The Collaborators | Page 3

and this buying bread with words! I must create for myself
an atmosphere. I must be always getting away from what is, even if I
go lower, lower. Ah! Well--but the dénouement. Give me your
impressions."
Henley meditated for awhile. Then he said; "Let us leave it. Let us get
to work; and in time, as the story progresses, it will seem inevitable.
We shall see it in front of us, and we shall not be able to avoid it. Let us
get to work"--he glanced at his watch and laughed--"or, rather, let us
get to bed. It is past four. This way madness lies. When we collaborate,
we will write in the morning. Our book shall be a book of the dawn,
and not of the darkness, despite its sombre theme."
"No, no; it must be a book of the darkness."
"Of the darkness, then, but written in the dawn. Your tragedy tempered
by my trust in human nature, and the power that causes things to right
themselves. Good-night, old boy."
"Good-night."
When Henley had left the room, Tren-chard sat for a moment with his
head sunk low on his breast and his eyes half closed. Then, with a jerk,

he gained his feet, went to the door, opened it, and looked forth on the
deserted landing. He listened, and heard Henley moving to and fro in
his bedroom. Then he shut the door, took off his smoking-coat, and
bared his left arm. There was a tiny blue mark on it.
"What will the dénouement be?" he whispered to himself, as he felt in
his waistcoat pocket with a trembling hand.

II.
The book was moving onward by slow degrees and with a great deal of
discussion.
In those days Henley and Trenchard lived much with sported oaks.
They were battling for fame. They were doing all they knew. Literary
gatherings missed them. First nights knew them no more. The grim
intensity that was always characteristic of Trenchard seemed in some
degree communicated to Henley. He began to more fully understand
what the creating for one's self of an atmosphere meant. The story he
and his friend were fashioning fastened upon him like some strange,
determined shadow from the realms of real life, gripped him more and
more closely, held him for long spells of time in a new and desolate
world. For the book so far was a deepening tragedy, and although, at
times, Henley strove to resist the paramount influence which the genius
of Trenchard began to exercise over him, he found himself
comparatively impotent, unable to shed gleams of popular light upon
the darkness of the pages. The power of the tale was undoubted. Henley
felt that it was a big thing that they two were doing; but would it be a
popular thing--a money-making thing? That was the question. He
sometimes wished with all his heart they had chosen a different subject
to work their combined talent upon. The germ of the work seemed only
capable of tragic treatment, if the book were to be artistic. Their hero
was a man of strong intellect, of physical beauty, full at first of the joy
of life, chivalrous, a believer in the innate goodness of human nature.
Believing in goodness, he believed also ardently in influence. In fact,
he was a worshipper of influence, and his main passion was to seize

upon the personalities of others, and impose his own personality upon
them. He loved to make men and women see with his eyes and hear
with his ears, adopt his theories as truth, take his judgment for their
own. All that he thought was--to him. He never doubted himself,
therefore he could not bear that those around him should not think with
him, act towards men and women as he acted, face life as he faced it.
Yet he was too subtle ever to be dogmatic. He never shouted in the
market-place. He led those with whom he came in contact as adroitly as
if he had been evil, and to the influence of others he was as adamant.
Events brought into his life a woman, complex, subtle too, with a
naturally noble character and fine understanding, a woman who, like so
many women, might have been anything, and was far worse than
nothing--a hopeless, helpless slave, the victim of the morphia habit,
which had gradually degraded her, driven her through sloughs of
immorality, wrecked a professional career which at one time had been
almost great, shattered her constitution, though not all her still curious
beauty, and ruined her, to all intents and purposes, body and soul. The
man and the woman met, and in a flash the man saw what she had been,
what she might have been, what, perhaps, in spite of all, she still