The Bell in the Fog | Page 4

the more full-blooded genius. But he had been content to have it so. His
creations might find and leave him cold, but he had known his highest
satisfaction in chiselling the statuettes, extracting subtle and elevating
harmonies, while combining words as no man of his tongue had
combined them before.
But the children were not statuettes. He had loved and brooded over
them long ere he had thought to tuck them into his pen, and on its first

stroke they danced out alive. The old mansion echoed with their
laughter, with their delightful and original pranks. Mr. Orth knew
nothing of children, therefore all the pranks he invented were as
original as his faculty. The little girl clung to his hand or knee as they
both followed the adventurous course of their common idol, the boy.
When Orth realized how alive they were, he opened each room of his
home to them in turn, that evermore he might have sacred and poignant
memories with all parts of the stately mansion where he must dwell
alone to the end. He selected their bedrooms, and hovered over
them--not through infantile disorders, which were beyond even his
imagination,--but through those painful intervals incident upon the
enterprising spirit of the boy and the devoted obedience of the girl to
fraternal command. He ignored the second Lord Teignmouth; he was
himself their father, and he admired himself extravagantly for the first
time; art had chastened him long since. Oddly enough, the children had
no mother, not even the memory of one.
He wrote the book more slowly than was his wont, and spent delightful
hours pondering upon the chapter of the morrow. He looked forward to
the conclusion with a sort of terror, and made up his mind that when
the inevitable last word was written he should start at once for
Homburg. Incalculable times a day he went to the gallery, for he no
longer had any desire to write the children out of his mind, and his eyes
hungered for them. They were his now. It was with an effort that he
sometimes humorously reminded himself that another man had fathered
them, and that their little skeletons were under the choir of the chapel.
Not even for peace of mind would he have descended into the vaults of
the lords of Chillingsworth and looked upon the marble effigies of his
children. Nevertheless, when in a superhumorous mood, he dwelt upon
his high satisfaction in having been enabled by his great-aunt to
purchase all that was left of them.
For two months he lived in his fool's paradise, and then he knew that
the book must end. He nerved himself to nurse the little girl through her
wasting illness, and when he clasped her hands, his own shook, his
knees trembled. Desolation settled upon the house, and he wished he
had left one corner of it to which he could retreat unhaunted by the

child's presence. He took long tramps, avoiding the river with a
sensation next to panic. It was two days before he got back to his table,
and then he had made up his mind to let the boy live. To kill him off,
too, was more than his augmented stock of human nature could endure.
After all, the lad's death had been purely accidental, wanton. It was just
that he should live--with one of the author's inimitable suggestions of
future greatness; but, at the end, the parting was almost as bitter as the
other. Orth knew then how men feel when their sons go forth to
encounter the world and ask no more of the old companionship.
The author's boxes were packed. He sent the manuscript to his
publisher an hour after it was finished--he could not have given it a
final reading to have saved it from failure--directed his secretary to
examine the proof under a microscope, and left the next morning for
Homburg. There, in inmost circles, he forgot his children. He visited in
several of the great houses of the Continent until November; then
returned to London to find his book the literary topic of the day. His
secretary handed him the reviews; and for once in a way he read the
finalities of the nameless. He found himself hailed as a genius, and
compared in astonished phrases to the prodigiously clever talent which
the world for twenty years had isolated under the name of Ralph Orth.
This pleased him, for every writer is human enough to wish to be hailed
as a genius, and immediately. Many are, and many wait; it depends
upon the fashion of the moment, and the needs and bias of those who
write of writers. Orth had waited twenty years; but his past was
bedecked with the headstones of geniuses long since forgotten. He