Part 41 (1/2)

”I was--just around,” vaguely.

”Not around here,” Desire was uncompromising. ”Benis, I think we should really be more businesslike. We should have talked this thirteenth chapter over yesterday. I see you have a note here for some opening paragraphs on The Apprehension of Color in Primitive Minds--”

A cascade of goblin laughter from Yorick interrupted her.

”Yorick is amused,” said Benis. ”He knows all about the apprehension of color in primitive minds. He advises us to go fis.h.i.+ng.”

Desire watched him stroke the bird's bent head with a puzzled frown.

”I wish you wouldn't joke about--this,” she said slowly. ”You don't want that habit of mind to affect your serious work.”

Spence looked up surprised.

”The whole character of the book is changing,” went on Desire resolutely. ”It will all have to be revised and brought into harmony.

I'm sure you've felt it yourself. In a book like this the treatment must be the same throughout. I've heard you say that a hundred times.

It doesn't matter what the treatment is, the necessary thing is that it be consistent. Isn't that right?”

”Certainly.”

”Well--yours isn't!”

Spence forgot the parrot (who immediately pecked his finger). He almost forgot that he had suffered an awakening and had pa.s.sed a bad night.

Desire interested him in the present moment as she always did. She was--what was she? ”Satisfying” was perhaps the best word for it. Just to be with her seemed to round out life.

”Prove it!” said he with some heat.

For half an hour he listened while she proved it with great energy and a thorough knowledge of her facts. He listened because he liked to listen and not because she was telling him anything new. He knew just where his ”treatment” of his material had changed, and he knew, as Desire did not, what had changed it. For the change was not really in the treatment at all, but in himself.

This book had been his earliest ambition. It had been the sole companion of his thoughts for years. It had been the little idol which must be served. Without a word of it being written, it had grown with his growth. His notes for it comprised all that he had filched from life. He had not hurried. He was leisurely by nature. Then had come the war, lifting him out of all the things he knew. And, after the war, its great weariness. Not until he had met Desire and found, in her fresh interest, something of his own lost enthusiasm, had he been able to work again. Then, in a glow of recovered energy, the book had been begun. And all had gone well until the book's inspirer had begun to usurp the place of the book itself. (Spence smiled as he realized that Desire was painstakingly tracing the course of her self-caused destruction.) How could he think of the book when he wanted only to think of her? Insensibly, his gathered facts had begun to lose their prime importance, his deductions had lost their sense of weight, all that he had done seemed strangely insignificant--it was like looking at something through the wrong end of a telescope. The great book was a star which grew steadily smaller.

The proportion was wrong. He knew that. But at present he could do nothing to readjust it. Two interests cannot occupy the same s.p.a.ce at the same time. The book interest had simply succ.u.mbed to an interest older and more potent.

”In this chapter, the Sixth,” Desire was saying, ”you seem to lose some of the serious purpose which is a prominent note in the opening chapters. You begin to treat things casually. You almost allow yourself to be humorous. Now is this supposed to be a humorous book, or is it not?”

”Oh--not. Distinctly not.”

”Well then, don't you see? If you had treated the thing in that semi-humorous manner all through and continued in that vein you would produce a certain definite type of book. The critics would probably say--”

”I know, spare me!”

”They would say,” sternly, ”that 'Professor Spence has a light touch.'

That 'he has treated his subject in a popular manner.'” (The professor groaned.) ”But that isn't a patch upon what they will say if you mix up your styles as you are doing at present.”

”But--well, what do you advise?”

Desire sucked her pencil. (He had given up trying to cure her of this poisonous habit.)

”I've thought about that. If you were not so--so temperamental, I would say go back and begin again. But that is risky. It will be better to go on, I think, trying to recapture the more serious style, until the whole book it at least in some form. Then you will know exactly where you are and what is necessary to harmonize the whole. You can then rewrite the 'off' chapters, bringing them into line. This is a recognized literary method, I believe.”