Book of Ghosts — 11 - A Professional Secret, part 2

Then, sighing, Miss Asphodel went languidly on her way.

Joseph was as one stunned.

He buried his face in his hands.

The person of all others with whom he desired to stand well, that person looked upon him as her most deadly enemy, at all events as the one who had most cruelly aggrieved her.

Presently, hearing the clock strike, he started.

He was due at the office, and Joseph Leveridge had always made a point of punctuality.

He now went to the office, and learned from his fellow-clerk that Mr. Stork had not returned; he had been there, and then had gone away to seek Leveridge at his lodgings.

Joseph considered it incumbent on him to resume his hat and go in quest of his "boss."

On his way it occurred to him that there was monotony in bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning, and he would like a change.

Moreover, he was hungry; he had left the house of Mrs. Baker without taking a mouthful, and if he returned now for a snack the eggs and the bacon would be cold.

So he stepped into the shop of Mr. Box, the grocer, for a tin of sardines in oil.

When the grocer saw him he said: "Will you favour me with a word, sir, in the back shop?"

"I am pressed for time," replied Leveridge nervously.

"But one word; I will not detain you," said Mr. Box, and led the way.

Joseph walked after him.

"Sir," said the grocer, shutting the glass door, "you have done me a prodigious wrong.

You have deprived me of what I would not have lost for a thousand pounds.

You have put me into your book.

How my business will get on without me--I mean my intellect, my powers of organisation, my trade instincts, in a word, myself--I do not know.

You have taken them from me and put them into your book.

I am consigned to a novel, when I want all my powers behind the counter.

Possibly my affairs for a while will go on by the weight of their own momentum, but it cannot be for long without my controlling brain.

Sir, you have brought me and my family to ruin--_you have used me up_."

Leveridge could bear this no more; he seized the handle of the door, rushed through the outer shop, precipitated himself into the street, carrying the sardine tin in his hand, and hurried to his lodgings.

But there new trouble awaited him.

On the doorstep still sat the three gentlemen.

When they saw him they rose to their feet.

"I know, I know what you have to say," gasped Joseph.

"In pity do not attack me all together.

One at a time.

With your leave, Mr. Vicar, will you step up first into my humble little sanctum, and I will receive the others later.

I believe that the smell of bacon and eggs is gone from the room.

I left the window open."

"I will most certainly follow you," said the Vicar of Swanton.

"This is a most serious matter."

"Excuse me, will you take a chair?"

"No, thank you; I can speak best when on my legs.

I lose impressiveness when seated.

But I fear, alas!

that gift has been taken from me.

Sir!

sir!

you have put me into your book.

My earthly tabernacle may be here, standing on your--or Mrs. Baker's drugget--but all my great oratorical powers have gone.

I have been despoiled of what was in me my highest, noblest, most spiritual parts.

What my preaching henceforth will be I fear to contemplate.

I may be able to string together a number of texts, and tack on an application, but that is mere mechanical work.

I used to dredge in much florid eloquence, to stick in the flowers of elocution between every joint.

And now!

--I am despoiled of all.

I, the Vicar of Swanton, shall be as a mere stick; I shall no more be a power in the pulpit, a force on the platform.

My prospects in the diocese are put an end to.

Miserable, miserable young man, you might have pumped others, but why me?

I know but too surely that _you have used me up_."

The vicar had taken off his hat, his bald forehead was beaded, his bristling grey whiskers drooped, his unctuous expression had faded away.

His eyes, usually bearing the look as though turned inward in ecstatic contemplation of his personal piety, with only a watery stare on the world without, were now dull.

He turned to the door.

"I will send up Stork," he said.

"Do so by all means, sir," was all that Joseph could say.

When the solicitor entered his red hair had assumed a darker dye, through the moisture that exuded from his head.

"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "this is a scurvy trick you have played me.

You have put me into your book."

"I only sketched a not over-scrupulous lawyer," protested Joseph.

"Why should you put the cap on your own head?"

"Because it fits.

It is myself you have put into your book, and by no legal process can I get out of it.

I shall not be competent to advise the magistrates on the bench, and, good heavens!

what a mess they will get into.

I do not know whether your fellow-clerk can carry on the business.

_I have been used up.

_ I'll tell you what.

You go away; I want you no more at the office.

Whenever you revisit Swanton you will see only the ruins of the respected firm of Stork.

It cannot go on when I am not in it, but in your book."

The last to arrive was Mr. Wotherspoon.

He was in a most depressed condition.

"There was not much in me," said he, "not at any time.

You might have spared such a trifle as me, and not put me also into your book and _used me up_.

Oh, dear, dear!

what will my poor mother do!

And how Sarah and Jane will bully me."

* * * * * That same day Mr. Leveridge packed up his traps and departed from Swanton for his mother's house.

That she was delighted to see him need not be said; that something was wrong, her maternal instinct told her.

But it was not for some days that he confided to her so much as this: "Oh, mother, I have written a novel, and have put into it the people of Swanton--and so have had to leave."

"My dear Joe," said the old lady, "you have done wrong and made a great mistake.

You never should introduce actual living personages into a work of fiction.

You should pulp them first, and then run out your characters fresh from the pulp."

"I was so afraid of using my imagination," explained Joe.

Some months elapsed, and Leveridge could not resolve on an employment that would suit him and at the same time maintain him.

The fifty pounds he had earned would not last long.

He began to be sensible of the impulse to be again writing.

He resisted it for a while, but when he got a letter from his publisher, saying that the novel had sold well, far better than had been expected, and that he would be pleased to consider another from Mr. Leveridge's pen, and could promise him for it more liberal terms, then Joseph's scruples vanished.

But on one thing he was resolved.

He would now create his characters.

They should not be taken from observation.

Moreover, he determined to differentiate his new work from the old in other material points.

His characters should be the reverse of those in the first novel.

For his heroine he imagined a girl of boisterous spirits, straightforward, true, but somewhat unconventional, and given to use slang expressions.

He had never met with such a girl, so that she would be a pure creation of his brain, and he made up his mind to call her Poppy.

Then he would avoid drawing the portrait of an Evangelical parson, and introduce one decidedly High Church; he would have no heavy, narrow tradesman like Box, but a man full of venture and speculative push.

Moreover, having used up the not over-scrupulous lawyer, he would portray one, the soul of honour, the confidant of not only the county gentry but of the county nobility.

And as he had caused so much trouble by the introduction of good old Mother Baker, he would trace the line of a lively, skittish young widow, always on the hunt after admirers, and endeavouring to entangle the youths who lodged with her.

As he went on with his story, it worked out to his satisfaction, and what especially gratified him and gave repose to his mind was the consciousness that he was using no one up, with whom he was acquainted, and that all his characters were pure creations.

The work was complete, and the publisher agreed to give a hundred pounds for it.

Then it passed through the press, and in due course Leveridge heard from the publisher that his six free copies had been sent off to him by train.

Joseph was almost as excited over his second novel as he was over the first.

He was too impatient to wait till the parcels were sent round in the ordinary way.

He hurried to the station in the evening, to meet the train from town, by which he expected his consignment; and having secured it, he hurried home, carrying the heavy parcel.

His mother's house was comparatively large; she occupied but a corner of it, and she had given over to her son a little cosy sitting-room, in which he might write and read.

Into this room Joseph carried his parcel, full of impatience to cut the string and disclose the volumes.

But he had hardly passed through his door before he was startled to see that his room was full of people; all but one were seated about the table.

That one who was not, lounged against the bookcase, standing on one foot.

With a shock of surprise, Joseph recognised all those there gathered together.

They were the characters in his book, his own creations.

And that individual who stood, in an indifferent attitude, was his new heroine, Poppy.

The first shock of surprise rapidly passed.

Joseph Leveridge felt no fear, but rather a sense of pleasure.

He was in the presence of his own creations, and knew them familiarly.

There were seven in all.

At his appearance they all saluted him respectfully as their creator--all except Poppy, who gave him a wink and a nod.

At the head of the table sat the High Church parson, shaven, with a long coat and a grave face, next to him, on the right, Lady Mabel Forraby, a tall, elderly, aristocratic-looking woman, the aunt of Poppy.

One element of lightness in the book had consisted in the struggles of Lady Mabel to control her wayward niece and the revolt of the latter.

Mr. Leveridge had never known a person of title in his life, so that Lady Mabel was a pure creation; so also, brought up, as he had been, by a Calvinistic mother, and afterwards thrown under the ministry of the Vicar of Swanton, he had not once come across a Ritualist.

Consequently his parson, in this instance, was also a pure creation.

A young gentleman, the hero of the novel, a bright intelligent fellow, full of vigour and good sense, and highly cultured, sat next to Lady Mabel.

Joseph had never been thrown into association with men of quite this type.

He had met nice respectable clerks and amusing and agreeable travellers for commercial houses, so that this personage also was a creation.

So most certainly was the bold, pert little widow who rolled her eyes and put on winsome airs.

Joseph had kept clear of all such instances, but he had heard and read of them.

She could look to him as her creator.

And that naughty little Poppy!

Her naughtiness was all mischief, put on to aggravate her staid old aunt, so full of daring, and yet withal so steady of heart; so full of frolic, but with principle underlying it all.

Joseph had never encountered anyone like her, anyone approaching to her.

The young ladies to whom his mother introduced him were all very prim and proper.

At Swanton he had been little in society: the vicar's daughter was a tract distributer and a mission woman, and Mr. Stork's daughter a domestic drudge.

Of all the characters in Joseph's book she was his most especial and delightful creation.

Then the white-haired family lawyer, fond of his jokes, able to tell a good story, close as a walnut relative to all matters communicated to him, strict and honourable in all his dealings, content with his small earnings, and frugally laying them by.

Joseph had not met such a man, but he had idealised him as the sort of lawyer he would wish to be should he stick to his profession.

He also, accordingly, was a creation.

And last, but not least, was the red-faced, audacious stockbroker; a man of sharp and quick determination, who saw a chance in a moment and closed on it, who was keen of scent and smelt a risky investment the moment it came before him.

Joseph knew no stockbroker--had only heard of them by rumour.

He, therefore, was a creation.

"Well, my children, not of my loins, but of my brain," said the author.

"What do you all want?"

"Bodies," they replied with one voice.

"Bodies!"

gasped Joseph, stepping backwards.

"Why, what possesses you all?

You can't expect me to furnish you with them."

"But, indeed, we do, old chap," said Poppy.

"Niece!"

said Lady Mabel, turning about in her chair, "address your creator with more respect."

"Stay, my lady," said the parson.

"Allow me to explain matters to Mr. Leveridge.

He is young and an inexperienced writer of fiction, and is therefore unaware of the exigencies of his profession.

You must know, dear author of our being, that every author of a work of imagination, such as you have been, lays himself under a moral and an inexorable obligation to find bodies for all those whom he has called into existence through his fertile brain.

Mr. Leveridge has not mixed in the literary world.

He does not belong to the Society of Authors.

He is--he will excuse the expression--raw in his profession.

It is a well-known law among novelists that they must furnish bodies for such as they have called into existence out of their pure imagination.

For this reason they invariably call their observation to their assistance, and they balance in their books the creations with the transcripts from life.

The only exception to this rule that I am aware of," continued the parson, "is where the author is able to get his piece dramatised, in which case, of course, the difficulty ceases."

"I should love to go on the stage," threw in Poppy.

"Niece, you do not know what you say," remarked Lady Mabel, turning herself about.

"Allow me, my lady," said the parson.

"What I have said is fact, is it not?"

"Most certainly," replied all.

Lady Mabel said: "I suppose it is."

"Then," pursued the parson, "the situation is this: Have you secured the dramatisation of your novel?"

"I never gave it a thought," said Joseph.

"In that case, as there is no prospect of our being so accommodated, the position is this: We shall have to haunt you night and day, mainly at night, till you have accommodated us with bodies; we cannot remain as phantom creations of a highly imaginative soul such as is yours, Mr. Leveridge.

If you have your rights, so have we.

And we insist on ours, and will insist till we are satisfied."

At once all vanished.

Joseph Leveridge felt that he had got himself into a worse hobble than before.

From his former difficulties he had escaped by flight.

But there was, he feared, no flying from these seven impatient creations all clamouring for bodies, and to provide them with such was beyond his powers.

All his delight in the publication of his new novel was spent.

It had brought with it care and perplexity.

He went to bed.

During the night, he was troubled with his characters; they peeped in at him.

Poppy got a peacock's feather and tickled his nose just as he was dropping asleep.

"You bounder!"

she said; "I shall give you no peace till you have settled me into a body--but oh!

get me on to the stage if you can."

"Poppy, come away," called Lady Mabel.

"Don't be improper.

Mr. Leveridge will do his best.

I want a body quite as much as do you, but I know how to ask for it properly."

"And I," said the parson, "should like to have mine before Easter, but have one I must."

Mr. Leveridge's state now was worse than the first.

One or other of his creatures was ever watching him.

His every movement was spied on.

There was no escaping their vigilance.

Sometimes they attended him in groups of two or three; sometimes they were all around him.

At meals not one was missing, and they eyed every mouthful of his food as he raised it to his lips.

His mother saw nothing--the creations were invisible to all eyes save those of their creator.

If he went out for a country walk, they trotted forth with him, some before, looking round at every turn to see which way he purposed going, some following.

Poppy and the skittish widow managed to attach themselves to him, one on each side.

"I hate that little woman," said Poppy.

"Why did you call her into being?"

[Illustration: IF HE WENT OUT FOR A WALK THEY TROTTED FORTH WITH HIM, SOME BEFORE, SOME FOLLOWING.

] "I never dreamed that things would come to this pass."

"I am convinced, creator dear, that there is a vein of wickedness in your composition, or you would never have imagined such a minx, good and amiable and butter-won't-melt-in-your-mouth though you may look.

And there must be a frolicsome devil in your heart, or I should never have become."

"Indeed, Poppy, I am very glad that I gave you being.

But one may have too much even of a good thing, and there are moments when I could dispense with your presence."

"I know, when you want to carry on with the widow.

She is always casting sheep's eyes at you."

"But, Poppy, you forget my hero, whom I created on purpose for you."

"All my attention is now engrossed in you, and will be till you provide me with a body."

When Leveridge was in his room reading, if he raised his eyes from his book they met the stare of one of his characters.

If he went up to his bedroom, he was followed.

If he sat with his mother, one kept guard.

This was become so intolerable, that one evening he protested to the stockbroker, who was then in attendance.

"Do, I entreat you, leave me to myself.

You treat me as if I were a lunatic and about to commit _felo de se_, and you were my warders."

"We watch you, sir," said the stockbroker, "in our own interest.

We cannot suffer you to give us the slip.

We are all expectant and impatient for the completion of what you have begun."

Then the parson undertook to administer a lecture on Duty, on responsibilities contracted to those called into partial existence by a writer of fiction.

He cannot be allowed to half do his work.

His creations must be realised, and can only be realised by being given a material existence.

"But what the dickens can I do?

I cannot fabricate bodies for you.

I

never in my life even made a doll."

"Have you no thought of dramatising us?"

"I know no dramatic writers."

"Do it yourself."

"Does not this sort of work require a certain familiarity with the technique of the stage which I do not possess?"

"That might be attended to later.

Pass your MS. through the hands of a dramatic expert, and pay him a percentage of your profits in recognition of his services.

Only one thing I bargain for, do not present me on the stage in such a manner as to discredit my cloth."

"Have I done so in my book?"

"No, indeed, I have nothing to complain of in that.

But there is no counting on what Poppy may persuade you into doing, and I fear that she is gaining influence over you.

Remember, she is your creation, and you must not suffer her to mould you."

The idea took root.

The suggestion was taken up, and Joseph Leveridge applied himself to his task with zest.

But he had to conceal what he was about from his mother, who had no opinion of the drama, and regarded the theatre as a sink of iniquity.

But now new difficulties arose.

Joseph's creations would not leave him alone for a moment.

Each had a suggestion, each wanted his or her own part accentuated at the expense of the other.

Each desired the heightening of the situations in which they severally appeared.

The clamour, the bickering, the interference made it impossible for Joseph to collect his thoughts, keep cool, and proceed with his work.

Sunday arrived, and Joseph drew on his gloves, put on his box-hat, and offered his arm to his mother, to conduct her to chapel.

All the characters were drawn up in the hall to accompany them.

Joseph and his mother walking down the street to Ebenezer Chapel presented a picture of a good and dutiful son and of a pious widow not to be surpassed.

Poppy and the widow entered into a struggle as to which was to walk on the unoccupied side of Joseph.

If this had been introduced into the picture it would have marred it; but happily this was invisible to all eyes save those of Joseph.

The rest of the imaginary party walked arm in arm behind till the chapel was reached, when the parson started back.

"I am not going in there!

It is a schism-shop," he exclaimed.

"Nothing in the world would induce me to cross the threshold."

"And I," said Lady Mabel, "I have no idea of attending a place of worship not of the Established Church."

"I'll go in--if only to protect Creator from the widow," said Poppy.

Joseph and his mother entered, and occupied their pew.

The characters, with the exception of the parson and the old lady, grouped themselves where they were able.

The stockbroker stood in the aisle with his arms on the pew door, to ensure that Joseph was kept a prisoner there.

But before the service had advanced far he had gone to sleep.

This was the more to be regretted, as the minister delivered a very strong appeal to the unconverted, and if ever there was an unconverted worldling, it was that stockbroker.

The skittish widow was leering at a deacon of an amorous complexion, but as he did not, and, in fact, could not see her, all her efforts were cast away.

The solicitor sat with stolid face and folded hands, and allowed the discourse to flow over him like a refreshing douche.

Poppy had got very tired of the show, and had slunk away to rejoin her aunt.

The hero closed his eyes and seemed resigned.

After nearly an hour had elapsed, whilst a hymn was being sung, Joseph, more to himself than to his mother, said: "Can I escape?"

"Escape what?

Wretch?"

inquired the widowed lady.

"I think I can do it.

There's a room at the side for earnest inquirers, or a vestry or something, with an outer door.

I will risk it, and make a bolt for my liberty."

He very gently and cautiously unhasped the door of the pew, and as he slid it open, the sleeping stockbroker, still sleeping and unconscious, slipped back, and Joseph was out.

He made his way into the room at the side, forth from the actual chapel, ran through it, and tried the door that opened into a side lane.

It was locked, but happily the key was in its place.

He turned it, plunged forth, and fell into the arms of his characters.

They were all there.

The solicitor had been observing him out of the corner of his eye, and had given the alarm.

The stockbroker was aroused, and he, the solicitor, the hero, ran out, gave the alarm to the three without, and Joseph was intercepted, and his attempt at escape frustrated.

He was reconducted home by them, himself dejected, they triumphant.