作者：佚名
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Spring Days试读：
PREFACE
When Henry Vizetelly, that admirable scholar, historian, and journalist, was sent to prison for publishing Zola’s novels mine were taken over by Walter Scott, and all were reprinted except “Spring Days.” This book was omitted from the list of my acknowledged works, for public and private criticism had shown it no mercy; and
I
had lost faith in it. All the welcome it had gotten were a few contemptuous paragraphs scattered through the Press, and an insolent article in The Academy, which I did not see, but of which I was notified by a friend in the Strand at the corner of Wellington Street.“Was the article a long one?”
“No, I don’t think they thought your book worth slashing. All I can tell you is that if any book of mine had been spoken of in that way I should never write another.”
I left my friend, hoping that the number of The Academy would not fall into the hands of the editor of the great London review, to whom I had dedicated the book after a night spent listening to him quoting from the classics, Greek, English, and Latin. “A very poor testimony, one which he won’t thank me for,” I muttered, and stopped before St. Clement Danes to think what kind of letter he would write to me. But he did not even acknowledge through his secretary the copy I sent to him, and I accepted the rebuff without resentment, arguing that the fault was mine. “The proofs should have been submitted to him, but the printers were calling for them! There’s no going back; the mischief is done,” and I waited, putting my trust in time, which blots out all unfortunate things, “even dedications,” I said.
Three months later, on opening my door one day, I found him standing with a common friend on the landing. I remember wondering what his reason was for bringing the friend, whether he had come as a sort of chaperon or witness. He left us after a few minutes, and I sat watching the great man of my imagination, asking myself if he were going to speak of “Spring Days,” hoping that he would avoid the painful subject. The plot and the characters of my new book might please him. If he would only allow me to speak about it he might be persuaded to accept a second dedication as some atonement for the first.
“You were kind enough to dedicate your novel—-”
“‘Spring Days’?”
“Yes, ‘Spring Days.’ I know that you wished to pay me a compliment, and if I didn’t write before it was because——”
“Was it so very bad?”
A butty little man raised Oriental eyes and square hands in protest.
“You have written other books,” he said, and proposed that we should go out together and walk in the Strand.
“Yes, ‘The Confessions of a Young Man’ was much liked here and in France. Will you let me give it to you?” We stopped at a book shop. “It will please you and help you to forget ‘Spring Days.’” He smiled. “Never mention that book again,” I added. “I wonder how I could have written it.”
We were in a hansom; he turned his head and looked at me without attempting to answer my question; and from that day till six months ago my impulse was to destroy every copy that came my way. A copy of “Spring Days” excited in me an uncontrollable desire of theft, and whenever I caught sight of one in a friend’s house I put it in my pocket without giving a thought to the inconvenience that the larceny might cause; the Thames received it, and I returned home congratulating myself that there was one copy less in the world of “Spring Days.”
When the Boer War drove me out of London I said: “Dublin doesn’t contain a copy of that book;” and for nearly eight years I was left in peace, only Edward Martyn teasing me, saying that one of these days he must read the book.
“R—— always says, ‘I like “Spring Days”.’”
“Insolent little ass,” I answered, “I’ll cut him dead when we meet again.”
But Edward was not joking as I thought he was, and some time afterwards he told me that after a good deal of advertising he had succeeded in obtaining a copy of “Spring Days.” The moment he left the room I searched the table and bookcase for it, but he kept it at Tillyra, else it would have gone into the Liffey, which receives all things.
“My dear George, I like the book better than any of your novels,” he said one day on his return from Galway. “It is the most original, it is like no other novel, and that is why people didn’t understand it.”
Of course it was impossible to quarrel with dear Edward, but I wondered if I ever should find pleasure in speaking to him again; and when A. E. told me a few weeks later that he had come upon a novel of mine which he had never read before—“Spring Days,” I said.
“Edward gave it to you?”
“No,” he answered, “I haven’t seen him for many months.”
“The worst book I ever wrote.” A. E. did not answer. “What do you think of it?” To my surprise I found him of the same opinion as Edward.
“My dear A. E., you know how I rely on your judgment. For twenty-five years I have refused to allow this book to be reprinted. Shall I relent?”
A. E. did not seem to think the book unworthy of me, and pressed me to read it.
“I’ll lend you my copy.”
I received it next day, but returned it to him unread, my courage having failed me at the last moment.
A few months later I met Richard Best, one of the librarians at the National Library. He had just returned from his holidays; he had been spending them in Wales for the sake of the language.
“By the way,” he said, “I came across an old novel of yours—‘Spring Days.’”
“You didn’t like it?”
“On the contrary, I liked it as well, if not better, than any novel you have written. It is so entirely original. My wife... I think you value her opinion—”
“She liked it?”
“Come home with me, and she’ll tell you how it struck her.”
“I will, on one condition, that you don’t mention that you spoke to me about the book.”
Best promised, and we had not been many minutes in the house before Mrs. Best interrupted my remarks about the weather to tell me what she thought of “Spring Days.”
“The matter is important. Sooner or later I shall have to think about a collected edition. Is it to be included?”
Mrs. Best, like A. E., offered to lend me her copy, but I could not bring myself to accept it, and escaped from the book till I came to live in London. Then Fate thrust it into my hands, the means employed being a woman to whom I had written for “Impressions and Opinions.” She had lost her copy; there was, however, an old book of mine which she had never heard me speak of—“Spring Days”—and which, etc., she was sending me the book.
“Omens are omens,” I muttered, “and there’s no use kicking against the pricks eternally;” and cutting the string of the parcel I sat down to read a novel which I had kept so resolutely out of my mind for twenty-five years, that all I remembered of its story and characters was an old gentleman who lived in a suburb, and whose daughters were a great source of trouble to him. I met the style of the narrative as I might that of an original writer whose works I was unacquainted with. There was a zest in it, and I read on and on; I must have read for nearly two hours, which is a long read for me, laying the book aside from time to time, so that I might reflect at my ease on the tenacity with which it had clung to existence. Every effort had been made to drown it; again and again it had been flung into the river, literally and metaphorically, but it had managed to swim ashore like a cat. It would seem that some books have nine hundred and ninety and nine lives, and God knows how long my meditation might have lasted if the front door bell had not rung.
“Are you at home, sir, to Mr.—?”
“Yes.”
There is time for one word more, dear reader, and whilst my visitor lays his hat and coat on the table in the passage I will beseech you not to look forward to a sentimental story; “Spring Days” is as free from sentiment or morals as Daphnis and Chloe.I
“Miss, I’ll have his blood; I will, miss, I will.”
“For goodness’ sake, cook, go back to your kitchen; put that dreadful pair of boots under your apron.”
“No, miss; I’ll be revenged. He has insulted me.”
“You can’t be revenged now, cook; you see he has shut himself in; you had better go back to your kitchen.”
The groom, who was washing the carriage, stood, mop in hand, grinning, appreciating the discomfiture of the coachman, who was paying the penalty of his joke.
“Cook, if you don’t go back to your kitchen instantly, I’ll give you notice. It is shameful—think what a scandal you are making in the stable-yard. Go back to your kitchen—I order you. It is half-past six, go and attend to your master’s dinner.”
“He has insulted me, he has insulted me. I’ll have your blood!” she cried, battering at the door. The rattling of chains was heard as the horses turned their heads.
“Put those boots under your apron, cook; go back to your kitchen, do as I tell you.”
The woman retreated, Maggie following. At intervals there were stoppages, and cook re-stated her desire to have the coachman’s blood. Maggie did not attempt to argue with her, but sternly repeated her order to go back to her kitchen, and to conceal the old boots under her apron.
“What business had he to rummage in my box, interfering with my things; he put them all along the kitchen table; he did it because I told you, miss, that he was carrying on with the kitchenmaid. He goes with her every evening into the wood shed, and a married man, too! I wouldn’t be his poor wife.”
“Go back to your kitchen, cook; do as I tell you.”
With muttered threats cook entered the house, and commanded the kitchenmaid to interfere no more with the oven, but to attend to her saucepans.
“What a violent woman,” thought Maggie, “horrid woman. I am sure she’s Irish. I’ll get rid of her as soon as I can. The place is filthy, but I daren’t speak to her now. She’s stirring the saucepan with her finger.”
At that moment quick steps were heard coming down the corridor, and Sally entered.
“Cook, cook, I want you to put back the dinner half an hour. I have to go down the town.”
“O Sally, I beg of you, what will father say?”
“Father isn’t everybody. I daresay the train will be a little late; it often is. He won’t know anything about it, that is if you don’t tell him.”
“What do you want to go down the town for?”
“Never you mind. I don’t ask you what you do.”
“You want to go down the slonk,” whispered Maggie.
The cook stopped stirring the saucepan, and the kitchenmaid stood listening greedily.
“Nothing of the kind,” Sally answered defiantly. “You’re always trying to get up something against me. Cook, will you keep back the dinner twenty minutes?”
“Cook, I forbid you. I’m mistress here.”
“How dare you insult me before the servants! Grace is mistress here, if it comes to that.”
“Grace has given me over the housekeeping. I am mistress when she is too unwell to attend to it.”
“Nothing of the sort. Grace is the eldest, I would give way to her, but I’m not going to give way to you. Cook, the dinner won’t be ready for another half hour, will it?”
“I don’t know when the dinner will be ready, and I don’t care.”
“It is a quarter to seven now, dinner won’t be ready before seven, will it, cook? Keep it back a bit. Now I must be off.”
And, as Maggie expected, Sally ran past the glass houses and the pear and apple trees, for there was at the end of the vegetable garden a door in the brick wall that enclosed the manor house. It was used by the gardeners, and it communicated with a path leading through some corn and grass land to the high road. There were five acres of land attached to the manor house, tennis lawn, shady walks, flower garden, kitchen garden, stables, and coach house at the back, and all this spoke in somewhat glaring fashion the wealth and ease of a rich city merchant.
“There she goes,” thought Maggie, flaunting her head. “What a fool she is to bully father instead of humouring him. We shall never hear the end of this. His dinner put back so that she may continue her flirtation with Meason! I shall have to tell the truth. Why should I tell a lie?”
“Please, miss,” said the butler as Maggie passed through the baize door, “I think it right to tell you about cook. We find it very hard to put up with her in the servants’ hall. She is a very violent-tempered woman; nor can I say much for her in other respects. Last week she sold twenty pounds of dripping, and it wasn’t all dripping, miss, it was for the most part butter.”
“John, I really can’t listen to any more stories about cook. Has the quarter-to-seven come in yet?”
“I haven’t seen it pass, miss, but I saw Mr. Willy coming up the drive a minute ago.”
Willy entered, and she turned to him and said: “Where have you been to, Willy?”
“Brighton. Has father come in yet?”
“No. You came by the tramcar?”
“Yes.”
With shoulders set well back and toes turned out, Willy came along the passage. His manner was full of deliberation, and he carried a small brown paper parcel under his arm as if it were a sword of state. Maggie followed him up the steep and vulgarly carpeted staircase that branched into the various passages forming the upper part of the house. Willy’s room was precise and grave, and there everything was held under lock and key. He put the brown paper parcel on the table; he took off his coat and laid it on the bed, heaving, at the same time, a sigh.
“Did you notice if the quarter-to-seven has been signalled?”
“Yes, but don’t keep on worrying; the train is coming along the embankment.”
“Then there will be a row to-night.”
“Why?”
“Sally told cook to keep the dinner back; she has gone down the slonk to speak to Meason.”
“Why didn’t you tell cook that she must take her orders from you and no one else?”
“So I did, but Sally said I was no more mistress here than she was. I said Grace had given me charge of the house, when she could not attend to it; but Sally will listen to no one, she’ll drive father out of his mind. There’s no one he hates like the Measons.”
“What is the matter with Grace? Where is she?”
“She’s in her room, lying on the bed crying. She says she wants to die; she says that she doesn’t care what becomes of her. She’ll never care for another man, and father will not give his consent. What’s-his-name has nothing—only a small allowance; he’ll never have any more, he isn’t a working man. I know father, he’ll never hear of any one who is not a working man. I wish you’d speak to her.”
“I’ve quite enough to do with my own affairs; I’ve had bad luck enough as it is, without running into new difficulties of my own accord.”
“If she refuses Berkins, father’ll never get over it. I wish you would speak to her.”
“No, don’t ask me. I never meddle in other people’s affairs. I’ve had trouble enough. Now I want to dress.”
When Maggie went downstairs, she found her father in the drawing-room.
“The train was a little late to-night. Has Willy come back from Brighton?”
“Yes, father.”
“I’ve been looking over his accounts and I find he has lost nearly two thousand pounds in Bond Street, and I don’t think he is doing any good with that agency in Brighton. I never approved of one or the other. I approve of nothing but legitimate city business. Shops in the West End! mere gambling. Where is Grace?”
“She’s in her room.”
“In her room? I suppose she hasn’t left it all day? This is very terrible. I don’t know what to do with you. Since your poor mother died my life has been nothing but trouble and vexation. I can’t manage you, you are too strong for me. So she hasn’t left her room; crying her eyes out, because I won’t consent to her marrying a penniless young officer! But I will not squander my money. I made it all myself, by my own industry, and I refuse to keep young fellows in idleness.”
“I don’t give you any trouble, father.”
“You are the best, Maggie, but you encourage your sister Sally. I hear that you, too, were seen walking with young Meason.”
“It is not true, I assure you, father. I met him as I was going to the post-office. I said, ‘How do you do?’ and I passed on.”
“Where is Sally?”
“She went out a few minutes ago.”
“Didn’t she know the time? She ought to be dressing for dinner. Do you know where she’s gone?”
“I think she went down the slonk.”
His children had inherited his straight, sharp features and his small, black, vivid eyes. Their hair was of various hues of black. Maggie’s was raven black and glossy; Sally’s was coarse and of a hue like black-lead; Grace’s was abundant and relieved with sooty shades; Willy’s hair was brown. He was the fair one of the family, and his hair was always closely cut in military fashion, and he wore a long flowing military moustache with a tinge of red in it. His father and he were built on the same lines—long, spare bodies, short necks and legs, and short, spare arms, and if the father’s white hair were dyed the years that separated him from his son would disappear, for although the son had only just turned thirty, he was middle-aged in face and feeling.
Sally and Grace were both thickly built, the latter a little inclined to fat. Maggie was thin and elegantly angular, and often stood in picturesque attitudes; she stood in one now, with her hands linked behind her back, and she watched her father, and her look was subtle and insinuating.
“When I came here,” he said, speaking rapidly, and as if he were speaking to himself, “the place was well enough; there was nothing but those wretched cottages facing the sea, the green, and a few cottages about it; but since those villas have been put up, Southwick has become unbearable. All my troubles,” he murmured, “originated in the Southdown Road.”
Maggie turned aside, smiled, and bit her lip; she did not speak, however, for she knew her father did not care to be interrupted in his musings.
“A hateful place—glass porticoes, and oleographs on the walls.” Here Mr. Brookes stopped in his walk to admire one of his favourite Friths. “Those ridiculous haberdashers, with a bas-relief of the founder of their house over the doorway. The proprietors of the baths, the Measons, poor as church mice, the son a mate of a merchant vessel—these are not proper associates for my daughters. I will not know them; I will not have them in my house.”
“The Measons are quite as good as we are, father. They may be poor, but as far as family goes—”
“You are just the same as the others, Maggie; once there is a young man to flirt with, you don’t care what he is or where he comes from. When there are no young men, you will snub the old ladies fast enough; and as for Sally, she is downright rude. I didn’t want to see the haberdashers, but while they were in my house I was polite to them.”
“It was the Horlocks who told them to call.”
“I know it was. If Mrs. Horlock likes to know these people, let her know them; but what does she want to force them upon us for? That’s what I want to know. We might never have known any one in the Southdown Road; I mean we never should, we never could have known any one in the Southdown Road if Mrs. Horlock hadn’t come to live there. We had to call upon her.”
“Every Viceroy in India called upon her. She was the only woman whom every Viceroy did call upon.”
“I know she was. Of course we had to call upon her. Most interesting woman; the General is very nice, too. I like them exceedingly. I often go to see them, although the smell of that mastiff is more than I can bear in the hot weather, especially if lilies or strong smelling flowers are in the room.”
“She feeds the mice, she won’t let them be destroyed, she lets the traps down at night.”
“Don’t let us go into the animal question. The constant smell of dogs is unpleasant, but I could put up with it—what I can’t stand are her acquaintances in the Southdown Road, and when I think that we should not have known any of them if it hadn’t been for her! Indirectly—I do not say directly—she is the cause of all my difficulties. It was at her house Sally met young Meason; it was at her house Grace met that young officer for whom she is crying her eyes out; and it was at her house—yes, I hadn’t thought of it before—it was at her house that Willy met that swindler who induced him to put two thousand pounds into the Bond Street shop. The Southdown Road might have remained here for the next five hundred years, and we should have known nothing of it had it not been for Mrs. Horlock; if she likes to know these people let her know them, but why force them upon us? It was only the other day she was talking to me about calling on some new friends of hers who have come to live there. I dare say it is the custom to call on every one at Calcutta, but I say that Calcutta etiquette is not Southwick etiquette, and I don’t care how many Viceroys called upon her, I will not know the Southdown Road.”
The enunciation of this last sentence was deliberate and impassioned. Mr. Brookes walked twice across the room; then he stood, his hands crossed behind his back, looking at his admired Goodall. His anger melted, and he mused on the price he had paid, and the price he thought it was now worth. Fearing he would return to the Southdown Road trouble, Maggie said: “I am afraid we shall be obliged to get rid of the new cook. She is Irish. Just before you came in I found her in the stable-yard threatening to break Holt’s head with a pair of dreadful old boots.”
“I don’t want to hear about the cook. The money you spend in housekeeping is enormous. Since your poor mother died I haven’t had a day’s peace. If it isn’t one thing it is another. You are fit for nothing but pleasure and flirtation; there isn’t a young man in the place or within ten miles you haven’t flirted with. I am often ashamed to look them in the face at the station. It is past seven; why isn’t dinner ready?”
“Sally told the cook to put the dinner back half an hour.”
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