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diff --git a/.gitattributes b/.gitattributes new file mode 100644 index 0000000..6833f05 --- /dev/null +++ b/.gitattributes @@ -0,0 +1,3 @@ +* text=auto +*.txt text +*.md text diff --git a/23421-0.txt b/23421-0.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..f9cfaf2 --- /dev/null +++ b/23421-0.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1237 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Collaborators + 1896 + +Author: Robert S. Hichens + +Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23421] +Last Updated: December 17, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLABORATORS *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + +THE COLLABORATORS. + +By Robert S. Hichens + +1896 + + + + +I. + +“Why shouldn’t we collaborate?” said Henley in his most matter-of-fact +way, as Big Ben gave voice to the midnight hour. “Everybody does it +nowadays. Two heads may be really better than one, although I seldom +believe in the truth of accepted sayings. Your head is a deuced good +one, Andrew; but--now don’t get angry--you are too excitable and too +intense to be left quite to yourself, even in book-writing, much less in +the ordinary affairs of life. I think you were born to collaborate, and +to collaborate with me. You can give me everything I lack, and I can +give you a little of the sense of humour, and act as a drag upon the +wheel.” + +“None of the new humour, Jack; that shall never appear in a book with +my name attached to it. Dickens I can tolerate. He is occasionally +felicitous. The story of ‘The Dying Clown,’ for instance, crude as it is +it has a certain grim tragedy about it. But the new humour came from the +pit, and should go--to the _Sporting Times_.” + +“Now, don’t get excited. The book is not in proof yet--perhaps never +will be. You need not be afraid. My humour will probably be old enough. +But what do you y to the idea?” + +Andrew Trenchard sat for awhile in silent consideration. His legs were +stretched out, and his slippered feet rested on the edge of the brass +fender. A nimbus of smoke surrounded his swarthy features, his shock of +black hair, his large, rather morose, dark eyes. He was a man of about +twenty-five, with an almost horribly intelligent face, so observant that +he tried people, so acute that he frightened them. His intellect was +never for a moment at rest, unless in sleep. He devoured himself with +his own emotions, and others with his analysis of theirs. His mind was +always crouching to spring, except when it was springing. He lived an +irregular life, and all horrors had a subtle fascination for him. As +Henley had remarked, he possessed little sense of humour, but immense +sense of evil and tragedy and sorrow. He seldom found time to +calmly regard the drama of life from the front. He was always at the +stage-door, sending in his card, and requesting admittance behind the +scenes. What was on the surface only interested him in so far as +it indicated what was beneath, and in all mental matters his normal +procedure was that of the disguised detective. Stupid people disliked +him. Clever people distrusted him while they admired him. The mediocre +suggested that he was liable to go off his head, and the profound +predicted for him fame, tempered by suicide. + +Most people considered him interesting, and a few were sincerely +attached to him. Among these last was Henley, who had been his friend +at Oxford, and had taken rooms in the same house with him in Smith’s +Square, Westminster. Both the young men were journalists. Henley, who, +as he had acknowledged, possessed a keen sense of humour, and was not +so much ashamed of it as he ought to have been, wrote--very +occasionally--for _Punch_, and more often for _Fun_, was dramatic critic +of a lively society paper, and “did” the books--in a sarcastic vein--for +a very unmuzzled “weekly,” that was libellous by profession and truthful +by oversight. Trenchard, on the other hand, wrote a good deal of very +condensed fiction, and generally placed it; contributed brilliant +fugitive articles to various papers and magazines, and was generally +spoken of by the inner circle of the craft as “a rising man,” and a +man to be afraid of. Henley was full of common-sense, only moderately +introspective, facile, and vivacious. He might be trusted to tincture a +book with the popular element, and yet not to spoil it; for his literary +sense was keen, despite his jocular leaning toward the new humour. He +lacked imagination; but his descriptive powers were racy, and he knew +instinctively what was likely to take, and what would be caviare to the +general. + +Trenchard, as he considered the proposition now made to him, realized +that Henley might supply much that he lacked in any book that was +written with a view to popular success. There could be no doubt of it. + +“But we should quarrel inevitably and doggedly,” he said at last. “If I +can not hold myself in, still less can I be held in. We should tear +one another in pieces. When I write, I feel that what I write must be, +however crude, however improper or horrible it may seem. You would want +to hold me back.” + +“My dear boy, I should more than want to--I should do it. In +collaboration, no man can be a law unto himself. That must be distinctly +understood before we begin. I don’t wish to force the proposition on +you. Only we are both ambitious devils. We are both poor. We are both +determined to try a book. Have we more chance of succeeding if we try +one together? I believe so. You have the imagination, the grip, the +stern power to evolve the story, to make it seem inevitable, to force +it step by step on its way. I can lighten that way. I can plant a few +flowers--they shall not be peonies, I promise you--on the roadside. +And I can, and, what is more, will, check you when you wish to make the +story impossibly horrible or fantastic to the verge of the insane. Now, +you needn’t be angry. This book, if we write it, has got to be a +good book, and yet a book that will bring grist to the mill. That is +understood.” + +Andrew’s great eyes flashed in the lamplight. + +“The mill,” he said. “Sometimes I feel inclined to let it stop working. +Who would care if one wheel ceased to turn? There are so many others.” + +“Ah, that’s the sort of thing I shall cut out of the book!” cried +Henley, turning the soda-water into his whisky with a cheerful swish. + +“We will be powerful, but never morbid; tragic, if you like, but not +without hope. We need not aspire too much; but we will not look at the +stones in the road all the time. And the dunghills, in which those weird +fowl, the pessimistic realists, love to rake, we will sedulously avoid. +Cheer up, old fellow, and be thankful that you possess a corrective in +me.” + +Trenchard’s face lightened in a rare smile as, with a half-sigh, he +said: + +“I believe you are right, and that I need a collaborator, an opposite, +who is yet in sympathy with me. Yes; either of us might fail alone; +together we should succeed.” + +“_Will_ succeed, my boy!” + +“But not by pandering to the popular taste,” added Andrew in his most +sombre tones, and with a curl of his thin, delicately-moulded lips. “I +shall never consent to that.” + +“We will not call it pandering. But we must hit the taste of the day, or +we shall look a couple of fools.” + +“People are always supposed to look fools when, for once, they are not +fools,” said Andrew. + +“Possibly. But now our bargain is made. Strike hands upon it. Henceforth +we are collaborators as well as friends.” + +Andrew extended his long, thin, feverish hand, and, as Henley held it +for a moment, he started at the intense, vivid, abnormal personality its +grasp seemed to reveal. To collaborate with Trenchard was to collaborate +with a human volcano. + +“And now for the germ of our book,” he said, as the clock struck one. +“Where shall we find it?” + +Trenchard leaned forward in his chair, with his hands pressed upon the +arms. + +“Listen, and I will give it you,” he said. + +And, almost until the dawn and the wakening of the slumbering city, +Henley sat and listened, and forgot that his pipe was smoked out, and +that his feet were cold. Trenchard had strange powers, and could enthral +as he could also repel. + +***** + +“It is a weird idea, and it is very powerful,” Henley said at last. +“But you stop short at the critical moment. Have you not devised a +_dénouement?_” + +“Not yet. That is where the collaboration will come in. You must help +me. We must talk it over. I am in doubt.” + +He got up and passed his hands nervously through his thick hair. + +“My doubt has kept me awake so many nights!” he said, and his voice was +rather husky and worn. + +Henley looked at him almost compassionately. + +“How intensely you live in your fancies!” + +“My fancies?” said Andrew, with a sudden harsh accent, and darting +a glance of curious watchfulness upon his friend. “My---- Yes, yes. +Perhaps I do. Perhaps I try to. Some people have souls that must escape +from their environment, their miserable life-envelope, or faint. Many +of us labour and produce merely to create an atmosphere in which we +ourselves may breathe for awhile and be happy. Damn this London, and +this lodging, and this buying bread with words! I must create for myself +an atmosphere. I must be always getting away from what is, even if I go +lower, lower. Ah! Well--but the _dénouement_. Give me your impressions.” + +Henley meditated for awhile. Then he said; “Let us leave it. Let us get +to work; and in time, as the story progresses, it will seem inevitable. +We shall see it in front of us, and we shall not be able to avoid it. +Let us get to work”--he glanced at his watch and laughed--“or, rather, +let us get to bed. It is past four. This way madness lies. When we +collaborate, we will write in the morning. Our book shall be a book of +the dawn, and not of the darkness, despite its sombre theme.” + +“No, no; it must be a book of the darkness.” + +“Of the darkness, then, but written in the dawn. Your tragedy tempered +by my trust in human nature, and the power that causes things to right +themselves. Good-night, old boy.” + +“Good-night.” + +When Henley had left the room, Tren-chard sat for a moment with his head +sunk low on his breast and his eyes half closed. Then, with a jerk, he +gained his feet, went to the door, opened it, and looked forth on the +deserted landing. He listened, and heard Henley moving to and fro in his +bedroom. Then he shut the door, took off his smoking-coat, and bared his +left arm. There was a tiny blue mark on it. + +“What will the _dénouement_ be?” he whispered to himself, as he felt in +his waistcoat pocket with a trembling hand. + + + + +II. + +The book was moving onward by slow degrees and with a great deal of +discussion. + +In those days Henley and Trenchard lived much with sported oaks. +They were battling for fame. They were doing all they knew. Literary +gatherings missed them. First nights knew them no more. The grim +intensity that was always characteristic of Trenchard seemed in some +degree communicated to Henley. He began to more fully understand what +the creating for one’s self of an atmosphere meant. The story he and his +friend were fashioning fastened upon him like some strange, determined +shadow from the realms of real life, gripped him more and more closely, +held him for long spells of time in a new and desolate world. For the +book so far was a deepening tragedy, and although, at times, Henley +strove to resist the paramount influence which the genius of Trenchard +began to exercise over him, he found himself comparatively impotent, +unable to shed gleams of popular light upon the darkness of the pages. +The power of the tale was undoubted. Henley felt that it was a big +thing that they two were doing; but would it be a popular thing--a +money-making thing? That was the question. He sometimes wished with all +his heart they had chosen a different subject to work their combined +talent upon. The germ of the work seemed only capable of tragic +treatment, if the book were to be artistic. Their hero was a man of +strong intellect, of physical beauty, full at first of the joy of life, +chivalrous, a believer in the innate goodness of human nature. Believing +in goodness, he believed also ardently in influence. In fact, he was +a worshipper of influence, and his main passion was to seize upon the +personalities of others, and impose his own personality upon them. He +loved to make men and women see with his eyes and hear with his ears, +adopt his theories as truth, take his judgment for their own. All that +he thought _was_--to him. He never doubted himself, therefore he could +not bear that those around him should not think with him, act towards +men and women as he acted, face life as he faced it. Yet he was too +subtle ever to be dogmatic. He never shouted in the market-place. He led +those with whom he came in contact as adroitly as if he had been evil, +and to the influence of others he was as adamant. + +Events brought into his life a woman, complex, subtle too, with a +naturally noble character and fine understanding, a woman who, like so +many women, might have been anything, and was far worse than nothing--a +hopeless, helpless slave, the victim of the morphia habit, which had +gradually degraded her, driven her through sloughs of immorality, +wrecked a professional career which at one time had been almost great, +shattered her constitution, though not all her still curious beauty, and +ruined her, to all intents and purposes, body and soul. The man and the +woman met, and in a flash the man saw what she had been, what she might +have been, what, perhaps, in spite of all, she still was, somewhere, +somehow. In her horrible degradation, in her dense despair, she +fascinated him. He could only see the fire bursting out of the swamp. He +could only feel on his cheek the breath of the spring in the darkness of +the charnel-house. He knew that she gave to him his great lifework. Her +monstrous habit he simply could not comprehend. It was altogether as +fantastic to him as absolute virtue sometimes seems to absolute vice. He +looked upon it, and felt as little kinship with it as a saint might feel +with a vampire. To him it was merely a hideous and extraordinary growth, +which had fastened like a cancer upon a beautiful and wonderful body, +and which must be cut out. He was profoundly interested. + +He loved the woman. Seeing her governed entirely by a vice, he made the +very common mistake of believing her to have a weak personality, easily +falling, perhaps for that very reason as easily lifted to her feet. He +resolved to save her, to devote all his powers, all his subtlety, all +his intellect, all his strong force of will, to weaning this woman from +her fatal habit. She was a married woman, long ago left, to kill herself +if she would, by the husband whose happiness she had wrecked. He took +her to live with him. For her sake he defied the world, and set himself +to do angel’s work when people believed him at the devil’s. He resolved +to wrap her, to envelop her in his influence, to enclose her in his +strong personality. Here, at last, was a grand, a noble opportunity +for the legitimate exercise of his master passion. He was confident of +victory. + +But his faith in himself was misplaced. This woman, whom he thought so +weak, was yet stronger than he. Although he could not influence her, he +began to find that she could influence him. At first he struggled with +her vice, which he could not understand. He thought himself merely +horrified at it; then he began to lose the horror in wonder at its +power. Its virility, as it were, fascinated him just a little. A vice +so overwhelmingly strong seemed to him at length almost glorious, almost +God-like. There was a sort of humanity about it. Yes, it was like a +being who lived and who conquered. + +The woman loved him, and he tried to win her from it; but her passion +for it was greater than her passion for him, greater than had been her +original passion for purity, for health, for success, for homage, for +all lovely and happiness-making things. Her passion for it was so great +that it roused the man’s curiosity at last; it made him hold his breath, +and stand in awe, and desire furtively to try just once for himself what +its dominion was like, to test its power as one may test the power of an +electric battery. He dared not do this openly, for fear the fact of his +doing so might drive the woman still farther on the downward path. So in +secret he tasted the fascinations of her vice, once--and again--and yet +again. But still he struggled for her while he was ceasing to struggle +for himself. Still he combated for her the foe who was conquering him. +Very strange, very terrible was his position in that London house with +her, isolated from the world. For his friends had dropped him. Even +those who were not scandalized at his relations with this woman had +ceased to come near him. They found him blind and deaf to the ordinary +interests of life. He never went out anywhere, unless occasionally with +her to some theatre. He never invited anyone to come and see him. At +first the woman absorbed all his interest, all his powers of love--and +then at last the woman and her vice, which was becoming his too. By +degrees he sank lower and lower, but he never told the woman the truth, +and he still urged her to give up her horrible habit, which now he +loved. And she laughed in his face, and asked him if a human creature +who had discovered a new life would be likely to give it up. “A new +death,” he murmured, and then, looking in a mirror near to him, saw his +lips curved in the thin, pale smile of the hypocrite. + +***** + +So far the two young men had written. They worked hard, but their +industry was occasionally interrupted by the unaccountable laziness +of Andrew, who, after toiling with unremitting fury for some days, and +scarcely getting up from his desk, would disappear, and perhaps not +return for several nights. Henley remonstrated with him, but in vain. + +“But what do you do, my dear fellow?” he asked. “What becomes of you?” + +“I go away to think out what is coming. The environment I seek helps +me,” answered Andrew, with a curious, gleaming smile. “I return full of +fresh copy.” + +This was true enough. He generally mysteriously departed when the book +was beginning to flag, and on his reappearance he always set to work +with new vigour and confidence. + +“It seems to me,” Henley said, “that it will be your book after all, not +mine. It is your plot, and when I think things over I find that every +detail is yours. You insisted on the house where the man and the woman +hid themselves being on the Chelsea Embankment. You invented the woman, +her character, her appearance. You named her Olive Beauchamp.” + +“Olive Beauchamp,” Andrew repeated, with a strange lingering over the +two words, which he pronounced in a very curious voice that trembled, as +if with some keen emotion, love or hate. “Yes; I named her as you say.” + +“Then, as the man in the play remarks, ‘Where do I come in?’” Henley +asked, half laughing, half vexed. “Upon my word, I shall have some +compunction in putting my name below yours on the title-page when the +book is published, if it ever is.” + +Andrew’s lips twitched once or twice uneasily. Then he said, “You need +not have any such compunction. The greatest chapter will probably be +written by you.” + +“Which chapter do you mean?” + +“That which winds the story up--that which brings the whole thing to its +legitimate conclusion. You must write the _dénouement_.” + +“I doubt if I could. And then we have not even now decided what it is to +be.” + +“We need not bother about that yet. It will come. Fate will decide it +for us.” + +“What do you mean, Andrew? How curiously you talk about the book +sometimes--so precisely as if it were true!” + +Trenchard smiled again, struck a match, and lit his pipe. + +“It seems true to me--when I am writing it,” he answered. “I have been +writing it these last two days and nights when I have been away, and now +I can go forward, if you agree to the new development which I suggest.” + +It was night. He had been absent for some days, and had just returned. +Henley, meanwhile, had been raging because the book had come to a +complete standstill. He himself could do nothing at it, since they had +reached a dead-lock, and had not talked over any new scenes, or mutually +decided upon the turn events were now to take. He felt rather cross and +sore. + +“_You_ can go forward,” he said: “yes, after your holiday. You might at +least tell me when you are going.” + +“I never know myself,” Andrew said rather sadly. + +He was looking very white and worn, and his eyes were heavy. + +“But I have thought some fresh material out. My idea is this: The man +now becomes such a complete slave to the morphia habit that concealment +of the fact is scarcely possible. And, indeed, he ceases to desire to +conceal it from the woman. The next scene will be an immensely powerful +one--that in which he tells her the truth.” + +“You do not think it would be more natural if she found it out against +his will? It seems to me that what he had concealed so long he would try +to hide for ever.” + +“No,” Andrew said emphatically; “that would not be so.” + +“But----” + +“Look here,” the other interrupted, with some obvious irritability; “let +me tell you what I have conceived, and raise any objections afterwards +if you wish to raise them. He would tell her the truth himself. He +would almost glory in doing so. That is the nature of the man. We have +depicted his pride in his own powers, his temptation, his struggle--his +fall, as it would be called----” + +“As it would be called.” + +“Well, well!--his fall, then. And now comes the moment when his fall is +complete. He bends the neck finally beneath his tyrant, and then he goes +to the woman and he tells her the truth.” + +“But explain matters a little more. Do you mean that he is glad, and +tells almost with triumph; or that he is appalled, and tells her with +horror?” + +“Ah! That is where the power of the scene lies. He is appalled. He is +like a man plunged at last into hell without hope of future redemption. +He tells her the truth with horror.” + +“And she?” + +“It is she who triumphs. Look here: it will be like this.” + +Andrew leaned forward across the table that stood between their two worn +armchairs. His thin, feverish-looking hands, with the fingers strongly +twisted together, rested upon it. His dark eyes glittered with +excitement. + +“It will be like this. It is evening--a dark, dull evening, like the +day before yesterday, closing in early, throttling the afternoon +prematurely, as it were. A drizzling rain falls softly, drenching +everything--the sodden leaves of the trees on the Embankment, the road, +which is heavy with clinging yellow mud, the stone coping of the wall +that skirts the river. + +“And the river heaves along. Its gray, dirty waves are beaten up by a +light, chilly wind, and chase the black barges with a puny, fretful, +sinister fury, falling back from their dark, wet sides with a hiss of +baffled hatred. Yes, it is dreary weather. + +“Do you know, Henley, as I know, the strange, subtle influence of +certain kinds of weather? There are days on which I could do great deeds +merely because of the way the sun is shining. There are days, there are +evenings, when I could commit crimes merely because of the way the +wind is whispering, the river is sighing, the dingy night is clustering +around me. There can be an angel in the weather, or there can be a +devil. On this evening I am describing there is a devil in the night! + +“The lights twinkle through the drizzling rain, and they are blurred, as +bright eyes are blurred, and made dull and ugly, by tears. Two or three +cabs roll slowly by the houses on the Embankment.. A few people hurry +past along the slippery, shining pavement. But as the night closes in +there is little life outside those tall, gaunt houses that are so near +the river! And in one of those houses the man comes down to the woman to +tell her the truth. + +“There is a devil in the weather that night, as I said, and that devil +whispers to the man, and tells him that it is now his struggle must end +finally, and the new era of unresisted yielding to the vice begin. In +the sinister darkness, in the diminutive, drenching mist of rain, he +speaks, and the man listens, and bows his head and answers ‘yes!’ It +is over. He has fallen finally. He is resolved, with a strange, dull +obstinacy that gives him a strange, dull pleasure--do you see?--to +go down to the room below, and tell the woman that she has conquered +him--that his power of will is a reed which can be crushed--that +henceforth there shall be two victims instead of one. He goes down.” + +Andrew paused a moment. His lips were twitching again. He looked +terribly excited. Henley listened in silence. He had lost all wish to +interrupt. + +“He goes down into the room below where the woman is, with her dark +hair, and her dead-white face, and her extraordinary eyes--large, +luminous, sometimes dull and without expression, sometimes dilated, and +with an unnatural life staring out of them. She is on the sofa near the +fire. He sits down beside her. His head falls into his hands, and at +first he is silent. He is thinking how he will tell her. She puts her +soft, dry hand on his, and she says: ‘I am very tired to-night. Do not +begin your evening sermon. Let me have it to-morrow. How you must love +me to be so persistent! and how you must love me to be so stupid as to +think that your power of will can break the power of such a habit as +mine!’ + +“Then he draws his hand away from hers, and he lifts his head from his +hands, and he tells her the truth. She leans back against a cushion +staring at him in silence, devouring him with her eyes, which have +become very bright and eager and searching. Presently he stops. + +“‘Go on,’ she says, ‘go on. Tell me more. Tell me all you feel. Tell +me how the habit stole upon you, and came to you again and again, and +stayed with you. Tell me how you first liked it, and then loved it, and +how it was something to you, and then much, and then everything. Go on! +go on!’ + +“And he catches her excitement. He conceals nothing from her. All the +hideous, terrible, mental processes he has been through, he details +to her, at first almost gloating over his own degradation. He even +exaggerates, as a man exaggerates in telling a story to an eager +auditor. He is carried away by her strange fury of listening. He lays +bare his soul; he exposes its wounds; he sears them with red-hot irons +for her to see. And then at last all is told. He can think of no more +details. He has even embellished the abominable truth. So he is silent, +and he looks at her.” + +“And what does she do?” asked Henley, with a catch in his voice as he +spoke. Undoubtedly in relating a fictitious narrative Andrew had a quite +abnormal power of making it appear true and real. + +“She looks at him, and then she bursts out laughing. Her eyes shine with +triumph. She is glad; she is joyous with the joy of a lost soul when it +sees that other souls are irrevocably lost too; she laughs, and she says +nothing.” + +“And the man?” + +Andrew’s eyes suddenly dilated. He leaned forward and laid his hand on +Henley’s arm. + +“Ah, the man! that is my great idea. As she laughs his heart is changed. +His love for her suddenly dies. Its place is taken by hatred. He +realizes then, for the first time, while he hears her laugh, what she +has done to him. He knows that she has ruined him, and that she is proud +of it--that she is rejoicing in having won him to destruction. He sees +that his perdition is merely a feather in her cap. He hates her. Oh, how +he hates her!--hates her!” + +The expression on Andrew’s face became terrible as he spoke--cruel, +malignant, almost fiendish. Henley turned cold, and shook off his hand +abruptly. + +“That is horrible!” he said. “I object to that. The book will be one of +unrelieved gloom.” + +“The book!” said Andrew. + +“Yes. You behave really as if the story were true, as if everything in +it were ordained--inevitable.” + +“It seems so to me; it is so. What must be, must be. If you are afraid +of tragedy, you ought never to have joined me in starting upon such a +story. Even what has never happened must be made to seem actual to +be successful. The art of fiction is to imitate truth with absolute +fidelity, not to travesty it. In such circumstances the man’s love would +be changed to hatred.” + +“Yes, if the woman’s demeanour were such as you have described. But why +should she be so callous? I do not think that is natural.” + +“You do not know the woman,” began Andrew harshly. Then he stopped +speaking abruptly, and a violent flush swept over his face. + +“I know her as well as you do, my dear fellow,” rejoined Henley, +laughing. “How you manage to live in your dreams! You certainly do +create an atmosphere for yourself with a vengeance, and for me too. I +believe you have an abnormal quantity of electricity concealed about you +somewhere, and sometimes you give me a shock and carry me out of myself. +If this is collaboration, it is really a farce. From the very first you +have had things all your own way. You have talked me over to your view +upon every single occasion; but now I am going to strike. I object to +the conduct you have devised for Olive. It will alienate all sympathy +from her; it is the behaviour of a devil.” + +“It is the behaviour of a woman,” said Andrew, with a cold cynicism that +seemed to cut like a knife. + +“How can you tell? How can you judge of women so surely?” + +“I study all strange phenomena, women among the rest.” + +“Have you ever met an Olive Beauchamp, then, in real life?” said Henley. + +The question was put more than half in jest; but Trenchard received it +with a heavy frown. + +“Don’t let us quarrel about the matter,” he said, “I can only tell you +this; and mind, Jack, I mean it. It is my unalterable resolve. Either +the story must proceed upon the lines that I have indicated, or I +cannot go on with it at all. It would be impossible for me to write it +differently.” + +“And this is collaboration, is it?” exclaimed the other, trying to force +a laugh, though even his good-nature could scarcely stand Trenchard’s +trampling demeanour. + +“I can’t help it. I cannot be inartistic and untrue to Nature even for +the sake of a friend.” + +“Thank you. Well, I have no desire to ruin your work, Andrew; but it is +really useless for this farce to continue. Do what you like, and let us +make no further pretence of collaborating. I cannot act as a drag upon +such a wheel as yours. I will not any longer be a dead-weight upon you. +Our temperaments evidently unfit us to be fellow-workers; and I feel +that your strength and power are so undeniable that you may, perhaps, +be able to carry this weary tragedy through, and by sheer force make it +palatable to the public. I will protest no more; I will only cease any +longer to pretend to have a finger in this literary pie.” + +Andrew’s morose expression passed away like a cloud. He got up and laid +his hand upon Henley’s shoulder. + +“You make me feel what a beast I am,” he said. “But I can’t help it. I +was made so. Do forgive me, Jack. I have taken the bit between my teeth, +I know. But--this story seems to me no fiction; it is a piece of life, +as real to me as those stars I see through the window-pane are real to +me--as my own emotions are real to me. Jack, this book has seized me. +Believe me, if it is written as I wish, it will make an impression upon +the world that will be great. The mind of the world is given to me like +a sheet of blank paper. I will write upon it with my heart’s blood. +But”--and here his manner became strangely impressive, and his sombre, +heavy eyes gazed deeply into the eyes of his friend--“remember this! +You will finish this book. I feel that; I know it. I cannot tell you +why. But so it is ordained. Let me write as far as I can, Jack, and let +me write as I will. But do not let us quarrel. The book is ours, not +mine. And--don’t--don’t take away your friendship from me.” + +The last words were said with an outburst of emotion that was almost +feminine in intensity. Henley felt deeply moved, for, as a rule, +Andrew’s manner was not specially affectionate, or even agreeable. + +“It is all right, old fellow,” he said, in the embarrassed English +manner which often covers so much that might with advantage be +occasionally revealed. “Go on in your own way. I believe you are a +genius, and I am only trying to clip the wings that may carry you +through the skies. Go on in your own way, and consult me only when you +feel inclined.” + +Andrew took his hand and pressed it in silence. + + + + +III. + +It was some three weeks after this that one afternoon Trenchard laid +down his pen at the conclusion of a chapter, and, getting up, thrust his +hands into his pockets and walked to the window. + +The look-out was rather dreary. A gray sky leaned over the great, +barrack-like church that gives an ecclesiastical flavour to +Smith’s Square. A few dirty sparrows fluttered above the gray +pavement--feverish, unresting birds, Trenchard named them silently, +as he watched their meaningless activity, their jerky, ostentatious +deportment, with lacklustre, yet excited, eyes. How gray everything +looked, tame, colourless, indifferent! The light was beginning to +fade stealthily out of things. The gray church was gradually becoming +shadowy. The flying forms of the hurrying sparrows disappeared in the +weary abysses of the air and sky. The sitting-room in Smith’s Square +was nearly dark now. Henley had gone out to a _matinée_ at one of the +theatres, so Trenchard was alone. He struck a match presently, lit a +candle, carried it over to his writing-table, and began to examine the +littered sheets he had just been writing. The book was nearing its end. +The tragedy was narrowing to a point. Trenchard read the last paragraph +which he had written: + +“He hardly knew that he lived, except during those many hours when, +plunged in dreams, he allowed, nay, forced, life to leave him for +awhile. He had sunk to depths below even those which Olive had reached. +And the thought that she was ever so little above him haunted him like a +spectre impelling him to some mysterious deed. When he was not dreaming, +he was dwelling upon this idea which had taken his soul captive. It +seemed to be shaping itself towards an act. Thought was the ante-room +through which he passed to the hall where Fate was sitting, ready to +give him audience. He traversed this ante-room, which seemed lined with +fantastic and terrible pictures, at first with lagging footfalls. But at +length he laid his hand upon the door that divided him from Fate.” + +***** + +And when he had read the final words he gathered the loose sheets +together with his long, thin fingers, and placed them one on the top +of the other in a neat pile. He put them into a drawer which contained +other unfinished manuscripts, shut the drawer, locked it, and carried +the key to Henley’s room. There he scribbled some words on a bit of +notepaper, wrapped the key in it, and inclosed it in an envelope on +which he wrote Henley’s name. Then he put on his overcoat, descended the +narrow stairs, and opened the front-door. The landlady heard him, and +screamed from the basement to know if he would be in to dinner. + +“I shall not be in at all to-night,” he answered, in a hard, dry voice +that travelled along the dingy passage with a penetrating distinctness. +The landlady murmured to the slatternly maidservant an ejaculatory +diatribe on the dissipatedness of young literary gentlemen as the door +banged. Trenchard disappeared in the gathering darkness, and soon left +Smith’s Square behind him. + +It chanced that day that, in the theatre, Henley encountered some +ladies who carried him home to tea after the performance. They lived in +Chelsea, and in returning to Smith’s Square afterwards Henley took his +way along the Chelsea Embankment. He always walked near to the dingy +river when he could. The contrast of its life to the town’s life through +which it flowed had a perpetual fascination for him. In the early +evening, too, the river presents many Doré effects. It is dim, +mysterious, sometimes meretricious, with its streaks of light close to +the dense shadows that lie under the bridges, its wailful, small waves +licking the wharves, and bearing up the inky barges that look like the +ferry-boat of the Styx. Henley loved to feel vivaciously despairing, and +he hugged himself in the belief that the Thames at nightfall tinged his +soul with a luxurious melancholy, the capacity for which was not far +from rendering him a poet. So he took his way by the river. As he neared +Cheyne Row, he saw in front of him the figure of a man leaning over +the low stone wall, with his face buried in his hands. On hearing his +approaching footsteps the man lifted himself up, turned round, and +preceded him along the pavement with a sort of listless stride which +seemed to Henley strangely familiar. He hastened his steps, and on +coming closer recognised that the man was Trenchard; but, just as he +was about to hail him, Trenchard crossed the road to one of the houses +opposite, inserted a key in the door, and disappeared within, shutting +the door behind him. + +Henley paused a moment opposite to the house. It was of a dull red +colour, and had a few creepers straggling helplessly about it, looking +like a torn veil that can only partially conceal a dull, heavy face. + +“Andrew seems at home here,” he thought, gazing up at the blind, tall +windows, which showed no ray of light. “I wonder----” + +And then, still gazing at the windows, he recalled the description of +the house where Olive Beauchamp lived in their book. + +“He took it from this,” Henley said to himself. Yes, that was obvious. +Trenchard had described the prison-house of despair, where the two +victims of a strange, desolating habit shut themselves up to sink, with +a curious minuteness. He had even devoted a paragraph to the tall iron +gate, whose round handle he had written of as “bald, and exposed to the +wind from the river, the paint having long since been worn off it.” In +the twilight Henley bent down and examined the handle of the gate. The +paint seemed to have been scraped from it. + +“How curiously real that book has become to me!” he muttered. “I could +almost believe that if I knocked upon that door, and was let in, I +should find Olive Beauchamp stretched on a couch in the room that lies +beyond those gaunt, shuttered windows.” + +He gave a last glance at the house, and as he did so he fancied that +he heard a slight cry come from it to him. He listened attentively and +heard nothing more. Then he walked away toward home. + +When he reached his room, he found upon his table the envelope which +Trenchard had directed to him. He opened it, and unwrapped the key from +the inclosed sheet of note-paper, on which were written these words: + + “Dear Jack, + + “I am off again. And this time I can’t say when I shall be + back. In any case, I have completed my part of the book, and + leave the finishing of it in your hands. This is the key of + the drawer in which I have locked the manuscript. You have + not seen most of the last volume. Read it, and judge for + yourself whether the _dénouement_ can be anything but + utterly tragic. I will not outline to you what I have + thought of for it. If you have any difficulty about the + _finale_, I shall be able to help you with it even if you do + not see me again for some time. By the way, what nonsense + that saying is, ‘Dead men tell no tales!’ Half the best + tales in the world are told, or at least completed, by dead + men. + + “Yours ever, + + “A. T.” + +Henley laid this note down and turned cold all over. It was the +concluding sentence which had struck a chill through his heart. He took +the key in his hand, went down to Trenchard’s room, unlocked the drawer +in his writing-table, and took out the manuscript. What did Andrew mean +by that sinister sentence? A tale completed by a dead man! Henley sat +down by the fire with the manuscript in his hands and began to read. He +was called away to dinner; but immediately afterward he returned to +his task, and till late into the night his glance travelled down the +closely-written sheets one after the other, until the light from the +candles grew blurred and indistinct, and his eyes ached. But still he +read on. The power and gloom of Andrew’s narrative held him in a vice, +and then he was searching for a clue in the labyrinth of words. At last +he came to the final paragraph, and then to the final sentence: + +“But at length he laid his hand upon the door that divided him from +Fate.” + +Henley put the sheet down carefully upon the table. It was three o’clock +in the morning, and the room seemed full of a strange, breathless cold, +the peculiar chilliness that precedes the dawn. The fire was burning +brightly enough, yet the warmth it emitted scarcely seemed to combat the +frosty air that penetrated from without, and Henley shivered as he +rose from his seat. His brows were drawn together, and he was thinking +deeply. A light seemed slowly struggling into his soul. That last +sentence of Tren-chard’s connected itself with what he had seen in the +afternoon on the Chelsea Embankment. “He laid his hand upon the door +that divided him from Fate.” + +A strange idea dawned in Henley’s mind, an idea which made many things +clear to him. Yet he put it away, and sat down again to read the +unfinished book once more. Andrew had carried on the story of the man’s +growing hatred of the woman whom he had tried to rescue, until it had +developed into a deadly fury, threatening immediate action. Then he had +left the _dénouement_ in Henley’s hands. He had left it ostensibly +in Henley’s hands, but the latter, reading the manuscript again with +intense care, saw that matters had been so contrived that the knot of +the novel could only be cut by murder. As it had been written, the man +must inevitably murder the woman. And Andrew? All through the night +Henley thought of him as he had last seen him, opening the door of the +red house with the tattered creepers climbing over it. + +At last, when it was dawn, he went up to bed tired out, after leaving a +written direction to the servant not to call him in the morning. When he +awoke and looked at his watch it was past two o’clock in the afternoon. +He sprang out of bed, dressed, and after a hasty meal, half breakfast, +half lunch, set out towards Chelsea. The day was bright and cold. The +sun shone on the river and sparkled on the windows of the houses on the +Embankment. Many people were about, and they looked cheerful. The weight +of depression that had settled upon Henley was lifted. He thought of the +strange, yet illuminating, idea that had occurred to him in the night, +and now, in broad daylight, it seemed clothed in absurdity. He laughed +at it. Yet he quickened his steps toward the red house with the +tarnished iron gate and the tattered creepers. + +But long before he reached it he met a boy sauntering along the +thoroughfare and shouting newspapers. He sang out unflinchingly in the +gay sunshine, “Murder! Murder!” and between his shouts he whistled +a music-hall song gaily in snatches. Henley stopped him and bought a +paper. He opened the paper in the wind, which seemed striving to prevent +him, and cast his eyes over the middle pages. Then suddenly he dropped +it to the ground with a white face, and falteringly signed to a cabman. +The _dénouement_ was written. The previous night, in a house on the +Chelsea Embankment, a woman had been done to death, and the murderer had +crept out and thrown himself into the gray, hurrying river. + +The woman’s name was Olive Beauchamp. + + +THE END. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLABORATORS *** + +***** This file should be named 23421-0.txt or 23421-0.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/4/2/23421/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/23421-0.zip b/23421-0.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..4d5f65c --- /dev/null +++ b/23421-0.zip diff --git a/23421-8.txt b/23421-8.txt new file mode 100644 index 0000000..30b3ea7 --- /dev/null +++ b/23421-8.txt @@ -0,0 +1,1236 @@ +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Collaborators + 1896 + +Author: Robert S. Hichens + +Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23421] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLABORATORS *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + +THE COLLABORATORS. + +By Robert S. Hichens + +1896 + + + + +I. + +"Why shouldn't we collaborate?" said Henley in his most matter-of-fact +way, as Big Ben gave voice to the midnight hour. "Everybody does it +nowadays. Two heads may be really better than one, although I seldom +believe in the truth of accepted sayings. Your head is a deuced good +one, Andrew; but--now don't get angry--you are too excitable and too +intense to be left quite to yourself, even in book-writing, much less in +the ordinary affairs of life. I think you were born to collaborate, and +to collaborate with me. You can give me everything I lack, and I can +give you a little of the sense of humour, and act as a drag upon the +wheel." + +"None of the new humour, Jack; that shall never appear in a book with +my name attached to it. Dickens I can tolerate. He is occasionally +felicitous. The story of 'The Dying Clown,' for instance, crude as it is +it has a certain grim tragedy about it. But the new humour came from the +pit, and should go--to the _Sporting Times_." + +"Now, don't get excited. The book is not in proof yet--perhaps never +will be. You need not be afraid. My humour will probably be old enough. +But what do you y to the idea?" + +Andrew Trenchard sat for awhile in silent consideration. His legs were +stretched out, and his slippered feet rested on the edge of the brass +fender. A nimbus of smoke surrounded his swarthy features, his shock of +black hair, his large, rather morose, dark eyes. He was a man of about +twenty-five, with an almost horribly intelligent face, so observant that +he tried people, so acute that he frightened them. His intellect was +never for a moment at rest, unless in sleep. He devoured himself with +his own emotions, and others with his analysis of theirs. His mind was +always crouching to spring, except when it was springing. He lived an +irregular life, and all horrors had a subtle fascination for him. As +Henley had remarked, he possessed little sense of humour, but immense +sense of evil and tragedy and sorrow. He seldom found time to +calmly regard the drama of life from the front. He was always at the +stage-door, sending in his card, and requesting admittance behind the +scenes. What was on the surface only interested him in so far as +it indicated what was beneath, and in all mental matters his normal +procedure was that of the disguised detective. Stupid people disliked +him. Clever people distrusted him while they admired him. The mediocre +suggested that he was liable to go off his head, and the profound +predicted for him fame, tempered by suicide. + +Most people considered him interesting, and a few were sincerely +attached to him. Among these last was Henley, who had been his friend +at Oxford, and had taken rooms in the same house with him in Smith's +Square, Westminster. Both the young men were journalists. Henley, who, +as he had acknowledged, possessed a keen sense of humour, and was not +so much ashamed of it as he ought to have been, wrote--very +occasionally--for _Punch_, and more often for _Fun_, was dramatic critic +of a lively society paper, and "did" the books--in a sarcastic vein--for +a very unmuzzled "weekly," that was libellous by profession and truthful +by oversight. Trenchard, on the other hand, wrote a good deal of very +condensed fiction, and generally placed it; contributed brilliant +fugitive articles to various papers and magazines, and was generally +spoken of by the inner circle of the craft as "a rising man," and a +man to be afraid of. Henley was full of common-sense, only moderately +introspective, facile, and vivacious. He might be trusted to tincture a +book with the popular element, and yet not to spoil it; for his literary +sense was keen, despite his jocular leaning toward the new humour. He +lacked imagination; but his descriptive powers were racy, and he knew +instinctively what was likely to take, and what would be caviare to the +general. + +Trenchard, as he considered the proposition now made to him, realized +that Henley might supply much that he lacked in any book that was +written with a view to popular success. There could be no doubt of it. + +"But we should quarrel inevitably and doggedly," he said at last. "If I +can not hold myself in, still less can I be held in. We should tear +one another in pieces. When I write, I feel that what I write must be, +however crude, however improper or horrible it may seem. You would want +to hold me back." + +"My dear boy, I should more than want to--I should do it. In +collaboration, no man can be a law unto himself. That must be distinctly +understood before we begin. I don't wish to force the proposition on +you. Only we are both ambitious devils. We are both poor. We are both +determined to try a book. Have we more chance of succeeding if we try +one together? I believe so. You have the imagination, the grip, the +stern power to evolve the story, to make it seem inevitable, to force +it step by step on its way. I can lighten that way. I can plant a few +flowers--they shall not be peonies, I promise you--on the roadside. +And I can, and, what is more, will, check you when you wish to make the +story impossibly horrible or fantastic to the verge of the insane. Now, +you needn't be angry. This book, if we write it, has got to be a +good book, and yet a book that will bring grist to the mill. That is +understood." + +Andrew's great eyes flashed in the lamplight. + +"The mill," he said. "Sometimes I feel inclined to let it stop working. +Who would care if one wheel ceased to turn? There are so many others." + +"Ah, that's the sort of thing I shall cut out of the book!" cried +Henley, turning the soda-water into his whisky with a cheerful swish. + +"We will be powerful, but never morbid; tragic, if you like, but not +without hope. We need not aspire too much; but we will not look at the +stones in the road all the time. And the dunghills, in which those weird +fowl, the pessimistic realists, love to rake, we will sedulously avoid. +Cheer up, old fellow, and be thankful that you possess a corrective in +me." + +Trenchard's face lightened in a rare smile as, with a half-sigh, he +said: + +"I believe you are right, and that I need a collaborator, an opposite, +who is yet in sympathy with me. Yes; either of us might fail alone; +together we should succeed." + +"_Will_ succeed, my boy!" + +"But not by pandering to the popular taste," added Andrew in his most +sombre tones, and with a curl of his thin, delicately-moulded lips. "I +shall never consent to that." + +"We will not call it pandering. But we must hit the taste of the day, or +we shall look a couple of fools." + +"People are always supposed to look fools when, for once, they are not +fools," said Andrew. + +"Possibly. But now our bargain is made. Strike hands upon it. Henceforth +we are collaborators as well as friends." + +Andrew extended his long, thin, feverish hand, and, as Henley held it +for a moment, he started at the intense, vivid, abnormal personality its +grasp seemed to reveal. To collaborate with Trenchard was to collaborate +with a human volcano. + +"And now for the germ of our book," he said, as the clock struck one. +"Where shall we find it?" + +Trenchard leaned forward in his chair, with his hands pressed upon the +arms. + +"Listen, and I will give it you," he said. + +And, almost until the dawn and the wakening of the slumbering city, +Henley sat and listened, and forgot that his pipe was smoked out, and +that his feet were cold. Trenchard had strange powers, and could enthral +as he could also repel. + +***** + +"It is a weird idea, and it is very powerful," Henley said at last. +"But you stop short at the critical moment. Have you not devised a +_dnouement?_" + +"Not yet. That is where the collaboration will come in. You must help +me. We must talk it over. I am in doubt." + +He got up and passed his hands nervously through his thick hair. + +"My doubt has kept me awake so many nights!" he said, and his voice was +rather husky and worn. + +Henley looked at him almost compassionately. + +"How intensely you live in your fancies!" + +"My fancies?" said Andrew, with a sudden harsh accent, and darting +a glance of curious watchfulness upon his friend. "My---- Yes, yes. +Perhaps I do. Perhaps I try to. Some people have souls that must escape +from their environment, their miserable life-envelope, or faint. Many +of us labour and produce merely to create an atmosphere in which we +ourselves may breathe for awhile and be happy. Damn this London, and +this lodging, and this buying bread with words! I must create for myself +an atmosphere. I must be always getting away from what is, even if I go +lower, lower. Ah! Well--but the _dnouement_. Give me your impressions." + +Henley meditated for awhile. Then he said; "Let us leave it. Let us get +to work; and in time, as the story progresses, it will seem inevitable. +We shall see it in front of us, and we shall not be able to avoid it. +Let us get to work"--he glanced at his watch and laughed--"or, rather, +let us get to bed. It is past four. This way madness lies. When we +collaborate, we will write in the morning. Our book shall be a book of +the dawn, and not of the darkness, despite its sombre theme." + +"No, no; it must be a book of the darkness." + +"Of the darkness, then, but written in the dawn. Your tragedy tempered +by my trust in human nature, and the power that causes things to right +themselves. Good-night, old boy." + +"Good-night." + +When Henley had left the room, Tren-chard sat for a moment with his head +sunk low on his breast and his eyes half closed. Then, with a jerk, he +gained his feet, went to the door, opened it, and looked forth on the +deserted landing. He listened, and heard Henley moving to and fro in his +bedroom. Then he shut the door, took off his smoking-coat, and bared his +left arm. There was a tiny blue mark on it. + +"What will the _dnouement_ be?" he whispered to himself, as he felt in +his waistcoat pocket with a trembling hand. + + + + +II. + +The book was moving onward by slow degrees and with a great deal of +discussion. + +In those days Henley and Trenchard lived much with sported oaks. +They were battling for fame. They were doing all they knew. Literary +gatherings missed them. First nights knew them no more. The grim +intensity that was always characteristic of Trenchard seemed in some +degree communicated to Henley. He began to more fully understand what +the creating for one's self of an atmosphere meant. The story he and his +friend were fashioning fastened upon him like some strange, determined +shadow from the realms of real life, gripped him more and more closely, +held him for long spells of time in a new and desolate world. For the +book so far was a deepening tragedy, and although, at times, Henley +strove to resist the paramount influence which the genius of Trenchard +began to exercise over him, he found himself comparatively impotent, +unable to shed gleams of popular light upon the darkness of the pages. +The power of the tale was undoubted. Henley felt that it was a big +thing that they two were doing; but would it be a popular thing--a +money-making thing? That was the question. He sometimes wished with all +his heart they had chosen a different subject to work their combined +talent upon. The germ of the work seemed only capable of tragic +treatment, if the book were to be artistic. Their hero was a man of +strong intellect, of physical beauty, full at first of the joy of life, +chivalrous, a believer in the innate goodness of human nature. Believing +in goodness, he believed also ardently in influence. In fact, he was +a worshipper of influence, and his main passion was to seize upon the +personalities of others, and impose his own personality upon them. He +loved to make men and women see with his eyes and hear with his ears, +adopt his theories as truth, take his judgment for their own. All that +he thought _was_--to him. He never doubted himself, therefore he could +not bear that those around him should not think with him, act towards +men and women as he acted, face life as he faced it. Yet he was too +subtle ever to be dogmatic. He never shouted in the market-place. He led +those with whom he came in contact as adroitly as if he had been evil, +and to the influence of others he was as adamant. + +Events brought into his life a woman, complex, subtle too, with a +naturally noble character and fine understanding, a woman who, like so +many women, might have been anything, and was far worse than nothing--a +hopeless, helpless slave, the victim of the morphia habit, which had +gradually degraded her, driven her through sloughs of immorality, +wrecked a professional career which at one time had been almost great, +shattered her constitution, though not all her still curious beauty, and +ruined her, to all intents and purposes, body and soul. The man and the +woman met, and in a flash the man saw what she had been, what she might +have been, what, perhaps, in spite of all, she still was, somewhere, +somehow. In her horrible degradation, in her dense despair, she +fascinated him. He could only see the fire bursting out of the swamp. He +could only feel on his cheek the breath of the spring in the darkness of +the charnel-house. He knew that she gave to him his great lifework. Her +monstrous habit he simply could not comprehend. It was altogether as +fantastic to him as absolute virtue sometimes seems to absolute vice. He +looked upon it, and felt as little kinship with it as a saint might feel +with a vampire. To him it was merely a hideous and extraordinary growth, +which had fastened like a cancer upon a beautiful and wonderful body, +and which must be cut out. He was profoundly interested. + +He loved the woman. Seeing her governed entirely by a vice, he made the +very common mistake of believing her to have a weak personality, easily +falling, perhaps for that very reason as easily lifted to her feet. He +resolved to save her, to devote all his powers, all his subtlety, all +his intellect, all his strong force of will, to weaning this woman from +her fatal habit. She was a married woman, long ago left, to kill herself +if she would, by the husband whose happiness she had wrecked. He took +her to live with him. For her sake he defied the world, and set himself +to do angel's work when people believed him at the devil's. He resolved +to wrap her, to envelop her in his influence, to enclose her in his +strong personality. Here, at last, was a grand, a noble opportunity +for the legitimate exercise of his master passion. He was confident of +victory. + +But his faith in himself was misplaced. This woman, whom he thought so +weak, was yet stronger than he. Although he could not influence her, he +began to find that she could influence him. At first he struggled with +her vice, which he could not understand. He thought himself merely +horrified at it; then he began to lose the horror in wonder at its +power. Its virility, as it were, fascinated him just a little. A vice +so overwhelmingly strong seemed to him at length almost glorious, almost +God-like. There was a sort of humanity about it. Yes, it was like a +being who lived and who conquered. + +The woman loved him, and he tried to win her from it; but her passion +for it was greater than her passion for him, greater than had been her +original passion for purity, for health, for success, for homage, for +all lovely and happiness-making things. Her passion for it was so great +that it roused the man's curiosity at last; it made him hold his breath, +and stand in awe, and desire furtively to try just once for himself what +its dominion was like, to test its power as one may test the power of an +electric battery. He dared not do this openly, for fear the fact of his +doing so might drive the woman still farther on the downward path. So in +secret he tasted the fascinations of her vice, once--and again--and yet +again. But still he struggled for her while he was ceasing to struggle +for himself. Still he combated for her the foe who was conquering him. +Very strange, very terrible was his position in that London house with +her, isolated from the world. For his friends had dropped him. Even +those who were not scandalized at his relations with this woman had +ceased to come near him. They found him blind and deaf to the ordinary +interests of life. He never went out anywhere, unless occasionally with +her to some theatre. He never invited anyone to come and see him. At +first the woman absorbed all his interest, all his powers of love--and +then at last the woman and her vice, which was becoming his too. By +degrees he sank lower and lower, but he never told the woman the truth, +and he still urged her to give up her horrible habit, which now he +loved. And she laughed in his face, and asked him if a human creature +who had discovered a new life would be likely to give it up. "A new +death," he murmured, and then, looking in a mirror near to him, saw his +lips curved in the thin, pale smile of the hypocrite. + +***** + +So far the two young men had written. They worked hard, but their +industry was occasionally interrupted by the unaccountable laziness +of Andrew, who, after toiling with unremitting fury for some days, and +scarcely getting up from his desk, would disappear, and perhaps not +return for several nights. Henley remonstrated with him, but in vain. + +"But what do you do, my dear fellow?" he asked. "What becomes of you?" + +"I go away to think out what is coming. The environment I seek helps +me," answered Andrew, with a curious, gleaming smile. "I return full of +fresh copy." + +This was true enough. He generally mysteriously departed when the book +was beginning to flag, and on his reappearance he always set to work +with new vigour and confidence. + +"It seems to me," Henley said, "that it will be your book after all, not +mine. It is your plot, and when I think things over I find that every +detail is yours. You insisted on the house where the man and the woman +hid themselves being on the Chelsea Embankment. You invented the woman, +her character, her appearance. You named her Olive Beauchamp." + +"Olive Beauchamp," Andrew repeated, with a strange lingering over the +two words, which he pronounced in a very curious voice that trembled, as +if with some keen emotion, love or hate. "Yes; I named her as you say." + +"Then, as the man in the play remarks, 'Where do I come in?'" Henley +asked, half laughing, half vexed. "Upon my word, I shall have some +compunction in putting my name below yours on the title-page when the +book is published, if it ever is." + +Andrew's lips twitched once or twice uneasily. Then he said, "You need +not have any such compunction. The greatest chapter will probably be +written by you." + +"Which chapter do you mean?" + +"That which winds the story up--that which brings the whole thing to its +legitimate conclusion. You must write the _dnouement_." + +"I doubt if I could. And then we have not even now decided what it is to +be." + +"We need not bother about that yet. It will come. Fate will decide it +for us." + +"What do you mean, Andrew? How curiously you talk about the book +sometimes--so precisely as if it were true!" + +Trenchard smiled again, struck a match, and lit his pipe. + +"It seems true to me--when I am writing it," he answered. "I have been +writing it these last two days and nights when I have been away, and now +I can go forward, if you agree to the new development which I suggest." + +It was night. He had been absent for some days, and had just returned. +Henley, meanwhile, had been raging because the book had come to a +complete standstill. He himself could do nothing at it, since they had +reached a dead-lock, and had not talked over any new scenes, or mutually +decided upon the turn events were now to take. He felt rather cross and +sore. + +"_You_ can go forward," he said: "yes, after your holiday. You might at +least tell me when you are going." + +"I never know myself," Andrew said rather sadly. + +He was looking very white and worn, and his eyes were heavy. + +"But I have thought some fresh material out. My idea is this: The man +now becomes such a complete slave to the morphia habit that concealment +of the fact is scarcely possible. And, indeed, he ceases to desire to +conceal it from the woman. The next scene will be an immensely powerful +one--that in which he tells her the truth." + +"You do not think it would be more natural if she found it out against +his will? It seems to me that what he had concealed so long he would try +to hide for ever." + +"No," Andrew said emphatically; "that would not be so." + +"But----" + +"Look here," the other interrupted, with some obvious irritability; "let +me tell you what I have conceived, and raise any objections afterwards +if you wish to raise them. He would tell her the truth himself. He +would almost glory in doing so. That is the nature of the man. We have +depicted his pride in his own powers, his temptation, his struggle--his +fall, as it would be called----" + +"As it would be called." + +"Well, well!--his fall, then. And now comes the moment when his fall is +complete. He bends the neck finally beneath his tyrant, and then he goes +to the woman and he tells her the truth." + +"But explain matters a little more. Do you mean that he is glad, and +tells almost with triumph; or that he is appalled, and tells her with +horror?" + +"Ah! That is where the power of the scene lies. He is appalled. He is +like a man plunged at last into hell without hope of future redemption. +He tells her the truth with horror." + +"And she?" + +"It is she who triumphs. Look here: it will be like this." + +Andrew leaned forward across the table that stood between their two worn +armchairs. His thin, feverish-looking hands, with the fingers strongly +twisted together, rested upon it. His dark eyes glittered with +excitement. + +"It will be like this. It is evening--a dark, dull evening, like the +day before yesterday, closing in early, throttling the afternoon +prematurely, as it were. A drizzling rain falls softly, drenching +everything--the sodden leaves of the trees on the Embankment, the road, +which is heavy with clinging yellow mud, the stone coping of the wall +that skirts the river. + +"And the river heaves along. Its gray, dirty waves are beaten up by a +light, chilly wind, and chase the black barges with a puny, fretful, +sinister fury, falling back from their dark, wet sides with a hiss of +baffled hatred. Yes, it is dreary weather. + +"Do you know, Henley, as I know, the strange, subtle influence of +certain kinds of weather? There are days on which I could do great deeds +merely because of the way the sun is shining. There are days, there are +evenings, when I could commit crimes merely because of the way the +wind is whispering, the river is sighing, the dingy night is clustering +around me. There can be an angel in the weather, or there can be a +devil. On this evening I am describing there is a devil in the night! + +"The lights twinkle through the drizzling rain, and they are blurred, as +bright eyes are blurred, and made dull and ugly, by tears. Two or three +cabs roll slowly by the houses on the Embankment.. A few people hurry +past along the slippery, shining pavement. But as the night closes in +there is little life outside those tall, gaunt houses that are so near +the river! And in one of those houses the man comes down to the woman to +tell her the truth. + +"There is a devil in the weather that night, as I said, and that devil +whispers to the man, and tells him that it is now his struggle must end +finally, and the new era of unresisted yielding to the vice begin. In +the sinister darkness, in the diminutive, drenching mist of rain, he +speaks, and the man listens, and bows his head and answers 'yes!' It +is over. He has fallen finally. He is resolved, with a strange, dull +obstinacy that gives him a strange, dull pleasure--do you see?--to +go down to the room below, and tell the woman that she has conquered +him--that his power of will is a reed which can be crushed--that +henceforth there shall be two victims instead of one. He goes down." + +Andrew paused a moment. His lips were twitching again. He looked +terribly excited. Henley listened in silence. He had lost all wish to +interrupt. + +"He goes down into the room below where the woman is, with her dark +hair, and her dead-white face, and her extraordinary eyes--large, +luminous, sometimes dull and without expression, sometimes dilated, and +with an unnatural life staring out of them. She is on the sofa near the +fire. He sits down beside her. His head falls into his hands, and at +first he is silent. He is thinking how he will tell her. She puts her +soft, dry hand on his, and she says: 'I am very tired to-night. Do not +begin your evening sermon. Let me have it to-morrow. How you must love +me to be so persistent! and how you must love me to be so stupid as to +think that your power of will can break the power of such a habit as +mine!' + +"Then he draws his hand away from hers, and he lifts his head from his +hands, and he tells her the truth. She leans back against a cushion +staring at him in silence, devouring him with her eyes, which have +become very bright and eager and searching. Presently he stops. + +"'Go on,' she says, 'go on. Tell me more. Tell me all you feel. Tell +me how the habit stole upon you, and came to you again and again, and +stayed with you. Tell me how you first liked it, and then loved it, and +how it was something to you, and then much, and then everything. Go on! +go on!' + +"And he catches her excitement. He conceals nothing from her. All the +hideous, terrible, mental processes he has been through, he details +to her, at first almost gloating over his own degradation. He even +exaggerates, as a man exaggerates in telling a story to an eager +auditor. He is carried away by her strange fury of listening. He lays +bare his soul; he exposes its wounds; he sears them with red-hot irons +for her to see. And then at last all is told. He can think of no more +details. He has even embellished the abominable truth. So he is silent, +and he looks at her." + +"And what does she do?" asked Henley, with a catch in his voice as he +spoke. Undoubtedly in relating a fictitious narrative Andrew had a quite +abnormal power of making it appear true and real. + +"She looks at him, and then she bursts out laughing. Her eyes shine with +triumph. She is glad; she is joyous with the joy of a lost soul when it +sees that other souls are irrevocably lost too; she laughs, and she says +nothing." + +"And the man?" + +Andrew's eyes suddenly dilated. He leaned forward and laid his hand on +Henley's arm. + +"Ah, the man! that is my great idea. As she laughs his heart is changed. +His love for her suddenly dies. Its place is taken by hatred. He +realizes then, for the first time, while he hears her laugh, what she +has done to him. He knows that she has ruined him, and that she is proud +of it--that she is rejoicing in having won him to destruction. He sees +that his perdition is merely a feather in her cap. He hates her. Oh, how +he hates her!--hates her!" + +The expression on Andrew's face became terrible as he spoke--cruel, +malignant, almost fiendish. Henley turned cold, and shook off his hand +abruptly. + +"That is horrible!" he said. "I object to that. The book will be one of +unrelieved gloom." + +"The book!" said Andrew. + +"Yes. You behave really as if the story were true, as if everything in +it were ordained--inevitable." + +"It seems so to me; it is so. What must be, must be. If you are afraid +of tragedy, you ought never to have joined me in starting upon such a +story. Even what has never happened must be made to seem actual to +be successful. The art of fiction is to imitate truth with absolute +fidelity, not to travesty it. In such circumstances the man's love would +be changed to hatred." + +"Yes, if the woman's demeanour were such as you have described. But why +should she be so callous? I do not think that is natural." + +"You do not know the woman," began Andrew harshly. Then he stopped +speaking abruptly, and a violent flush swept over his face. + +"I know her as well as you do, my dear fellow," rejoined Henley, +laughing. "How you manage to live in your dreams! You certainly do +create an atmosphere for yourself with a vengeance, and for me too. I +believe you have an abnormal quantity of electricity concealed about you +somewhere, and sometimes you give me a shock and carry me out of myself. +If this is collaboration, it is really a farce. From the very first you +have had things all your own way. You have talked me over to your view +upon every single occasion; but now I am going to strike. I object to +the conduct you have devised for Olive. It will alienate all sympathy +from her; it is the behaviour of a devil." + +"It is the behaviour of a woman," said Andrew, with a cold cynicism that +seemed to cut like a knife. + +"How can you tell? How can you judge of women so surely?" + +"I study all strange phenomena, women among the rest." + +"Have you ever met an Olive Beauchamp, then, in real life?" said Henley. + +The question was put more than half in jest; but Trenchard received it +with a heavy frown. + +"Don't let us quarrel about the matter," he said, "I can only tell you +this; and mind, Jack, I mean it. It is my unalterable resolve. Either +the story must proceed upon the lines that I have indicated, or I +cannot go on with it at all. It would be impossible for me to write it +differently." + +"And this is collaboration, is it?" exclaimed the other, trying to force +a laugh, though even his good-nature could scarcely stand Trenchard's +trampling demeanour. + +"I can't help it. I cannot be inartistic and untrue to Nature even for +the sake of a friend." + +"Thank you. Well, I have no desire to ruin your work, Andrew; but it is +really useless for this farce to continue. Do what you like, and let us +make no further pretence of collaborating. I cannot act as a drag upon +such a wheel as yours. I will not any longer be a dead-weight upon you. +Our temperaments evidently unfit us to be fellow-workers; and I feel +that your strength and power are so undeniable that you may, perhaps, +be able to carry this weary tragedy through, and by sheer force make it +palatable to the public. I will protest no more; I will only cease any +longer to pretend to have a finger in this literary pie." + +Andrew's morose expression passed away like a cloud. He got up and laid +his hand upon Henley's shoulder. + +"You make me feel what a beast I am," he said. "But I can't help it. I +was made so. Do forgive me, Jack. I have taken the bit between my teeth, +I know. But--this story seems to me no fiction; it is a piece of life, +as real to me as those stars I see through the window-pane are real to +me--as my own emotions are real to me. Jack, this book has seized me. +Believe me, if it is written as I wish, it will make an impression upon +the world that will be great. The mind of the world is given to me like +a sheet of blank paper. I will write upon it with my heart's blood. +But"--and here his manner became strangely impressive, and his sombre, +heavy eyes gazed deeply into the eyes of his friend--"remember this! +You will finish this book. I feel that; I know it. I cannot tell you +why. But so it is ordained. Let me write as far as I can, Jack, and let +me write as I will. But do not let us quarrel. The book is ours, not +mine. And--don't--don't take away your friendship from me." + +The last words were said with an outburst of emotion that was almost +feminine in intensity. Henley felt deeply moved, for, as a rule, +Andrew's manner was not specially affectionate, or even agreeable. + +"It is all right, old fellow," he said, in the embarrassed English +manner which often covers so much that might with advantage be +occasionally revealed. "Go on in your own way. I believe you are a +genius, and I am only trying to clip the wings that may carry you +through the skies. Go on in your own way, and consult me only when you +feel inclined." + +Andrew took his hand and pressed it in silence. + + + + +III. + +It was some three weeks after this that one afternoon Trenchard laid +down his pen at the conclusion of a chapter, and, getting up, thrust his +hands into his pockets and walked to the window. + +The look-out was rather dreary. A gray sky leaned over the great, +barrack-like church that gives an ecclesiastical flavour to +Smith's Square. A few dirty sparrows fluttered above the gray +pavement--feverish, unresting birds, Trenchard named them silently, +as he watched their meaningless activity, their jerky, ostentatious +deportment, with lacklustre, yet excited, eyes. How gray everything +looked, tame, colourless, indifferent! The light was beginning to +fade stealthily out of things. The gray church was gradually becoming +shadowy. The flying forms of the hurrying sparrows disappeared in the +weary abysses of the air and sky. The sitting-room in Smith's Square +was nearly dark now. Henley had gone out to a _matine_ at one of the +theatres, so Trenchard was alone. He struck a match presently, lit a +candle, carried it over to his writing-table, and began to examine the +littered sheets he had just been writing. The book was nearing its end. +The tragedy was narrowing to a point. Trenchard read the last paragraph +which he had written: + +"He hardly knew that he lived, except during those many hours when, +plunged in dreams, he allowed, nay, forced, life to leave him for +awhile. He had sunk to depths below even those which Olive had reached. +And the thought that she was ever so little above him haunted him like a +spectre impelling him to some mysterious deed. When he was not dreaming, +he was dwelling upon this idea which had taken his soul captive. It +seemed to be shaping itself towards an act. Thought was the ante-room +through which he passed to the hall where Fate was sitting, ready to +give him audience. He traversed this ante-room, which seemed lined with +fantastic and terrible pictures, at first with lagging footfalls. But at +length he laid his hand upon the door that divided him from Fate." + +***** + +And when he had read the final words he gathered the loose sheets +together with his long, thin fingers, and placed them one on the top +of the other in a neat pile. He put them into a drawer which contained +other unfinished manuscripts, shut the drawer, locked it, and carried +the key to Henley's room. There he scribbled some words on a bit of +notepaper, wrapped the key in it, and inclosed it in an envelope on +which he wrote Henley's name. Then he put on his overcoat, descended the +narrow stairs, and opened the front-door. The landlady heard him, and +screamed from the basement to know if he would be in to dinner. + +"I shall not be in at all to-night," he answered, in a hard, dry voice +that travelled along the dingy passage with a penetrating distinctness. +The landlady murmured to the slatternly maidservant an ejaculatory +diatribe on the dissipatedness of young literary gentlemen as the door +banged. Trenchard disappeared in the gathering darkness, and soon left +Smith's Square behind him. + +It chanced that day that, in the theatre, Henley encountered some +ladies who carried him home to tea after the performance. They lived in +Chelsea, and in returning to Smith's Square afterwards Henley took his +way along the Chelsea Embankment. He always walked near to the dingy +river when he could. The contrast of its life to the town's life through +which it flowed had a perpetual fascination for him. In the early +evening, too, the river presents many Dor effects. It is dim, +mysterious, sometimes meretricious, with its streaks of light close to +the dense shadows that lie under the bridges, its wailful, small waves +licking the wharves, and bearing up the inky barges that look like the +ferry-boat of the Styx. Henley loved to feel vivaciously despairing, and +he hugged himself in the belief that the Thames at nightfall tinged his +soul with a luxurious melancholy, the capacity for which was not far +from rendering him a poet. So he took his way by the river. As he neared +Cheyne Row, he saw in front of him the figure of a man leaning over +the low stone wall, with his face buried in his hands. On hearing his +approaching footsteps the man lifted himself up, turned round, and +preceded him along the pavement with a sort of listless stride which +seemed to Henley strangely familiar. He hastened his steps, and on +coming closer recognised that the man was Trenchard; but, just as he +was about to hail him, Trenchard crossed the road to one of the houses +opposite, inserted a key in the door, and disappeared within, shutting +the door behind him. + +Henley paused a moment opposite to the house. It was of a dull red +colour, and had a few creepers straggling helplessly about it, looking +like a torn veil that can only partially conceal a dull, heavy face. + +"Andrew seems at home here," he thought, gazing up at the blind, tall +windows, which showed no ray of light. "I wonder----" + +And then, still gazing at the windows, he recalled the description of +the house where Olive Beauchamp lived in their book. + +"He took it from this," Henley said to himself. Yes, that was obvious. +Trenchard had described the prison-house of despair, where the two +victims of a strange, desolating habit shut themselves up to sink, with +a curious minuteness. He had even devoted a paragraph to the tall iron +gate, whose round handle he had written of as "bald, and exposed to the +wind from the river, the paint having long since been worn off it." In +the twilight Henley bent down and examined the handle of the gate. The +paint seemed to have been scraped from it. + +"How curiously real that book has become to me!" he muttered. "I could +almost believe that if I knocked upon that door, and was let in, I +should find Olive Beauchamp stretched on a couch in the room that lies +beyond those gaunt, shuttered windows." + +He gave a last glance at the house, and as he did so he fancied that +he heard a slight cry come from it to him. He listened attentively and +heard nothing more. Then he walked away toward home. + +When he reached his room, he found upon his table the envelope which +Trenchard had directed to him. He opened it, and unwrapped the key from +the inclosed sheet of note-paper, on which were written these words: + + "Dear Jack, + + "I am off again. And this time I can't say when I shall be + back. In any case, I have completed my part of the book, and + leave the finishing of it in your hands. This is the key of + the drawer in which I have locked the manuscript. You have + not seen most of the last volume. Read it, and judge for + yourself whether the _dnouement_ can be anything but + utterly tragic. I will not outline to you what I have + thought of for it. If you have any difficulty about the + _finale_, I shall be able to help you with it even if you do + not see me again for some time. By the way, what nonsense + that saying is, 'Dead men tell no tales!' Half the best + tales in the world are told, or at least completed, by dead + men. + + "Yours ever, + + "A. T." + +Henley laid this note down and turned cold all over. It was the +concluding sentence which had struck a chill through his heart. He took +the key in his hand, went down to Trenchard's room, unlocked the drawer +in his writing-table, and took out the manuscript. What did Andrew mean +by that sinister sentence? A tale completed by a dead man! Henley sat +down by the fire with the manuscript in his hands and began to read. He +was called away to dinner; but immediately afterward he returned to +his task, and till late into the night his glance travelled down the +closely-written sheets one after the other, until the light from the +candles grew blurred and indistinct, and his eyes ached. But still he +read on. The power and gloom of Andrew's narrative held him in a vice, +and then he was searching for a clue in the labyrinth of words. At last +he came to the final paragraph, and then to the final sentence: + +"But at length he laid his hand upon the door that divided him from +Fate." + +Henley put the sheet down carefully upon the table. It was three o'clock +in the morning, and the room seemed full of a strange, breathless cold, +the peculiar chilliness that precedes the dawn. The fire was burning +brightly enough, yet the warmth it emitted scarcely seemed to combat the +frosty air that penetrated from without, and Henley shivered as he +rose from his seat. His brows were drawn together, and he was thinking +deeply. A light seemed slowly struggling into his soul. That last +sentence of Tren-chard's connected itself with what he had seen in the +afternoon on the Chelsea Embankment. "He laid his hand upon the door +that divided him from Fate." + +A strange idea dawned in Henley's mind, an idea which made many things +clear to him. Yet he put it away, and sat down again to read the +unfinished book once more. Andrew had carried on the story of the man's +growing hatred of the woman whom he had tried to rescue, until it had +developed into a deadly fury, threatening immediate action. Then he had +left the _dnouement_ in Henley's hands. He had left it ostensibly +in Henley's hands, but the latter, reading the manuscript again with +intense care, saw that matters had been so contrived that the knot of +the novel could only be cut by murder. As it had been written, the man +must inevitably murder the woman. And Andrew? All through the night +Henley thought of him as he had last seen him, opening the door of the +red house with the tattered creepers climbing over it. + +At last, when it was dawn, he went up to bed tired out, after leaving a +written direction to the servant not to call him in the morning. When he +awoke and looked at his watch it was past two o'clock in the afternoon. +He sprang out of bed, dressed, and after a hasty meal, half breakfast, +half lunch, set out towards Chelsea. The day was bright and cold. The +sun shone on the river and sparkled on the windows of the houses on the +Embankment. Many people were about, and they looked cheerful. The weight +of depression that had settled upon Henley was lifted. He thought of the +strange, yet illuminating, idea that had occurred to him in the night, +and now, in broad daylight, it seemed clothed in absurdity. He laughed +at it. Yet he quickened his steps toward the red house with the +tarnished iron gate and the tattered creepers. + +But long before he reached it he met a boy sauntering along the +thoroughfare and shouting newspapers. He sang out unflinchingly in the +gay sunshine, "Murder! Murder!" and between his shouts he whistled +a music-hall song gaily in snatches. Henley stopped him and bought a +paper. He opened the paper in the wind, which seemed striving to prevent +him, and cast his eyes over the middle pages. Then suddenly he dropped +it to the ground with a white face, and falteringly signed to a cabman. +The _dnouement_ was written. The previous night, in a house on the +Chelsea Embankment, a woman had been done to death, and the murderer had +crept out and thrown himself into the gray, hurrying river. + +The woman's name was Olive Beauchamp. + + +THE END. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLABORATORS *** + +***** This file should be named 23421-8.txt or 23421-8.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/4/2/23421/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Thus, we do not necessarily +keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper edition. + + +Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search facility: + + http://www.gutenberg.org + +This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm, +including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary +Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to +subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks. diff --git a/23421-8.zip b/23421-8.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..886042b --- /dev/null +++ b/23421-8.zip diff --git a/23421-h.zip b/23421-h.zip Binary files differnew file mode 100644 index 0000000..86e93a1 --- /dev/null +++ b/23421-h.zip diff --git a/23421-h/23421-h.htm b/23421-h/23421-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..25e8ab1 --- /dev/null +++ b/23421-h/23421-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,1448 @@ +<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> + +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd" > + +<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en"> + <head> + <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" /> + <title> + The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Collaborators + 1896 + +Author: Robert S. Hichens + +Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23421] +Last Updated: December 17, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLABORATORS *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + THE COLLABORATORS. + </h1> + <h2> + By Robert S. Hichens + </h2> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h3> + 1896 + </h3> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h2> + Contents + </h2> + <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + <tr> + <td> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III. </a> + </p> + </td> + </tr> + </table> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I. + </h2> + <p> + “Why shouldn’t we collaborate?” said Henley in his most matter-of-fact + way, as Big Ben gave voice to the midnight hour. “Everybody does it + nowadays. Two heads may be really better than one, although I seldom + believe in the truth of accepted sayings. Your head is a deuced good one, + Andrew; but—now don’t get angry—you are too excitable and too + intense to be left quite to yourself, even in book-writing, much less in + the ordinary affairs of life. I think you were born to collaborate, and to + collaborate with me. You can give me everything I lack, and I can give you + a little of the sense of humour, and act as a drag upon the wheel.” + </p> + <p> + “None of the new humour, Jack; that shall never appear in a book with my + name attached to it. Dickens I can tolerate. He is occasionally + felicitous. The story of ‘The Dying Clown,’ for instance, crude as it is + it has a certain grim tragedy about it. But the new humour came from the + pit, and should go—to the <i>Sporting Times</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “Now, don’t get excited. The book is not in proof yet—perhaps never + will be. You need not be afraid. My humour will probably be old enough. + But what do you y to the idea?” + </p> + <p> + Andrew Trenchard sat for awhile in silent consideration. His legs were + stretched out, and his slippered feet rested on the edge of the brass + fender. A nimbus of smoke surrounded his swarthy features, his shock of + black hair, his large, rather morose, dark eyes. He was a man of about + twenty-five, with an almost horribly intelligent face, so observant that + he tried people, so acute that he frightened them. His intellect was never + for a moment at rest, unless in sleep. He devoured himself with his own + emotions, and others with his analysis of theirs. His mind was always + crouching to spring, except when it was springing. He lived an irregular + life, and all horrors had a subtle fascination for him. As Henley had + remarked, he possessed little sense of humour, but immense sense of evil + and tragedy and sorrow. He seldom found time to calmly regard the drama of + life from the front. He was always at the stage-door, sending in his card, + and requesting admittance behind the scenes. What was on the surface only + interested him in so far as it indicated what was beneath, and in all + mental matters his normal procedure was that of the disguised detective. + Stupid people disliked him. Clever people distrusted him while they + admired him. The mediocre suggested that he was liable to go off his head, + and the profound predicted for him fame, tempered by suicide. + </p> + <p> + Most people considered him interesting, and a few were sincerely attached + to him. Among these last was Henley, who had been his friend at Oxford, + and had taken rooms in the same house with him in Smith’s Square, + Westminster. Both the young men were journalists. Henley, who, as he had + acknowledged, possessed a keen sense of humour, and was not so much + ashamed of it as he ought to have been, wrote—very occasionally—for + <i>Punch</i>, and more often for <i>Fun</i>, was dramatic critic of a + lively society paper, and “did” the books—in a sarcastic vein—for + a very unmuzzled “weekly,” that was libellous by profession and truthful + by oversight. Trenchard, on the other hand, wrote a good deal of very + condensed fiction, and generally placed it; contributed brilliant fugitive + articles to various papers and magazines, and was generally spoken of by + the inner circle of the craft as “a rising man,” and a man to be afraid + of. Henley was full of common-sense, only moderately introspective, + facile, and vivacious. He might be trusted to tincture a book with the + popular element, and yet not to spoil it; for his literary sense was keen, + despite his jocular leaning toward the new humour. He lacked imagination; + but his descriptive powers were racy, and he knew instinctively what was + likely to take, and what would be caviare to the general. + </p> + <p> + Trenchard, as he considered the proposition now made to him, realized that + Henley might supply much that he lacked in any book that was written with + a view to popular success. There could be no doubt of it. + </p> + <p> + “But we should quarrel inevitably and doggedly,” he said at last. “If I + can not hold myself in, still less can I be held in. We should tear one + another in pieces. When I write, I feel that what I write must be, however + crude, however improper or horrible it may seem. You would want to hold me + back.” + </p> + <p> + “My dear boy, I should more than want to—I should do it. In + collaboration, no man can be a law unto himself. That must be distinctly + understood before we begin. I don’t wish to force the proposition on you. + Only we are both ambitious devils. We are both poor. We are both + determined to try a book. Have we more chance of succeeding if we try one + together? I believe so. You have the imagination, the grip, the stern + power to evolve the story, to make it seem inevitable, to force it step by + step on its way. I can lighten that way. I can plant a few flowers—they + shall not be peonies, I promise you—on the roadside. And I can, and, + what is more, will, check you when you wish to make the story impossibly + horrible or fantastic to the verge of the insane. Now, you needn’t be + angry. This book, if we write it, has got to be a good book, and yet a + book that will bring grist to the mill. That is understood.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew’s great eyes flashed in the lamplight. + </p> + <p> + “The mill,” he said. “Sometimes I feel inclined to let it stop working. + Who would care if one wheel ceased to turn? There are so many others.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, that’s the sort of thing I shall cut out of the book!” cried Henley, + turning the soda-water into his whisky with a cheerful swish. + </p> + <p> + “We will be powerful, but never morbid; tragic, if you like, but not + without hope. We need not aspire too much; but we will not look at the + stones in the road all the time. And the dunghills, in which those weird + fowl, the pessimistic realists, love to rake, we will sedulously avoid. + Cheer up, old fellow, and be thankful that you possess a corrective in + me.” + </p> + <p> + Trenchard’s face lightened in a rare smile as, with a half-sigh, he said: + </p> + <p> + “I believe you are right, and that I need a collaborator, an opposite, who + is yet in sympathy with me. Yes; either of us might fail alone; together + we should succeed.” + </p> + <p> + “<i>Will</i> succeed, my boy!” + </p> + <p> + “But not by pandering to the popular taste,” added Andrew in his most + sombre tones, and with a curl of his thin, delicately-moulded lips. “I + shall never consent to that.” + </p> + <p> + “We will not call it pandering. But we must hit the taste of the day, or + we shall look a couple of fools.” + </p> + <p> + “People are always supposed to look fools when, for once, they are not + fools,” said Andrew. + </p> + <p> + “Possibly. But now our bargain is made. Strike hands upon it. Henceforth + we are collaborators as well as friends.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew extended his long, thin, feverish hand, and, as Henley held it for + a moment, he started at the intense, vivid, abnormal personality its grasp + seemed to reveal. To collaborate with Trenchard was to collaborate with a + human volcano. + </p> + <p> + “And now for the germ of our book,” he said, as the clock struck one. + “Where shall we find it?” + </p> + <p> + Trenchard leaned forward in his chair, with his hands pressed upon the + arms. + </p> + <p> + “Listen, and I will give it you,” he said. + </p> + <p> + And, almost until the dawn and the wakening of the slumbering city, Henley + sat and listened, and forgot that his pipe was smoked out, and that his + feet were cold. Trenchard had strange powers, and could enthral as he + could also repel. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + “It is a weird idea, and it is very powerful,” Henley said at last. “But + you stop short at the critical moment. Have you not devised a <i>dénouement?</i>” + </p> + <p> + “Not yet. That is where the collaboration will come in. You must help me. + We must talk it over. I am in doubt.” + </p> + <p> + He got up and passed his hands nervously through his thick hair. + </p> + <p> + “My doubt has kept me awake so many nights!” he said, and his voice was + rather husky and worn. + </p> + <p> + Henley looked at him almost compassionately. + </p> + <p> + “How intensely you live in your fancies!” + </p> + <p> + “My fancies?” said Andrew, with a sudden harsh accent, and darting a + glance of curious watchfulness upon his friend. “My—— Yes, + yes. Perhaps I do. Perhaps I try to. Some people have souls that must + escape from their environment, their miserable life-envelope, or faint. + Many of us labour and produce merely to create an atmosphere in which we + ourselves may breathe for awhile and be happy. Damn this London, and this + lodging, and this buying bread with words! I must create for myself an + atmosphere. I must be always getting away from what is, even if I go + lower, lower. Ah! Well—but the <i>dénouement</i>. Give me your + impressions.” + </p> + <p> + Henley meditated for awhile. Then he said; “Let us leave it. Let us get to + work; and in time, as the story progresses, it will seem inevitable. We + shall see it in front of us, and we shall not be able to avoid it. Let us + get to work”—he glanced at his watch and laughed—“or, rather, + let us get to bed. It is past four. This way madness lies. When we + collaborate, we will write in the morning. Our book shall be a book of the + dawn, and not of the darkness, despite its sombre theme.” + </p> + <p> + “No, no; it must be a book of the darkness.” + </p> + <p> + “Of the darkness, then, but written in the dawn. Your tragedy tempered by + my trust in human nature, and the power that causes things to right + themselves. Good-night, old boy.” + </p> + <p> + “Good-night.” + </p> + <p> + When Henley had left the room, Tren-chard sat for a moment with his head + sunk low on his breast and his eyes half closed. Then, with a jerk, he + gained his feet, went to the door, opened it, and looked forth on the + deserted landing. He listened, and heard Henley moving to and fro in his + bedroom. Then he shut the door, took off his smoking-coat, and bared his + left arm. There was a tiny blue mark on it. + </p> + <p> + “What will the <i>dénouement</i> be?” he whispered to himself, as he felt + in his waistcoat pocket with a trembling hand. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II. + </h2> + <p> + The book was moving onward by slow degrees and with a great deal of + discussion. + </p> + <p> + In those days Henley and Trenchard lived much with sported oaks. They were + battling for fame. They were doing all they knew. Literary gatherings + missed them. First nights knew them no more. The grim intensity that was + always characteristic of Trenchard seemed in some degree communicated to + Henley. He began to more fully understand what the creating for one’s self + of an atmosphere meant. The story he and his friend were fashioning + fastened upon him like some strange, determined shadow from the realms of + real life, gripped him more and more closely, held him for long spells of + time in a new and desolate world. For the book so far was a deepening + tragedy, and although, at times, Henley strove to resist the paramount + influence which the genius of Trenchard began to exercise over him, he + found himself comparatively impotent, unable to shed gleams of popular + light upon the darkness of the pages. The power of the tale was undoubted. + Henley felt that it was a big thing that they two were doing; but would it + be a popular thing—a money-making thing? That was the question. He + sometimes wished with all his heart they had chosen a different subject to + work their combined talent upon. The germ of the work seemed only capable + of tragic treatment, if the book were to be artistic. Their hero was a man + of strong intellect, of physical beauty, full at first of the joy of life, + chivalrous, a believer in the innate goodness of human nature. Believing + in goodness, he believed also ardently in influence. In fact, he was a + worshipper of influence, and his main passion was to seize upon the + personalities of others, and impose his own personality upon them. He + loved to make men and women see with his eyes and hear with his ears, + adopt his theories as truth, take his judgment for their own. All that he + thought <i>was</i>—to him. He never doubted himself, therefore he + could not bear that those around him should not think with him, act + towards men and women as he acted, face life as he faced it. Yet he was + too subtle ever to be dogmatic. He never shouted in the market-place. He + led those with whom he came in contact as adroitly as if he had been evil, + and to the influence of others he was as adamant. + </p> + <p> + Events brought into his life a woman, complex, subtle too, with a + naturally noble character and fine understanding, a woman who, like so + many women, might have been anything, and was far worse than nothing—a + hopeless, helpless slave, the victim of the morphia habit, which had + gradually degraded her, driven her through sloughs of immorality, wrecked + a professional career which at one time had been almost great, shattered + her constitution, though not all her still curious beauty, and ruined her, + to all intents and purposes, body and soul. The man and the woman met, and + in a flash the man saw what she had been, what she might have been, what, + perhaps, in spite of all, she still was, somewhere, somehow. In her + horrible degradation, in her dense despair, she fascinated him. He could + only see the fire bursting out of the swamp. He could only feel on his + cheek the breath of the spring in the darkness of the charnel-house. He + knew that she gave to him his great lifework. Her monstrous habit he + simply could not comprehend. It was altogether as fantastic to him as + absolute virtue sometimes seems to absolute vice. He looked upon it, and + felt as little kinship with it as a saint might feel with a vampire. To + him it was merely a hideous and extraordinary growth, which had fastened + like a cancer upon a beautiful and wonderful body, and which must be cut + out. He was profoundly interested. + </p> + <p> + He loved the woman. Seeing her governed entirely by a vice, he made the + very common mistake of believing her to have a weak personality, easily + falling, perhaps for that very reason as easily lifted to her feet. He + resolved to save her, to devote all his powers, all his subtlety, all his + intellect, all his strong force of will, to weaning this woman from her + fatal habit. She was a married woman, long ago left, to kill herself if + she would, by the husband whose happiness she had wrecked. He took her to + live with him. For her sake he defied the world, and set himself to do + angel’s work when people believed him at the devil’s. He resolved to wrap + her, to envelop her in his influence, to enclose her in his strong + personality. Here, at last, was a grand, a noble opportunity for the + legitimate exercise of his master passion. He was confident of victory. + </p> + <p> + But his faith in himself was misplaced. This woman, whom he thought so + weak, was yet stronger than he. Although he could not influence her, he + began to find that she could influence him. At first he struggled with her + vice, which he could not understand. He thought himself merely horrified + at it; then he began to lose the horror in wonder at its power. Its + virility, as it were, fascinated him just a little. A vice so + overwhelmingly strong seemed to him at length almost glorious, almost + God-like. There was a sort of humanity about it. Yes, it was like a being + who lived and who conquered. + </p> + <p> + The woman loved him, and he tried to win her from it; but her passion for + it was greater than her passion for him, greater than had been her + original passion for purity, for health, for success, for homage, for all + lovely and happiness-making things. Her passion for it was so great that + it roused the man’s curiosity at last; it made him hold his breath, and + stand in awe, and desire furtively to try just once for himself what its + dominion was like, to test its power as one may test the power of an + electric battery. He dared not do this openly, for fear the fact of his + doing so might drive the woman still farther on the downward path. So in + secret he tasted the fascinations of her vice, once—and again—and + yet again. But still he struggled for her while he was ceasing to struggle + for himself. Still he combated for her the foe who was conquering him. + Very strange, very terrible was his position in that London house with + her, isolated from the world. For his friends had dropped him. Even those + who were not scandalized at his relations with this woman had ceased to + come near him. They found him blind and deaf to the ordinary interests of + life. He never went out anywhere, unless occasionally with her to some + theatre. He never invited anyone to come and see him. At first the woman + absorbed all his interest, all his powers of love—and then at last + the woman and her vice, which was becoming his too. By degrees he sank + lower and lower, but he never told the woman the truth, and he still urged + her to give up her horrible habit, which now he loved. And she laughed in + his face, and asked him if a human creature who had discovered a new life + would be likely to give it up. “A new death,” he murmured, and then, + looking in a mirror near to him, saw his lips curved in the thin, pale + smile of the hypocrite. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + So far the two young men had written. They worked hard, but their industry + was occasionally interrupted by the unaccountable laziness of Andrew, who, + after toiling with unremitting fury for some days, and scarcely getting up + from his desk, would disappear, and perhaps not return for several nights. + Henley remonstrated with him, but in vain. + </p> + <p> + “But what do you do, my dear fellow?” he asked. “What becomes of you?” + </p> + <p> + “I go away to think out what is coming. The environment I seek helps me,” + answered Andrew, with a curious, gleaming smile. “I return full of fresh + copy.” + </p> + <p> + This was true enough. He generally mysteriously departed when the book was + beginning to flag, and on his reappearance he always set to work with new + vigour and confidence. + </p> + <p> + “It seems to me,” Henley said, “that it will be your book after all, not + mine. It is your plot, and when I think things over I find that every + detail is yours. You insisted on the house where the man and the woman hid + themselves being on the Chelsea Embankment. You invented the woman, her + character, her appearance. You named her Olive Beauchamp.” + </p> + <p> + “Olive Beauchamp,” Andrew repeated, with a strange lingering over the two + words, which he pronounced in a very curious voice that trembled, as if + with some keen emotion, love or hate. “Yes; I named her as you say.” + </p> + <p> + “Then, as the man in the play remarks, ‘Where do I come in?’” Henley + asked, half laughing, half vexed. “Upon my word, I shall have some + compunction in putting my name below yours on the title-page when the book + is published, if it ever is.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew’s lips twitched once or twice uneasily. Then he said, “You need not + have any such compunction. The greatest chapter will probably be written + by you.” + </p> + <p> + “Which chapter do you mean?” + </p> + <p> + “That which winds the story up—that which brings the whole thing to + its legitimate conclusion. You must write the <i>dénouement</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “I doubt if I could. And then we have not even now decided what it is to + be.” + </p> + <p> + “We need not bother about that yet. It will come. Fate will decide it for + us.” + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean, Andrew? How curiously you talk about the book sometimes—so + precisely as if it were true!” + </p> + <p> + Trenchard smiled again, struck a match, and lit his pipe. + </p> + <p> + “It seems true to me—when I am writing it,” he answered. “I have + been writing it these last two days and nights when I have been away, and + now I can go forward, if you agree to the new development which I + suggest.” + </p> + <p> + It was night. He had been absent for some days, and had just returned. + Henley, meanwhile, had been raging because the book had come to a complete + standstill. He himself could do nothing at it, since they had reached a + dead-lock, and had not talked over any new scenes, or mutually decided + upon the turn events were now to take. He felt rather cross and sore. + </p> + <p> + “<i>You</i> can go forward,” he said: “yes, after your holiday. You might + at least tell me when you are going.” + </p> + <p> + “I never know myself,” Andrew said rather sadly. + </p> + <p> + He was looking very white and worn, and his eyes were heavy. + </p> + <p> + “But I have thought some fresh material out. My idea is this: The man now + becomes such a complete slave to the morphia habit that concealment of the + fact is scarcely possible. And, indeed, he ceases to desire to conceal it + from the woman. The next scene will be an immensely powerful one—that + in which he tells her the truth.” + </p> + <p> + “You do not think it would be more natural if she found it out against his + will? It seems to me that what he had concealed so long he would try to + hide for ever.” + </p> + <p> + “No,” Andrew said emphatically; “that would not be so.” + </p> + <p> + “But——” + </p> + <p> + “Look here,” the other interrupted, with some obvious irritability; “let + me tell you what I have conceived, and raise any objections afterwards if + you wish to raise them. He would tell her the truth himself. He would + almost glory in doing so. That is the nature of the man. We have depicted + his pride in his own powers, his temptation, his struggle—his fall, + as it would be called——” + </p> + <p> + “As it would be called.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, well!—his fall, then. And now comes the moment when his fall + is complete. He bends the neck finally beneath his tyrant, and then he + goes to the woman and he tells her the truth.” + </p> + <p> + “But explain matters a little more. Do you mean that he is glad, and tells + almost with triumph; or that he is appalled, and tells her with horror?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! That is where the power of the scene lies. He is appalled. He is like + a man plunged at last into hell without hope of future redemption. He + tells her the truth with horror.” + </p> + <p> + “And she?” + </p> + <p> + “It is she who triumphs. Look here: it will be like this.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew leaned forward across the table that stood between their two worn + armchairs. His thin, feverish-looking hands, with the fingers strongly + twisted together, rested upon it. His dark eyes glittered with excitement. + </p> + <p> + “It will be like this. It is evening—a dark, dull evening, like the + day before yesterday, closing in early, throttling the afternoon + prematurely, as it were. A drizzling rain falls softly, drenching + everything—the sodden leaves of the trees on the Embankment, the + road, which is heavy with clinging yellow mud, the stone coping of the + wall that skirts the river. + </p> + <p> + “And the river heaves along. Its gray, dirty waves are beaten up by a + light, chilly wind, and chase the black barges with a puny, fretful, + sinister fury, falling back from their dark, wet sides with a hiss of + baffled hatred. Yes, it is dreary weather. + </p> + <p> + “Do you know, Henley, as I know, the strange, subtle influence of certain + kinds of weather? There are days on which I could do great deeds merely + because of the way the sun is shining. There are days, there are evenings, + when I could commit crimes merely because of the way the wind is + whispering, the river is sighing, the dingy night is clustering around me. + There can be an angel in the weather, or there can be a devil. On this + evening I am describing there is a devil in the night! + </p> + <p> + “The lights twinkle through the drizzling rain, and they are blurred, as + bright eyes are blurred, and made dull and ugly, by tears. Two or three + cabs roll slowly by the houses on the Embankment.. A few people hurry past + along the slippery, shining pavement. But as the night closes in there is + little life outside those tall, gaunt houses that are so near the river! + And in one of those houses the man comes down to the woman to tell her the + truth. + </p> + <p> + “There is a devil in the weather that night, as I said, and that devil + whispers to the man, and tells him that it is now his struggle must end + finally, and the new era of unresisted yielding to the vice begin. In the + sinister darkness, in the diminutive, drenching mist of rain, he speaks, + and the man listens, and bows his head and answers ‘yes!’ It is over. He + has fallen finally. He is resolved, with a strange, dull obstinacy that + gives him a strange, dull pleasure—do you see?—to go down to + the room below, and tell the woman that she has conquered him—that + his power of will is a reed which can be crushed—that henceforth + there shall be two victims instead of one. He goes down.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew paused a moment. His lips were twitching again. He looked terribly + excited. Henley listened in silence. He had lost all wish to interrupt. + </p> + <p> + “He goes down into the room below where the woman is, with her dark hair, + and her dead-white face, and her extraordinary eyes—large, luminous, + sometimes dull and without expression, sometimes dilated, and with an + unnatural life staring out of them. She is on the sofa near the fire. He + sits down beside her. His head falls into his hands, and at first he is + silent. He is thinking how he will tell her. She puts her soft, dry hand + on his, and she says: ‘I am very tired to-night. Do not begin your evening + sermon. Let me have it to-morrow. How you must love me to be so + persistent! and how you must love me to be so stupid as to think that your + power of will can break the power of such a habit as mine!’ + </p> + <p> + “Then he draws his hand away from hers, and he lifts his head from his + hands, and he tells her the truth. She leans back against a cushion + staring at him in silence, devouring him with her eyes, which have become + very bright and eager and searching. Presently he stops. + </p> + <p> + “‘Go on,’ she says, ‘go on. Tell me more. Tell me all you feel. Tell me + how the habit stole upon you, and came to you again and again, and stayed + with you. Tell me how you first liked it, and then loved it, and how it + was something to you, and then much, and then everything. Go on! go on!’ + </p> + <p> + “And he catches her excitement. He conceals nothing from her. All the + hideous, terrible, mental processes he has been through, he details to + her, at first almost gloating over his own degradation. He even + exaggerates, as a man exaggerates in telling a story to an eager auditor. + He is carried away by her strange fury of listening. He lays bare his + soul; he exposes its wounds; he sears them with red-hot irons for her to + see. And then at last all is told. He can think of no more details. He has + even embellished the abominable truth. So he is silent, and he looks at + her.” + </p> + <p> + “And what does she do?” asked Henley, with a catch in his voice as he + spoke. Undoubtedly in relating a fictitious narrative Andrew had a quite + abnormal power of making it appear true and real. + </p> + <p> + “She looks at him, and then she bursts out laughing. Her eyes shine with + triumph. She is glad; she is joyous with the joy of a lost soul when it + sees that other souls are irrevocably lost too; she laughs, and she says + nothing.” + </p> + <p> + “And the man?” + </p> + <p> + Andrew’s eyes suddenly dilated. He leaned forward and laid his hand on + Henley’s arm. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, the man! that is my great idea. As she laughs his heart is changed. + His love for her suddenly dies. Its place is taken by hatred. He realizes + then, for the first time, while he hears her laugh, what she has done to + him. He knows that she has ruined him, and that she is proud of it—that + she is rejoicing in having won him to destruction. He sees that his + perdition is merely a feather in her cap. He hates her. Oh, how he hates + her!—hates her!” + </p> + <p> + The expression on Andrew’s face became terrible as he spoke—cruel, + malignant, almost fiendish. Henley turned cold, and shook off his hand + abruptly. + </p> + <p> + “That is horrible!” he said. “I object to that. The book will be one of + unrelieved gloom.” + </p> + <p> + “The book!” said Andrew. + </p> + <p> + “Yes. You behave really as if the story were true, as if everything in it + were ordained—inevitable.” + </p> + <p> + “It seems so to me; it is so. What must be, must be. If you are afraid of + tragedy, you ought never to have joined me in starting upon such a story. + Even what has never happened must be made to seem actual to be successful. + The art of fiction is to imitate truth with absolute fidelity, not to + travesty it. In such circumstances the man’s love would be changed to + hatred.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, if the woman’s demeanour were such as you have described. But why + should she be so callous? I do not think that is natural.” + </p> + <p> + “You do not know the woman,” began Andrew harshly. Then he stopped + speaking abruptly, and a violent flush swept over his face. + </p> + <p> + “I know her as well as you do, my dear fellow,” rejoined Henley, laughing. + “How you manage to live in your dreams! You certainly do create an + atmosphere for yourself with a vengeance, and for me too. I believe you + have an abnormal quantity of electricity concealed about you somewhere, + and sometimes you give me a shock and carry me out of myself. If this is + collaboration, it is really a farce. From the very first you have had + things all your own way. You have talked me over to your view upon every + single occasion; but now I am going to strike. I object to the conduct you + have devised for Olive. It will alienate all sympathy from her; it is the + behaviour of a devil.” + </p> + <p> + “It is the behaviour of a woman,” said Andrew, with a cold cynicism that + seemed to cut like a knife. + </p> + <p> + “How can you tell? How can you judge of women so surely?” + </p> + <p> + “I study all strange phenomena, women among the rest.” + </p> + <p> + “Have you ever met an Olive Beauchamp, then, in real life?” said Henley. + </p> + <p> + The question was put more than half in jest; but Trenchard received it + with a heavy frown. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t let us quarrel about the matter,” he said, “I can only tell you + this; and mind, Jack, I mean it. It is my unalterable resolve. Either the + story must proceed upon the lines that I have indicated, or I cannot go on + with it at all. It would be impossible for me to write it differently.” + </p> + <p> + “And this is collaboration, is it?” exclaimed the other, trying to force a + laugh, though even his good-nature could scarcely stand Trenchard’s + trampling demeanour. + </p> + <p> + “I can’t help it. I cannot be inartistic and untrue to Nature even for the + sake of a friend.” + </p> + <p> + “Thank you. Well, I have no desire to ruin your work, Andrew; but it is + really useless for this farce to continue. Do what you like, and let us + make no further pretence of collaborating. I cannot act as a drag upon + such a wheel as yours. I will not any longer be a dead-weight upon you. + Our temperaments evidently unfit us to be fellow-workers; and I feel that + your strength and power are so undeniable that you may, perhaps, be able + to carry this weary tragedy through, and by sheer force make it palatable + to the public. I will protest no more; I will only cease any longer to + pretend to have a finger in this literary pie.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew’s morose expression passed away like a cloud. He got up and laid + his hand upon Henley’s shoulder. + </p> + <p> + “You make me feel what a beast I am,” he said. “But I can’t help it. I was + made so. Do forgive me, Jack. I have taken the bit between my teeth, I + know. But—this story seems to me no fiction; it is a piece of life, + as real to me as those stars I see through the window-pane are real to me—as + my own emotions are real to me. Jack, this book has seized me. Believe me, + if it is written as I wish, it will make an impression upon the world that + will be great. The mind of the world is given to me like a sheet of blank + paper. I will write upon it with my heart’s blood. But”—and here his + manner became strangely impressive, and his sombre, heavy eyes gazed + deeply into the eyes of his friend—“remember this! You will finish + this book. I feel that; I know it. I cannot tell you why. But so it is + ordained. Let me write as far as I can, Jack, and let me write as I will. + But do not let us quarrel. The book is ours, not mine. And—don’t—don’t + take away your friendship from me.” + </p> + <p> + The last words were said with an outburst of emotion that was almost + feminine in intensity. Henley felt deeply moved, for, as a rule, Andrew’s + manner was not specially affectionate, or even agreeable. + </p> + <p> + “It is all right, old fellow,” he said, in the embarrassed English manner + which often covers so much that might with advantage be occasionally + revealed. “Go on in your own way. I believe you are a genius, and I am + only trying to clip the wings that may carry you through the skies. Go on + in your own way, and consult me only when you feel inclined.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew took his hand and pressed it in silence. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III. + </h2> + <p> + It was some three weeks after this that one afternoon Trenchard laid down + his pen at the conclusion of a chapter, and, getting up, thrust his hands + into his pockets and walked to the window. + </p> + <p> + The look-out was rather dreary. A gray sky leaned over the great, + barrack-like church that gives an ecclesiastical flavour to Smith’s + Square. A few dirty sparrows fluttered above the gray pavement—feverish, + unresting birds, Trenchard named them silently, as he watched their + meaningless activity, their jerky, ostentatious deportment, with + lacklustre, yet excited, eyes. How gray everything looked, tame, + colourless, indifferent! The light was beginning to fade stealthily out of + things. The gray church was gradually becoming shadowy. The flying forms + of the hurrying sparrows disappeared in the weary abysses of the air and + sky. The sitting-room in Smith’s Square was nearly dark now. Henley had + gone out to a <i>matinée</i> at one of the theatres, so Trenchard was + alone. He struck a match presently, lit a candle, carried it over to his + writing-table, and began to examine the littered sheets he had just been + writing. The book was nearing its end. The tragedy was narrowing to a + point. Trenchard read the last paragraph which he had written: + </p> + <p> + “He hardly knew that he lived, except during those many hours when, + plunged in dreams, he allowed, nay, forced, life to leave him for awhile. + He had sunk to depths below even those which Olive had reached. And the + thought that she was ever so little above him haunted him like a spectre + impelling him to some mysterious deed. When he was not dreaming, he was + dwelling upon this idea which had taken his soul captive. It seemed to be + shaping itself towards an act. Thought was the ante-room through which he + passed to the hall where Fate was sitting, ready to give him audience. He + traversed this ante-room, which seemed lined with fantastic and terrible + pictures, at first with lagging footfalls. But at length he laid his hand + upon the door that divided him from Fate.” + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + And when he had read the final words he gathered the loose sheets together + with his long, thin fingers, and placed them one on the top of the other + in a neat pile. He put them into a drawer which contained other unfinished + manuscripts, shut the drawer, locked it, and carried the key to Henley’s + room. There he scribbled some words on a bit of notepaper, wrapped the key + in it, and inclosed it in an envelope on which he wrote Henley’s name. + Then he put on his overcoat, descended the narrow stairs, and opened the + front-door. The landlady heard him, and screamed from the basement to know + if he would be in to dinner. + </p> + <p> + “I shall not be in at all to-night,” he answered, in a hard, dry voice + that travelled along the dingy passage with a penetrating distinctness. + The landlady murmured to the slatternly maidservant an ejaculatory + diatribe on the dissipatedness of young literary gentlemen as the door + banged. Trenchard disappeared in the gathering darkness, and soon left + Smith’s Square behind him. + </p> + <p> + It chanced that day that, in the theatre, Henley encountered some ladies + who carried him home to tea after the performance. They lived in Chelsea, + and in returning to Smith’s Square afterwards Henley took his way along + the Chelsea Embankment. He always walked near to the dingy river when he + could. The contrast of its life to the town’s life through which it flowed + had a perpetual fascination for him. In the early evening, too, the river + presents many Doré effects. It is dim, mysterious, sometimes meretricious, + with its streaks of light close to the dense shadows that lie under the + bridges, its wailful, small waves licking the wharves, and bearing up the + inky barges that look like the ferry-boat of the Styx. Henley loved to + feel vivaciously despairing, and he hugged himself in the belief that the + Thames at nightfall tinged his soul with a luxurious melancholy, the + capacity for which was not far from rendering him a poet. So he took his + way by the river. As he neared Cheyne Row, he saw in front of him the + figure of a man leaning over the low stone wall, with his face buried in + his hands. On hearing his approaching footsteps the man lifted himself up, + turned round, and preceded him along the pavement with a sort of listless + stride which seemed to Henley strangely familiar. He hastened his steps, + and on coming closer recognised that the man was Trenchard; but, just as + he was about to hail him, Trenchard crossed the road to one of the houses + opposite, inserted a key in the door, and disappeared within, shutting the + door behind him. + </p> + <p> + Henley paused a moment opposite to the house. It was of a dull red colour, + and had a few creepers straggling helplessly about it, looking like a torn + veil that can only partially conceal a dull, heavy face. + </p> + <p> + “Andrew seems at home here,” he thought, gazing up at the blind, tall + windows, which showed no ray of light. “I wonder——” + </p> + <p> + And then, still gazing at the windows, he recalled the description of the + house where Olive Beauchamp lived in their book. + </p> + <p> + “He took it from this,” Henley said to himself. Yes, that was obvious. + Trenchard had described the prison-house of despair, where the two victims + of a strange, desolating habit shut themselves up to sink, with a curious + minuteness. He had even devoted a paragraph to the tall iron gate, whose + round handle he had written of as “bald, and exposed to the wind from the + river, the paint having long since been worn off it.” In the twilight + Henley bent down and examined the handle of the gate. The paint seemed to + have been scraped from it. + </p> + <p> + “How curiously real that book has become to me!” he muttered. “I could + almost believe that if I knocked upon that door, and was let in, I should + find Olive Beauchamp stretched on a couch in the room that lies beyond + those gaunt, shuttered windows.” + </p> + <p> + He gave a last glance at the house, and as he did so he fancied that he + heard a slight cry come from it to him. He listened attentively and heard + nothing more. Then he walked away toward home. + </p> + <p> + When he reached his room, he found upon his table the envelope which + Trenchard had directed to him. He opened it, and unwrapped the key from + the inclosed sheet of note-paper, on which were written these words: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Dear Jack, + + “I am off again. And this time I can’t say when I shall be + back. In any case, I have completed my part of the book, and + leave the finishing of it in your hands. This is the key of + the drawer in which I have locked the manuscript. You have + not seen most of the last volume. Read it, and judge for + yourself whether the <i>dénouement</i> can be anything but + utterly tragic. I will not outline to you what I have + thought of for it. If you have any difficulty about the + <i>finale</i>, I shall be able to help you with it even if you do + not see me again for some time. By the way, what nonsense + that saying is, ‘Dead men tell no tales!’ Half the best + tales in the world are told, or at least completed, by dead + men. + + “Yours ever, + + “A. T.” + </pre> + <p> + Henley laid this note down and turned cold all over. It was the concluding + sentence which had struck a chill through his heart. He took the key in + his hand, went down to Trenchard’s room, unlocked the drawer in his + writing-table, and took out the manuscript. What did Andrew mean by that + sinister sentence? A tale completed by a dead man! Henley sat down by the + fire with the manuscript in his hands and began to read. He was called + away to dinner; but immediately afterward he returned to his task, and + till late into the night his glance travelled down the closely-written + sheets one after the other, until the light from the candles grew blurred + and indistinct, and his eyes ached. But still he read on. The power and + gloom of Andrew’s narrative held him in a vice, and then he was searching + for a clue in the labyrinth of words. At last he came to the final + paragraph, and then to the final sentence: + </p> + <p> + “But at length he laid his hand upon the door that divided him from Fate.” + </p> + <p> + Henley put the sheet down carefully upon the table. It was three o’clock + in the morning, and the room seemed full of a strange, breathless cold, + the peculiar chilliness that precedes the dawn. The fire was burning + brightly enough, yet the warmth it emitted scarcely seemed to combat the + frosty air that penetrated from without, and Henley shivered as he rose + from his seat. His brows were drawn together, and he was thinking deeply. + A light seemed slowly struggling into his soul. That last sentence of + Tren-chard’s connected itself with what he had seen in the afternoon on + the Chelsea Embankment. “He laid his hand upon the door that divided him + from Fate.” + </p> + <p> + A strange idea dawned in Henley’s mind, an idea which made many things + clear to him. Yet he put it away, and sat down again to read the + unfinished book once more. Andrew had carried on the story of the man’s + growing hatred of the woman whom he had tried to rescue, until it had + developed into a deadly fury, threatening immediate action. Then he had + left the <i>dénouement</i> in Henley’s hands. He had left it ostensibly in + Henley’s hands, but the latter, reading the manuscript again with intense + care, saw that matters had been so contrived that the knot of the novel + could only be cut by murder. As it had been written, the man must + inevitably murder the woman. And Andrew? All through the night Henley + thought of him as he had last seen him, opening the door of the red house + with the tattered creepers climbing over it. + </p> + <p> + At last, when it was dawn, he went up to bed tired out, after leaving a + written direction to the servant not to call him in the morning. When he + awoke and looked at his watch it was past two o’clock in the afternoon. He + sprang out of bed, dressed, and after a hasty meal, half breakfast, half + lunch, set out towards Chelsea. The day was bright and cold. The sun shone + on the river and sparkled on the windows of the houses on the Embankment. + Many people were about, and they looked cheerful. The weight of depression + that had settled upon Henley was lifted. He thought of the strange, yet + illuminating, idea that had occurred to him in the night, and now, in + broad daylight, it seemed clothed in absurdity. He laughed at it. Yet he + quickened his steps toward the red house with the tarnished iron gate and + the tattered creepers. + </p> + <p> + But long before he reached it he met a boy sauntering along the + thoroughfare and shouting newspapers. He sang out unflinchingly in the gay + sunshine, “Murder! Murder!” and between his shouts he whistled a + music-hall song gaily in snatches. Henley stopped him and bought a paper. + He opened the paper in the wind, which seemed striving to prevent him, and + cast his eyes over the middle pages. Then suddenly he dropped it to the + ground with a white face, and falteringly signed to a cabman. The <i>dénouement</i> + was written. The previous night, in a house on the Chelsea Embankment, a + woman had been done to death, and the murderer had crept out and thrown + himself into the gray, hurrying river. + </p> + <p> + The woman’s name was Olive Beauchamp. + </p> + <p> + THE END. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. 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You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Collaborators + 1896 + +Author: Robert S. Hichens + +Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23421] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ASCII + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLABORATORS *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + + +THE COLLABORATORS. + +By Robert S. Hichens + +1896 + + + + +I. + +"Why shouldn't we collaborate?" said Henley in his most matter-of-fact +way, as Big Ben gave voice to the midnight hour. "Everybody does it +nowadays. Two heads may be really better than one, although I seldom +believe in the truth of accepted sayings. Your head is a deuced good +one, Andrew; but--now don't get angry--you are too excitable and too +intense to be left quite to yourself, even in book-writing, much less in +the ordinary affairs of life. I think you were born to collaborate, and +to collaborate with me. You can give me everything I lack, and I can +give you a little of the sense of humour, and act as a drag upon the +wheel." + +"None of the new humour, Jack; that shall never appear in a book with +my name attached to it. Dickens I can tolerate. He is occasionally +felicitous. The story of 'The Dying Clown,' for instance, crude as it is +it has a certain grim tragedy about it. But the new humour came from the +pit, and should go--to the _Sporting Times_." + +"Now, don't get excited. The book is not in proof yet--perhaps never +will be. You need not be afraid. My humour will probably be old enough. +But what do you y to the idea?" + +Andrew Trenchard sat for awhile in silent consideration. His legs were +stretched out, and his slippered feet rested on the edge of the brass +fender. A nimbus of smoke surrounded his swarthy features, his shock of +black hair, his large, rather morose, dark eyes. He was a man of about +twenty-five, with an almost horribly intelligent face, so observant that +he tried people, so acute that he frightened them. His intellect was +never for a moment at rest, unless in sleep. He devoured himself with +his own emotions, and others with his analysis of theirs. His mind was +always crouching to spring, except when it was springing. He lived an +irregular life, and all horrors had a subtle fascination for him. As +Henley had remarked, he possessed little sense of humour, but immense +sense of evil and tragedy and sorrow. He seldom found time to +calmly regard the drama of life from the front. He was always at the +stage-door, sending in his card, and requesting admittance behind the +scenes. What was on the surface only interested him in so far as +it indicated what was beneath, and in all mental matters his normal +procedure was that of the disguised detective. Stupid people disliked +him. Clever people distrusted him while they admired him. The mediocre +suggested that he was liable to go off his head, and the profound +predicted for him fame, tempered by suicide. + +Most people considered him interesting, and a few were sincerely +attached to him. Among these last was Henley, who had been his friend +at Oxford, and had taken rooms in the same house with him in Smith's +Square, Westminster. Both the young men were journalists. Henley, who, +as he had acknowledged, possessed a keen sense of humour, and was not +so much ashamed of it as he ought to have been, wrote--very +occasionally--for _Punch_, and more often for _Fun_, was dramatic critic +of a lively society paper, and "did" the books--in a sarcastic vein--for +a very unmuzzled "weekly," that was libellous by profession and truthful +by oversight. Trenchard, on the other hand, wrote a good deal of very +condensed fiction, and generally placed it; contributed brilliant +fugitive articles to various papers and magazines, and was generally +spoken of by the inner circle of the craft as "a rising man," and a +man to be afraid of. Henley was full of common-sense, only moderately +introspective, facile, and vivacious. He might be trusted to tincture a +book with the popular element, and yet not to spoil it; for his literary +sense was keen, despite his jocular leaning toward the new humour. He +lacked imagination; but his descriptive powers were racy, and he knew +instinctively what was likely to take, and what would be caviare to the +general. + +Trenchard, as he considered the proposition now made to him, realized +that Henley might supply much that he lacked in any book that was +written with a view to popular success. There could be no doubt of it. + +"But we should quarrel inevitably and doggedly," he said at last. "If I +can not hold myself in, still less can I be held in. We should tear +one another in pieces. When I write, I feel that what I write must be, +however crude, however improper or horrible it may seem. You would want +to hold me back." + +"My dear boy, I should more than want to--I should do it. In +collaboration, no man can be a law unto himself. That must be distinctly +understood before we begin. I don't wish to force the proposition on +you. Only we are both ambitious devils. We are both poor. We are both +determined to try a book. Have we more chance of succeeding if we try +one together? I believe so. You have the imagination, the grip, the +stern power to evolve the story, to make it seem inevitable, to force +it step by step on its way. I can lighten that way. I can plant a few +flowers--they shall not be peonies, I promise you--on the roadside. +And I can, and, what is more, will, check you when you wish to make the +story impossibly horrible or fantastic to the verge of the insane. Now, +you needn't be angry. This book, if we write it, has got to be a +good book, and yet a book that will bring grist to the mill. That is +understood." + +Andrew's great eyes flashed in the lamplight. + +"The mill," he said. "Sometimes I feel inclined to let it stop working. +Who would care if one wheel ceased to turn? There are so many others." + +"Ah, that's the sort of thing I shall cut out of the book!" cried +Henley, turning the soda-water into his whisky with a cheerful swish. + +"We will be powerful, but never morbid; tragic, if you like, but not +without hope. We need not aspire too much; but we will not look at the +stones in the road all the time. And the dunghills, in which those weird +fowl, the pessimistic realists, love to rake, we will sedulously avoid. +Cheer up, old fellow, and be thankful that you possess a corrective in +me." + +Trenchard's face lightened in a rare smile as, with a half-sigh, he +said: + +"I believe you are right, and that I need a collaborator, an opposite, +who is yet in sympathy with me. Yes; either of us might fail alone; +together we should succeed." + +"_Will_ succeed, my boy!" + +"But not by pandering to the popular taste," added Andrew in his most +sombre tones, and with a curl of his thin, delicately-moulded lips. "I +shall never consent to that." + +"We will not call it pandering. But we must hit the taste of the day, or +we shall look a couple of fools." + +"People are always supposed to look fools when, for once, they are not +fools," said Andrew. + +"Possibly. But now our bargain is made. Strike hands upon it. Henceforth +we are collaborators as well as friends." + +Andrew extended his long, thin, feverish hand, and, as Henley held it +for a moment, he started at the intense, vivid, abnormal personality its +grasp seemed to reveal. To collaborate with Trenchard was to collaborate +with a human volcano. + +"And now for the germ of our book," he said, as the clock struck one. +"Where shall we find it?" + +Trenchard leaned forward in his chair, with his hands pressed upon the +arms. + +"Listen, and I will give it you," he said. + +And, almost until the dawn and the wakening of the slumbering city, +Henley sat and listened, and forgot that his pipe was smoked out, and +that his feet were cold. Trenchard had strange powers, and could enthral +as he could also repel. + +***** + +"It is a weird idea, and it is very powerful," Henley said at last. +"But you stop short at the critical moment. Have you not devised a +_denouement?_" + +"Not yet. That is where the collaboration will come in. You must help +me. We must talk it over. I am in doubt." + +He got up and passed his hands nervously through his thick hair. + +"My doubt has kept me awake so many nights!" he said, and his voice was +rather husky and worn. + +Henley looked at him almost compassionately. + +"How intensely you live in your fancies!" + +"My fancies?" said Andrew, with a sudden harsh accent, and darting +a glance of curious watchfulness upon his friend. "My---- Yes, yes. +Perhaps I do. Perhaps I try to. Some people have souls that must escape +from their environment, their miserable life-envelope, or faint. Many +of us labour and produce merely to create an atmosphere in which we +ourselves may breathe for awhile and be happy. Damn this London, and +this lodging, and this buying bread with words! I must create for myself +an atmosphere. I must be always getting away from what is, even if I go +lower, lower. Ah! Well--but the _denouement_. Give me your impressions." + +Henley meditated for awhile. Then he said; "Let us leave it. Let us get +to work; and in time, as the story progresses, it will seem inevitable. +We shall see it in front of us, and we shall not be able to avoid it. +Let us get to work"--he glanced at his watch and laughed--"or, rather, +let us get to bed. It is past four. This way madness lies. When we +collaborate, we will write in the morning. Our book shall be a book of +the dawn, and not of the darkness, despite its sombre theme." + +"No, no; it must be a book of the darkness." + +"Of the darkness, then, but written in the dawn. Your tragedy tempered +by my trust in human nature, and the power that causes things to right +themselves. Good-night, old boy." + +"Good-night." + +When Henley had left the room, Tren-chard sat for a moment with his head +sunk low on his breast and his eyes half closed. Then, with a jerk, he +gained his feet, went to the door, opened it, and looked forth on the +deserted landing. He listened, and heard Henley moving to and fro in his +bedroom. Then he shut the door, took off his smoking-coat, and bared his +left arm. There was a tiny blue mark on it. + +"What will the _denouement_ be?" he whispered to himself, as he felt in +his waistcoat pocket with a trembling hand. + + + + +II. + +The book was moving onward by slow degrees and with a great deal of +discussion. + +In those days Henley and Trenchard lived much with sported oaks. +They were battling for fame. They were doing all they knew. Literary +gatherings missed them. First nights knew them no more. The grim +intensity that was always characteristic of Trenchard seemed in some +degree communicated to Henley. He began to more fully understand what +the creating for one's self of an atmosphere meant. The story he and his +friend were fashioning fastened upon him like some strange, determined +shadow from the realms of real life, gripped him more and more closely, +held him for long spells of time in a new and desolate world. For the +book so far was a deepening tragedy, and although, at times, Henley +strove to resist the paramount influence which the genius of Trenchard +began to exercise over him, he found himself comparatively impotent, +unable to shed gleams of popular light upon the darkness of the pages. +The power of the tale was undoubted. Henley felt that it was a big +thing that they two were doing; but would it be a popular thing--a +money-making thing? That was the question. He sometimes wished with all +his heart they had chosen a different subject to work their combined +talent upon. The germ of the work seemed only capable of tragic +treatment, if the book were to be artistic. Their hero was a man of +strong intellect, of physical beauty, full at first of the joy of life, +chivalrous, a believer in the innate goodness of human nature. Believing +in goodness, he believed also ardently in influence. In fact, he was +a worshipper of influence, and his main passion was to seize upon the +personalities of others, and impose his own personality upon them. He +loved to make men and women see with his eyes and hear with his ears, +adopt his theories as truth, take his judgment for their own. All that +he thought _was_--to him. He never doubted himself, therefore he could +not bear that those around him should not think with him, act towards +men and women as he acted, face life as he faced it. Yet he was too +subtle ever to be dogmatic. He never shouted in the market-place. He led +those with whom he came in contact as adroitly as if he had been evil, +and to the influence of others he was as adamant. + +Events brought into his life a woman, complex, subtle too, with a +naturally noble character and fine understanding, a woman who, like so +many women, might have been anything, and was far worse than nothing--a +hopeless, helpless slave, the victim of the morphia habit, which had +gradually degraded her, driven her through sloughs of immorality, +wrecked a professional career which at one time had been almost great, +shattered her constitution, though not all her still curious beauty, and +ruined her, to all intents and purposes, body and soul. The man and the +woman met, and in a flash the man saw what she had been, what she might +have been, what, perhaps, in spite of all, she still was, somewhere, +somehow. In her horrible degradation, in her dense despair, she +fascinated him. He could only see the fire bursting out of the swamp. He +could only feel on his cheek the breath of the spring in the darkness of +the charnel-house. He knew that she gave to him his great lifework. Her +monstrous habit he simply could not comprehend. It was altogether as +fantastic to him as absolute virtue sometimes seems to absolute vice. He +looked upon it, and felt as little kinship with it as a saint might feel +with a vampire. To him it was merely a hideous and extraordinary growth, +which had fastened like a cancer upon a beautiful and wonderful body, +and which must be cut out. He was profoundly interested. + +He loved the woman. Seeing her governed entirely by a vice, he made the +very common mistake of believing her to have a weak personality, easily +falling, perhaps for that very reason as easily lifted to her feet. He +resolved to save her, to devote all his powers, all his subtlety, all +his intellect, all his strong force of will, to weaning this woman from +her fatal habit. She was a married woman, long ago left, to kill herself +if she would, by the husband whose happiness she had wrecked. He took +her to live with him. For her sake he defied the world, and set himself +to do angel's work when people believed him at the devil's. He resolved +to wrap her, to envelop her in his influence, to enclose her in his +strong personality. Here, at last, was a grand, a noble opportunity +for the legitimate exercise of his master passion. He was confident of +victory. + +But his faith in himself was misplaced. This woman, whom he thought so +weak, was yet stronger than he. Although he could not influence her, he +began to find that she could influence him. At first he struggled with +her vice, which he could not understand. He thought himself merely +horrified at it; then he began to lose the horror in wonder at its +power. Its virility, as it were, fascinated him just a little. A vice +so overwhelmingly strong seemed to him at length almost glorious, almost +God-like. There was a sort of humanity about it. Yes, it was like a +being who lived and who conquered. + +The woman loved him, and he tried to win her from it; but her passion +for it was greater than her passion for him, greater than had been her +original passion for purity, for health, for success, for homage, for +all lovely and happiness-making things. Her passion for it was so great +that it roused the man's curiosity at last; it made him hold his breath, +and stand in awe, and desire furtively to try just once for himself what +its dominion was like, to test its power as one may test the power of an +electric battery. He dared not do this openly, for fear the fact of his +doing so might drive the woman still farther on the downward path. So in +secret he tasted the fascinations of her vice, once--and again--and yet +again. But still he struggled for her while he was ceasing to struggle +for himself. Still he combated for her the foe who was conquering him. +Very strange, very terrible was his position in that London house with +her, isolated from the world. For his friends had dropped him. Even +those who were not scandalized at his relations with this woman had +ceased to come near him. They found him blind and deaf to the ordinary +interests of life. He never went out anywhere, unless occasionally with +her to some theatre. He never invited anyone to come and see him. At +first the woman absorbed all his interest, all his powers of love--and +then at last the woman and her vice, which was becoming his too. By +degrees he sank lower and lower, but he never told the woman the truth, +and he still urged her to give up her horrible habit, which now he +loved. And she laughed in his face, and asked him if a human creature +who had discovered a new life would be likely to give it up. "A new +death," he murmured, and then, looking in a mirror near to him, saw his +lips curved in the thin, pale smile of the hypocrite. + +***** + +So far the two young men had written. They worked hard, but their +industry was occasionally interrupted by the unaccountable laziness +of Andrew, who, after toiling with unremitting fury for some days, and +scarcely getting up from his desk, would disappear, and perhaps not +return for several nights. Henley remonstrated with him, but in vain. + +"But what do you do, my dear fellow?" he asked. "What becomes of you?" + +"I go away to think out what is coming. The environment I seek helps +me," answered Andrew, with a curious, gleaming smile. "I return full of +fresh copy." + +This was true enough. He generally mysteriously departed when the book +was beginning to flag, and on his reappearance he always set to work +with new vigour and confidence. + +"It seems to me," Henley said, "that it will be your book after all, not +mine. It is your plot, and when I think things over I find that every +detail is yours. You insisted on the house where the man and the woman +hid themselves being on the Chelsea Embankment. You invented the woman, +her character, her appearance. You named her Olive Beauchamp." + +"Olive Beauchamp," Andrew repeated, with a strange lingering over the +two words, which he pronounced in a very curious voice that trembled, as +if with some keen emotion, love or hate. "Yes; I named her as you say." + +"Then, as the man in the play remarks, 'Where do I come in?'" Henley +asked, half laughing, half vexed. "Upon my word, I shall have some +compunction in putting my name below yours on the title-page when the +book is published, if it ever is." + +Andrew's lips twitched once or twice uneasily. Then he said, "You need +not have any such compunction. The greatest chapter will probably be +written by you." + +"Which chapter do you mean?" + +"That which winds the story up--that which brings the whole thing to its +legitimate conclusion. You must write the _denouement_." + +"I doubt if I could. And then we have not even now decided what it is to +be." + +"We need not bother about that yet. It will come. Fate will decide it +for us." + +"What do you mean, Andrew? How curiously you talk about the book +sometimes--so precisely as if it were true!" + +Trenchard smiled again, struck a match, and lit his pipe. + +"It seems true to me--when I am writing it," he answered. "I have been +writing it these last two days and nights when I have been away, and now +I can go forward, if you agree to the new development which I suggest." + +It was night. He had been absent for some days, and had just returned. +Henley, meanwhile, had been raging because the book had come to a +complete standstill. He himself could do nothing at it, since they had +reached a dead-lock, and had not talked over any new scenes, or mutually +decided upon the turn events were now to take. He felt rather cross and +sore. + +"_You_ can go forward," he said: "yes, after your holiday. You might at +least tell me when you are going." + +"I never know myself," Andrew said rather sadly. + +He was looking very white and worn, and his eyes were heavy. + +"But I have thought some fresh material out. My idea is this: The man +now becomes such a complete slave to the morphia habit that concealment +of the fact is scarcely possible. And, indeed, he ceases to desire to +conceal it from the woman. The next scene will be an immensely powerful +one--that in which he tells her the truth." + +"You do not think it would be more natural if she found it out against +his will? It seems to me that what he had concealed so long he would try +to hide for ever." + +"No," Andrew said emphatically; "that would not be so." + +"But----" + +"Look here," the other interrupted, with some obvious irritability; "let +me tell you what I have conceived, and raise any objections afterwards +if you wish to raise them. He would tell her the truth himself. He +would almost glory in doing so. That is the nature of the man. We have +depicted his pride in his own powers, his temptation, his struggle--his +fall, as it would be called----" + +"As it would be called." + +"Well, well!--his fall, then. And now comes the moment when his fall is +complete. He bends the neck finally beneath his tyrant, and then he goes +to the woman and he tells her the truth." + +"But explain matters a little more. Do you mean that he is glad, and +tells almost with triumph; or that he is appalled, and tells her with +horror?" + +"Ah! That is where the power of the scene lies. He is appalled. He is +like a man plunged at last into hell without hope of future redemption. +He tells her the truth with horror." + +"And she?" + +"It is she who triumphs. Look here: it will be like this." + +Andrew leaned forward across the table that stood between their two worn +armchairs. His thin, feverish-looking hands, with the fingers strongly +twisted together, rested upon it. His dark eyes glittered with +excitement. + +"It will be like this. It is evening--a dark, dull evening, like the +day before yesterday, closing in early, throttling the afternoon +prematurely, as it were. A drizzling rain falls softly, drenching +everything--the sodden leaves of the trees on the Embankment, the road, +which is heavy with clinging yellow mud, the stone coping of the wall +that skirts the river. + +"And the river heaves along. Its gray, dirty waves are beaten up by a +light, chilly wind, and chase the black barges with a puny, fretful, +sinister fury, falling back from their dark, wet sides with a hiss of +baffled hatred. Yes, it is dreary weather. + +"Do you know, Henley, as I know, the strange, subtle influence of +certain kinds of weather? There are days on which I could do great deeds +merely because of the way the sun is shining. There are days, there are +evenings, when I could commit crimes merely because of the way the +wind is whispering, the river is sighing, the dingy night is clustering +around me. There can be an angel in the weather, or there can be a +devil. On this evening I am describing there is a devil in the night! + +"The lights twinkle through the drizzling rain, and they are blurred, as +bright eyes are blurred, and made dull and ugly, by tears. Two or three +cabs roll slowly by the houses on the Embankment.. A few people hurry +past along the slippery, shining pavement. But as the night closes in +there is little life outside those tall, gaunt houses that are so near +the river! And in one of those houses the man comes down to the woman to +tell her the truth. + +"There is a devil in the weather that night, as I said, and that devil +whispers to the man, and tells him that it is now his struggle must end +finally, and the new era of unresisted yielding to the vice begin. In +the sinister darkness, in the diminutive, drenching mist of rain, he +speaks, and the man listens, and bows his head and answers 'yes!' It +is over. He has fallen finally. He is resolved, with a strange, dull +obstinacy that gives him a strange, dull pleasure--do you see?--to +go down to the room below, and tell the woman that she has conquered +him--that his power of will is a reed which can be crushed--that +henceforth there shall be two victims instead of one. He goes down." + +Andrew paused a moment. His lips were twitching again. He looked +terribly excited. Henley listened in silence. He had lost all wish to +interrupt. + +"He goes down into the room below where the woman is, with her dark +hair, and her dead-white face, and her extraordinary eyes--large, +luminous, sometimes dull and without expression, sometimes dilated, and +with an unnatural life staring out of them. She is on the sofa near the +fire. He sits down beside her. His head falls into his hands, and at +first he is silent. He is thinking how he will tell her. She puts her +soft, dry hand on his, and she says: 'I am very tired to-night. Do not +begin your evening sermon. Let me have it to-morrow. How you must love +me to be so persistent! and how you must love me to be so stupid as to +think that your power of will can break the power of such a habit as +mine!' + +"Then he draws his hand away from hers, and he lifts his head from his +hands, and he tells her the truth. She leans back against a cushion +staring at him in silence, devouring him with her eyes, which have +become very bright and eager and searching. Presently he stops. + +"'Go on,' she says, 'go on. Tell me more. Tell me all you feel. Tell +me how the habit stole upon you, and came to you again and again, and +stayed with you. Tell me how you first liked it, and then loved it, and +how it was something to you, and then much, and then everything. Go on! +go on!' + +"And he catches her excitement. He conceals nothing from her. All the +hideous, terrible, mental processes he has been through, he details +to her, at first almost gloating over his own degradation. He even +exaggerates, as a man exaggerates in telling a story to an eager +auditor. He is carried away by her strange fury of listening. He lays +bare his soul; he exposes its wounds; he sears them with red-hot irons +for her to see. And then at last all is told. He can think of no more +details. He has even embellished the abominable truth. So he is silent, +and he looks at her." + +"And what does she do?" asked Henley, with a catch in his voice as he +spoke. Undoubtedly in relating a fictitious narrative Andrew had a quite +abnormal power of making it appear true and real. + +"She looks at him, and then she bursts out laughing. Her eyes shine with +triumph. She is glad; she is joyous with the joy of a lost soul when it +sees that other souls are irrevocably lost too; she laughs, and she says +nothing." + +"And the man?" + +Andrew's eyes suddenly dilated. He leaned forward and laid his hand on +Henley's arm. + +"Ah, the man! that is my great idea. As she laughs his heart is changed. +His love for her suddenly dies. Its place is taken by hatred. He +realizes then, for the first time, while he hears her laugh, what she +has done to him. He knows that she has ruined him, and that she is proud +of it--that she is rejoicing in having won him to destruction. He sees +that his perdition is merely a feather in her cap. He hates her. Oh, how +he hates her!--hates her!" + +The expression on Andrew's face became terrible as he spoke--cruel, +malignant, almost fiendish. Henley turned cold, and shook off his hand +abruptly. + +"That is horrible!" he said. "I object to that. The book will be one of +unrelieved gloom." + +"The book!" said Andrew. + +"Yes. You behave really as if the story were true, as if everything in +it were ordained--inevitable." + +"It seems so to me; it is so. What must be, must be. If you are afraid +of tragedy, you ought never to have joined me in starting upon such a +story. Even what has never happened must be made to seem actual to +be successful. The art of fiction is to imitate truth with absolute +fidelity, not to travesty it. In such circumstances the man's love would +be changed to hatred." + +"Yes, if the woman's demeanour were such as you have described. But why +should she be so callous? I do not think that is natural." + +"You do not know the woman," began Andrew harshly. Then he stopped +speaking abruptly, and a violent flush swept over his face. + +"I know her as well as you do, my dear fellow," rejoined Henley, +laughing. "How you manage to live in your dreams! You certainly do +create an atmosphere for yourself with a vengeance, and for me too. I +believe you have an abnormal quantity of electricity concealed about you +somewhere, and sometimes you give me a shock and carry me out of myself. +If this is collaboration, it is really a farce. From the very first you +have had things all your own way. You have talked me over to your view +upon every single occasion; but now I am going to strike. I object to +the conduct you have devised for Olive. It will alienate all sympathy +from her; it is the behaviour of a devil." + +"It is the behaviour of a woman," said Andrew, with a cold cynicism that +seemed to cut like a knife. + +"How can you tell? How can you judge of women so surely?" + +"I study all strange phenomena, women among the rest." + +"Have you ever met an Olive Beauchamp, then, in real life?" said Henley. + +The question was put more than half in jest; but Trenchard received it +with a heavy frown. + +"Don't let us quarrel about the matter," he said, "I can only tell you +this; and mind, Jack, I mean it. It is my unalterable resolve. Either +the story must proceed upon the lines that I have indicated, or I +cannot go on with it at all. It would be impossible for me to write it +differently." + +"And this is collaboration, is it?" exclaimed the other, trying to force +a laugh, though even his good-nature could scarcely stand Trenchard's +trampling demeanour. + +"I can't help it. I cannot be inartistic and untrue to Nature even for +the sake of a friend." + +"Thank you. Well, I have no desire to ruin your work, Andrew; but it is +really useless for this farce to continue. Do what you like, and let us +make no further pretence of collaborating. I cannot act as a drag upon +such a wheel as yours. I will not any longer be a dead-weight upon you. +Our temperaments evidently unfit us to be fellow-workers; and I feel +that your strength and power are so undeniable that you may, perhaps, +be able to carry this weary tragedy through, and by sheer force make it +palatable to the public. I will protest no more; I will only cease any +longer to pretend to have a finger in this literary pie." + +Andrew's morose expression passed away like a cloud. He got up and laid +his hand upon Henley's shoulder. + +"You make me feel what a beast I am," he said. "But I can't help it. I +was made so. Do forgive me, Jack. I have taken the bit between my teeth, +I know. But--this story seems to me no fiction; it is a piece of life, +as real to me as those stars I see through the window-pane are real to +me--as my own emotions are real to me. Jack, this book has seized me. +Believe me, if it is written as I wish, it will make an impression upon +the world that will be great. The mind of the world is given to me like +a sheet of blank paper. I will write upon it with my heart's blood. +But"--and here his manner became strangely impressive, and his sombre, +heavy eyes gazed deeply into the eyes of his friend--"remember this! +You will finish this book. I feel that; I know it. I cannot tell you +why. But so it is ordained. Let me write as far as I can, Jack, and let +me write as I will. But do not let us quarrel. The book is ours, not +mine. And--don't--don't take away your friendship from me." + +The last words were said with an outburst of emotion that was almost +feminine in intensity. Henley felt deeply moved, for, as a rule, +Andrew's manner was not specially affectionate, or even agreeable. + +"It is all right, old fellow," he said, in the embarrassed English +manner which often covers so much that might with advantage be +occasionally revealed. "Go on in your own way. I believe you are a +genius, and I am only trying to clip the wings that may carry you +through the skies. Go on in your own way, and consult me only when you +feel inclined." + +Andrew took his hand and pressed it in silence. + + + + +III. + +It was some three weeks after this that one afternoon Trenchard laid +down his pen at the conclusion of a chapter, and, getting up, thrust his +hands into his pockets and walked to the window. + +The look-out was rather dreary. A gray sky leaned over the great, +barrack-like church that gives an ecclesiastical flavour to +Smith's Square. A few dirty sparrows fluttered above the gray +pavement--feverish, unresting birds, Trenchard named them silently, +as he watched their meaningless activity, their jerky, ostentatious +deportment, with lacklustre, yet excited, eyes. How gray everything +looked, tame, colourless, indifferent! The light was beginning to +fade stealthily out of things. The gray church was gradually becoming +shadowy. The flying forms of the hurrying sparrows disappeared in the +weary abysses of the air and sky. The sitting-room in Smith's Square +was nearly dark now. Henley had gone out to a _matinee_ at one of the +theatres, so Trenchard was alone. He struck a match presently, lit a +candle, carried it over to his writing-table, and began to examine the +littered sheets he had just been writing. The book was nearing its end. +The tragedy was narrowing to a point. Trenchard read the last paragraph +which he had written: + +"He hardly knew that he lived, except during those many hours when, +plunged in dreams, he allowed, nay, forced, life to leave him for +awhile. He had sunk to depths below even those which Olive had reached. +And the thought that she was ever so little above him haunted him like a +spectre impelling him to some mysterious deed. When he was not dreaming, +he was dwelling upon this idea which had taken his soul captive. It +seemed to be shaping itself towards an act. Thought was the ante-room +through which he passed to the hall where Fate was sitting, ready to +give him audience. He traversed this ante-room, which seemed lined with +fantastic and terrible pictures, at first with lagging footfalls. But at +length he laid his hand upon the door that divided him from Fate." + +***** + +And when he had read the final words he gathered the loose sheets +together with his long, thin fingers, and placed them one on the top +of the other in a neat pile. He put them into a drawer which contained +other unfinished manuscripts, shut the drawer, locked it, and carried +the key to Henley's room. There he scribbled some words on a bit of +notepaper, wrapped the key in it, and inclosed it in an envelope on +which he wrote Henley's name. Then he put on his overcoat, descended the +narrow stairs, and opened the front-door. The landlady heard him, and +screamed from the basement to know if he would be in to dinner. + +"I shall not be in at all to-night," he answered, in a hard, dry voice +that travelled along the dingy passage with a penetrating distinctness. +The landlady murmured to the slatternly maidservant an ejaculatory +diatribe on the dissipatedness of young literary gentlemen as the door +banged. Trenchard disappeared in the gathering darkness, and soon left +Smith's Square behind him. + +It chanced that day that, in the theatre, Henley encountered some +ladies who carried him home to tea after the performance. They lived in +Chelsea, and in returning to Smith's Square afterwards Henley took his +way along the Chelsea Embankment. He always walked near to the dingy +river when he could. The contrast of its life to the town's life through +which it flowed had a perpetual fascination for him. In the early +evening, too, the river presents many Dore effects. It is dim, +mysterious, sometimes meretricious, with its streaks of light close to +the dense shadows that lie under the bridges, its wailful, small waves +licking the wharves, and bearing up the inky barges that look like the +ferry-boat of the Styx. Henley loved to feel vivaciously despairing, and +he hugged himself in the belief that the Thames at nightfall tinged his +soul with a luxurious melancholy, the capacity for which was not far +from rendering him a poet. So he took his way by the river. As he neared +Cheyne Row, he saw in front of him the figure of a man leaning over +the low stone wall, with his face buried in his hands. On hearing his +approaching footsteps the man lifted himself up, turned round, and +preceded him along the pavement with a sort of listless stride which +seemed to Henley strangely familiar. He hastened his steps, and on +coming closer recognised that the man was Trenchard; but, just as he +was about to hail him, Trenchard crossed the road to one of the houses +opposite, inserted a key in the door, and disappeared within, shutting +the door behind him. + +Henley paused a moment opposite to the house. It was of a dull red +colour, and had a few creepers straggling helplessly about it, looking +like a torn veil that can only partially conceal a dull, heavy face. + +"Andrew seems at home here," he thought, gazing up at the blind, tall +windows, which showed no ray of light. "I wonder----" + +And then, still gazing at the windows, he recalled the description of +the house where Olive Beauchamp lived in their book. + +"He took it from this," Henley said to himself. Yes, that was obvious. +Trenchard had described the prison-house of despair, where the two +victims of a strange, desolating habit shut themselves up to sink, with +a curious minuteness. He had even devoted a paragraph to the tall iron +gate, whose round handle he had written of as "bald, and exposed to the +wind from the river, the paint having long since been worn off it." In +the twilight Henley bent down and examined the handle of the gate. The +paint seemed to have been scraped from it. + +"How curiously real that book has become to me!" he muttered. "I could +almost believe that if I knocked upon that door, and was let in, I +should find Olive Beauchamp stretched on a couch in the room that lies +beyond those gaunt, shuttered windows." + +He gave a last glance at the house, and as he did so he fancied that +he heard a slight cry come from it to him. He listened attentively and +heard nothing more. Then he walked away toward home. + +When he reached his room, he found upon his table the envelope which +Trenchard had directed to him. He opened it, and unwrapped the key from +the inclosed sheet of note-paper, on which were written these words: + + "Dear Jack, + + "I am off again. And this time I can't say when I shall be + back. In any case, I have completed my part of the book, and + leave the finishing of it in your hands. This is the key of + the drawer in which I have locked the manuscript. You have + not seen most of the last volume. Read it, and judge for + yourself whether the _denouement_ can be anything but + utterly tragic. I will not outline to you what I have + thought of for it. If you have any difficulty about the + _finale_, I shall be able to help you with it even if you do + not see me again for some time. By the way, what nonsense + that saying is, 'Dead men tell no tales!' Half the best + tales in the world are told, or at least completed, by dead + men. + + "Yours ever, + + "A. T." + +Henley laid this note down and turned cold all over. It was the +concluding sentence which had struck a chill through his heart. He took +the key in his hand, went down to Trenchard's room, unlocked the drawer +in his writing-table, and took out the manuscript. What did Andrew mean +by that sinister sentence? A tale completed by a dead man! Henley sat +down by the fire with the manuscript in his hands and began to read. He +was called away to dinner; but immediately afterward he returned to +his task, and till late into the night his glance travelled down the +closely-written sheets one after the other, until the light from the +candles grew blurred and indistinct, and his eyes ached. But still he +read on. The power and gloom of Andrew's narrative held him in a vice, +and then he was searching for a clue in the labyrinth of words. At last +he came to the final paragraph, and then to the final sentence: + +"But at length he laid his hand upon the door that divided him from +Fate." + +Henley put the sheet down carefully upon the table. It was three o'clock +in the morning, and the room seemed full of a strange, breathless cold, +the peculiar chilliness that precedes the dawn. The fire was burning +brightly enough, yet the warmth it emitted scarcely seemed to combat the +frosty air that penetrated from without, and Henley shivered as he +rose from his seat. His brows were drawn together, and he was thinking +deeply. A light seemed slowly struggling into his soul. That last +sentence of Tren-chard's connected itself with what he had seen in the +afternoon on the Chelsea Embankment. "He laid his hand upon the door +that divided him from Fate." + +A strange idea dawned in Henley's mind, an idea which made many things +clear to him. Yet he put it away, and sat down again to read the +unfinished book once more. Andrew had carried on the story of the man's +growing hatred of the woman whom he had tried to rescue, until it had +developed into a deadly fury, threatening immediate action. Then he had +left the _denouement_ in Henley's hands. He had left it ostensibly +in Henley's hands, but the latter, reading the manuscript again with +intense care, saw that matters had been so contrived that the knot of +the novel could only be cut by murder. As it had been written, the man +must inevitably murder the woman. And Andrew? All through the night +Henley thought of him as he had last seen him, opening the door of the +red house with the tattered creepers climbing over it. + +At last, when it was dawn, he went up to bed tired out, after leaving a +written direction to the servant not to call him in the morning. When he +awoke and looked at his watch it was past two o'clock in the afternoon. +He sprang out of bed, dressed, and after a hasty meal, half breakfast, +half lunch, set out towards Chelsea. The day was bright and cold. The +sun shone on the river and sparkled on the windows of the houses on the +Embankment. Many people were about, and they looked cheerful. The weight +of depression that had settled upon Henley was lifted. He thought of the +strange, yet illuminating, idea that had occurred to him in the night, +and now, in broad daylight, it seemed clothed in absurdity. He laughed +at it. Yet he quickened his steps toward the red house with the +tarnished iron gate and the tattered creepers. + +But long before he reached it he met a boy sauntering along the +thoroughfare and shouting newspapers. He sang out unflinchingly in the +gay sunshine, "Murder! Murder!" and between his shouts he whistled +a music-hall song gaily in snatches. Henley stopped him and bought a +paper. He opened the paper in the wind, which seemed striving to prevent +him, and cast his eyes over the middle pages. Then suddenly he dropped +it to the ground with a white face, and falteringly signed to a cabman. +The _denouement_ was written. The previous night, in a house on the +Chelsea Embankment, a woman had been done to death, and the murderer had +crept out and thrown himself into the gray, hurrying river. + +The woman's name was Olive Beauchamp. + + +THE END. + + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens + +*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLABORATORS *** + +***** This file should be named 23421.txt or 23421.zip ***** +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: + http://www.gutenberg.org/2/3/4/2/23421/ + +Produced by David Widger + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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Hichens + </title> + <style type="text/css" xml:space="preserve"> + + body { margin:5%; background:#faebd0; text-align:justify} + P { text-indent: 1em; margin-top: .25em; margin-bottom: .25em; } + H1,H2,H3,H4,H5,H6 { text-align: center; margin-left: 15%; margin-right: 15%; } + hr { width: 50%; text-align: center;} + .foot { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; text-indent: -3em; font-size: 90%; } + blockquote {font-size: 97%; font-style: italic; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%;} + .mynote {background-color: #DDE; color: #000; padding: .5em; margin-left: 10%; margin-right: 10%; font-family: sans-serif; font-size: 95%;} + .toc { margin-left: 10%; margin-bottom: .75em;} + .toc2 { margin-left: 20%;} + div.fig { display:block; margin:0 auto; text-align:center; } + div.middle { margin-left: 20%; margin-right: 20%; text-align: justify; } + .figleft {float: left; margin-left: 0%; margin-right: 1%;} + .figright {float: right; margin-right: 0%; margin-left: 1%;} + .pagenum {display:inline; font-size: 70%; font-style:normal; + margin: 0; padding: 0; position: absolute; right: 1%; + text-align: right;} + pre { font-style: italic; font-size: 90%; margin-left: 10%;} + +</style> + </head> + <body> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + +The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. Hichens + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + +Title: The Collaborators + 1896 + +Author: Robert S. Hichens + +Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23421] +Last Updated: December 17, 2016 + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: UTF-8 + +*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE COLLABORATORS *** + + + + +Produced by David Widger + + + + + +</pre> + <div style="height: 8em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h1> + THE COLLABORATORS. + </h1> + <h2> + By Robert S. Hichens + </h2> + <p> + <br /> + </p> + <h3> + 1896 + </h3> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <h2> + Contents + </h2> + <table summary="" style="margin-right: auto; margin-left: auto"> + <tr> + <td> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0001"> I. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0002"> II. </a> + </p> + <p class="toc"> + <a href="#link2H_4_0003"> III. </a> + </p> + </td> + </tr> + </table> + <p> + <br /> <br /> + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + <br /> <br /> <a name="link2H_4_0001" id="link2H_4_0001"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + I. + </h2> + <p> + “Why shouldn’t we collaborate?” said Henley in his most matter-of-fact + way, as Big Ben gave voice to the midnight hour. “Everybody does it + nowadays. Two heads may be really better than one, although I seldom + believe in the truth of accepted sayings. Your head is a deuced good one, + Andrew; but—now don’t get angry—you are too excitable and too + intense to be left quite to yourself, even in book-writing, much less in + the ordinary affairs of life. I think you were born to collaborate, and to + collaborate with me. You can give me everything I lack, and I can give you + a little of the sense of humour, and act as a drag upon the wheel.” + </p> + <p> + “None of the new humour, Jack; that shall never appear in a book with my + name attached to it. Dickens I can tolerate. He is occasionally + felicitous. The story of ‘The Dying Clown,’ for instance, crude as it is + it has a certain grim tragedy about it. But the new humour came from the + pit, and should go—to the <i>Sporting Times</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “Now, don’t get excited. The book is not in proof yet—perhaps never + will be. You need not be afraid. My humour will probably be old enough. + But what do you y to the idea?” + </p> + <p> + Andrew Trenchard sat for awhile in silent consideration. His legs were + stretched out, and his slippered feet rested on the edge of the brass + fender. A nimbus of smoke surrounded his swarthy features, his shock of + black hair, his large, rather morose, dark eyes. He was a man of about + twenty-five, with an almost horribly intelligent face, so observant that + he tried people, so acute that he frightened them. His intellect was never + for a moment at rest, unless in sleep. He devoured himself with his own + emotions, and others with his analysis of theirs. His mind was always + crouching to spring, except when it was springing. He lived an irregular + life, and all horrors had a subtle fascination for him. As Henley had + remarked, he possessed little sense of humour, but immense sense of evil + and tragedy and sorrow. He seldom found time to calmly regard the drama of + life from the front. He was always at the stage-door, sending in his card, + and requesting admittance behind the scenes. What was on the surface only + interested him in so far as it indicated what was beneath, and in all + mental matters his normal procedure was that of the disguised detective. + Stupid people disliked him. Clever people distrusted him while they + admired him. The mediocre suggested that he was liable to go off his head, + and the profound predicted for him fame, tempered by suicide. + </p> + <p> + Most people considered him interesting, and a few were sincerely attached + to him. Among these last was Henley, who had been his friend at Oxford, + and had taken rooms in the same house with him in Smith’s Square, + Westminster. Both the young men were journalists. Henley, who, as he had + acknowledged, possessed a keen sense of humour, and was not so much + ashamed of it as he ought to have been, wrote—very occasionally—for + <i>Punch</i>, and more often for <i>Fun</i>, was dramatic critic of a + lively society paper, and “did” the books—in a sarcastic vein—for + a very unmuzzled “weekly,” that was libellous by profession and truthful + by oversight. Trenchard, on the other hand, wrote a good deal of very + condensed fiction, and generally placed it; contributed brilliant fugitive + articles to various papers and magazines, and was generally spoken of by + the inner circle of the craft as “a rising man,” and a man to be afraid + of. Henley was full of common-sense, only moderately introspective, + facile, and vivacious. He might be trusted to tincture a book with the + popular element, and yet not to spoil it; for his literary sense was keen, + despite his jocular leaning toward the new humour. He lacked imagination; + but his descriptive powers were racy, and he knew instinctively what was + likely to take, and what would be caviare to the general. + </p> + <p> + Trenchard, as he considered the proposition now made to him, realized that + Henley might supply much that he lacked in any book that was written with + a view to popular success. There could be no doubt of it. + </p> + <p> + “But we should quarrel inevitably and doggedly,” he said at last. “If I + can not hold myself in, still less can I be held in. We should tear one + another in pieces. When I write, I feel that what I write must be, however + crude, however improper or horrible it may seem. You would want to hold me + back.” + </p> + <p> + “My dear boy, I should more than want to—I should do it. In + collaboration, no man can be a law unto himself. That must be distinctly + understood before we begin. I don’t wish to force the proposition on you. + Only we are both ambitious devils. We are both poor. We are both + determined to try a book. Have we more chance of succeeding if we try one + together? I believe so. You have the imagination, the grip, the stern + power to evolve the story, to make it seem inevitable, to force it step by + step on its way. I can lighten that way. I can plant a few flowers—they + shall not be peonies, I promise you—on the roadside. And I can, and, + what is more, will, check you when you wish to make the story impossibly + horrible or fantastic to the verge of the insane. Now, you needn’t be + angry. This book, if we write it, has got to be a good book, and yet a + book that will bring grist to the mill. That is understood.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew’s great eyes flashed in the lamplight. + </p> + <p> + “The mill,” he said. “Sometimes I feel inclined to let it stop working. + Who would care if one wheel ceased to turn? There are so many others.” + </p> + <p> + “Ah, that’s the sort of thing I shall cut out of the book!” cried Henley, + turning the soda-water into his whisky with a cheerful swish. + </p> + <p> + “We will be powerful, but never morbid; tragic, if you like, but not + without hope. We need not aspire too much; but we will not look at the + stones in the road all the time. And the dunghills, in which those weird + fowl, the pessimistic realists, love to rake, we will sedulously avoid. + Cheer up, old fellow, and be thankful that you possess a corrective in + me.” + </p> + <p> + Trenchard’s face lightened in a rare smile as, with a half-sigh, he said: + </p> + <p> + “I believe you are right, and that I need a collaborator, an opposite, who + is yet in sympathy with me. Yes; either of us might fail alone; together + we should succeed.” + </p> + <p> + “<i>Will</i> succeed, my boy!” + </p> + <p> + “But not by pandering to the popular taste,” added Andrew in his most + sombre tones, and with a curl of his thin, delicately-moulded lips. “I + shall never consent to that.” + </p> + <p> + “We will not call it pandering. But we must hit the taste of the day, or + we shall look a couple of fools.” + </p> + <p> + “People are always supposed to look fools when, for once, they are not + fools,” said Andrew. + </p> + <p> + “Possibly. But now our bargain is made. Strike hands upon it. Henceforth + we are collaborators as well as friends.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew extended his long, thin, feverish hand, and, as Henley held it for + a moment, he started at the intense, vivid, abnormal personality its grasp + seemed to reveal. To collaborate with Trenchard was to collaborate with a + human volcano. + </p> + <p> + “And now for the germ of our book,” he said, as the clock struck one. + “Where shall we find it?” + </p> + <p> + Trenchard leaned forward in his chair, with his hands pressed upon the + arms. + </p> + <p> + “Listen, and I will give it you,” he said. + </p> + <p> + And, almost until the dawn and the wakening of the slumbering city, Henley + sat and listened, and forgot that his pipe was smoked out, and that his + feet were cold. Trenchard had strange powers, and could enthral as he + could also repel. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + “It is a weird idea, and it is very powerful,” Henley said at last. “But + you stop short at the critical moment. Have you not devised a <i>dénouement?</i>” + </p> + <p> + “Not yet. That is where the collaboration will come in. You must help me. + We must talk it over. I am in doubt.” + </p> + <p> + He got up and passed his hands nervously through his thick hair. + </p> + <p> + “My doubt has kept me awake so many nights!” he said, and his voice was + rather husky and worn. + </p> + <p> + Henley looked at him almost compassionately. + </p> + <p> + “How intensely you live in your fancies!” + </p> + <p> + “My fancies?” said Andrew, with a sudden harsh accent, and darting a + glance of curious watchfulness upon his friend. “My—— Yes, + yes. Perhaps I do. Perhaps I try to. Some people have souls that must + escape from their environment, their miserable life-envelope, or faint. + Many of us labour and produce merely to create an atmosphere in which we + ourselves may breathe for awhile and be happy. Damn this London, and this + lodging, and this buying bread with words! I must create for myself an + atmosphere. I must be always getting away from what is, even if I go + lower, lower. Ah! Well—but the <i>dénouement</i>. Give me your + impressions.” + </p> + <p> + Henley meditated for awhile. Then he said; “Let us leave it. Let us get to + work; and in time, as the story progresses, it will seem inevitable. We + shall see it in front of us, and we shall not be able to avoid it. Let us + get to work”—he glanced at his watch and laughed—“or, rather, + let us get to bed. It is past four. This way madness lies. When we + collaborate, we will write in the morning. Our book shall be a book of the + dawn, and not of the darkness, despite its sombre theme.” + </p> + <p> + “No, no; it must be a book of the darkness.” + </p> + <p> + “Of the darkness, then, but written in the dawn. Your tragedy tempered by + my trust in human nature, and the power that causes things to right + themselves. Good-night, old boy.” + </p> + <p> + “Good-night.” + </p> + <p> + When Henley had left the room, Tren-chard sat for a moment with his head + sunk low on his breast and his eyes half closed. Then, with a jerk, he + gained his feet, went to the door, opened it, and looked forth on the + deserted landing. He listened, and heard Henley moving to and fro in his + bedroom. Then he shut the door, took off his smoking-coat, and bared his + left arm. There was a tiny blue mark on it. + </p> + <p> + “What will the <i>dénouement</i> be?” he whispered to himself, as he felt + in his waistcoat pocket with a trembling hand. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0002" id="link2H_4_0002"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + II. + </h2> + <p> + The book was moving onward by slow degrees and with a great deal of + discussion. + </p> + <p> + In those days Henley and Trenchard lived much with sported oaks. They were + battling for fame. They were doing all they knew. Literary gatherings + missed them. First nights knew them no more. The grim intensity that was + always characteristic of Trenchard seemed in some degree communicated to + Henley. He began to more fully understand what the creating for one’s self + of an atmosphere meant. The story he and his friend were fashioning + fastened upon him like some strange, determined shadow from the realms of + real life, gripped him more and more closely, held him for long spells of + time in a new and desolate world. For the book so far was a deepening + tragedy, and although, at times, Henley strove to resist the paramount + influence which the genius of Trenchard began to exercise over him, he + found himself comparatively impotent, unable to shed gleams of popular + light upon the darkness of the pages. The power of the tale was undoubted. + Henley felt that it was a big thing that they two were doing; but would it + be a popular thing—a money-making thing? That was the question. He + sometimes wished with all his heart they had chosen a different subject to + work their combined talent upon. The germ of the work seemed only capable + of tragic treatment, if the book were to be artistic. Their hero was a man + of strong intellect, of physical beauty, full at first of the joy of life, + chivalrous, a believer in the innate goodness of human nature. Believing + in goodness, he believed also ardently in influence. In fact, he was a + worshipper of influence, and his main passion was to seize upon the + personalities of others, and impose his own personality upon them. He + loved to make men and women see with his eyes and hear with his ears, + adopt his theories as truth, take his judgment for their own. All that he + thought <i>was</i>—to him. He never doubted himself, therefore he + could not bear that those around him should not think with him, act + towards men and women as he acted, face life as he faced it. Yet he was + too subtle ever to be dogmatic. He never shouted in the market-place. He + led those with whom he came in contact as adroitly as if he had been evil, + and to the influence of others he was as adamant. + </p> + <p> + Events brought into his life a woman, complex, subtle too, with a + naturally noble character and fine understanding, a woman who, like so + many women, might have been anything, and was far worse than nothing—a + hopeless, helpless slave, the victim of the morphia habit, which had + gradually degraded her, driven her through sloughs of immorality, wrecked + a professional career which at one time had been almost great, shattered + her constitution, though not all her still curious beauty, and ruined her, + to all intents and purposes, body and soul. The man and the woman met, and + in a flash the man saw what she had been, what she might have been, what, + perhaps, in spite of all, she still was, somewhere, somehow. In her + horrible degradation, in her dense despair, she fascinated him. He could + only see the fire bursting out of the swamp. He could only feel on his + cheek the breath of the spring in the darkness of the charnel-house. He + knew that she gave to him his great lifework. Her monstrous habit he + simply could not comprehend. It was altogether as fantastic to him as + absolute virtue sometimes seems to absolute vice. He looked upon it, and + felt as little kinship with it as a saint might feel with a vampire. To + him it was merely a hideous and extraordinary growth, which had fastened + like a cancer upon a beautiful and wonderful body, and which must be cut + out. He was profoundly interested. + </p> + <p> + He loved the woman. Seeing her governed entirely by a vice, he made the + very common mistake of believing her to have a weak personality, easily + falling, perhaps for that very reason as easily lifted to her feet. He + resolved to save her, to devote all his powers, all his subtlety, all his + intellect, all his strong force of will, to weaning this woman from her + fatal habit. She was a married woman, long ago left, to kill herself if + she would, by the husband whose happiness she had wrecked. He took her to + live with him. For her sake he defied the world, and set himself to do + angel’s work when people believed him at the devil’s. He resolved to wrap + her, to envelop her in his influence, to enclose her in his strong + personality. Here, at last, was a grand, a noble opportunity for the + legitimate exercise of his master passion. He was confident of victory. + </p> + <p> + But his faith in himself was misplaced. This woman, whom he thought so + weak, was yet stronger than he. Although he could not influence her, he + began to find that she could influence him. At first he struggled with her + vice, which he could not understand. He thought himself merely horrified + at it; then he began to lose the horror in wonder at its power. Its + virility, as it were, fascinated him just a little. A vice so + overwhelmingly strong seemed to him at length almost glorious, almost + God-like. There was a sort of humanity about it. Yes, it was like a being + who lived and who conquered. + </p> + <p> + The woman loved him, and he tried to win her from it; but her passion for + it was greater than her passion for him, greater than had been her + original passion for purity, for health, for success, for homage, for all + lovely and happiness-making things. Her passion for it was so great that + it roused the man’s curiosity at last; it made him hold his breath, and + stand in awe, and desire furtively to try just once for himself what its + dominion was like, to test its power as one may test the power of an + electric battery. He dared not do this openly, for fear the fact of his + doing so might drive the woman still farther on the downward path. So in + secret he tasted the fascinations of her vice, once—and again—and + yet again. But still he struggled for her while he was ceasing to struggle + for himself. Still he combated for her the foe who was conquering him. + Very strange, very terrible was his position in that London house with + her, isolated from the world. For his friends had dropped him. Even those + who were not scandalized at his relations with this woman had ceased to + come near him. They found him blind and deaf to the ordinary interests of + life. He never went out anywhere, unless occasionally with her to some + theatre. He never invited anyone to come and see him. At first the woman + absorbed all his interest, all his powers of love—and then at last + the woman and her vice, which was becoming his too. By degrees he sank + lower and lower, but he never told the woman the truth, and he still urged + her to give up her horrible habit, which now he loved. And she laughed in + his face, and asked him if a human creature who had discovered a new life + would be likely to give it up. “A new death,” he murmured, and then, + looking in a mirror near to him, saw his lips curved in the thin, pale + smile of the hypocrite. + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + So far the two young men had written. They worked hard, but their industry + was occasionally interrupted by the unaccountable laziness of Andrew, who, + after toiling with unremitting fury for some days, and scarcely getting up + from his desk, would disappear, and perhaps not return for several nights. + Henley remonstrated with him, but in vain. + </p> + <p> + “But what do you do, my dear fellow?” he asked. “What becomes of you?” + </p> + <p> + “I go away to think out what is coming. The environment I seek helps me,” + answered Andrew, with a curious, gleaming smile. “I return full of fresh + copy.” + </p> + <p> + This was true enough. He generally mysteriously departed when the book was + beginning to flag, and on his reappearance he always set to work with new + vigour and confidence. + </p> + <p> + “It seems to me,” Henley said, “that it will be your book after all, not + mine. It is your plot, and when I think things over I find that every + detail is yours. You insisted on the house where the man and the woman hid + themselves being on the Chelsea Embankment. You invented the woman, her + character, her appearance. You named her Olive Beauchamp.” + </p> + <p> + “Olive Beauchamp,” Andrew repeated, with a strange lingering over the two + words, which he pronounced in a very curious voice that trembled, as if + with some keen emotion, love or hate. “Yes; I named her as you say.” + </p> + <p> + “Then, as the man in the play remarks, ‘Where do I come in?’” Henley + asked, half laughing, half vexed. “Upon my word, I shall have some + compunction in putting my name below yours on the title-page when the book + is published, if it ever is.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew’s lips twitched once or twice uneasily. Then he said, “You need not + have any such compunction. The greatest chapter will probably be written + by you.” + </p> + <p> + “Which chapter do you mean?” + </p> + <p> + “That which winds the story up—that which brings the whole thing to + its legitimate conclusion. You must write the <i>dénouement</i>.” + </p> + <p> + “I doubt if I could. And then we have not even now decided what it is to + be.” + </p> + <p> + “We need not bother about that yet. It will come. Fate will decide it for + us.” + </p> + <p> + “What do you mean, Andrew? How curiously you talk about the book sometimes—so + precisely as if it were true!” + </p> + <p> + Trenchard smiled again, struck a match, and lit his pipe. + </p> + <p> + “It seems true to me—when I am writing it,” he answered. “I have + been writing it these last two days and nights when I have been away, and + now I can go forward, if you agree to the new development which I + suggest.” + </p> + <p> + It was night. He had been absent for some days, and had just returned. + Henley, meanwhile, had been raging because the book had come to a complete + standstill. He himself could do nothing at it, since they had reached a + dead-lock, and had not talked over any new scenes, or mutually decided + upon the turn events were now to take. He felt rather cross and sore. + </p> + <p> + “<i>You</i> can go forward,” he said: “yes, after your holiday. You might + at least tell me when you are going.” + </p> + <p> + “I never know myself,” Andrew said rather sadly. + </p> + <p> + He was looking very white and worn, and his eyes were heavy. + </p> + <p> + “But I have thought some fresh material out. My idea is this: The man now + becomes such a complete slave to the morphia habit that concealment of the + fact is scarcely possible. And, indeed, he ceases to desire to conceal it + from the woman. The next scene will be an immensely powerful one—that + in which he tells her the truth.” + </p> + <p> + “You do not think it would be more natural if she found it out against his + will? It seems to me that what he had concealed so long he would try to + hide for ever.” + </p> + <p> + “No,” Andrew said emphatically; “that would not be so.” + </p> + <p> + “But——” + </p> + <p> + “Look here,” the other interrupted, with some obvious irritability; “let + me tell you what I have conceived, and raise any objections afterwards if + you wish to raise them. He would tell her the truth himself. He would + almost glory in doing so. That is the nature of the man. We have depicted + his pride in his own powers, his temptation, his struggle—his fall, + as it would be called——” + </p> + <p> + “As it would be called.” + </p> + <p> + “Well, well!—his fall, then. And now comes the moment when his fall + is complete. He bends the neck finally beneath his tyrant, and then he + goes to the woman and he tells her the truth.” + </p> + <p> + “But explain matters a little more. Do you mean that he is glad, and tells + almost with triumph; or that he is appalled, and tells her with horror?” + </p> + <p> + “Ah! That is where the power of the scene lies. He is appalled. He is like + a man plunged at last into hell without hope of future redemption. He + tells her the truth with horror.” + </p> + <p> + “And she?” + </p> + <p> + “It is she who triumphs. Look here: it will be like this.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew leaned forward across the table that stood between their two worn + armchairs. His thin, feverish-looking hands, with the fingers strongly + twisted together, rested upon it. His dark eyes glittered with excitement. + </p> + <p> + “It will be like this. It is evening—a dark, dull evening, like the + day before yesterday, closing in early, throttling the afternoon + prematurely, as it were. A drizzling rain falls softly, drenching + everything—the sodden leaves of the trees on the Embankment, the + road, which is heavy with clinging yellow mud, the stone coping of the + wall that skirts the river. + </p> + <p> + “And the river heaves along. Its gray, dirty waves are beaten up by a + light, chilly wind, and chase the black barges with a puny, fretful, + sinister fury, falling back from their dark, wet sides with a hiss of + baffled hatred. Yes, it is dreary weather. + </p> + <p> + “Do you know, Henley, as I know, the strange, subtle influence of certain + kinds of weather? There are days on which I could do great deeds merely + because of the way the sun is shining. There are days, there are evenings, + when I could commit crimes merely because of the way the wind is + whispering, the river is sighing, the dingy night is clustering around me. + There can be an angel in the weather, or there can be a devil. On this + evening I am describing there is a devil in the night! + </p> + <p> + “The lights twinkle through the drizzling rain, and they are blurred, as + bright eyes are blurred, and made dull and ugly, by tears. Two or three + cabs roll slowly by the houses on the Embankment.. A few people hurry past + along the slippery, shining pavement. But as the night closes in there is + little life outside those tall, gaunt houses that are so near the river! + And in one of those houses the man comes down to the woman to tell her the + truth. + </p> + <p> + “There is a devil in the weather that night, as I said, and that devil + whispers to the man, and tells him that it is now his struggle must end + finally, and the new era of unresisted yielding to the vice begin. In the + sinister darkness, in the diminutive, drenching mist of rain, he speaks, + and the man listens, and bows his head and answers ‘yes!’ It is over. He + has fallen finally. He is resolved, with a strange, dull obstinacy that + gives him a strange, dull pleasure—do you see?—to go down to + the room below, and tell the woman that she has conquered him—that + his power of will is a reed which can be crushed—that henceforth + there shall be two victims instead of one. He goes down.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew paused a moment. His lips were twitching again. He looked terribly + excited. Henley listened in silence. He had lost all wish to interrupt. + </p> + <p> + “He goes down into the room below where the woman is, with her dark hair, + and her dead-white face, and her extraordinary eyes—large, luminous, + sometimes dull and without expression, sometimes dilated, and with an + unnatural life staring out of them. She is on the sofa near the fire. He + sits down beside her. His head falls into his hands, and at first he is + silent. He is thinking how he will tell her. She puts her soft, dry hand + on his, and she says: ‘I am very tired to-night. Do not begin your evening + sermon. Let me have it to-morrow. How you must love me to be so + persistent! and how you must love me to be so stupid as to think that your + power of will can break the power of such a habit as mine!’ + </p> + <p> + “Then he draws his hand away from hers, and he lifts his head from his + hands, and he tells her the truth. She leans back against a cushion + staring at him in silence, devouring him with her eyes, which have become + very bright and eager and searching. Presently he stops. + </p> + <p> + “‘Go on,’ she says, ‘go on. Tell me more. Tell me all you feel. Tell me + how the habit stole upon you, and came to you again and again, and stayed + with you. Tell me how you first liked it, and then loved it, and how it + was something to you, and then much, and then everything. Go on! go on!’ + </p> + <p> + “And he catches her excitement. He conceals nothing from her. All the + hideous, terrible, mental processes he has been through, he details to + her, at first almost gloating over his own degradation. He even + exaggerates, as a man exaggerates in telling a story to an eager auditor. + He is carried away by her strange fury of listening. He lays bare his + soul; he exposes its wounds; he sears them with red-hot irons for her to + see. And then at last all is told. He can think of no more details. He has + even embellished the abominable truth. So he is silent, and he looks at + her.” + </p> + <p> + “And what does she do?” asked Henley, with a catch in his voice as he + spoke. Undoubtedly in relating a fictitious narrative Andrew had a quite + abnormal power of making it appear true and real. + </p> + <p> + “She looks at him, and then she bursts out laughing. Her eyes shine with + triumph. She is glad; she is joyous with the joy of a lost soul when it + sees that other souls are irrevocably lost too; she laughs, and she says + nothing.” + </p> + <p> + “And the man?” + </p> + <p> + Andrew’s eyes suddenly dilated. He leaned forward and laid his hand on + Henley’s arm. + </p> + <p> + “Ah, the man! that is my great idea. As she laughs his heart is changed. + His love for her suddenly dies. Its place is taken by hatred. He realizes + then, for the first time, while he hears her laugh, what she has done to + him. He knows that she has ruined him, and that she is proud of it—that + she is rejoicing in having won him to destruction. He sees that his + perdition is merely a feather in her cap. He hates her. Oh, how he hates + her!—hates her!” + </p> + <p> + The expression on Andrew’s face became terrible as he spoke—cruel, + malignant, almost fiendish. Henley turned cold, and shook off his hand + abruptly. + </p> + <p> + “That is horrible!” he said. “I object to that. The book will be one of + unrelieved gloom.” + </p> + <p> + “The book!” said Andrew. + </p> + <p> + “Yes. You behave really as if the story were true, as if everything in it + were ordained—inevitable.” + </p> + <p> + “It seems so to me; it is so. What must be, must be. If you are afraid of + tragedy, you ought never to have joined me in starting upon such a story. + Even what has never happened must be made to seem actual to be successful. + The art of fiction is to imitate truth with absolute fidelity, not to + travesty it. In such circumstances the man’s love would be changed to + hatred.” + </p> + <p> + “Yes, if the woman’s demeanour were such as you have described. But why + should she be so callous? I do not think that is natural.” + </p> + <p> + “You do not know the woman,” began Andrew harshly. Then he stopped + speaking abruptly, and a violent flush swept over his face. + </p> + <p> + “I know her as well as you do, my dear fellow,” rejoined Henley, laughing. + “How you manage to live in your dreams! You certainly do create an + atmosphere for yourself with a vengeance, and for me too. I believe you + have an abnormal quantity of electricity concealed about you somewhere, + and sometimes you give me a shock and carry me out of myself. If this is + collaboration, it is really a farce. From the very first you have had + things all your own way. You have talked me over to your view upon every + single occasion; but now I am going to strike. I object to the conduct you + have devised for Olive. It will alienate all sympathy from her; it is the + behaviour of a devil.” + </p> + <p> + “It is the behaviour of a woman,” said Andrew, with a cold cynicism that + seemed to cut like a knife. + </p> + <p> + “How can you tell? How can you judge of women so surely?” + </p> + <p> + “I study all strange phenomena, women among the rest.” + </p> + <p> + “Have you ever met an Olive Beauchamp, then, in real life?” said Henley. + </p> + <p> + The question was put more than half in jest; but Trenchard received it + with a heavy frown. + </p> + <p> + “Don’t let us quarrel about the matter,” he said, “I can only tell you + this; and mind, Jack, I mean it. It is my unalterable resolve. Either the + story must proceed upon the lines that I have indicated, or I cannot go on + with it at all. It would be impossible for me to write it differently.” + </p> + <p> + “And this is collaboration, is it?” exclaimed the other, trying to force a + laugh, though even his good-nature could scarcely stand Trenchard’s + trampling demeanour. + </p> + <p> + “I can’t help it. I cannot be inartistic and untrue to Nature even for the + sake of a friend.” + </p> + <p> + “Thank you. Well, I have no desire to ruin your work, Andrew; but it is + really useless for this farce to continue. Do what you like, and let us + make no further pretence of collaborating. I cannot act as a drag upon + such a wheel as yours. I will not any longer be a dead-weight upon you. + Our temperaments evidently unfit us to be fellow-workers; and I feel that + your strength and power are so undeniable that you may, perhaps, be able + to carry this weary tragedy through, and by sheer force make it palatable + to the public. I will protest no more; I will only cease any longer to + pretend to have a finger in this literary pie.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew’s morose expression passed away like a cloud. He got up and laid + his hand upon Henley’s shoulder. + </p> + <p> + “You make me feel what a beast I am,” he said. “But I can’t help it. I was + made so. Do forgive me, Jack. I have taken the bit between my teeth, I + know. But—this story seems to me no fiction; it is a piece of life, + as real to me as those stars I see through the window-pane are real to me—as + my own emotions are real to me. Jack, this book has seized me. Believe me, + if it is written as I wish, it will make an impression upon the world that + will be great. The mind of the world is given to me like a sheet of blank + paper. I will write upon it with my heart’s blood. But”—and here his + manner became strangely impressive, and his sombre, heavy eyes gazed + deeply into the eyes of his friend—“remember this! You will finish + this book. I feel that; I know it. I cannot tell you why. But so it is + ordained. Let me write as far as I can, Jack, and let me write as I will. + But do not let us quarrel. The book is ours, not mine. And—don’t—don’t + take away your friendship from me.” + </p> + <p> + The last words were said with an outburst of emotion that was almost + feminine in intensity. Henley felt deeply moved, for, as a rule, Andrew’s + manner was not specially affectionate, or even agreeable. + </p> + <p> + “It is all right, old fellow,” he said, in the embarrassed English manner + which often covers so much that might with advantage be occasionally + revealed. “Go on in your own way. I believe you are a genius, and I am + only trying to clip the wings that may carry you through the skies. Go on + in your own way, and consult me only when you feel inclined.” + </p> + <p> + Andrew took his hand and pressed it in silence. + </p> + <p> + <a name="link2H_4_0003" id="link2H_4_0003"> + <!-- H2 anchor --> </a> + </p> + <div style="height: 4em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> + <h2> + III. + </h2> + <p> + It was some three weeks after this that one afternoon Trenchard laid down + his pen at the conclusion of a chapter, and, getting up, thrust his hands + into his pockets and walked to the window. + </p> + <p> + The look-out was rather dreary. A gray sky leaned over the great, + barrack-like church that gives an ecclesiastical flavour to Smith’s + Square. A few dirty sparrows fluttered above the gray pavement—feverish, + unresting birds, Trenchard named them silently, as he watched their + meaningless activity, their jerky, ostentatious deportment, with + lacklustre, yet excited, eyes. How gray everything looked, tame, + colourless, indifferent! The light was beginning to fade stealthily out of + things. The gray church was gradually becoming shadowy. The flying forms + of the hurrying sparrows disappeared in the weary abysses of the air and + sky. The sitting-room in Smith’s Square was nearly dark now. Henley had + gone out to a <i>matinée</i> at one of the theatres, so Trenchard was + alone. He struck a match presently, lit a candle, carried it over to his + writing-table, and began to examine the littered sheets he had just been + writing. The book was nearing its end. The tragedy was narrowing to a + point. Trenchard read the last paragraph which he had written: + </p> + <p> + “He hardly knew that he lived, except during those many hours when, + plunged in dreams, he allowed, nay, forced, life to leave him for awhile. + He had sunk to depths below even those which Olive had reached. And the + thought that she was ever so little above him haunted him like a spectre + impelling him to some mysterious deed. When he was not dreaming, he was + dwelling upon this idea which had taken his soul captive. It seemed to be + shaping itself towards an act. Thought was the ante-room through which he + passed to the hall where Fate was sitting, ready to give him audience. He + traversed this ante-room, which seemed lined with fantastic and terrible + pictures, at first with lagging footfalls. But at length he laid his hand + upon the door that divided him from Fate.” + </p> + <hr /> + <p> + And when he had read the final words he gathered the loose sheets together + with his long, thin fingers, and placed them one on the top of the other + in a neat pile. He put them into a drawer which contained other unfinished + manuscripts, shut the drawer, locked it, and carried the key to Henley’s + room. There he scribbled some words on a bit of notepaper, wrapped the key + in it, and inclosed it in an envelope on which he wrote Henley’s name. + Then he put on his overcoat, descended the narrow stairs, and opened the + front-door. The landlady heard him, and screamed from the basement to know + if he would be in to dinner. + </p> + <p> + “I shall not be in at all to-night,” he answered, in a hard, dry voice + that travelled along the dingy passage with a penetrating distinctness. + The landlady murmured to the slatternly maidservant an ejaculatory + diatribe on the dissipatedness of young literary gentlemen as the door + banged. Trenchard disappeared in the gathering darkness, and soon left + Smith’s Square behind him. + </p> + <p> + It chanced that day that, in the theatre, Henley encountered some ladies + who carried him home to tea after the performance. They lived in Chelsea, + and in returning to Smith’s Square afterwards Henley took his way along + the Chelsea Embankment. He always walked near to the dingy river when he + could. The contrast of its life to the town’s life through which it flowed + had a perpetual fascination for him. In the early evening, too, the river + presents many Doré effects. It is dim, mysterious, sometimes meretricious, + with its streaks of light close to the dense shadows that lie under the + bridges, its wailful, small waves licking the wharves, and bearing up the + inky barges that look like the ferry-boat of the Styx. Henley loved to + feel vivaciously despairing, and he hugged himself in the belief that the + Thames at nightfall tinged his soul with a luxurious melancholy, the + capacity for which was not far from rendering him a poet. So he took his + way by the river. As he neared Cheyne Row, he saw in front of him the + figure of a man leaning over the low stone wall, with his face buried in + his hands. On hearing his approaching footsteps the man lifted himself up, + turned round, and preceded him along the pavement with a sort of listless + stride which seemed to Henley strangely familiar. He hastened his steps, + and on coming closer recognised that the man was Trenchard; but, just as + he was about to hail him, Trenchard crossed the road to one of the houses + opposite, inserted a key in the door, and disappeared within, shutting the + door behind him. + </p> + <p> + Henley paused a moment opposite to the house. It was of a dull red colour, + and had a few creepers straggling helplessly about it, looking like a torn + veil that can only partially conceal a dull, heavy face. + </p> + <p> + “Andrew seems at home here,” he thought, gazing up at the blind, tall + windows, which showed no ray of light. “I wonder——” + </p> + <p> + And then, still gazing at the windows, he recalled the description of the + house where Olive Beauchamp lived in their book. + </p> + <p> + “He took it from this,” Henley said to himself. Yes, that was obvious. + Trenchard had described the prison-house of despair, where the two victims + of a strange, desolating habit shut themselves up to sink, with a curious + minuteness. He had even devoted a paragraph to the tall iron gate, whose + round handle he had written of as “bald, and exposed to the wind from the + river, the paint having long since been worn off it.” In the twilight + Henley bent down and examined the handle of the gate. The paint seemed to + have been scraped from it. + </p> + <p> + “How curiously real that book has become to me!” he muttered. “I could + almost believe that if I knocked upon that door, and was let in, I should + find Olive Beauchamp stretched on a couch in the room that lies beyond + those gaunt, shuttered windows.” + </p> + <p> + He gave a last glance at the house, and as he did so he fancied that he + heard a slight cry come from it to him. He listened attentively and heard + nothing more. Then he walked away toward home. + </p> + <p> + When he reached his room, he found upon his table the envelope which + Trenchard had directed to him. He opened it, and unwrapped the key from + the inclosed sheet of note-paper, on which were written these words: + </p> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + “Dear Jack, + + “I am off again. And this time I can’t say when I shall be + back. In any case, I have completed my part of the book, and + leave the finishing of it in your hands. This is the key of + the drawer in which I have locked the manuscript. You have + not seen most of the last volume. Read it, and judge for + yourself whether the <i>dénouement</i> can be anything but + utterly tragic. I will not outline to you what I have + thought of for it. If you have any difficulty about the + <i>finale</i>, I shall be able to help you with it even if you do + not see me again for some time. By the way, what nonsense + that saying is, ‘Dead men tell no tales!’ Half the best + tales in the world are told, or at least completed, by dead + men. + + “Yours ever, + + “A. T.” + </pre> + <p> + Henley laid this note down and turned cold all over. It was the concluding + sentence which had struck a chill through his heart. He took the key in + his hand, went down to Trenchard’s room, unlocked the drawer in his + writing-table, and took out the manuscript. What did Andrew mean by that + sinister sentence? A tale completed by a dead man! Henley sat down by the + fire with the manuscript in his hands and began to read. He was called + away to dinner; but immediately afterward he returned to his task, and + till late into the night his glance travelled down the closely-written + sheets one after the other, until the light from the candles grew blurred + and indistinct, and his eyes ached. But still he read on. The power and + gloom of Andrew’s narrative held him in a vice, and then he was searching + for a clue in the labyrinth of words. At last he came to the final + paragraph, and then to the final sentence: + </p> + <p> + “But at length he laid his hand upon the door that divided him from Fate.” + </p> + <p> + Henley put the sheet down carefully upon the table. It was three o’clock + in the morning, and the room seemed full of a strange, breathless cold, + the peculiar chilliness that precedes the dawn. The fire was burning + brightly enough, yet the warmth it emitted scarcely seemed to combat the + frosty air that penetrated from without, and Henley shivered as he rose + from his seat. His brows were drawn together, and he was thinking deeply. + A light seemed slowly struggling into his soul. That last sentence of + Tren-chard’s connected itself with what he had seen in the afternoon on + the Chelsea Embankment. “He laid his hand upon the door that divided him + from Fate.” + </p> + <p> + A strange idea dawned in Henley’s mind, an idea which made many things + clear to him. Yet he put it away, and sat down again to read the + unfinished book once more. Andrew had carried on the story of the man’s + growing hatred of the woman whom he had tried to rescue, until it had + developed into a deadly fury, threatening immediate action. Then he had + left the <i>dénouement</i> in Henley’s hands. He had left it ostensibly in + Henley’s hands, but the latter, reading the manuscript again with intense + care, saw that matters had been so contrived that the knot of the novel + could only be cut by murder. As it had been written, the man must + inevitably murder the woman. And Andrew? All through the night Henley + thought of him as he had last seen him, opening the door of the red house + with the tattered creepers climbing over it. + </p> + <p> + At last, when it was dawn, he went up to bed tired out, after leaving a + written direction to the servant not to call him in the morning. When he + awoke and looked at his watch it was past two o’clock in the afternoon. He + sprang out of bed, dressed, and after a hasty meal, half breakfast, half + lunch, set out towards Chelsea. The day was bright and cold. The sun shone + on the river and sparkled on the windows of the houses on the Embankment. + Many people were about, and they looked cheerful. The weight of depression + that had settled upon Henley was lifted. He thought of the strange, yet + illuminating, idea that had occurred to him in the night, and now, in + broad daylight, it seemed clothed in absurdity. He laughed at it. Yet he + quickened his steps toward the red house with the tarnished iron gate and + the tattered creepers. + </p> + <p> + But long before he reached it he met a boy sauntering along the + thoroughfare and shouting newspapers. He sang out unflinchingly in the gay + sunshine, “Murder! Murder!” and between his shouts he whistled a + music-hall song gaily in snatches. Henley stopped him and bought a paper. + He opened the paper in the wind, which seemed striving to prevent him, and + cast his eyes over the middle pages. Then suddenly he dropped it to the + ground with a white face, and falteringly signed to a cabman. The <i>dénouement</i> + was written. The previous night, in a house on the Chelsea Embankment, a + woman had been done to death, and the murderer had crept out and thrown + himself into the gray, hurrying river. + </p> + <p> + The woman’s name was Olive Beauchamp. + </p> + <p> + THE END. + </p> + <div style="height: 6em;"> + <br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /> + </div> +<pre xml:space="preserve"> + + + + + +End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Collaborators, by Robert S. 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