Sir Dominick Ferrand | Page 8

man's style was
not impaired by his sense of something lawless in the way it had been
gained. He had made the purchase in anticipation of the money he
expected from Mr. Locket, but Mr. Locket's liberality was to depend on
the ingenuity of his contributor, who now found himself confronted
with the consequence of a frivolous optimism. The fruit of his labour
presented, as he stared at it with his elbows on his desk, an aspect
uncompromising and incorruptible. It seemed to look up at him
reproachfully and to say, with its essential finish: "How could you
promise anything so base; how could you pass your word to mutilate
and dishonour me?" The alterations demanded by Mr. Locket were
impossible; the concessions to the platitude of his conception of the
public mind were degrading. The public mind!--as if the public HAD a
mind, or any principle of perception more discoverable than the stare of
huddled sheep! Peter Baron felt that it concerned him to determine if he
were only not clever enough or if he were simply not abject enough to
rewrite his story. He might in truth have had less pride if he had had
more skill, and more discretion if he had had more practice. Humility,

in the profession of letters, was half of practice, and resignation was
half of success. Poor Peter actually flushed with pain as he recognised
that this was not success, the production of gelid prose which his editor
could do nothing with on the one side and he himself could do nothing
with on the other. The truth about his luckless tale was now the more
bitter from his having managed, for some days, to taste it as sweet.
As he sat there, baffled and sombre, biting his pen and wondering what
was meant by the "rewards" of literature, he generally ended by tossing
away the composition deflowered by Mr. Locket and trying his hand at
the sort of twaddle that Mrs. Ryves might be able to set to music.
Success in these experiments wouldn't be a reward of literature, but it
might very well become a labour of love. The experiments would be
pleasant enough for him if they were pleasant for his inscrutable
neighbour. That was the way he thought of her now, for he had learned
enough about her, little by little, to guess how much there was still to
learn. To spend his mornings over cheap rhymes for her was certainly
to shirk the immediate question; but there were hours when he judged
this question to be altogether too arduous, reflecting that he might quite
as well perish by the sword as by famine. Besides, he did meet it
obliquely when he considered that he shouldn't be an utter failure if he
were to produce some songs to which Mrs. Ryves's accompaniments
would give a circulation. He had not ventured to show her anything yet,
but one morning, at a moment when her little boy was in his room, it
seemed to him that, by an inspiration, he had arrived at the happy
middle course (it was an art by itself), between sound and sense. If the
sense was not confused it was because the sound was so familiar.
He had said to the child, to whom he had sacrificed barley-sugar (it had
no attraction for his own lips, yet in these days there was always some
of it about), he had confided to the small Sidney that if he would wait a
little he should be intrusted with something nice to take down to his
parent. Sidney had absorbing occupation and, while Peter copied off
the song in a pretty hand, roamed, gurgling and sticky, about the room.
In this manner he lurched like a little toper into the rear of the
davenport, which stood a few steps out from the recess of the window,
and, as he was fond of beating time to his intensest joys, began to bang
on the surface of it with a paper- knife which at that spot had chanced
to fall upon the floor. At the moment Sidney committed this violence

his kind friend had happened to raise the lid of the desk and, with his
head beneath it, was rummaging among a mass of papers for a proper
envelope. "I say, I say, my boy!" he exclaimed, solicitous for the
ancient glaze of his most cherished possession. Sidney paused an
instant; then, while Peter still hunted for the envelope, he administered
another, and this time a distinctly disobedient, rap. Peter heard it from
within and was struck with its oddity of sound--so much so that,
leaving the child for a moment under a demoralising impression of
impunity, he waited with quick curiosity for a repetition of the stroke. It
came of course