GERTON walked into my private room on Saturday morning and flung a bundle of MS. on my table.
"Read that," he said.
I was irritated. Egerton is my junior partner—between us we constitute the publishing firm of Burdett Egerton—but I object to his breaking in on me when I am busy.
"What is it?" I asked.
"It's a story," he said; "a story which has been submitted to me for the magazine."
The Tower Magazine is one of our ventures, and it is understood between us that Egerton is responsible for it. I resented his trying to make me do his work.
"Who's it by?" I asked.
"I don't know. It's sent to me without name or address attached to it."
"Then for goodness' sake put it in the waste-paper basket and don't bother me."
"It's good," said Egerton. "It's so good that"
"Then publish it; but for heaven's sake let me alone. I'm going down to the country for the week- end, and if I'm to catch my train I must"
"Very well then, I'll publish it; but if there's a hideous row afterwards, don't blame me."
Egerton is one of those men who pride themselves on freedom from conventional prejudice. If he thinks a thing is good from a literary point of view he does not care how bad it is in every other way. He rather likes shocking people. I have had to remonstrate with him more than once. His hint about the nature of the story that lay on my table frightened me. I publish The Tower Magazine with the object of making money, and I am painfully aware that it does not do to shock the public.
"Very well," I said, "leave it there. I'll read it in the train and let you know on Monday what I think of it. But if it's the kind of story"
"It is," said Egerton. "Exactly that kind of story, only worse; but it's good. It's—I speak quite literally—infernally good. I wish I knew who wrote it."
I had promised to pay a Saturday to Monday visit to my uncle Ambrose in Cambridgeshire. I owe a little attention to the old gentleman in return for my education, which he paid for, and for his kindness in allowing me to consider his rectory my home. He is rather a big man among the local clergy, being a rural dean, a canon and having some reputation as a scholar. I am told that he is likely to be an Archdeacon when the present man drops off. He has a very nice parish, a clean village inhabited, so far as I have ever seen, entirely by respectful old women who curtsey and small boys who sing in the choir. There is also a squire, but he is the black sheep of the flock, and my uncle sees very little of him. The village is near Newmarket, and the squire is a racing man. When he is at home he has a houseful of fast people and seems particularly fond of fast women. None of his party ever go to church. My uncle is austerely clerical in his outlook upon life. I quite realise that he is bound to disapprove of the squire. I can also, I think, understand the squire's dislike of going to church.
I read Egerton's story in the train. It was all he said it was. Guy de Maupassant at his worst was not much worse; but, on the other hand, Guy de Maupassant was not much better. It was a fine, an uncommonly fine short story; but it was plainly impossible to publish it. I stuffed the MS. into the bottom of my bag and sat for the rest of the journey gloating over the abominable cleverness of the thing. It was an absolutely straightforward, simple piece of writing, and the most sacred precepts of morality were remorselessly ridiculed. I felt, as Egerton did, that I should greatly like to know who wrote it. The man or the woman, whichever it was, had something very like actual genius.
On Sunday, after morning service, my uncle Ambrose took me for a stroll round his garden. He gave me his views on The Tower Magazine, and I felt, as I listened to him, uncommonly glad that I had not left the story in Egerton's hands. If it had been published my uncle would never have spoken to me again. He already deplored the levity of the magazine and regretted its want of serious matter.
"Perhaps," he said, "I shall some day send you a paper myself. I have long felt that some attempt ought to be made to instruct our people in the history of the monastic orders."
This was an embarrassing suggestion. I owe a good deal to my uncle Ambrose, but I am running a magazine with the object of making money. And, besides, a paper on the monastic orders would not be fair to Egerton.
"Surely," I said, "your time must be too fully occupied to allow you to undertake such work. Your contemplated monograph on the English Benedictines, your cathedral sermons, your functions as a rural dean, the round of your parochial duties"