FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81  
82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   >>   >|  
of art critic, when one of those sudden pauses which seem to drop softly between intimate friends followed his concluding speech. Verity held up her finger with the hackneyed allusion to a passing angel, at which Malcolm laughed scornfully. "You are too poetical, my dear Verity," he observed; "it was no white-robed celestial vision brushing past us in the twilight and fanning us with plumed and balmy wings; the gliding shadow that moved between us was merely the guardian genius who presides over my destiny. But as he passed I touched his mantle"--and here Malcolm regarded his audience with infinite meaning. No one hazarded an observation. Amias, who had been filling his pipe with tobacco, looked at it longingly and returned it to his pocket. This process he repeated at intervals from sheer force of habit. With his pipe alight he was an ideal listener; without it his attention wandered and grew drowsy. But Malcolm, wrapt up in his own visionary conceits, did not see the pathos of the action. He was on his favourite hobby-horse--life, and its limitations, its enforced denials and futile sacrifices, was opening before his eyes. "I am going to write a book," he announced abruptly. "I mean to take the world by storm--to say my say--for once. It will not be a novel. The public is inundated by the flood of fiction that threatens to engulf it. We have biographies by the ton, in two, three, or four volumes; in every public place in England we set up our golden image, and we bid men, women, and children fall down and do it homage. Hero-worship is our favourite cult; woe to that man who refuses to burn incense before it!" "I suppose you intend to bring out a volume of essays?" queried Amias lazily. "No, my dear fellow," returned Malcolm rather mendaciously, for he was planning a series of essays at that very time. "No trifles and syllabubs for me--froth above and sweetness and jam beneath. Every one writes essays nowadays, and tries to stir with his little Gulliver pen the yeasty foam raised by a Carlyle or an Emerson. One might as well watch the effort of a small hairy caterpillar to follow in the wake of a sea-serpent. Oh ye gods and little fishes, could anything be more grotesque!" "But the book?" growled Amias, with a surreptitious glance at his pipe. "Oh, the book," returned Malcolm loftily, "it is a sudden inspiration, but I feel the grip of my Frankenstein already; I have not yet let go the mantle of my
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   77   78   79   80   81  
82   83   84   85   86   87   88   89   90   91   92   93   94   95   96   97   98   99   100   101   102   103   104   105   106   >>   >|  



Top keywords:
Malcolm
 

returned

 

essays

 

favourite

 

mantle

 
sudden
 
public
 

Verity

 
homage
 

worship


intend

 

volume

 
suppose
 

refuses

 
incense
 

biographies

 
engulf
 
threatens
 

inundated

 

fiction


volumes

 

children

 

golden

 

England

 

queried

 

caterpillar

 

follow

 

serpent

 

effort

 

surreptitious


growled

 
glance
 

inspiration

 

loftily

 

grotesque

 
fishes
 

Frankenstein

 
Emerson
 

syllabubs

 
trifles

sweetness
 

fellow

 
mendaciously
 
planning
 

series

 

beneath

 
yeasty
 

raised

 
Carlyle
 

Gulliver