CHAPTER XIII.
"THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE."
By a thorough knowledge of the natural laws which govern the operationsof human nature and by a careful application of the fine properties ofwell-selected men, and a judicious use of every available instrument oflog-rolling, the Mutual Depreciation Society gradually built up aconstitution strong enough to defy every tendency to disintegration.Hundreds of subtle malcontents floated round, ready to attack whereverthere was a weak point, but foiled by ignorance of the Society'sexistence, and the members escaped many a fatal shaft by keepingthemselves entirely to themselves. The idea of the Mutual DepreciationSociety was that every member should say what he thought of the others.The founders, who all took equal shares in it, were
Tom Brown, Dick Jones, Harry Robinson.
Their object in founding the Mutual Depreciation Society was of courseto achieve literary success, but they soon perceived that their phalanxwas too small for this, and as they had no power to add to their numberexcept by inviting strangers from without, they took steps to inducethree other gentlemen to solicit the privileges of membership. Thesecond batch comprised,
Taffy Owen, Andrew Mackay, Patrick Boyle.
_Tom Brown, the Supreme Thinker._]
These six gentlemen being all blessed with youth, health andincompetence, resolved to capture the town. Their tactics were verysimple, though their first operations were hampered by their ignoranceof one another's. Thus, it was some time before it was discovered thatAndrew Mackay, who had been deployed to seize the _Saturday Slasher_,had no real acquaintance with the editor's fencing-master, while DickJones, who had undertaken to bombard the _Acadaeum_, had started underthe impression that the eminent critic to whom he had dedicated hispoems (by permission) was still connected with the staff. But thesedifficulties were eliminated as soon as the Society got into workingorder. Everything comes to him who will not wait, and almost before theyhad time to wink our six gentlemen had secured the makings of anInfluence. Each had loyally done his best for himself and the rest, andthe first spoils of the campaign, as announced amid applause by theSecretary at the monthly dinner, were
Two Morning Papers, Two Evening Papers, Two Weekly Papers.
They were not the most influential, nor even the best circulated, stillit was not a bad beginning, though of course only a nucleus. By puttingout tentacles in every direction, by undertaking to write even onsubjects with which they were acquainted, they gradually secured a moreor less tenacious connection with the majority of the better journalsand magazines. On taking stock they found that the account stood thus:
Three Morning Papers, Four Evening Papers, Eleven Weekly Papers, Thirteen London Letters, Seven Dramatic Columns, Six Monthly Magazines, Thirteen Influences on Advertisements, Nine Friendships with Eminent Editors, Seventeen ditto with Eminent Sub-editors, Six ditto with Lady Journalists, Fifty-three Loans (at two-and-six each) to Pressmen, One hundred and nine Mentions of Editor's Womenkind at Fashionable Receptions.
It showed what could be achieved by six men, working together shoulderto shoulder for the highest aims in a spirit of mutual good-will andbrotherhood. They were undoubtedly greatly helped by having all been toOxford or Cambridge, but still much was the legitimate result of theirown manoeuvres.
By the time the secret campaign had reached this stage, manywell-meaning, unsuspecting men, not included in the above inventory, hadbeen pressed into the service of the Society, with the members of whichthey were connected by the thousand and one ties which spring upnaturally in the intercourse of the world, so that there was hardly anyjournal in the three kingdoms on which the Society could not, by somehook or the other, fasten a paragraph, if we except such publications asthe _Newgate Calendar_ and _Lloyds' Shipping List_, which record historyrather than make it.
Indeed, the success of the Society in this department was such as tosuggest the advisability of having themselves formally incorporatedunder the Companies' Acts for the manufacture and distribution ofparagraphs, for which they had unequalled facilities, and had obtainedvaluable concessions, and it was only the publicity required by lawwhich debarred them from enlarging their home trade to a profitableindustry for the benefit of non-members. For, by the peculiar nature ofthe machinery, it could only be worked if people were unaware of itsexistence. They resolved, however, that when they had made their pile,they would start the newspaper of the future, which any philosopher withan eye to the trend of things can see will be a journal written byadvertisers for gentlemen, and will contain nothing calculated to bringa blush to the cheek of the young person except cosmetics.
Contemporaneously with the execution of one side of the Plan ofCampaign, the Society was working the supplementary side. Day and night,week-days and Sundays, in season and out, these six gentlemen praisedthemselves and one another, or got themselves and one another praised bynon-members. There are many ways in which you can praise an author, fromblame downwards. There is the puff categorical and the puff allusive,the lie direct and the eulogy insinuative, the downright abuse and thesubtle innuendo, the exaltation of your man or the depression of hisrival. The attacking method of log-rolling must not be confounded withdepreciation. In their outside campaign, the members used every varietyof puff, but depreciation was strictly reserved for their privategatherings. For this was the wisdom of the Club, and herein lay itsimmense superiority over every other log-rolling club, that whereas inthose childish cliques every man is expected to admire every other, orto say so, in the Mutual Depreciation Society the obligation was all theother way. Every man was bound by the rules to sneer at the work of hisfellow-members and, if he should happen to admire any of it, at least tohave the grace to keep his feelings to himself. In practice, however,the latter contingency never arose, and each was able honestly toexpress all he thought, for it is impossible for men to work togetherfor a common object without discovering that they do not deserve to getit. Needless to point out how this sagacious provision strengthened themin their campaign, for not having to keep up the tension of mutualadmiration, and being able to relax and breathe (and express themselves)freely at their monthly symposia, as well as to slang one another in thestreet, they were able to write one another up with a clear conscience.It is well to found on human nature. Every other basis proves shiftingsand. The success of the Mutual Depreciation Society justified theirbelief in human nature.
Not only did they depreciate one another, but they made reparation tothe non-members they were always trying to write down during businesshours, by eulogizing them in the most generous manner in those blessedhours of leisure when knife answers fork and soul speaks to soul. Atsuch times even popular authors were allowed to have a little merit.
It was at one of these periods of soul-expansion, when the mostpetty-souled feels inclined to loosen the last two buttons of hiswaistcoat, that the idea of the English Shakespeare was first mooted.But we are anticipating, which is imprudent, as anticipations are seldomrealized.
One of the worst features of prosperity is that it is cloying, and whenthe first gloss of novelty and adventure had worn off, the free lancesof the Mutual Depreciation Society began to bore one another. You canget tired even of hearing your own dispraises; and the members werecompelled to spice their mutual adverse criticism in the highest manner,so as to compensate for its staleness. The jaded appetite must needs bepampered if it is to experience anything of that relish which a naturalhealthy hunger for adverse criticism can command so easily.
This was the sort of thing that went on at the dinners:
"I say, Tom," said Andrew Mackay, "what in Heaven's name made youpublish your waste-paper basket under the name of 'Stray Thoughts?' Forutter and incomprehensible idiocy they are only surpassed by Dick's lastvolume of poems. I shouldn't have thought such things could come evenout of a lunatic asylum, certainly not without a keeper. Really youfellows ought to consider me a litt
le----"
"We do. We consider you as little as they make them," they interruptedsimultaneously.
"It isn't fair to throw all the work on me," he went on. "How can I goon saying that Tom Brown is the supreme thinker of the time, the deepestintellect since Hegel, with a gift of style that rivals Berkeley's, ifyou go on turning out twaddle that a copy-book would boggle at? How canI keep repeating that for sure and consummate art, for unfailingcertainty of insight, for unerring visualization, for objectivesubjectivity and for subjective objectivity, for Swinburnian sweep ofmusic and Shakespearean depth of suggestiveness, Dick Jones can giveforty in a hundred (spot stroke barred) to all other contemporary poets,if you continue to spue out rhymes as false as your teeth, rhythms asmusical as your voice when you read them, and words that would drive adrawing-room composer mad with envy to set them? I maintain, it is notsticking to the bargain to expose me to the danger of being found out.You ought at least to have the decency to wrap up your fatuousness inlonger words or more abstruse themes. You're both so beastlyintelligible that a child can understand you're asses."
"Tut, tut, Andrew," said Taffy Owen, "it's all very well of you to talkwho've only got to do the criticism. And I think it's deuced ungratefulof you after we've written you up into the position of leading Englishcritic to want us to give you straw for your bricks! Do we ever complainwhen you call us cataclysmic, creative, esemplastic, or even epicene? Weknow it's rot, but we put up with it. When you said that Robinson's lastnovel had all the glow and genius of Dickens without his humor, all theripe wisdom of Thackeray without his social knowingness, all theimaginativeness of Shakespeare without his definiteness ofcharacterization, we all saw at once that you were incautiously allowingthe donkey's ears to protrude too obviously from beneath the lion'sskin. But did anyone grumble? Did Robinson, though the edition was soldout the day after? Did I, though you had just called me a modernBuddhist with the soul of an ancient Greek and the radiant fragrance ofa Cingalese tea-planter? I know these phrases take the public and I tryto be patient."
"Owen is right," Harry Robinson put in emphatically. "When you said Iwas a cross between a Scandinavian skald and a Dutch painter, I bore mycross in silence."
"Yes, but what else can a fellow say, when you give the public suchheterogeneous and formless balderdash that there is nothing for it butto pretend it's a new style, an epoch-making work, the foundation of anew era in literary art? Really I think you others have out and away thebest of it. It's much easier to write bad books than to eulogize theirmerits in an adequately plausible manner. I think it's playing it toolow upon a chap, the way you fellows are going on. It's taking a meanadvantage of my position."
"And who put you into that position, I should like to know?" yelled DickJones, becoming poetically excited. "Didn't we lift you up into it onthe point of our pens?"
"Fortunately they were not very pointed," ejaculated the great critic,wriggling uncomfortably at the suggestion. "I don't deny that, ofcourse. All I say is, you're giving me away now."
"You give yourself away," shrieked Owen vehemently, "with a pound ofthat Cingalese tea. How is it Boyle managed to crack up our playswithout being driven to any of this new-fangled nonsense?"
"Plays!" said Patrick, looking up moodily. "Anything is good enough forplays. You see I can always fall back on the acting and crack up that. Ihad to do that with Owen's thing at the _Lymarket_. My notice read likea gushing account of the play, in reality it was all devoted to theplayers. The trick of it is not easy. Those who can read between thelines could see that there were only three of them about the pieceitself, and yet the outside public would never dream I was shirking theexpression of an opinion about the merits of the play or the pinningmyself to any definite statement. The only time, Owen, I dare say, thatyour plays are literature is when they are a frost, for that bothexplains the failure and justifies you. But, an you love me, Taffy, orif you have any care for my reputation, do not, I beg of you, be enticedinto the new folly of printing your plays."
"But things have come to that stage I _must_ do it," said Owen, "orincur the suspicion of illiterateness."
"No, no!" pleaded Patrick in horror. "Sooner than that I will damn allthe other printed plays _en bloc_, and say that the real literaryplaywrights, conscious of their position, are too dignified to resort tothis cheap method of self-assertion."
"But you will not carry out your threat? Remember how dangerously nearyou came to exposing me over your _Naquette_."
The Club laughed. Everyone knew the incident, for it was Patrick's stockgrievance against the dramatist. Patrick being out of town, had writtenhis eulogy of this play of Owen's from his inner consciousness. On thefourth night in deference to Owen's persuasions he had gone to see_Naquette_.
After the tragedy, Owen found him seated moodily in the stalls, longafter the audience had filed out.
"Knocked you, old man, this time, eh?" queried Owen laughingcomplacently.
"_Knocked you, old man, this time, eh?_"]
"Yes, all to pieces!" snarled Patrick savagely. "I shall never believein my critical judgment again. I dare not look my notice in the face.When I wrote _Naquette_ was a masterpiece, I thought at least therewould be some merit in it--I didn't bargain for such rot as this."
In this wise things would have gone on--from bad to worse--had Heavennot created Cecilia nineteen years before.
Cecilia was a tall, fair girl, with dreamy eyes and unpronouncedopinions, who longed for the ineffable with an unspeakable yearning.
Frank Grey loved her. He always knew he was going to and one day he didit. After that it was impossible to drop the habit. And at last he wentso far as to propose. He was a young lawyer, with a fondness for manlysports and a wealth of blonde moustache.
"Cecilia," he said, "I love you. Will you be mine?"
He had a habit of using unconventional phrases.
"No, Frank," she said gently, and there was a world and severalsatellites of tenderness in her tremulous tones. "It cannot be."
"Ah, do not decide so quickly," he pleaded. "I will not press you for ananswer."
"I would press you for an answer, if I could," replied Cecilia, "but Ido not love you."
"Why not?" he demanded desperately.
"Because you are not what I should like you to be?"
"And what would you like me to be?" he demanded eagerly.
"If I told you, you would try to become it?"
"I would," he said, enthusiastically. "Be it what it may, I would leaveno stone unturned. I would work, strive, study, reform--anything,everything."
"I feared so," she said despondently. "That is why I will not tell you.Don't you understand that your charm to me is your being justyourself--your simple, honest, manly self? I will not have my enjoymentof your individuality spoilt by your transmogrification into someunnatural product of the forcing house. No, Frank, let us be true toourselves, not to each other. I shall always remain your friend, lookingup to you as to something stanch, sturdy, stalwart, coming to consultyou (unprofessionally) in all my difficulties. I will tell you all mysecrets, Frank, so that you will know more of me than if I married you.Dear friend, let it remain as I say. It is for the best."
So Frank went away broken-hearted, and joined the Mutual DepreciationSociety. He did not care what became of him. How they came to let him inwas this. He was the one man in the world outside who knew all aboutthem, having been engaged as the Society's legal adviser. It was he whomade their publishers and managers sit in an erect position. In applyingfor a more intimate connection, he stated that he had met with amisfortune, and a little monthly abuse would enliven him. The Societydecided that, as he was already half one of themselves, and as he hadnever written a line in his life, and so could not diminish theirtakings, nothing but good could ensue from the infusion of new blood. Infact, they wanted it badly. Their mutual recriminations had degeneratedinto mere platitudes. With a new man to insult and be insulted by,something of the old animation would be restored to their proceedings.The
wisdom of the policy was early seen, for the first fruit of it wasthe English Shakespeare, who for a whole year daily opened out new andexciting perspectives of sensation and amusement to a _blase_ Society.Andrew Mackay had written an enthusiastic article in the so-called_Nineteenth Century_ on "The Cochin-China Shakespeare," and set alltongues wagging about the new literary phenomenon with whose verses theboatmen of the Irrawady rocked their children to sleep on the cradle ofthe river, and whose dramas were played in eight hours slices in thestrolling-booths of Shanghai. Andrew had already arranged with Anyman tobring out a translation from the original Cochin-Chinese, for there wasno language he could not translate from, provided it were sufficientlyunknown.
"Cochin-Chinese Shakespeare, indeed!" said Dick Jones, at the nextsymposium. "Why, judging from the copious extracts you gave from hisgreatest drama, Baby Bantam, it is _the_ most tedious drivel. You mighthave written it yourself. Where is the Shakespearean quality of this,which is, you say, the whole of Act Thirteen?
"'Hang-ho: Out, Fu-sia, does your mother know you are?
"'Fu-sia: I have no mother, but I have a child.'"
"Where is the Shakespearean quality?" repeated Andrew. "Do you not feelthe perfect pathos of those two lines, the infiniteness of incisivesignificance? To me they paint the whole scene in two strokes ofmatchless simplicity, strophe and anti-strophe. Fu-sia the repentantoutcast and Hang-ho whose honest love she rejected, stand out as in aflash of lightning. Nay, Shakespeare himself never wrote an act of suchtragic brevity, packed so full of the sense of anagke. Why, so far fromit being tedious drivel, a lady in whose opinion I have great confidenceand to whom I sent my article, told me afterwards that she couldn'tsleep till she had read it."
"_She told me she couldn't sleep till she had read it._"]
The Mutual Depreciation Society burst into a roar of laughter and Andrewrealized that he had put his foot into it.
"Don't you think it a shame," broke in Frank Grey, "that we Englishare debarred from having a Shakespeare. There's been one discoveredlately in Belgium, and we have already a Dutch Shakespeare, a FrenchShakespeare, a German Shakespeare, and an American Shakespeare. Englishis the only language in which we can't get one. It seems cruel that weshould be just the one nation in the world to be cut off from having anineteenth century Shakespeare. Every patriotic Briton must surelydesire that we could discover an English Shakespeare to put beside thesevaunted foreign phenomena."
"But an English Shakespeare is a bull," said Patrick Boyle, who had akeen eye for such.
"Precisely. A John Bull," replied Frank.
"Peace. I would willingly look out for one," said Andrew Mackay,thoughtfully. "But I cannot venture to insinuate yet that Shakespearedid not write English. The time is scarcely ripe, though it is maturingfast. Otherwise the idea is tempting."
"But why take the words in their natural meaning?" demanded Tom Brown,the philosopher, in astonishment. "Is it not unapparent that an EnglishShakespeare would be a great writer more saturated with Anglo-Saxonspirit than Shakespeare, who was cosmic and for all time and for everyplace? Hamlet, Othello, Lady Macbeth--these are world-types, not Englishcharacters. Our English Shakespeare must be more autochthonic, morechauviniste; or more provincial and more _borne_, if you like to put itthat way. His scenes must be rooted in English life, and his personagesmust smack of British soil." There was much table-thumping when thephilosopher ceased.
"Excellent!" said Andrew. "He must be found. It will be the greatestboom of the century. But whom can we discover?"
"There is John P. Smith," said Tom Brown.
"No, why John P. Smith? He has merit," objected Taffy Owen. "And then hehas never been in our set."
"And besides he would not be satisfied," said Patrick Boyle.
"That is true," said Andrew Mackay reflectively. "I know, Owen, _you_would like to be the subject of the discovery. But I am afraid it is toolate. I have taken your measurements and laid down the chart of yourgenius too definitely to alter now. You are permanently established inbusiness as the dainty neo-Hellenic Buddhist who has chosen to expresshimself through farcical comedy. If you were just starting life, I couldwork you into this English Shakespeardom--I am always happy to put agood thing in the way of a friend--but at your age it is not easy to gointo a new line."
"Well, but," put in Harry Robinson, "if none of us is to be the EnglishShakespeare, why should we give over the appointment to an outsider?Charity begins at home."
"That _is_ a difficulty," admitted Andrew, puckering his brow. "Itbrings us to a standstill. Seductive, therefore, as the idea is, I amafraid it has occurred to us too late."
They sat in thoughtful silence. Then suddenly Frank Grey flashed in witha suggestion that took their breath away for a moment and restored it tothem, charged with "Bravos" the moment after.
"But why should he exist at all?"
Why indeed? The more they pondered the matter, the less necessity theysaw for it.
"'Pon my word, Grey, you are right," said Andrew. "Right as Talleyrandwhen he told the thief who insisted that he must live: _Mais, monsieur,je n'en vois pas la necessite_."
"It's an inspiration!" said Tom Brown, moved out of his usual apathy."We all remember how Whateley proved that the Emperor Napoleon neverexisted--and the plausible way he did it. How few persons actually sawthe Emperor? How did even these know that what they saw _was_ theEmperor? Conversely, it should be as easy as possible for us six to puta non-existent English Shakespeare on the market. You remember whatVoltaire said of God--that if there were none it would be necessary toinvent Him. In like manner patriotism calls upon us to invent theEnglish Shakespeare."
"Yes, won't it be awful fun?" said Patrick Boyle.
The idea was taken up eagerly--the _modus operandi_ was discussed, andthe members parted, effervescing with enthusiasm and anxious to startthe campaign immediately. The English Shakespeare was to be namedFladpick, a cognomen which once seen would hook itself on to the memory.
The very next day a leading article in the _Daily Herald_ casuallyquoted Fladpick's famous line:
"Coffined in English yew, he sleeps in peace."
And throughout the next month, in the most out-of-the-way and unlikelyquarters, the word Fladpick lurked and sprang upon the reader. Lines andphrases from Fladpick were quoted. Gradually the thing worked up,gathering momentum on its way, and going more and more of itself, likean ever-swelling snowball which needs but the first push down themountain-side. Soon a leprosy of Fladpick broke out over the journalismof the day. The very office-boys caught the infection, and in their bookreviews they dragged in Fladpick with an air of antediluvianacquaintance. Writers were said not to possess Fladpick's imagination,though they might have more sense of style, or they were said not topossess Fladpick's sense of style, though they might have moreimagination. Certain epithets and tricks of manner were described asquite Fladpickian, while others were mentioned as extravagant and asdisdained by writers like, say, Fladpick. Young authors were paternallyinvited to mould themselves on Fladpick, while others werecontemptuously dismissed as mere imitators of Fladpick. By this timeFladpick's poetic dramas began to be asked for at the libraries, and thelibraries said that they were all out. This increased the demand so muchthat the libraries told their subscribers they must wait till the newedition, which was being hurried through the press, was published. Whenthings had reached this stage, queries about Fladpick appeared in theliterary and professionally inquisitive papers, and answers were given,with reference to the editions of Fladpick's book. It began to leak outthat he was a young Englishman who had lived all his life in Tartary,and that his book had been published by a local firm and enjoyed noinconsiderable reputation among the English Tartars there, but that thecopies which had found their way to England were extremely scarce andhad come into the hands of only a few _cognoscenti_, who being such wereenabled to create for him the reputation he so thoroughly deserved. Thenext step was to contradict this, and the press teemed with biographiesand counter-biographies. _Dazzl
er_ also wired numerous interviews, butan authoritative statement was inserted in the _Acadaeum_, signed byAndrew Mackay, stating that they were unfounded, and paragraphs began toappear detailing how Fladpick spent his life in dodging theinterviewers. Anecdotes of Fladpick were highly valued by editors ofnewspapers, and very plenteous they were, for Fladpick was known to be acosmopolitan, always sailing from pole to pole and caring little forresidence in the country of which he yet bade fair to be the laureate.These anecdotes girdled the globe even more quickly than their hero, andthey returned from foreign parts bronzed and almost unrecognizable, toset out immediately on fresh journeys in their new guise.
A parody of one of his plays was inserted in a comic paper, and it wasbruited abroad that Andrew Mackay was collaborating with him inpreparing one of his dramas for representation at the IndependentTheatre. This set the older critics by the ears, and they protestedvehemently in their theatrical columns against the infamous ethicspropagated by the new writer, quoting largely from the specimens of hiswork given in Mackay's article in the _Fortnightly Review_. Patrick, whowrote the dramatic criticism for seven papers, led the attack upon theaudacious iconoclast. Journalesia was convulsed by the quarrel, and evenyoung ladies asked their partners in the giddy waltz whether they wereFladpickiets or Anti-Fladpickiets. You could never be certain ofescaping Fladpick at dinner, for the lady you took down was apt to takeyou down by her contempt of your ignorance of Fladpick's awfully sweetwritings. Any amount of people promised one another introductions toFladpick, and those who had met him enjoyed quite a reflected reputationin Belgravian circles. As to the Fladpickian parties, which brothergeniuses like Dick Jones and Harry Robinson gave to the great writer, itwas next to impossible to secure an invitation to them, andcomparatively few boasted of the privilege. Fladpick reaped a good dealof _kudos_ from refusing to be lionized and preferring the society ofmen of letters like himself, during his rare halting moments in England.
Long before this stage Mackay had seen his way to introducing thecatch-word of the conspiracy, "The English Shakespeare." He defendedvehemently the ethics of the great writer, claiming they were at coreessentially at one with those of the great nation from whence he sprangand whose very life-blood had passed into his work. This brought about areaction, and all over the country the scribblers hastened to do justiceto the maligned writer, and an elaborate analysis of his most subtlecharacters was announced as having been undertaken by Mr. Patrick Boyle.And when it was stated that he was to be included in the ContemporaryMen of Letters Series, the advance orders for the work were far inadvance of the demand for Fladpick's actual writings. "Shakespearean,""The English Shakespeare," was now constantly used in connection withhis work, and even the most hard-worked reviewers promised themselves toskim his book in their next summer holidays. About this time, too,_Dazzler_ unconsciously helped the Society by announcing that Fladpickwas dying of consumption in a snow-hut in Greenland, and it was feltthat he must either die or go to a warmer climate, if not both. The newsof his phthisic weakness put the seal upon his genius, and the greatheart of the nation went out to him in his lonely snow-hut, but returnedon learning that the report was a _canard_. Still, the danger he hadpassed through endeared him to his country, and within a few monthsFladpick, the English Shakespeare, was definitely added to the gloriesof the national literature, founding a whole school of writers in hisown country, attracting considerable attention on the Continent, andbeing universally regarded as the centre of the Victorian Renaissance.
But this was the final stage. A little before it was reached Ceciliacame to Frank Grey to pour her latest trouble into his ear, for she hadcarefully kept her promise of bothering him with her most intimatedetails, and the love-sick young lawyer had listened to her pettypsychology with a patience which would have brought him in considerablefees if invested in the usual way. But this time the worry was genuine.
"Frank," she said, "I am in love."
The young man turned as white as a sheet. The sword of Damocles hadfallen at last, sundering them forever.
"With whom?" he gasped.
"With Mr. Fladpick!"
"The English Shakespeare?"
"The same!"
"But you have never seen him!"
"I have seen his soul. I have divined him from his writings. I havestudied Andrew Mackay's essays on him. I feel that he and I are _enrapport_."
"But this is madness!"
"I know it is. I have tried to fight against it. I have applied foradmission to the Old Maids' Club, so as to stifle my hopeless passion.Once I have joined Miss Dulcimer's Society, I shall perhaps find peaceagain."
"Great Heavens! Think; think before you take this terrible step. Are yousure it is love you feel, not admiration?"
"No, it is love. At first I thought it was admiration, and probably itwas, for I was not likely to be mistaken in the analysis of my feelings,in which I have had much practice. But gradually I felt it efflorescingand sending forth tender shoots clad in delicate green buds, and a sweetwonder came upon me, and I knew that love was struggling to get itselfborn in my soul. Then suddenly the news came that he I loved was ill,dying in that lonely snow-hut in grim Greenland, and then in the tempestof grief that shook me I knew that my life was bound up with his.Watered by my hot tears, the love in my heart bourgeoned and blossomedlike some strange tropical passion-flower, and when the reassuringmessage that he was strong and well flashed through the world, I feltthat if he lived not for me, the universe were a blank and next year'sdaisies would grow over my early grave."
"_He I loved was dying in Greenland._"]
She burst into tears. "A great writer has always been the ideal which Iwould not tell you of. It is the one thing I have kept from you. But oh,Frank, Frank, he can never be mine. He will probably never know of myexistence and the most I can ever hope for is his autograph. To-morrow Ishall join the Old Maids' Club, and then all will be over." A paroxysmof hopeless sobs punctuated her remarks.
It was a terrible position. Frank groaned inwardly.
How was he to explain to this fair young thing that she loved nobody andcould never hope to marry him? There was no doubt that with her intensenature and her dreamy blue eyes she would pine away and die. Or worse,she would live to be an old maid.
He made an effort to laugh it off.
"Tush!" he said, "all this is mere imagination. I don't believe youreally love anybody!"
"Frank!" She drew herself up, stony and rigid, the warm tears on herpoor white face frozen to ice. "Have you nothing better than this to sayto me, after I have shown you my inmost soul?"
The wretched young lawyer's face returned from white to red. He couldhave faced a football team in open combat, but these complex psychicalpositions were beyond the healthy young Philistine.
"For--or--give me," he stammered. "I--I am--I--that is to say,Fladpick--oh how can I explain what I mean?"
Cecilia sobbed on. Every sob seemed to stick in Frank's own throat. Hisimpotence maddened him. Was he to let the woman he loved fret herself todeath for a shadow? And yet to undeceive her were scarcely less fatal.He could have cut out the tongue that first invented Fladpick. Verily,his sin was finding him out.
"Why can you not explain what you mean?" wept Cecilia.
"Because I--oh, hang it all--because I am the cause of your grief."
"You?" she said. A strange, wonderful look came into her eyes. Thethought shot from her eyes to his and dazzled them.
Yes! why not? why should he not sacrifice himself to save this delicatecreature from a premature tomb? Why should he not become "the EnglishShakespeare?" True, it was a heavy burden to sustain, but what will aman not dare or suffer for the woman he loves? Moreover, was he notresponsible for Fladpick's being, and thus for all the evil done by hisFrankenstein? He had employed Fladpick for his own amusement and theEmployers' Liability Act was heavy upon him. The path of abnegation, ofduty, was clear. He saw it and he went for it then and there--went, likea brave young Englishman, to meet his marriage.
"Yes," he said, "I am glad you love Mr. Fladpick."
"Why?" she murmured breathlessly.
"Because I love you."
"But--I--do--not--love--you," she said slowly.
"You will, when I tell you it is I who have provoked your love."
"Frank, is this true?"
"On my word of honor as an Englishman."
"You are Fladpick?"
"If I am not, he does not exist. There is no such person."
"Oh, Frank, this is no cruel jest?"
"Cecilia, it is the sacred truth. Fladpick is nobody, if he is not FrankGrey."
"But you never lived in Tartary?"
"Of course not. All that about Fladpick is the veriest poetry. But I didnot mind it, for nobody suspected me. I'll introduce you to AndrewMackay himself, and you shall hear from his own lips how the newspapershave lied about Fladpick."
"My noble, modest boy! So this was why you were so embarrassed before!But why not have told _me_ that you were Fladpick?"
"Because I wanted you to love me for myself alone."
She fell into his arms.
"Frank--Frank--Fladpick, my own, my English Shakespeare," she sobbedecstatically.
At the next meeting of the Mutual Depreciation Society, a bombshell in astamped envelope was handed to Mr. Andrew Mackay. He tore open theenvelope and the explosion followed--as follows:
"GENTLEMEN,
"I hereby beg to tender the resignation of my membership in your valued Society, as well as to anticipate your objections to my retaining the post of legal adviser I have the honor to hold. I am about to marry--the cynic will say I am laying the foundation of a Mutual Depreciation Society of my own. But this is not the reason of my retirement. That is to be sought in my having accepted the position of the English Shakespeare which you were good enough to open up for me. It would be a pity to let the pedestal stand empty. From the various excerpts you were kind enough to invent, especially from the copious extracts in Mr. Mackay's articles, I have been able to piece together a considerable body of poetic work, and by carefully collecting every existing fragment, and studying the most authoritative expositions of my aims and methods, I have constructed several dramas, much as Professor Owen re-constructed the mastodon from the bones that were extant. As you know I had never written a line in my life before, but by the copious aid of your excellent and genuinely helpful criticism I was enabled to get along without much difficulty. I find that to write blank verse you have only to invert the order of the words and keep on your guard against rhyme. You may be interested to know that the last line in the last tragedy is:
'Coffined in English yew he sleeps in peace.'
When written, I got my dramas privately printed with a Tartary trademark, after which I smudged the book and sold the copyright to Makemillion & Co. for ten thousand pounds. Needless to say I shall never write another book. In taking leave of you I cannot help feeling that, if I owe you some gratitude for the lofty pinnacle to which you have raised me, you are also not unindebted to me for finally removing the shadow of apprehension that must have dogged you in your sober moments--I mean the fear of being found out. Mr. Andrew Mackay, in particular, as the most deeply committed, I feel owes me what he can never hope to repay for my gallantry in filling the mantle designed by him, whose emptiness might one day have been exposed, to his immediate downfall.
"I am, gentlemen, "Your most sincere and humble Depreciator, "THE ENGLISH SHAKESPEARE."
The Old Maids' Club Page 13