After A Shadow and Other Stories | Page 9

ever met with) to friends of all ranks in many different
parts of England, and I never yet knew it fail of producing an effect.
The farmhouse audience were, I may almost say, petrified by it. I never
before saw people look so long in the same direction, and sit so long in
the same attitude, as they did. Even the servants stole away from their
work in the kitchen, and, unrebuked by master or mistress, stood quite
spell-bound in the doorway to listen. Observing all this in silence,
while my husband was going on with his narrative, the thought
suddenly flashed across me, "Why should William not get a wider
audience for that story, as well as for others which he has heard from
time to time from his sitters, and which he has hitherto only repeated in
private among a few friends? People tell stories in books and get
money for them. What if we told our stories in a book? and what if the
book sold? Why freedom, surely, from the one great anxiety that is now
preying on us! Money enough to stop at the farmhouse till William's
eyes are fit for work again!" I almost jumped up from my chair as my
thought went on shaping itself in this manner. When great men make
wonderful discoveries, do they feel sensations like mine, I wonder?
Was Sir Isaac Newton within an ace of skipping into the air when he
first found out the law of gravitation? Did Friar Bacon long to dance
when he lit the match and heard the first charge of gunpowder in the
world go off with a bang?
I had to put a strong constraint on myself, or I should have
communicated all that was passing in my mind to William before our

friends at the farmhouse. But I knew it was best to wait until we were
alone, and I did wait. What a relief it was when we all got up at last to
say good-night!
The moment we were in our own room, I could not stop to take so
much as a pin out of my dress before I began. "My dear," said I, "I
never heard you tell that gambling-house adventure so well before.
What an effect it had upon our friends! what an effect, indeed, it always
has wherever you tell it!"
So far he did not seem to take much notice. He just nodded, and began
to pour out some of the lotion in which he always bathes his poor eyes
the last thing at night.
"And as for that, William," I went on, "all your stories seem to interest
people. What a number you have picked up, first and last, from
different sitters, in the fifteen years of your practice as a portrait-painter!
Have you any idea how many stories you really do know?"
No: he could not undertake to say how many just then. He gave this
answer in a very indifferent tone, dabbing away all the time at his eyes
with the sponge and lotion. He did it so awkwardly and roughly, as it
seemed to me, that I took the sponge from him and applied the lotion
tenderly myself.
"Do you think," said I, "if you turned over one of your stories carefully
in your mind beforehand--say the one you told to-night, for
example--that you could repeat it all to me so perfectly and deliberately
that I should be able to take it down in writing from your lips?"
Yes: of course he could. But why ask that question?
"Because I should like to have all the stories that you have been in the
habit of relating to our friends set down fairly in writing, by way of
preserving them from ever being forgotten."
Would I bathe his left eye now, because that felt the hottest to-night? I
began to forbode that his growing indifference to what I was saying

would soon end in his fairly going to sleep before I had developed my
new idea, unless I took some means forthwith of stimulating his
curiosity, or, in other words, of waking him into a proper state of
astonishment and attention. "William," said I, without another syllable
of preface, "I have got a new plan for finding all the money we want for
our expenses here."
He jerked his head up directly, and looked at me. What plan?
"This: The state of your eyes prevents you for the present from
following your profession as an artist, does it not? Very well. What are
you to do with your idle time, my dear? Turn author! And how are you
to get the money we want? By publishing a book!"
"Good gracious, Leah! are you out of your senses?" he exclaimed.
I put my arm