The Inheritors | Page 6

of the superseder, the essential
quality that makes for the empire of the Occidental. But I was not a
negro--not even relatively a Hindoo. I was somebody, confound it, I
was somebody.
As an author, I had been so uniformly unsuccessful, so absolutely
unrecognised, that I had got into the way of regarding myself as ahead
of my time, as a worker for posterity. It was a habit of mind--the only
revenge that I could take upon despiteful Fate. This girl came to
confound me with the common herd--she declared herself to be that
very posterity for which I worked.
She was probably a member of some clique that called themselves
Fourth Dimensionists--just as there had been pre-Raphaelites. It was a
matter of cant allegory. I began to wonder how it was that I had never
heard of them. And how on earth had they come to hear of me!
"She must have read something of mine," I found myself musing: "the
Jenkins story perhaps. It must have been the Jenkins story; they gave it
a good place in their rotten magazine. She must have seen that it was
the real thing, and...." When one is an author one looks at things in that
way, you know.
By that time I was ready to knock at the door of the great Callan. I

seemed to be jerked into the commonplace medium of a great,
great--oh, an infinitely great--novelist's home life. I was led into a
well-lit drawing-room, welcomed by the great man's wife, gently
propelled into a bedroom, made myself tidy, descended and was
introduced into the sanctum, before my eyes had grown accustomed to
the lamp-light. Callan was seated upon his sofa surrounded by an
admiring crowd of very local personages. I forget what they looked like.
I think there was a man whose reddish beard did not become him and
another whose face might have been improved by the addition of a
reddish beard; there was also an extremely moody dark man and I
vaguely recollect a person who lisped.
They did not talk much; indeed there was very little conversation. What
there was Callan supplied. He--spoke--very--slowly--and--very
--authoritatively, like a great actor whose aim is to hold the stage as
long as possible. The raising of his heavy eyelids at the opening door
conveyed the impression of a dark, mental weariness; and seemed
somehow to give additional length to his white nose. His short, brown
beard was getting very grey, I thought. With his lofty forehead and with
his superior, yet propitiatory smile, I was of course familiar. Indeed one
saw them on posters in the street. The notables did not want to talk.
They wanted to be spell-bound--and they were. Callan sat there in an
appropriate attitude--the one in which he was always photographed.
One hand supported his head, the other toyed with his watch-chain. His
face was uniformly solemn, but his eyes were disconcertingly furtive.
He cross-questioned me as to my walk from Canterbury; remarked that
the cathedral was a--magnificent--Gothic--Monument and set me right
as to the lie of the roads. He seemed pleased to find that I remembered
very little of what I ought to have noticed on the way. It gave him an
opportunity for the display of his local erudition.
"A--remarkable
woman--used--to--live--in--the--cottage--next--the--mill--at--Stelling,"
he said; "she was the original of Kate Wingfield."
"In your 'Boldero?'" the chorus chorussed.
Remembrance of the common at Stelling--of the glimmering white

faces of the shadowy cottages--was like a cold waft of mist to me. I
forgot to say "Indeed!"
"She was--a very--remarkable--woman--She----"
I found myself wondering which was real; the common with its misty
hedges and the blurred moon; or this room with its ranks of uniformly
bound books and its bust of the great man that threw a portentous
shadow upward from its pedestal behind the lamp.
Before I had entirely recovered myself, the notables were departing to
catch the last train. I was left alone with Callan.
He did not trouble to resume his attitude for me, and when he did speak,
spoke faster.
"Interesting man, Mr. Jinks?" he said; "you recognised him?"
"No," I said; "I don't think I ever met him."
Callan looked annoyed.
"I thought I'd got him pretty well. He's Hector Steele. In my
'Blanfield,'" he added.
"Indeed!" I said. I had never been able to read "Blanfield." "Indeed, ah,
yes--of course."
There was an awkward pause.
"The whiskey will be here in a minute," he said, suddenly. "I don't have
it in when Whatnot's here. He's the Rector, you know; a great
temperance man. When we've had a--a modest quencher--we'll get to
business."
"Oh," I said, "your letters really meant--"
"Of course," he answered. "Oh, here's the whiskey. Well now, Fox was
down here the other night. You know Fox, of course?"

"Didn't he