The Inheritors | Page 9

poor last of the family, was without
the pale, simply because I, too, was a novelist. I explained these things
to Callan and he commented on them, found it strange how small or
how large, I forget which, the world was. Since his own apotheosis
shoals of Callans had claimed relationship.
I ate my breakfast. Afterward, we set about the hatching of that
article--the thought of it sickens me even now. You will find it in the
volume along with the others; you may see how I lugged in Callan's
surroundings, his writing-room, his dining-room, the romantic arbour
in which he found it easy to write love-scenes, the clipped trees like
peacocks and the trees clipped like bears, and all the rest of the
background for appropriate attitudes. He was satisfied with any
arrangements of words that suggested a gentle awe on the part of the
writer.
"Yes, yes," he said once or twice, "that's just the touch, just the
touch--very nice. But don't you think...." We lunched after some time.
I was so happy. Quite pathetically happy. It had come so easy to me. I
had doubted my ability to do the sort of thing; but it had written itself,
as money spends itself, and I was going to earn money like that. The
whole of my past seemed a mistake--a childishness. I had kept out of
this sort of thing because I had thought it below me; I had kept out of it
and had starved my body and warped my mind. Perhaps I had even
damaged my work by this isolation. To understand life one must
live--and I had only brooded. But, by Jove, I would try to live now.
Callan had retired for his accustomed siesta and I was smoking pipe
after pipe over a confoundedly bad French novel that I had found in the
book-shelves. I must have been dozing. A voice from behind my back
announced:

"Miss Etchingham Granger!" and added--"Mr. Callan will be down
directly." I laid down my pipe, wondered whether I ought to have been
smoking when Cal expected visitors, and rose to my feet.
"You!" I said, sharply. She answered, "You see." She was smiling. She
had been so much in my thoughts that I was hardly surprised--the thing
had even an air of pleasant inevitability about it.
"You must be a cousin of mine," I said, "the name--"
"Oh, call it sister," she answered.
I was feeling inclined for farce, if blessed chance would throw it in my
way. You see, I was going to live at last, and life for me meant
irresponsibility.
"Ah!" I said, ironically, "you are going to be a sister to me, as they
say." She might have come the bogy over me last night in the
moonlight, but now ... There was a spice of danger about it, too, just a
touch lurking somewhere. Besides, she was good-looking and well set
up, and I couldn't see what could touch me. Even if it did, even if I got
into a mess, I had no relatives, not even a friend, to be worried about
me. I stood quite alone, and I half relished the idea of getting into a
mess--it would be part of life, too. I was going to have a little money,
and she excited my curiosity. I was tingling to know what she was
really at.
"And one might ask," I said, "what you are doing in this--in this...." I
was at a loss for a word to describe the room--the smugness parading as
professional Bohemianism.
"Oh, I am about my own business," she said, "I told you last
night--have you forgotten?"
"Last night you were to inherit the earth," I reminded her, "and one
doesn't start in a place like this. Now I should have gone--well--I
should have gone to some politician's house--a cabinet minister's--say
to Gurnard's. He's the coming man, isn't he?"

"Why, yes," she answered, "he's the coming man."
You will remember that, in those days, Gurnard was only the dark
horse of the ministry. I knew little enough of these things, despised
politics generally; they simply didn't interest me. Gurnard I disliked
platonically; perhaps because his face was a little enigmatic--a little
repulsive. The country, then, was in the position of having no
Opposition and a Cabinet with two distinct strains in it--the Churchill
and the Gurnard--and Gurnard was the dark horse.
"Oh, you should join your flats," I said, pleasantly. "If he's the coming
man, where do you come in?... Unless he, too, is a Dimensionist."
"Oh, both--both," she answered. I admired the tranquillity with which
she converted my points into her own. And I was very happy--it struck
me as a pleasant sort of fooling....
"I suppose you will let me know some day who you are?"