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CHAPTER III.

“I don’t quite know how to explain it to you,” he said, “but it was the very fact that your notice of my book had a spice of intelligence, it was just your exceptional sharpness, that produced the feeling–a very old story with me, I beg you to believe–under the momentary influence of which I used in speaking to that good lady the words you so naturally resent. I don’t read the things in the newspapers unless they’re thrust upon me as that one was–it’s always one’s best friend who does it! But I used to read them sometimes–ten years ago. I dare say they were in general rather stupider then; at any rate it always struck me they missed my little point with a perfection exactly as admirable when they patted me on the back as when they kicked me in the shins. Whenever since I’ve happened to have a glimpse of them they were still blazing away–still missing it, I mean, deliciously. YOU miss it, my dear fellow, with inimitable assurance; the fact of your being awfully clever and your article’s being awfully nice doesn’t make a hair’s breadth of difference. It’s quite with you rising young men,” Vereker laughed, “that I feel most what a failure I am!”

I listened with keen interest; it grew keener as he talked. “YOU a failure–heavens! What then may your ‘little point’ happen to be?”

“Have I got to TELL you, after all these years and labours?” There was something in the friendly reproach of this–jocosely exaggerated–that made me, as an ardent young seeker for truth, blush to the roots of my hair. I’m as much in the dark as ever, though I’ve grown used in a sense to my obtuseness; at that moment, however, Vereker’s happy accent made me appear to myself, and probably to him, a rare dunce. I was on the point of exclaiming “Ah yes, don’t tell me: for my honour, for that of the craft, don’t!” when he went on in a manner that showed he had read my thought and had his own idea of the probability of our some day redeeming ourselves. “By my little point I mean–what shall I call it?–the particular thing I’ve written my books most FOR. Isn’t there for every writer a particular thing of that sort, the thing that most makes him apply himself, the thing without the effort to achieve which he wouldn’t write at all, the very passion of his passion, the part of the business in which, for him, the flame of art burns most intensely? Well, it’s THAT!”

I considered a moment–that is I followed at a respectful distance, rather gasping. I was fascinated–easily, you’ll say; but I wasn’t going after all to be put off my guard. “Your description’s certainly beautiful, but it doesn’t make what you describe very distinct.”

“I promise you it would be distinct if it should dawn on you at all.” I saw that the charm of our topic overflowed for my companion into an emotion as lively as my own. “At any rate,” he went on, “I can speak for myself: there’s an idea in my work without which I wouldn’t have given a straw for the whole job. It’s the finest fullest intention of the lot, and the application of it has been, I think, a triumph of patience, of ingenuity. I ought to leave that to somebody else to say; but that nobody does say it is precisely what we’re talking about. It stretches, this little trick of mine, from book to book, and everything else, comparatively, plays over the surface of it. The order, the form, the texture of my books will perhaps some day constitute for the initiated a complete representation of it. So it’s naturally the thing for the critic to look for. It strikes me,” my visitor added, smiling, “even as the thing for the critic to find.”