The Three Impostors; or, The Transmutations Read online

  THE RECLUSE OF BAYSWATER.

  Amongst the many friends who were favored with the occasional pleasureof Mr. Dyson's society was Mr. Edgar Russell, realist and obscurestruggler, who occupied a small back room on the second floor of a housein Abingdon Grove, Notting Hill. Turning off from the main street andwalking a few paces onward, one was conscious of a certain calm, adrowsy peace, which made the feet inclined to loiter; and this was everthe atmosphere of Abingdon Grove. The houses stood a little back, withgardens where the lilac and laburnum and blood-red may blossomed gaylyin their seasons, and there was a corner where an older house in anotherstreet had managed to keep a back garden of real extent; a walled-ingarden whence there came a pleasant scent of greenness after the rainsof early summer, where old elms held memories of the open fields, wherethere was yet sweet grass to walk on. The houses in Abingdon Grovebelonged chiefly to the nondescript stucco period of thirty-five yearsago, tolerably built with passable accommodation for moderate incomes;they had largely passed into the state of lodgings, and cards bearingthe inscription "Furnished Apartments" were not infrequent over thedoors. Here, then, in a house of sufficiently good appearance, Mr.Russell had established himself; for he looked upon the traditionaldirt and squalor of Grub Street as a false and obsolete convention, andpreferred, as he said, to live within sight of green leaves. Indeed,from his room one had a magnificent view of a long line of gardens, anda screen of poplars shut out the melancholy back premises of WiltonStreet during the summer months. Mr. Russell lived chiefly on bread andtea, for his means were of the smallest; but when Dyson came to see him,he would send out the slavey for six-ale, and Dyson was always atliberty to smoke as much of his own tobacco as he pleased. The landladyhad been so unfortunate as to have her drawing-room floor vacant formany months; a card had long proclaimed the void within; and Dyson, whenhe walked up the steps one evening in early autumn, had a sense thatsomething was missing, and, looking at the fanlight, saw the appealingcard had disappeared.

  "You have let your first floor, have you?" he said, as he greeted Mr.Russell.

  "Yes; it was taken about a fortnight ago by a lady."

  "Indeed," said Dyson, always curious; "a young lady?"

  "Yes, I believe so. She is a widow, and wears a thick crape veil. I havemet her once or twice on the stairs and in the street, but I should notknow her face."

  "Well," said Dyson, when the beer had arrived, and the pipes were infull blast, "and what have you been doing? Do you find the work gettingany easier?"

  "Alas!" said the young man, with an expression of great gloom, "the lifeis a purgatory, and all but a hell. I write, picking out my words,weighing and balancing the force of every syllable, calculating theminutest effects that language can produce, erasing and rewriting, andspending a whole evening over a page of manuscript. And then in themorning when I read what I have written--Well, there is nothing to bedone but to throw it in the waste-paper basket if the verso has beenalready written on, or to put it in the drawer if the other side happensto be clean. When I have written a phrase which undoubtedly embodies ahappy turn of thought, I find it dressed up in feeble commonplace; andwhen the style is good, it serves only to conceal the baldness ofsuperannuated fancies. I sweat over my work, Dyson,--every finished linemeans so much agony. I envy the lot of the carpenter in the side streetwho has a craft which he understands. When he gets an order for a table,he does not writhe with anguish; but if I were so unlucky as to get anorder for a book, I think I should go mad."

  "My dear fellow, you take it all too seriously. You should let the inkflow more readily. Above all, firmly believe, when you sit down towrite, that you are an artist, and that whatever you are about is amasterpiece. Suppose ideas fail you, say; as I heard one of our mostexquisite artists say, "It's of no consequence; the ideas are all there,at the bottom of that box of cigarettes." You, indeed, smoke tobacco,but the application is the same. Besides, you must have some happymoments, and these should be ample consolation."

  "Perhaps you are right. But such moments are so few; and then there isthe torture of a glorious conception matched, with execution beneath thestandard of the Family Story Paper. For instance, I was happy for twohours a night or two ago; I lay awake and saw visions. But then themorning!"

  "What was your idea?"

  "It seemed to me a splendid one; I thought of Balzac and the 'ComedieHumaine,' of Zola and the Rougon-Macquart family. It dawned upon me thatI would write the history of a street. Every house should form a volume.I fixed upon the street, I saw each house, and read, as clearly as inletters, the physiology and psychology of each. The little by-waystretched before me in its actual shape,--a street that I know and havepassed down a hundred times; with some twenty houses, prosperous andmean, and lilac bushes in purple blossom; and yet it was at the sametime a symbol, a _via dolorosa_ of hopes cherished and disappointed, ofyears of monotonous existence without content or discontent, oftragedies and obscure sorrows; and on the door of one of those houses Isaw the red stain of blood, and behind a window two shadows, blackenedand faded, on the blind, as they swayed on tightened cords,--the shadowsof a man and a woman hanging in a vulgar, gas-lit parlor. These were myfancies; but when pen touched paper, they shrivelled and vanished away,"

  "Yes," said. Dyson, "there is a lot in that. I envy you the pains oftransmuting vision into reality, and still more I envy you the day whenyou will look at your bookshelf and see twenty goodly books upon theshelves,--the series complete and done forever. Let me entreat you tohave them bound in solid parchment, with gold lettering. It is the onlyreal cover for a valiant book. When I look in at the windows of somechoice shop, and see the bindings of Levant morocco, with pretty toolsand panellings, and your sweet contrasts of red and green, I say tomyself, 'These are not books, but bibelots.' A book bound so--a truebook, mind you--is like a Gothic statue draped in brocade of Lyons."

  "Alas!" said Russell, "we need not discuss the binding,--the books arenot begun."

  The talk went on as usual till eleven o'clock, when Dyson bade hisfriend good-night. He knew the way downstairs, and walked down byhimself; but greatly to his surprise, as he crossed the first-floorlanding, the door opened slightly, and a hand was stretched out,beckoning.

  Dyson was not the man to hesitate under such circumstances. In a momenthe saw himself involved in adventure; and, as he told himself, theDysons had never disobeyed a lady's summons. Softly, then, with dueregard for the lady's honor, he would have entered the room, when a lowbut clear voice spoke to him,--

  "Go downstairs and open the door, and shut it again rather loudly. Thencome up to me; and for heaven's sake, walk softly."

  Dyson obeyed her commands,--not without some hesitation, for he wasafraid of meeting the landlady or the maid on his return journey. Butwalking like a cat, and making each step he trod on crack loudly, heflattered himself that he had escaped observation; and as he gained thetop of the stairs, the door opened wide before him, and he found himselfin the lady's drawing-room, bowing awkwardly.

  "Pray be seated, sir. Perhaps this chair will be the best; it was thefavored chair of my landlady's deceased husband. I would ask you tosmoke, but the odor would betray me. I know my proceedings must seem toyou unconventional; but I saw you arrive this evening, and I do notthink you would refuse to help a woman who is so unfortunate as I am."

  Mr. Dyson looked shyly at the young lady before him. She was dressed indeep mourning; but the piquant smiling face and charming hazel eyes illaccorded with the heavy garments, and the mouldering surface of thecrape.

  "Madam," he said gallantly, "your instinct has served you well. We willnot trouble, if you please, about the question of social conventions;the chivalrous gentleman knows nothing of such matters. I hope I may beprivileged to serve you."

  "You are very kind to me, but I knew it would be so. Alas, sir, I havehad experience of life, and I am rarely mistaken. Yet man is too oftenso vile and so misjudging that I trembled even as I resolved to takethis step, which, for all I knew, might prove to be bo
th desperate andruinous."

  "With me you have nothing to fear," said Dyson. "I was nurtured in thefaith of chivalry, and I have always endeavored to remember the proudtraditions of my race. Confide in me then, and count upon my secrecy,and, if it prove possible, you may rely on my help."

  "Sir, I will not waste your time, which I am sure is valuable, by idleparleyings. Learn, then, that I am a fugitive, and in hiding here. Iplace myself in your power; you have but to describe my features, and Ifall into the hands of my relentless enemy."

  Mr. Dyson wondered for a passing instant how this could be; but he onlyrenewed his promise of silence, repeating that he would be the embodiedspirit of dark concealment.

  "Good," said the lady; "the Oriental fervor of your style is delightful.In the first place, I must disabuse your mind of the conviction that Iam a widow. These gloomy vestments have been forced on me by strangecircumstance; in plain language, I have deemed it expedient to godisguised. You have a friend, I think, in the house,--Mr. Russell? Heseems of a coy and retiring nature."

  "Excuse me, madam," said Dyson, "he is not coy, but he is a realist; andperhaps you are aware that no Carthusian monk can emulate the cloistralseclusion in which a realistic novelist loves to shroud himself. It ishis way of observing human, nature."

  "Well, well," said the lady; "all this, though deeply interesting is notgermane to our affair. I must tell you my history."

  With these words the young lady proceeded to relate the