His countenance fell at this--he put out his hand as if to bid me good-night. “Ah, my dear fellow, it can’t be described in cheap journalese!”
I knew of course he would be awfully fastidious, but our talk had made me feel how much his nerves were exposed. I was unsatisfied--I kept hold of his hand. “I won’t make use of the expression then,” I said, “in the article in which I shall eventually announce my discovery, though I daresay I shall have hard work to do without it. But meanwhile, just to hasten that difficult birth, can’t you give a fellow a clue?” I felt much more at my ease.
“My whole lucid effort gives him a clue--every page and line and letter. The thing’s as concrete there as a bird in a cage, a bait on a hook, a piece of cheese in a mouse-trap. It’s stuck into every volume as your foot is stuck into your shoe. It governs every line, it chooses every word, it dots every i, it places every comma.”
I scratched my head. “Is it something in the style or something in the thought? An element of form or an element of feeling?”
He indulgently shook my hand again, and I felt my questions to be crude and my distinctions pitiful. “Good-night, my dear boy--don’t bother about it. After all, you do like a fellow.”
“And a little intelligence might spoil it?” I still detained him.
He hesitated. “Well, you’ve got a heart in your body. Is that an element of form or an element of feeling? What I contend that nobody has ever mentioned in my work is the organ of life.”
“I see--it’s some idea about life, some sort of philosophy. Unless it be,” I added with the eagerness of a thought perhaps still happier, “some kind of game you’re up to with your style, something you’re after in the language. Perhaps it’s a preference for the letter P!” I ventured profanely to break out. “Papa, potatoes, prunes--that sort of thing?” He was suitably indulgent: he only said I hadn’t got the right letter. But his amusement was over; I could see he was bored. There was nevertheless something else I had absolutely to learn. “Should you be able, pen in hand, to state it clearly yourself--to name it, phrase it, formulate it?”
“Oh,” he almost passionately sighed, “if I were only, pen in hand, one of _you_ chaps!”