Schwartz: A History

Schwartz: A History, by David
Christie Murray

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Title: Schwartz: A History From "Schwartz" by David Christie Murray
Author: David Christie Murray
Release Date: August 8, 2007 [EBook #22271]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY ***

Produced by David Widger

SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY
By David Christie Murray
Author Of 'Aunt Rachel,' 'The Weaker Vessel,' Etc.

SCHWARTZ: A HISTORY

I
I was expatriated by a man with an axe. The man and the axe were
alike visionary and unreal, though it needed a very considerable effort
of the will to hold them at mental arm's length. I had work on hand
which imperatively demanded to be finished, and I was so broken down
by a long course of labour that it was a matter of actual difficulty with
me when I sat down at my desk of a morning to lay hold of the thread
of last night's work, and to recall the personages who had moved
through my manuscript pages for the past three or four months. The
day's work always began with a fog, which at first looked impenetrable,
but would brighten little by little until I could see my ideal friends
moving in it, and could recognise their familiar lineaments. Then the
fog would disperse altogether, and a certain indescribable, exultant,
feverish brightness would succeed it, and in this feverish brightness my
ideal friends would move and talk as it were of their own volition.
But one morning--it was in November, and the sand-tinged foam flecks
caught from the stormy bay were thick on the roadway before my
window--the fog was thicker and more obdurate than common. I read
and re-read the work of the day before, and the written words conveyed
no meaning. In a dim sort of way this seemed lamentable, and I
remember standing at the window, and looking out to where the white
crests of the waves came racing shorewards under a leaden-coloured
sky, and saying to myself over and over again, 'Oh, that way madness
lies!' but without any active sentiment of dismay or fear, and with a
clouded, uninterested wonder as to where the words came from. Quite
suddenly I became aware of a second presence in the chamber, and
turned with an actual assurance that some one stood behind me. I was
alone, as a single glance about the room informed me, but the sense of
that second presence was so clearly defined and positive that the mere
evidence of sight seemed doubtful.

The day's work began in the manner which had of late grown
customary, and in a while the fog gave way to a brilliance unusually
flushed and hectic. The uninvited, invisible personage kept his place,
until, even with the constant fancy that he was there looking over my
shoulder, and so close that there was always a risk of contact, I grew to
disregard him. All day long he watched the pen travelling over the
paper, all day long I was aware of him, featureless, shadowy,
expressionless, with a vague cheek near my own. During the brief
interval I gave myself for luncheon he stood behind my chair, and,
being much refreshed and brightened by my morning's work, I mocked
him quite gaily.
'Your name is Nerves,' I told him within myself, 'and you live in the
land of Mental Overwork. I have still a fortnight's stretch across the
country you inhabit, and if you so please you may accompany me all
the way. You may even follow me into the land of Repose which lies
beyond your own territory, but its air will not agree with you. You will
dwindle, peak, and pine in that exquisite atmosphere, and in a very
little while I shall have seen the last of you.'
After luncheon I took a constitutional on the pier, not without a hope
that my featureless friend might be blown away by the gusty wind,
which came bellowing up from the Firth of Forth, with enough stinging
salt and vivifying freshness in it, one might have fancied, to shrivel up
a host of phantoms. I tramped him up and down the gleaming planks in
the keen salt wind for half an hour, and he shadowed me unshrinkingly.
With the worst will in the world I took him home, and all afternoon and
all evening he stuck his shadowy head over my shoulder, and watched
the pen as it spread