn's sympathies I procrastinated a little. I had succeeded better than I wished,

and I had, as it happened, work nearer at hand. A few days later I called on Lord Crouchley and carried off in

triumph the most unintelligible statement that had yet appeared of his lordship's reasons for his change of

front. I thus set in motion in the daily papers columns of virtuous verbiage. The following week I ran down to

Brighton for a chat, as Mr. Pinhorn called it, with Mrs. Bounder, who gave me, on the subject of her divorce,

many curious particulars that had not been articulated in court. If ever an article flowed from the primal fount

it was that article on Mrs. Bounder. By this time, however, I became aware that Neil Paraday's new book was

on the point of appearing and that its approach had been the ground of my original appeal to Mr. Pinhorn,

who was now annoyed with me for having lost so many days. He bundled me off we would at least not lose

another. I've always thought his sudden alertness a remarkable example of the journalistic instinct. Nothing

had occurred, since I first spoke to him, to create a visible urgency, and no enlightenment could possibly have

reached him. It was a pure case of profession flair he had smelt the coming glory as an animal smells its

I MAY as well say at once that this little record pretends in no degree to be a picture either of my

introduction to Mr. Paraday or of certain proximate steps and stages. The scheme of my narrative allows no

space for these things, and in any case a prohibitory sentiment would hang about my recollection of so rare an

hour. These meagre notes are essentially private, so that if they see the light the insidious forces that, as my

story itself shows, make at present for publicity will simply have overmastered my precautions. The curtain

fell lately enough on the lamentable drama. My memory of the day I alighted at Mr. Paraday's door is a fresh

memory of kindness, hospitality, compassion, and of the wonderful illuminating talk in which the welcome

was conveyed. Some voice of the air had taught me the right moment, the moment of his life at which an act

of unexpected young allegiance might most come home to him. He had recently recovered from a long, grave

illness. I had gone to the neighbouring inn for the night, but I spent the evening in his company, and he

insisted the next day on my sleeping under his roof. I hadn't an indefinite leave: Mr. Pinhorn supposed us to

put our victims through on the gallop. It was later, in the office, that the rude motions of the jig were set to

music. I fortified myself, however, as my training had taught me to do, by the conviction that nothing could

be more advantageous for my article than to be written in the very atmosphere. I said nothing to Mr. Paraday

about it, but in the morning, after my remove from the inn, while he was occupied in his study, as he had

notified me he should need to be, I committed to paper the main heads of my impression. Then thinking to

commend myself to Mr. Pinhorn by my celerity, I walked out and posted my little packet before luncheon.

Once my paper was written I was free to stay on, and if it was calculated to divert attention from my levity in

so doing I could reflect with satisfaction that I had never been so clever. I don't mean to deny of course that I

was aware it was much too good for Mr. Pinhorn; but I was equally conscious that Mr. Pinhorn had the

supreme shrewdness of recognising from time to time the cases in which an article was not too bad only

because it was too good. There was nothing he loved so much as to print on the right occasion a thing he

hated. I had begun my visit to the great man on a Monday, and on the Wednesday his book came out. A copy

of it arrived by the first post, and he let me go out into the garden with it immediately after breakfast, I read it

from beginning to end that day, and in the evening he asked me to remain with him the rest of the week and

That night my manuscript came back from Mr. Pinhorn, accompanied with a letter the gist of which was the

desire to know what I meant by trying to fob off on him such stuff. That was the meaning of the question, if

not exactly its form, and it made my mistake immense to me. Such as this mistake was I could now only look

it in the face and accept it. I knew where I had failed, but it was exactly where I couldn't have succeeded. I

had been sent down to be personal and then in point of fact hadn't been personal at all: what I had dispatched

to London was just a little finicking feverish study of my author's talent. Anything less relevant to Mr.

Pinhorn's purpose couldn't well be imagined, and he was visibly angry at my having (at his expense, with a

secondclass ticket) approached the subject of our enterprise only to stand off so helplessly. For myself, I

knew but too well what had happened, and how a miracle as pretty as some old miracle of legend had

been wrought on the spot to save me. There had been a big brush of wings, the flash of an opaline robe, and

then, with a great cool stir of the air, the sense of an angel's having swooped down and caught me to his

bosom. He held me only till the danger was over, and it all took place in a minute. With my manuscript back

on my hands I understood the phenomenon better, and the reflexions I made on it are what I meant, at the

beginning of this anecdote, by my change of heart. Mr. Pinhorn's note was not only a rebuke decidedly stern,

but an invitation immediately to send him it was the case to say so the genuine article, the revealing and

reverberating sketch to the promise of which, and of which alone, I owed my squandered privilege. A week

or two later I recast my peccant paper and, giving it a particular application to Mr. Paraday's new book,

obtained for it the hospitality of another journal, where, I must admit, Mr. Pinhorn was so far vindicated as

I WAS frankly, at the end of three days, a very prejudiced critic, so that one morning when, in the garden, my

great man had offered to read me something I quite held my breath as I listened. It was the written scheme of

another book something put aside long ago, before his illness, but that he had lately taken out again to

reconsider. He had been turning it round when I came down on him, and it had grown magnificently under

this second hand. Loose liberal confident, it might have passed for a great gossiping eloquent letter the

overflow into talk of an artist's amorous plan. The theme I thought singularly rich, quite the strongest he had

yet treated; and this familiar statement of it, full too of fine maturities, was really, in summarised splendour, a

mine of gold, a precious independent work. I remember rather profanely wondering whether the ultimate

production could possibly keep at the pitch. His reading of the fond epistle, at any rate, made me feel as if I

were, for the advantage of posterity, in close correspondence with him were the distinguished person to

whom it had been affectionately addressed. It was a high distinction simply to be told such things. The idea

he now communicated had all the freshness, the flushed fairness, of the conception untouched and untried: it

was Venus rising from the sea and before the airs had blown upon her. I had never been so throbbingly

present at such an unveiling. But when he had tossed the last bright word after the others, as I had seen

cashiers in banks, weighing mounds of coin, drop a final sovereign into the tray, I knew a sudden prudent

"My dear master, how, after all, are you going to do it? It's infinitely noble, but what time it will take, what

patience and independence, what assured, what perfect conditions! Oh for a lone isle in a tepid sea!"

"Isn't this practically a lone isle, and aren't you, as an encircling medium, tepid enough?" he asked, alluding

with a laugh to the wonder of my young admiration and the narrow limits of his little provincial home. "Time

isn't what I've lacked hitherto: the question hasn't been to find it, but to use it. Of course my illness made,

while it lasted, a great hole but I dare say there would have been a hole at any rate. The earth we tread has

Neil Paraday looked at me with eyes such pleasant eyes as he had in which, as I now recall their

expression, I seem to have seen a dim imagination of his fate. He was fifty years old, and his illness had been

We had both got up, quickened as by this clearer air, and he had lighted a cigarette. I had taken a fresh one,

which with an intenser smile, by way of answer to my exclamation, he applied to the flame of his match. "If I

weren't better I shouldn't have thought of THAT!" He flourished his script in his hand.

"I don't want to be discouraging, but that's not true," I returned. "I'm sure that during the months you lay here

in pain you had visitations sublime. You thought of a thousand things. You think of more and more all the

while. That's what makes you, if you'll pardon my familiarity, so respectable. At a time when so many people

are spent you come into your second wind. But, thank God, all the same, you're better! Thank God, too,

you're not, as you were telling me yesterday, 'successful.' If YOU weren't a failure what would be the use of

trying? That's my one reserve on the subject of your recovery that it makes you 'score,' as the newspapers

say. It looks well in the newspapers, and almost anything that does that's horrible. 'We are happy to announce

that Mr. Paraday, the celebrated author, is again in the enjoyment of excellent health.' Somehow I shouldn't

"You won't see it; I'm not in the least celebrated my obscurity protects me. But couldn't you bear even to

"Dead passe encore; there's nothing so safe. One never knows what a living artist may do one has

mourned so many. However, one must make the worst of it. You must be as dead as you can."

At this moment the parlourmaid appeared in the door that opened from the garden: Paraday lived at no great

cost, and the frisk of petticoats, with a timorous "Sherry, sir?" was about his modest mahogany. He allowed

half his income to his wife, from whom he had succeeded in separating without redundancy of legend. I had a

general faith in his having behaved well, and I had once, in London, taken Mrs. Paraday down to dinner. He

now turned to speak to the maid, who offered him, on a tray, some card or note, while, agitated, excited, I

wandered to the end of the precinct. The idea of his security became supremely dear to me, and I asked

myself if I were the same young man who had come down a few days before to scatter him to the four winds.

When I retraced my steps he had gone into the house, and the woman the second London post had come in

had placed my letters and a newspaper on a bench. I sat down there to the letters, which were a brief

business, and then, without heeding the address, took the paper from its envelope. It was the journal of

highest renown, THE EMPIRE of that morning. It regularly came to Paraday, but I remembered that neither

of us had yet looked at the copy already delivered. This one had a great mark on the "editorial" page, and,

uncrumpling the wrapper, I saw it to be directed to my host and stamped with the name of his publishers. I

instantly divined that THE EMPIRE had spoken of him, and I've not forgotten the odd little shock of the

circumstance. It checked all eagerness and made me drop the paper a moment. As I sat there conscious of a

palpitation I think I had a vision of what was to be. I had also a vision of the letter I would presently address

to Mr. Pinhorn, breaking, as it were, with Mr. Pinhorn. Of course, however, the next minute the voice of THE

The article wasn't, I thanked heaven, a review; it was a "leader," the last of three, presenting Neil Paraday to

the human race. His new book, the fifth from his hand, had been but a day or two out, and THE EMPIRE,

already aware of it, fired, as if on the birth of a prince, a salute of a whole column. The guns had been

booming these three hours in the house without our suspecting them. The big blundering newspaper had

discovered him, and now he was proclaimed and anointed and crowned. His place was assigned him as

publicly as if a fat usher with a wand had pointed to the topmost chair; he was to pass up and still up, higher

and higher, between the watching faces and the envious sounds away up to the dais and the throne. The

article was "epochmaking," a landmark in his life; he had taken rank at a bound, waked up a national glory.

A national glory was needed, and it was an immense convenience he was there. What all this meant rolled

over me, and I fear I grew a little faint it meant so much more than I could say "yea" to on the spot. In a

flash, somehow, all was different; the tremendous wave I speak of had swept something away. It had knocked

down, I suppose, my little customary altar, my twinkling tapers and my flowers, and had reared itself into the

likeness of a temple vast and bare. When Neil Paraday should come out of the house he would come out a

contemporary. That was what had happened: the poor man was to be squeezed into his horrible age. I felt as

if he had been overtaken on the crest of the hill and brought back to the city. A little more and he would have

WHEN he came out it was exactly as if he had been in custody, for beside him walked a stout man with a big

black beard, who, save that he wore spectacles, might have been a policeman, and in whom at a second

"This is Mr. Morrow," said Paraday, looking, I thought, rather white: "he wants to publish heaven knows

I winced as I remembered that this was exactly what I myself had wanted. "Already?" I cried with a sort of

Mr. Morrow glared, agreeably, through his glasses: they suggested the electric headlights of some monstrous

modem ship, and I felt as if Paraday and I were tossing terrified under his bows. I saw his momentum was

irresistible. "I was confident that I should be the first in the field. A great interest is naturally felt in Mr.

"I hadn't the least idea of it," said Paraday, as if he had been told he had been snoring.

"I find he hasn't read the article in THE EMPIRE," Mr. Morrow remarked to me. "That's so very interesting

it's something to start with," he smiled. He had begun to pull off his gloves, which were violently new, and to

look encouragingly round the little garden. As a "surrounding" I felt how I myself had already been taken in;

I was a little fish in the stomach of a bigger one. "I represent," our visitor continued, "a syndicate of

influential journals, no less than thirtyseven, whose public whose publics, I may say are in peculiar

sympathy with Mr. Paraday's line of thought. They would greatly appreciate any expression of his views on

the subject of the art he so nobly exemplifies. In addition to my connexion with the syndicate just mentioned

I hold a particular commission from THE TATLER, whose most prominent department, 'Smatter and Chatter'

I dare say you've often enjoyed it attracts such attention. I was honoured only last week, as a

representative of THE TATLER, with the confidence of Guy Walsingham, the brilliant author of

'Obsessions.' She pronounced herself thoroughly pleased with my sketch of her method; she went so far as to

Neil Paraday had dropped on the gardenbench and sat there at once detached and confounded; he looked

hard at a bare spot in the lawn, as if with an anxiety that had suddenly made him grave. His movement had

been interpreted by his visitor as an invitation to sink sympathetically into a wicker chair that stood hard by,

and while Mr. Morrow so settled himself I felt he had taken official possession and that there was no undoing

it. One had heard of unfortunate people's having "a man in the house," and this was just what we had. There

was a silence of a moment, during which we seemed to acknowledge in the only way that was possible the

presence of universal fate; the sunny stillness took no pity, and my thought, as I was sure Paraday's was

doing, performed within the minute a great distant revolution. I saw just how emphatic I should make my

rejoinder to Mr. Pinhorn, and that having come, like Mr. Morrow, to betray, I must remain as long as possible

to save. Not because I had brought my mind back, but because our visitors last words were in my ear, I

"Oh yes, a mere pseudonym rather pretty, isn't it? and convenient, you know, for a lady who goes in for

the larger latitude. 'Obsessions, by Miss Soandso,' would look a little odd, but men are more naturally

indelicate. Have you peeped into 'Obsessions'?" Mr. Morrow continued sociably to our companion.

Paraday, still absent, remote, made no answer, as if he hadn't heard the question: a form of intercourse that

appeared to suit the cheerful Mr. Morrow as well as any other. Imperturbably bland, he was a man of

resources he only needed to be on the spot. He had pocketed the whole poor place while Paraday and I were

woolgathering, and I could imagine that he had already got his "heads." His system, at any rate, was justified

by the inevitability with which I replied, to save my friend the trouble: "Dear no he hasn't read it. He

"Things that are TOO far over the fence, eh?" I was indeed a godsend to Mr. Morrow. It was the

psychological moment; it determined the appearance of his notebook, which, however, he at first kept

slightly behind him, even as the dentist approaching his victim keeps the horrible forceps. "Mr. Paraday holds

with the good old proprieties I see!" And thinking of the thirtyseven influential journals, I found myself,

as I found poor Paraday, helplessly assisting at the promulgation of this ineptitude. "There's no point on

which distinguished views are so acceptable as on this question raised perhaps more strikingly than ever by

Guy Walsingham of the permissibility of the larger latitude. I've an appointment, precisely in connexion

with it, next week, with Dora Forbes, author of 'The Other Way Round,' which everybody's talking about.

Has Mr. Paraday glanced at 'The Other Way Round'?" Mr. Morrow now frankly appealed to me. I took on

myself to repudiate the supposition, while our companion, still silent, got up nervously and walked away. His

visitor paid no heed to his withdrawal; but opened out the notebook with a more fatherly pat. "Dora Forbes,

I gather, takes the ground, the same as Guy Walsingham's, that the larger latitude has simply got to come. He

holds that it has got to be squarely faced. Of course his sex makes him a less prejudiced witness. But an

authoritative word from Mr. Paraday from the point of view of HIS sex, you know would go right round

I was bewildered: it sounded somehow as if there were three sexes. My interlocutor's pencil was poised, my

private responsibility great. I simply sat staring, none the less, and only found presence of mind to say: "Is

"The wife?" Mr. Morrow was for a moment as confused as myself. But when I explained that I alluded to

Dora Forbes in person he informed me, with visible amusement at my being so out of it, that this was the

"penname" of an indubitable male he had a big red moustache. "He goes in for the slight mystification

because the ladies are such popular favourites. A great deal of interest is felt in his acting on that idea

which IS clever, isn't it? and there's every prospect of its being widely imitated." Our host at this moment

joined us again, and Mr. Morrow remarked invitingly that he should be happy to make a note of any

observation the movement in question, the bid for success under a lady's name, might suggest to Mr. Paraday.

But the poor man, without catching the allusion, excused himself, pleading that, though greatly honoured by

his visitor's interest, he suddenly felt unwell and should have to take leave of him have to go and lie down

and keep quiet. His young friend might be trusted to answer for him, but he hoped Mr. Morrow didn't expect

great things even of his young friend. His young friend, at this moment, looked at Neil Paraday with an

anxious eye, greatly wondering if he were doomed to be ill again; but Paraday's own kind face met his

question reassuringly, seemed to say in a glance intelligible enough: "Oh I'm not ill, but I'm scared: get him

out of the house as quietly as possible." Getting newspapermen out of the house was odd business for an

emissary of Mr. Pinhorn, and I was so exhilarated by the idea of it that I called after him as he left us: "Read

"DELICIOUS my having come down to tell him of it!" Mr. Morrow ejaculated. "My cab was at the door

twenty minutes after THE EMPIRE had been laid on my breakfasttable. Now what have you got for me?"

he continued, dropping again into his chair, from which, however, he the next moment eagerly rose. "I was

shown into the drawingroom, but there must be more to see his study, his literary sanctum, the little things

he has about, or other domestic objects and features. He wouldn't be lying down on his studytable ? There's a

great interest always felt in the scene of an author's labours. Sometimes we're favoured with very delightful

peeps. Dora Forbes showed me all his tabledrawers, and almost jammed my hand into one into which I

made a dash! I don't ask that of you, but if we could talk things over right there where he sits I feel as if I

I had no wish whatever to be rude to Mr. Morrow, I was much too initiated not to tend to more diplomacy;

but I had a quick inspiration, and I entertained an insurmountable, an almost superstitious objection to his

crossing the threshold of my friend's little lonely shabby consecrated workshop. "No, no we shan't get at his

life that way," I said. "The way to get at his life is to But wait a moment!" I broke off and went quickly into

the house, whence I in three minutes reappeared before Mr. Morrow with the two volumes of Paraday's new

book. "His life's here," I went on, "and I'm so full of this admirable thing that I can't talk of anything else. The

artist's life's his work, and this is the place to observe him. What he has to tell us he tells us with THIS

Mr. Morrow goodhumouredly protested. "Do you mean to say that no other source of information should be

"None other till this particular one by far the most copious has been quite exhausted. Have you exhausted

it, my dear sir? Had you exhausted it when you came down here? It seems to me in our time almost wholly

neglected, and something should surely be done to restore its ruined credit. It's the course to which the artist

himself at every step, and with such pathetic confidence, refers us. This last book of Mr. Paraday's is full of

"The only kind that count. It tells you with a perfection that seems to me quite final all the author thinks, for

"Where does it do that?" asked Mr. Morrow, who had picked up the second volume and was insincerely

"Everywhere in the whole treatment of his case. Extract the opinion, disengage the answer those are the

Mr. Morrow, after a minute, tossed the book away. "Ah but you mustn't take me for a reviewer."

"Heaven forbid I should take you for anything so dreadful! You came down to perform a little act of

sympathy, and so, I may confide to you, did I. Let us perform our little act together. These pages overflow

with the testimony we want: let us read them and taste them and interpret them. You'll of course have

perceived for yourself that one scarcely does read Neil Paraday till one reads him aloud; he gives out to the

ear an extraordinary full tone, and it's only when you expose it confidently to that test that you really get near

his style. Take up your book again and let me listen, while you pay it out, to that wonderful fifteenth chapter.

If you feel you can't do it justice, compose yourself to attention while I produce for you I think I can! this

Mr. Morrow gave me a straight look which was as hard as a blow between the eyes; he had turned rather red,

and a question had formed itself in his mind which reached my sense as distinctly as if he had uttered it:

"What sort of a damned fool are YOU?" Then he got up, gathering together his hat and gloves, buttoning his

coat, projecting hungrily all over the place the big transparency of his mask. It seemed to flare over Fleet

Street and somehow made the actual spot distressingly humble: there was so little for it to feed on unless he

counted the blisters of our stucco or saw his way to do something with the roses. Even the poor roses were

common kinds. Presently his eyes fell on the manuscript from which Paraday had been reading to me and

which still lay on the bench. As my own followed them I saw it looked promising, looked pregnant, as if it

gently throbbed with the life the reader had given it. Mr. Morrow indulged in a nod at it and a vague thrust of

"A secret!" There was an instant's silence, and then Mr. Morrow made another movement. I may have been

mistaken, but it affected me as the translated impulse of the desire to lay hands on the manuscript, and this

led me to indulge in a quick anticipatory grab which may very well have seemed ungraceful, or even

impertinent, and which at any rate left Mr. Paraday's two admirers very erect, glaring at each other while one

of them held a bundle of papers well behind him. An instant later Mr. Morrow quitted me abruptly, as if he

had really carried something off with him. To reassure myself, watching his broad back recede, I only

grasped my manuscript the tighter. He went to the back door of the house, the one he had come out from, but

on trying the handle he appeared to find it fastened. So he passed round into the front garden, and by listening

intently enough I could presently hear the outer gate close behind him with a bang. I thought again of the

thirtyseven influential journals and wondered what would be his revenge. I hasten to add that he was

magnanimous: which was just the most dreadful thing he could have been. THE TATLER published a

charming chatty familiar account of Mr. Paraday's "Homelife," and on the wings of the thirtyseven

influential journals it went, to use Mr. Morrow's own expression, right round the globe.

A WEEK later, early in May, my glorified friend came up to town, where, it may be veraciously recorded he

was the king of the beasts of the year. No advancement was ever more rapid, no exaltation more complete, no

bewilderment more teachable. His book sold but moderately, though the article in THE EMPIRE had done

unwonted wonders for it; but he circulated in person to a measure that the libraries might well have envied.

His formula had been found he was a "revelation." His momentary terror had been real, just as mine had

been the overclouding of his passionate desire to be left to finish his work. He was far from unsociable, but

he had the finest conception of being let alone that I've ever met. For the time, none the less, he took his

profit where it seemed most to crowd on him, having in his pocket the portable sophistries about the nature of

the artist's task. Observation too was a kind of work and experience a kind of success; London dinners were

all material and London ladies were fruitful toil. "No one has the faintest conception of what I'm trying for,"

he said to me, "and not many have read three pages that I've written; but I must dine with them first they'll

find out why when they've time." It was rather rude justice perhaps; but the fatigue had the merit of being a

new sort, while the phantasmagoric town was probably after all less of a battlefield than the haunted study.

He once told me that he had had no personal life to speak of since his fortieth year, but had had more than

was good for him before. London closed the parenthesis and exhibited him in relations; one of the most

inevitable of these being that in which he found himself to Mrs. Weeks Wimbush, wife of the boundless

brewer and proprietress of the universal menagerie. In this establishment, as everybody knows, on occasions

when the crush is great, the animals rub shoulders freely with the spectators and the lions sit down for whole

It had been ominously clear to me from the first that in Neil Paraday this lady, who, as all the world agreed,

was tremendous fun, considered that she had secured a prime attraction, a creature of almost heraldic oddity.

Nothing could exceed her enthusiasm over her capture, and nothing could exceed the confused apprehensions

it excited in me. I had an instinctive fear of her which I tried without effect to conceal from her victim, but

which I let her notice with perfect impunity. Paraday heeded it, but she never did, for her conscience was that

of a romping child. She was a blind violent force to which I could attach no more idea of responsibility than

to the creaking of a sign in the wind. It was difficult to say what she conduced to but circulation. She was

constructed of steel and leather, and all I asked of her for our tractable friend was not to do him to death. He

had consented for a time to be of indiarubber, but my thoughts were fixed on the day he should resume his

shape or at least get back into his box. It was evidently all right, but I should be glad when it was well over. I

had a special fear the impression was ineffaceable of the hour when, after Mr. Morrow's departure, I had

found him on the sofa in his study. That pretext of indisposition had not in the least been meant as a snub to

the envoy of THE TATLER he had gone to lie down in very truth. He had felt a pang of his old pain, the

result of the agitation wrought in him by this forcing open of a new period. His old programme, his old ideal

even had to be changed. Say what one would, success was a complication and recognition had to be

reciprocal. The monastic life, the pious illumination of the missal in the convent cell were things of the

gathered past. It didn't engender despair, but at least it required adjustment. Before I left him on that occasion

we had passed a bargain, my part of which was that I should make it my business to take care of him. Let

whoever would represent the interest in his presence (I must have had a mystical prevision of Mrs. Weeks

Wimbush) I should represent the interest in his work or otherwise expressed in his absence. These two

interests were in their essence opposed; and I doubt, as youth is fleeting, if I shall ever again know the

intensity of joy with which I felt that in so good a cause I was willing to make myself odious.

One day in Sloane Street I found myself questioning Paraday's landlord, who had come to the door in answer

to my knock. Two vehicles, a barouche and a smart hansom, were drawn up before the house.

It was three o'clock, and on days when Paraday didn't lunch out he attached a value to these appropriated

hours. On which days, however, didn't the dear man lunch out? Mrs. Wimbush, at such a crisis, would have

rushed round immediately after her own repast. I went into the diningroom first, postponing the pleasure of

seeing how, upstairs, the lady of the barouche would, on my arrival, point the moral of my sweet solicitude.

No one took such an interest as herself in his doing only what was good for him, and she was always on the

spot to see that he did it. She made appointments with him to discuss the best means of economising his time

and protecting his privacy. She further made his health her special business, and had so much sympathy with

my own zeal for it that she was the author of pleasing fictions on the subject of what my devotion had led me

to give up. I gave up nothing (I don't count Mr. Pinhorn) because I had nothing, and all I had as yet achieved

was to find myself also in the menagerie. I had dashed in to save my friend, but I had only got domesticated

and wedged; so that I could do little more for him than exchange with him over people's heads looks of

THE young lady in the diningroom had a brave face, black hair, blue eyes, and in her lap a big volume. "I've

come for his autograph," she said when I had explained to her that I was under bonds to see people for him

when he was occupied. "I've been waiting half an hour, but I'm prepared to wait all day." I don't know

whether it was this that told me she was American, for the propensity to wait all day is not in general

characteristic of her race. I was enlightened probably not so much by the spirit of the utterance as by some

quality of its sound. At any rate I saw she had an individual patience and a lovely frock, together with an

expression that played among her pretty features like a breeze among flowers. Putting her book on the table

she showed me a massive album, showily bound and full of autographs of price. The collection of faded

notes, of still more faded "thoughts," of quotations, platitudes, signatures, represented a formidable purpose.

I could only disclose my dread of it. "Most people apply to Mr. Paraday by letter, you know."

"Very true," I reflected; "the sort of letter you mean goes straight into the fire."

"How do you know the sort I mean?" My interlocutress had blushed and smiled, and in a moment she added:

"I'm sure they're beautiful, but he burns without reading." I didn't add that I had convinced him he ought to.

"He would perhaps be so if distinguished men hadn't an infallible nose for nonsense."

She looked at me a moment her face was sweet and gay. "Do YOU burn without reading too?" in answer

to which I assured her that if she'd trust me with her repository I'd see that Mr. Paraday should write his name

"Do you want very much to see him?" It seemed ungracious to catechise so charming a creature, but

"I don't see that that's exactly your business, but if it will make me more seductive I'll confess that I'm quite

She was interesting; I could imagine she had lost parents, natural protectors could conceive even she had

inherited money. I was at a pass of my own fortunes when keeping hansoms at doors seemed to me pure

swagger. As a trick of this bold and sensitive girl, however, it became romantic a part of the general

romance of her freedom, her errand, her innocence. The confidence of young Americans was notorious, and I

speedily arrived at a conviction that no impulse could have been more generous than the impulse that had

operated here. I foresaw at that moment that it would make her my peculiar charge, just as circumstances had

made Neil Paraday. She would be another person to look after, so that one's honour would be concerned in

guiding her straight. These things became clearer to me later on; at the instant I had scepticism enough to

observe to her, as I turned the pages of her volume, that her net had all the same caught many a big fish. She

appeared to have had fruitful access to the great ones of the earth; there were people moreover whose

signatures she had presumably secured without a personal interview. She couldn't have worried George

Washington and Friedrich Schiller and Hannah More. She met this argument, to my surprise, by throwing up

the album without a pang. It wasn't even her own; she was responsible for none of its treasures. It belonged to

a girlfriend in America, a young lady in a western city. This young lady had insisted on her bringing it, to

pick up more autographs: she thought they might like to see, in Europe, in what company they would be. The

"girlfriend," the western city, the immortal names, the curious errand, the idyllic faith, all made a story as

strange to me, and as beguiling, as some tale in the Arabian Nights. Thus it was that my informant had

encumbered herself with the ponderous tome; but she hastened to assure me that this was the first time she

had brought it out. For her visit to Mr. Paraday it had simply been a pretext. She didn't really care a straw that

"Because I just love him!" Before I could recover from the agitating effect of this crystal ring my companion

had continued: "Hasn't there ever been any face that you've wanted to look into?"

How could I tell her so soon how much I appreciated the opportunity of looking into hers? I could only assent

in general to the proposition that there were certainly for every one such yearnings, and even such faces; and

I felt the crisis demand all my lucidity, all my wisdom. "Oh yes, I'm a student of physiognomy. Do you

"They've been everything to me and a little more beside I know them by heart. They've completely taken

hold of me. There's no author about whom I'm in such a state as I'm in about Neil Paraday."

"Permit me to remark then," I presently returned, "that you're one of the right sort."

"Oh there are enthusiasts who are quite of the wrong. I mean you're one of those to whom an appeal can be

If she was ready for one it was only waiting for her, and in a moment I mentioned it. "Give up this crude

She looked mystified, then turned visibly pale. "Why, hasn't he any personal charm?" The girl was terrible

"Ah that dreadful word 'personally'!" I wailed; "we're dying of it, for you women bring it out with murderous

effect. When you meet with a genius as fine as this idol of ours let him off the dreary duty of being a

personality as well. Know him only by what's best in him and spare him for the same sweet sake."

My young lady continued to look at me in confusion and mistrust, and the result of her reflexion on what I

had just said was to make her suddenly break out: "Look here, sir what's the matter with him?"

"The matter with him is that if he doesn't look out people will eat a great hole in his life."

"He's beset, badgered, bothered he's pulled to pieces on the pretext of being applauded. People expect him

to give them his time, his golden time, who wouldn't themselves give five shillings for one of his books."

"Give your sympathy give your forbearance. Twothirds of those who approach him only do it to advertise

"Why it's too bad!" the girl exclaimed with the face of an angel. "It's the first time I was ever called crude!"

I followed up my advantage. "There's a lady with him now who's a terrible complication, and who yet hasn't

"Without ceasing. I only mention her as a single case. Do you want to know how to show a superlative

"Don't force him to have to take account of you; admire him in silence, cultivate him at a distance and

secretly appropriate his message. Do you want to know," I continued, warming to my idea, "how to perform

an act of homage really sublime?" Then as she hung on my words: "Succeed in never seeing him at all!"

"The more you get into his writings the less you'll want to, and you'll be immensely sustained by the thought

She looked at me without resentment or spite, and at the truth I had put before her with candour, credulity,

pity. I was afterwards happy to remember that she must have gathered from my face the liveliness of my

"Oh I express it badly, but I should be delighted if you'd let me come to see you to explain it better."

She made no response to this, and her thoughtful eyes fell on the big album, on which she presently laid her

hands as if to take it away. "I did use to say out West that they might write a little less for autographs to all

"What do they care for the thoughts and style? They didn't even understand you. I'm not sure," I added, "that I

She had got up to go, and though I wanted her to succeed in not seeing Neil Paraday I wanted her also,

inconsequently, to remain in the house. I was at any rate far from desiring to hustle her off. As Mrs. Weeks

Wimbush, upstairs, was still saving our friend in her own way, I asked my young lady to let me briefly relate,

in illustration of my point, the little incident of my having gone down into the country for a profane purpose

and been converted on the spot to holiness. Sinking again into her chair to listen she showed a deep interest in

the anecdote. Then thinking it over gravely she returned with her odd intonation: "Yes, but you do see him!" I

had to admit that this was the case; and I wasn't so prepared with an effective attenuation as I could have

wished. She eased the situation off, however, by the charming quaintness with which she finally said: "Well,

I wouldn't want him to be lonely!" This time she rose in earnest, but I persuaded her to let me keep the album

to show Mr. Paraday. I assured her I'd bring it back to her myself. "Well, you'll find my address somewhere

I BLUSH to confess it, but I invited Mr. Paraday that very day to transcribe into the album one of his most

characteristic passages. I told him how I had got rid of the strange girl who had brought it her ominous

name was Miss Hurter and she lived at an hotel; quite agreeing with him moreover as to the wisdom of

getting rid with equal promptitude of the book itself. This was why I carried it to Albemarle Street no later

than on the morrow. I failed to find her at home, but she wrote to me and I went again; she wanted so much to

hear more about Neil Paraday. I returned repeatedly, I may briefly declare, to supply her with this

information. She had been immensely taken, the more she thought of it, with that idea of mine about the act

of homage: it had ended by filling her with a generous rapture. She positively desired to do something

sublime for him, though indeed I could see that, as this particular flight was difficult, she appreciated the fact

that my visits kept her up. I had it on my conscience to keep her up: I neglected nothing that would contribute

to it, and her conception of our cherished author's independence became at last as fine as his very own. "Read

him, read him THAT will be an education in decency," I constantly repeated; while, seeking him in his

works even as God in nature, she represented herself as convinced that, according to my assurance, this was

the system that had, as she expressed it, weaned her. We read him together when I could find time, and the

generous creature's sacrifice was fed by our communion. There were twenty selfish women about whom I

told her and who stirred her to a beautiful rage. Immediately after my first visit her sister, Mrs. Milsom, came

over from Paris, and the two ladies began to present, as they called it, their letters. I thanked our stars that

none had been presented to Mr. Paraday. They received invitations and dined out, and some of these

occasions enabled Fanny Hurter to perform, for consistency's sake, touching feats of submission. Nothing

indeed would now have induced her even to look at the object of her admiration. Once, hearing his name

announced at a party, she instantly left the room by another door and then straightway quitted the house. At

another time when I was at the opera with them Mrs. Milsom had invited me to their box I attempted to

point Mr. Paraday out to her in the stalls. On this she asked her sister to change places with her and, while

that lady devoured the great man through a powerful glass, presented, all the rest of the evening, her inspired

back to the house. To torment her tenderly I pressed the glass upon her, telling her how wonderfully near it

brought our friend's handsome head. By way of answer she simply looked at me in charged silence, letting

me see that tears had gathered in her eyes. These tears, I may remark, produced an effect on me of which the

end is not yet. There was a moment when I felt it my duty to mention them to Neil Paraday, but I was

deterred by the reflexion that there were questions more relevant to his happiness.

These question indeed, by the end of the season, were reduced to a single one the question of reconstituting

so far as might be possible the conditions under which he had produced his best work. Such conditions could

never all come back, for there was a new one that took up too much place; but some perhaps were not beyond

recall. I wanted above all things to see him sit down to the subject he had, on my making his acquaintance,

read me that admirable sketch of. Something told me there was no security but in his doing so before the new

factor, as we used to say at Mr. Pinhorn's, should render the problem incalculable. It only halfreassured me

that the sketch itself was so copious and so eloquent that even at the worst there would be the making of a

small but complete book, a tiny volume which, for the faithful, might well become an object of adoration.

There would even not be wanting critics to declare, I foresaw, that the plan was a thing to be more thankful

for than the structure to have been reared on it. My impatience for the structure, none the less, grew and grew

with the interruptions. He had on coming up to town begun to sit for his portrait to a young painter, Mr.

Rumble, whose little game, as we also used to say at Mr. Pinhorn's, was to be the first to perch on the

shoulders of renown. Mr. Rumble's studio was a circus in which the man of the hour, and still more the

woman, leaped through the hoops of his showy frames almost as electrically as they burst into telegrams and

"specials." He pranced into the exhibitions on their back; he was the reporter on canvas, the Vandyke up to

date, and there was one roaring year in which Mrs. Bounder and Miss Braby, Guy Walsingham and Dora

Forbes proclaimed in chorus from the same pictured walls that no one had yet got ahead of him.

Paraday had been promptly caught and saddled, accepting with characteristic goodhumour his confidential

hint that to figure in his show was not so much a consequence as a cause of immortality. From Mrs. Wimbush

to the last "representative" who called to ascertain his twelve favourite dishes, it was the same ingenuous

assumption that he would rejoice in the repercussion. There were moments when I fancied I might have had

more patience with them if they hadn't been so fatally benevolent. I hated at all events Mr. Rumble's picture,

and had my bottled resentment ready when, later on, I found my distracted friend had been stuffed by Mrs.

Wimbush into the mouth of another cannon. A young artist in whom she was intensely interested, and who

had no connexion with Mr. Rumble, was to show how far he could make him go. Poor Paraday, in return, was

naturally to write something somewhere about the young artist. She played her victims against each other

with admirable ingenuity, and her establishment was a huge machine in which the tiniest and the biggest

wheels went round to the same treadle. I had a scene with her in which I tried to express that the function of

such a man was to exercise his genius not to serve as a hoarding for pictorial posters. The people I was

perhaps angriest with were the editors of magazines who had introduced what they called new features, so

aware were they that the newest feature of all would be to make him grind their axes by contributing his

views on vital topics and taking part in the periodical prattle about the future of fiction. I made sure that

before I should have done with him there would scarcely be a current form of words left me to be sick of; but

meanwhile I could make surer still of my animosity to bustling ladies for whom he drew the water that

I had a battle with Mrs. Wimbush over the artist she protected, and another over the question of a certain

week, at the end of July, that Mr. Paraday appeared to have contracted to spend with her in the country. I

protested against this visit; I intimated that he was too unwell for hospitality without a nuance, for caresses

without imagination; I begged he might rather take the time in some restorative way. A sultry air of promises,

of ponderous parties, hung over his August, and he would greatly profit by the interval of rest. He hadn't told

me he was ill again that he had had a warning; but I hadn't needed this, for I found his reticence his worst

symptom. The only thing he said to me was that he believed a comfortable attack of something or other

would set him up: it would put out of the question everything but the exemptions he prized. I'm afraid I shall

have presented him as a martyr in a very small cause if I fail to explain that he surrendered himself much

more liberally than I surrendered him. He filled his lungs, for the most part; with the comedy of his queer

fate: the tragedy was in the spectacles through which I chose to look. He was conscious of inconvenience,

and above all of a great renouncement; but how could he have heard a mere dirge in the bells of his

accession? The sagacity and the jealousy were mine, and his the impressions and the harvest. Of course, as

regards Mrs. Wimbush, I was worsted in my encounters, for wasn't the state of his health the very reason for

his coming to her at Prestidge? Wasn't it precisely at Prestidge that he was to be coddled, and wasn't the dear

Princess coming to help her to coddle him? The dear Princess, now on a visit to England, was of a famous

foreign house, and, in her gilded cage, with her retinue of keepers and feeders, was the most expensive

specimen in the good lady's collection. I don't think her august presence had had to do with Paraday's

consenting to go, but it's not impossible he had operated as a bait to the illustrious stranger. The party had

been made up for him, Mrs. Wimbush averred, and every one was counting on it, the dear Princess most of

all. If he was well enough he was to read them something absolutely fresh, and it was on that particular

prospect the Princess had set her heart. She was so fond of genius in ANY walk of life, and was so used to it

and understood it so well: she was the greatest of Mr. Paraday's admirers, she devoured everything he wrote.

And then he read like an angel. Mrs. Wimbush reminded me that he had again and again given her, Mrs.

For a moment too she met my eyes, and for the fraction of a moment she hesitated and coloured. "Oh all sorts

I wondered if this were an imperfect recollection or only a perfect fib, and she quite understood my unuttered

comment on her measure of such things. But if she could forget Neil Paraday's beauties she could of course

forget my rudeness, and three days later she invited me, by telegraph, to join the party at Prestidge. This time

she might indeed have had a story about what I had given up to be near the master. I addressed from that fine

residence several communications to a young lady in London, a young lady whom, I confess, I quitted with

reluctance and whom the reminder of what she herself could give up was required to make me quit at all. It

adds to the gratitude I owe her on other grounds that she kindly allows me to transcribe from my letters a few

"I SUPPOSE I ought to enjoy the joke of what's going on here," I wrote, "but somehow it doesn't amuse me.

Pessimism on the contrary possesses me and cynicism deeply engages. I positively feel my own flesh sore

from the brass nails in Neil Paraday's social harness. The house is full of people who like him, as they

mention, awfully, and with whom his talent for talking nonsense has prodigious success. I delight in his

nonsense myself; why is it therefore that I grudge these happy folk their artless satisfaction? Mystery of the

human heart abyss of the critical spirit! Mrs. Wimbush thinks she can answer that question, and as my want

of gaiety has at last worn out her patience she has given me a glimpse of her shrewd guess. I'm made restless

by the selfishness of the insincere friend I want to monopolise Paraday in order that he may push me on. To

be intimate with him is a feather in my cap; it gives me an importance that I couldn't naturally pretend to, and

I seek to deprive him of social refreshment because I fear that meeting more disinterested people may

enlighten him as to my real motive. All the disinterested people here are his particular admirers and have

been carefully selected as such. There's supposed to be a copy of his last book in the house, and in the hall I

come upon ladies, in attitudes, bending gracefully over the first volume. I discreetly avert my eyes, and when

I next look round the precarious joy has been superseded by the book of life. There's a sociable circle or a

confidential couple, and the relinquished volume lies open on its face and as dropped under extreme coercion.

Somebody else presently finds it and transfers it, with its air of momentary desolation, to another piece of

furniture. Every one's asking every one about it all day, and every one's telling every one where they put it

last. I'm sure it's rather smudgy about the twentieth page. I've a strong impression, too, that the second

volume is lost has been packed in the bag of some departing guest; and yet everybody has the impression

that somebody else has read to the end. You see therefore that the beautiful book plays a great part in our

existence. Why should I take the occasion of such distinguished honours to say that I begin to see deeper into

Gustave Flaubert's doleful refrain about the hatred of literature? I refer you again to the perverse constitution

"The Princess is a massive lady with the organisation of an athlete and the confusion of tongues of a valet de

place. She contrives to commit herself extraordinarily little in a great many languages, and is entertained and

conversed with in detachments and relays, like an institution which goes on from generation to generation or

a big building contracted for under a forfeit. She can't have a personal taste any more than, when her husband

succeeds, she can have a personal crown, and her opinion on any matter is rusty and heavy and plain made,

in the night of ages, to last and be transmitted. I feel as if I ought to 'tip' some custode for my glimpse of it.

She has been told everything in the world and has never perceived anything, and the echoes of her education

respond awfully to the rash footfall I mean the casual remark in the cold Valhalla of her memory. Mrs.

Wimbush delights in her wit and says there's nothing so charming as to hear Mr. Paraday draw it out. He's

perpetually detailed for this job, and he tells me it has a peculiarly exhausting effect. Every one's beginning

at the end of two days to sidle obsequiously away from her, and Mrs. Wimbush pushes him again and again

into the breach. None of the uses I have yet seen him put to infuriate me quite so much. He looks very fagged

and has at last confessed to me that his condition makes him uneasy has even promised me he'll go straight

home instead of returning to his final engagements in town. Last night I had some talk with him about going

today, cutting his visit short; so sure am I that he'll be better as soon as he's shut up in his lighthouse. He

told me that this is what he would like to do; reminding me, however, that the first lesson of his greatness has

been precisely that he can't do what he likes. Mrs. Wimbush would never forgive him if he should leave her

before the Princess has received the last hand. When I hint that a violent rupture with our hostess would be

the best thing in the world for him he gives me to understand that if his reason assents to the proposition his

courage hangs woefully back. He makes no secret of being mortally afraid of her, and when I ask what harm

she can do him that she hasn't already done he simply repeats: 'I'm afraid, I'm afraid! Don't enquire too

closely,' he said last night; 'only believe that I feel a sort of terror. It's strange, when she's so kind! At any

rate, I'd as soon overturn that piece of priceless Sevres as tell her I must go before my date.' It sounds

dreadfully weak, but he has some reason, and he pays for his imagination, which puts him (I should hate it) in

the place of others and makes him feel, even against himself, their feelings, their appetites, their motives. It's

indeed inveterately against himself that he makes his imagination act. What a pity he has such a lot of it! He's

too beastly intelligent. Besides, the famous reading's still to come off, and it has been postponed a day to

allow Guy Walsingham to arrive. It appears this eminent lady's staying at a house a few miles off, which

means of course that Mrs. Wimbush has forcibly annexed her. She's to come over in a day or two Mrs.

"Today's wet and cold, and several of the company, at the invitation of the Duke, have driven over to

luncheon at Bigwood. I saw poor Paraday wedge himself, by command, into the little supplementary seat of a

brougham in which the Princess and our hostess were already ensconced. If the front glass isn't open on his

dear old back perhaps he'll survive. Bigwood, I believe, is very grand and frigid, all marble and precedence,

and I wish him well out of the adventure. I can't tell you how much more and more your attitude to him, in

the midst of all this, shines out by contrast. I never willingly talk to these people about him, but see what a

comfort I find it to scribble to you! I appreciate it it keeps me warm; there are no fires in the house. Mrs.

Wimbush goes by the calendar, the temperature goes by the weather, the weather goes by God knows what,

and the Princess is easily heated. I've nothing but my acrimony to warm me, and have been out under an

umbrella to restore my circulation. Coming in an hour ago I found Lady Augusta Minch rummaging about

the hall. When I asked her what she was looking for she said she had mislaid something that Mr. Paraday had

lent her. I ascertained in a moment that the article in question is a manuscript, and I've a foreboding that it's

the noble morsel he read me six weeks ago. When I expressed my surprise that he should have bandied about

anything so precious (I happen to know it's his only copy in the most beautiful hand in all the world) Lady

Augusta confessed to me that she hadn't had it from himself, but from Mrs. Wimbush, who had wished to

give her a glimpse of it as a salve for her not being able to stay and hear it read.

"'It's not for Guy Walsingham they're waiting now, it's for Dora Forbes,' Lady Augusta said. 'She's coming, I

believe, early tomorrow. Meanwhile Mrs. Wimbush has found out about him, and is actively wiring to him.

"'You bewilder me a little,' I replied; 'in the age we live in one gets lost among the genders and the pronouns.

The clear thing is that Mrs. Wimbush doesn't guard such a treasure so jealously as she might.'

"'Poor dear, she has the Princess to guard! Mr. Paraday lent her the manuscript to look over.'

"Lady Augusta stared my irony was lost on her. 'She didn't have time, so she gave me a chance first;

"'I haven't lost it. I remember now it was very stupid of me to have forgotten. I told my maid to give it to

"'Of course he gave it back to my maid or else his man did,' said Lady Augusta. 'I dare say it's all right.'

"The conscience of these people is like a summer sea. They haven't time to look over a priceless composition;

they've only time to kick it about the house. I suggested that the 'man,' fired with a noble emulation, had

perhaps kept the work for his own perusal; and her ladyship wanted to know whether, if the thing shouldn't

reappear for the grand occasion appointed by our hostess, the author wouldn't have something else to read

that would do just as well. Their questions are too delightful! I declared to Lady Augusta briefly that nothing

in the world can ever do so well as the thing that does best; and at this she looked a little disconcerted. But I

added that if the manuscript had gone astray our little circle would have the less of an effort of attention to

"'I dare say she is she's so awfully clever. But what's the use of being a Princess '

"'If you can't dissemble your love?' I asked as Lady Augusta was vague. She said at any rate she'd question

her maid; and I'm hoping that when I go down to dinner I shall find the manuscript has been recovered."

"IT has NOT been recovered," I wrote early the next day, "and I'm moreover much troubled about our friend.

He came back from Bigwood with a chill and, being allowed to have a fire in his room, lay down a while

before dinner. I tried to send him to bed and indeed thought I had put him in the way of it; but after I had

gone to dress Mrs. Wimbush came up to see him, with the inevitable result that when I returned I found him

under arms and flushed and feverish, though decorated with the rare flower she had brought him for his

buttonhole. He came down to dinner, but Lady Augusta Minch was very shy of him. Today he's in great

pain, and the advent of ces dames I mean of Guy Walsingham and Dora Forbes doesn't at all console me.

It does Mrs. Wimbush, however, for she has consented to his remaining in bed so that he may be all right

tomorrow for the listening circle. Guy Walsingham's already on the scene, and the Doctor for Paraday also

arrived early. I haven't yet seen the author of 'Obsessions,' but of course I've had a moment by myself with

the Doctor. I tried to get him to say that our invalid must go straight home I mean tomorrow or next day;

but he quite refuses to talk about the future. Absolute quiet and warmth and the regular administration of an

important remedy are the points he mainly insists on. He returns this afternoon, and I'm to go back to see the

patient at one o'clock, when he next takes his medicine. It consoles me a little that he certainly won't be able

to read an exertion he was already more than unfit for. Lady Augusta went off after breakfast, assuring me

her first care would be to follow up the lost manuscript. I can see she thinks me a shocking busybody and

doesn't understand my alarm, but she'll do what she can, for she's a goodnatured woman. 'So are they all

honourable men.' That was precisely what made her give the thing to Lord Dorimont and made Lord

Dorimont bag it. What use HE has for it God only knows. I've the worst forebodings, but somehow I'm

strangely without passion desperately calm. As I consider the unconscious, the wellmeaning ravages of

our appreciative circle I bow my head in submission to some great natural, some universal accident; I'm

rendered almost indifferent, in fact quite gay (haha!) by the sense of immitigable fate. Lady Augusta

promises me to trace the precious object and let me have it through the post by the time Paraday's well

enough to play his part with it. The last evidence is that her maid did give it to his lordship's valet. One would

suppose it some thrilling number of THE FAMILY BUDGET. Mrs. Wimbush, who's aware of the accident,

is much less agitated by it than she would doubtless be were she not for the hour inevitably engrossed with

Later in the day I informed my correspondent, for whom indeed I kept a loose diary of the situation, that I had

made the acquaintance of this celebrity and that she was a pretty little girl who wore her hair in what used to

be called a crop. She looked so juvenile and so innocent that if, as Mr. Morrow had announced, she was

resigned to the larger latitude, her superiority to prejudice must have come to her early. I spent most of the

day hovering about Neil Paraday's room, but it was communicated to me from below that Guy Walsingham,

at Prestidge, was a success. Toward evening I became conscious somehow that her superiority was

contagious, and by the time the company separated for the night I was sure the larger latitude had been

generally accepted. I thought of Dora Forbes and felt that he had no time to lose. Before dinner I received a

telegram from Lady Augusta Minch. "Lord Dorimont thinks he must have left bundle in train enquire."

How could I enquire if I was to take the word as a command? I was too worried and now too alarmed about

Neil Paraday. The Doctor came back, and it was an immense satisfaction to me to be sure he was wise and

interested. He was proud of being called to so distinguished a patient, but he admitted to me that night that

my friend was gravely ill. It was really a relapse, a recrudescence of his old malady. There could be no

question of moving him: we must at any rate see first, on the spot, what turn his condition would take.

Meanwhile, on the morrow, he was to have a nurse. On the morrow the dear man was easier, and my spirits

rose to such cheerfulness that I could almost laugh over Lady Augusta's second telegram: "Lord Dorimont's

servant been to station nothing found. Push enquiries." I did laugh, I'm sure, as I remembered this to be the

mystic scroll I had scarcely allowed poor Mr. Morrow to point his umbrella at. Fool that I had been: the

thirtyseven influential journals wouldn't have destroyed it, they'd only have printed it. Of course I said

When the nurse arrived she turned me out of the room, on which I went downstairs. I should premise that at

breakfast the news that our brilliant friend was doing well excited universal complacency, and the Princess

graciously remarked that he was only to be commiserated for missing the society of Miss Collop. Mrs.

Wimbush, whose social gift never shone brighter than in the dry decorum with which she accepted this fizzle

in her fireworks, mentioned to me that Guy Walsingham had made a very favourable impression on her

Imperial Highness. Indeed I think every one did so, and that, like the moneymarket or the national honour,

her Imperial Highness was constitutionally sensitive. There was a certain gladness, a perceptible bustle in the

air, however, which I thought slightly anomalous in a house where a great author lay critically ill. "Le roy est

mort vive le roy": I was reminded that another great author had already stepped into his shoes. When I

came down again after the nurse had taken possession I found a strange gentleman hanging about the hall and

pacing to and fro by the closed door of the drawingroom. This personage was florid and bald; he had a big

red moustache and wore showy knickerbockers characteristics all that fitted to my conception of the

identity of Dora Forbes. In a moment I saw what had happened: the author of "The Other Way Round" had

just alighted at the portals of Prestidge, but had suffered a scruple to restrain him from penetrating further. I

recognised his scruple when, pausing to listen at his gesture of caution, I heard a shrill voice lifted in a sort of

rhythmic uncanny chant. The famous reading had begun, only it was the author of "Obsessions" who now

furnished the sacrifice. The new visitor whispered to me that he judged something was going on he oughtn't

"Miss Collop arrived last night," I smiled, "and the Princess has a thirst for the inedit."

"Guy Walsingham, your distinguished confrere or shall I say your formidable rival?"

Dora Forbes evidently felt the dilemma; he gave an irritated crook to his moustache. "SHALL I go in?" he

We looked at each other hard a moment; then I expressed something bitter that was in me, expressed it in an

infernal "Do!" After this I got out into the air, but not so fast as not to hear, when the door of the

drawingroom opened, the disconcerted drop of Miss Collop's public manner: she must have been in the

midst of the larger latitude. Producing with extreme rapidity, Guy Walsingham has just published a work in

which amiable people who are not initiated have been pained to see the genius of a sisternovelist held up to

unmistakeable ridicule; so fresh an exhibition does it seem to them of the dreadful way men have always

treated women. Dora Forbes, it's true, at the present hour, is immensely pushed by Mrs. Wimbush and has sat

for his portrait to the young artists she protects, sat for it not only in oils but in monumental alabaster.

What happened at Prestidge later in the day is of course contemporary history. If the interruption I had

whimsically sanctioned was almost a scandal, what is to be said of that general scatter of the company which,

under the Doctor's rule, began to take place in the evening? His rule was soothing to behold, small comfort as

I was to have at the end. He decreed in the interest of his patient an absolutely soundless house and a

consequent breakup of the party. Little country practitioner as he was, he literally packed off the Princess.

She departed as promptly as if a revolution had broken out, and Guy Walsingham emigrated with her. I was

kindly permitted to remain, and this was not denied even to Mrs. Wimbush. The privilege was withheld

indeed from Dora Forbes; so Mrs. Wimbush kept her latest capture temporarily concealed. This was so little,

however, her usual way of dealing with her eminent friends that a couple of days of it exhausted her patience,

and she went up to town with him in great publicity. The sudden turn for the worse her afflicted guest had,

after a brief improvement, taken on the third night raised an obstacle to her seeing him before her retreat; a

fortunate circumstance doubtless, for she was fundamentally disappointed in him. This was not the kind of

performance for which she had invited him to Prestidge, let alone invited the Princess. I must add that none of

the generous acts marking her patronage of intellectual and other merit have done so much for her reputation

as her lending Neil Paraday the most beautiful of her numerous homes to die in. He took advantage to the

utmost of the singular favour. Day by day I saw him sink, and I roamed alone about the empty terraces and

gardens. His wife never came near him, but I scarcely noticed it: as I paced there with rage in my heart I was

too full of another wrong. In the event of his death it would fall to me perhaps to bring out in some charming

form, with notes, with the tenderest editorial care, that precious heritage of his written project. But where was

that precious heritage and were both the author and the book to have been snatched from us? Lady Augusta

wrote me that she had done all she could and that poor Lord Dorimont, who had really been worried to death,

was extremely sorry. I couldn't have the matter out with Mrs. Wimbush, for I didn't want to be taunted by her

with desiring to aggrandise myself by a public connexion with Mr. Paraday's sweepings. She had signified

her willingness to meet the expense of all advertising, as indeed she was always ready to do. The last night of

the horrible series, the night before he died, I put my ear closer to his pillow.

"It IS a glorious book," Neil Paraday murmured. "Print it as it stands beautifully."

It may be imagined whether, now that he's gone, the promise seems to me less sacred. I'm convinced that if

such pages had appeared in his lifetime the Abbey would hold him today. I've kept the advertising in my

own hands, but the manuscript has not been recovered. It's impossible, and at any rate intolerable, to suppose

it can have been wantonly destroyed. Perhaps some hazard of a blind hand, some brutal fatal ignorance has

lighted kitchenfires with it. Every stupid and hideous accident haunts my meditations. My undiscourageable

search for the lost treasure would make a long chapter. Fortunately I've a devoted associate in the person of a

young lady who has every day a fresh indignation and a fresh idea, and who maintains with intensity that the

prize will still turn up. Sometimes I believe her, but I've quite ceased to believe myself. The only thing for us

at all events is to go on seeking and hoping together; and we should be closely united by this firm tie even