“Now that shows how much you know about my life. Problems arise, and questions are asked, and complaints pour in. And can I say a word to Hereward about the place that will be his? No, I must wait until he emerges, dazed and dumb and vacant-eyed. I should like to tell him to wake up sometimes. And I would, if I dared.”
“No one should dare to tell anyone that,” said Joanna. “It is too simple to have so much courage.”
“Well, I haven’t it. So you need not fear. I am quite without it. If a father can be afraid of his son, that father is before you.”
“Hereward is absorbed in the lives he imagines,” said Zillah. “He can’t be so alert to this one.”
“Is he? Is that what it is? Well, things are not what they seem. Of course we know they are not. It has become a saying. Well, I am blind to it all. He has chosen a line apart from me.”
“And one more apart than you know. One where many are called, but few chosen.”
“Well, put like that, I have no choice but to accept it. If that is so, it is. So Hereward is one by himself. Well, of course we know he is. And we look up to him. We are grateful to him. We realise where we should be without him. We are thankful for every word that falls from his pen. And other people are grateful too. Look at the things that are said of him. Why, my heart swells with pride. Tears come into my eyes, and I am not ashamed of it. I quite tremble to think I am his father.”
“I expect he trembles at it too,” said Joanna. “But people are always ashamed of their parents. So it hardly matters if they are more ashamed than usual.”
“Ashamed of us, are they? Well, it is a feeling I don’t return. I am proud of them. Proud of my son for what he achieves, and of my daughter for the help she gives him. I look up to my children. And if they look down on us, well, it can happen, as you say. And they have a right to look down on us. We are not equal to them. I mean, of course, that I am not. No man would look down on his mother. It need not be said.”
“Only part of my work is of use to you,” said Hereward. “It is the part that should not mean the most to me.”
“Well, it means it to me. I should be ungrateful if it did not. Why, it is the part that gives us something. I don’t see much point in work for its own sake. It is an odd, conceited view. And it is a wrong kind of conceit. The labourer is worthy of his hire. That would not be stated where it is, if it was not true.”
“My books are read for different reasons. We should be willing to write for the few.”
“Well, I am glad you write for the many too. It is natural that I should be. I am one of the many myself. And it gives the whole thing its meaning. The few have too much done for them. To serve the many is a larger aim. And it is best from your own point of view. Why should you toil and get nothing out of it? Or nothing in your own time. I often wonder how poets and painters feel, if they know about things in an after life. And novelists too. They are artists too in a way. Oh, I think about these things more than you know.”
“I am sure Hereward did not know,” said Joanna. “I believe I hardly knew myself. I am proud of you, Michael. And I see that our children must be more and more ashamed.”
“Well, I talk and think in my own way. We all have our ways of doing everything. And of course mine is not theirs. I often wonder how my children came about. It escapes me. I can’t explain it.”
“Something may have come to them through me. Not from me. It has passed me over.”
“Yes, it has missed a generation. That is a thing that does happen. I know there were unusual people in your family, and that they had no recognition in their time. It rather bears out what I have said. Well, Galleon, and what do you say to my son’s manner of life? What is your opinion of it?”
“Well, Sir Michael, if there happens to be necessity, it does not involve anything manual,” said Galleon, making this clear.
“Well, I am not so sure. Scratching and scribbling and shuffling papers! It does that into the bargain.”
“Well, not to the point of soiling the hands, Sir Michael.”
“The ink and dust are equal to it, I should think.”
“Well, they may have their own suggestion, Sir Michael.”
“Would you like to write a book, Galleon?”
“Well, I have often thought of it, Sir Michael. The simplicity of it is before one’s eyes, as it might seem.”
“Yes, it puts it into people’s heads. I wonder I have never set my hand to it. It is a thing I shall never explain.”
“No doubt there is explanation in both cases, Sir Michael.”
“You mean you have not the time, and I have not the talent? Ah, I can read your thought, Galleon. I can often read people’s minds. That might be useful to me, if I wrote. But the time is past. And one writer in a house is enough.”
“And the other pursuits are necessary, Sir Michael. To enable the writing to take place and the results to ensue.”
“Ah, you are indispensable, Galleon. Mr. Hereward’s work depends on yours, and so we all depend on it,” said Sir Michael, again using his gift of reading minds. “Ah, we give you your due. Yes, you can go to your work, and so can he. Yes, your sister will go with you, Hereward. Ah, you have a helpmate in my Zillah. You have your comrade there. And I am glad to know it. It is a solace to me. I don’t always feel you have sympathy in your home. I sometimes think we fail you there. And you do not fail us. You don’t indeed. You have lifted a weight from us to-day. We respect work that does so much for us. If we have given another impression, it is a wrong one. My Joanna, our future is safe. We need not hide our joy. Galleon, can you imagine our son and daughter celebrating matters in this way?”
“It may not need such a feat of imagination, Sir Michael,” said Galleon, who knew that the pair in question were indulging in mimicry of the activity, as they went upstairs.
“Which of our parents is the greater character?” said Zillah, when they reached her brother’s room.
“Pappa. Mamma is the greater person. How you protect me from them! From those arch enemies of the artist, parents and home. Where should I be without you? Where should any of us be?”
“So many of your readers must be parents, and more must live in a home. It is no wonder that your best work is too little known.”
“Ah, Zillah, I am content. All my work is my own. If I serve many thousands of people I am glad to know I serve them. It is no ignoble task. What comes from my brain comes from myself, and I would not disown it. My best work, as it is called, is no more deeply mine. And its serving fewer gives it no higher place. Everything springs from the same source. I feel it is the same. But we can’t control our brains as we control our movements. When I am in the power of mine, I don’t belong to myself. Well, you will be on guard to-day. No one must come to my door. Meals can be sent up, if there is need.”
The need arose, and Sir Michael heard the order given. “So the force is at work,” he said, as he came to the luncheon table. “But it must need fuel like anything else. And that could be supplied down here.”
“It breaks a train of thought to take part in ordinary talk,” said Zillah.
“Hereward does not take part in it. He sits like a stork with his mind elsewhere. And eats as if he was doing something else, as I suppose he is. But he has a life apart from his thought. He can’t feed himself with a pen. And we must use a knife and fork, as he does. I don’t see there is all that difference. You will say that he feeds us all with his pen. Ah, ha, I forestalled you there. I took the words out of your mouth. There is not such a gulf between us.”
“It is natural that the words should be in our mouths. The thought must be in our minds.”
“Well, well, it is in yours, I know. It may be too seldom in mine. But it does not lessen my pride in my son. Why, I read things about him that quite take me aback. And I say to myself: ‘I am the father of this man. I gave him life. Whatever he has done, I have done myself in a way.’ It is a serious thought. I am sobered by it.”