Part 20 (2/2)
”Mark--don't write this book.”
Mark started slightly with surprise.
”Kitty! what are you saying?”
”Write a happy book.”
”My dear babe--how uninteresting!”
”Write a good book, a book to make people better and happier.”
”A book with a purpose! No, Kitty.”
”Well then, a spring book. This night isn't a night with a purpose, because it's lovely.”
He laughed quite gaily.
”Humorist! Why did you bring me out into it?”
”To influence you against that book.”
He was silent.
”Are you angry, Mark?”
”No, dear.”
”Will you do what I ask?”
”No, Kitty.”
He spoke very quietly and gently, then changed the subject, talked of the coming summer, the garden, prospective pleasures. But he talked no more of his work. Next day he shut himself up in his study, and thenceforward his life became a repet.i.tion of his life during the previous summer. A fortnight later Frederic Berrand arrived.
Catherine had long felt an eager desire to see this one intimate friend of Mark's. She expected him to be no ordinary man, and she was not mistaken. Berrand was much older than Mark. He looked about forty. He was thin, sallow, eager in manner, with s.h.i.+ning eyes--almost toad-like--a yellowish-white complexion, and coal-black hair. His vivacity was un-English, yet at the back of his nature there lay surely a stagnant reservoir of melancholy. He was a pessimist, full of ardour.
He revelled, intellectually, in the sorrows and in the evils that afflict the world.
It was easy to see that he had a great influence over Mark. And it was easy to see also that the dismal genius of ”William Foster” appealed to all the peculiarities of his nature with intense force. He was at once on friendly terms with Catherine, to whom he spoke openly of his admiration of her husband.
”Mrs. Sirrett,” he said one evening, when Mark was working--he had taken to working at night now as well as in the morning--”your husband will do great things. He will found a school. The young men will be captivated by his sombre genius, and we shall have less of the thoughtless rubbish that the journalist loves and calls sane, healthy, and all the rest of it.”
”But surely sanity and health----”
”My dear Mrs. Sirrett, we want originality and imagination.”
”Yes, indeed. But can't they be sane and healthy?”
”Was Gautier healthy when he wrote of the Priest and of the Vampire?
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