Chapter 3

To encourage me, I suppose, Callan gave me the proof-sheets of his next
to read in bed. The thing was so bad that it nearly sickened me of him
and his jobs. I tried to read the stuff; to read it conscientiously, to
read myself to sleep with it. I was under obligations to old Cal and I
wanted to do him justice, but the thing was impossible. I fathomed a
sort of a plot. It dealt in fratricide with a touch of adultery; a Great
Moral Purpose loomed in the background. It would have been a dully
readable novel but for that; as it was, it was intolerable. It was
amazing that Cal himself could put out such stuff; that he should have
the impudence. He was not a fool, not by any means a fool. It revolted
me more than a little.

I came to it out of a different plane of thought. I may not have been
able to write then--or I may; but I did know enough to recognise the
flagrantly, the indecently bad, and, upon my soul, the idea that I, too,
must cynically offer this sort of stuff if I was ever to sell my tens
of thousands very nearly sent me back to my solitude. Callan had begun
very much as I was beginning now; he had even, I believe, had ideals in
his youth and had starved a little. It was rather trying to think that
perhaps I was really no more than another Callan, that, when at last I
came to review my life, I should have much such a record to look back
upon. It disgusted me a little, and when I put out the light the horrors
settled down upon me.

I woke in a shivering frame of mind, ashamed to meet Callan's eye. It
was as if he must be aware of my over-night thoughts, as if he must
think me a fool who quarrelled with my victuals. He gave no signs of any
such knowledge--was dignified, cordial; discussed his breakfast with
gusto, opened his letters, and so on. An anæmic amanuensis was taking
notes for appropriate replies. How could I tell him that I would not do
the work, that I was too proud and all the rest of it? He would have
thought me a fool, would have stiffened into hostility, I should have
lost my last chance. And, in the broad light of day, I was loath to do
that.

He began to talk about indifferent things; we glided out on to a
current of mediocre conversation. The psychical moment, if there were
any such, disappeared.

Someone bearing my name had written to express an intention of offering
personal worship that afternoon. The prospect seemed to please the great
Cal. He was used to such things; he found them pay, I suppose. We began
desultorily to discuss the possibility of the writer's being a relation
of mine; I doubted. I had no relations that I knew of; there was a
phenomenal old aunt who had inherited the acres and respectability of
the Etchingham Grangers, but she was not the