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Page 2
From "Jephson" I hold a letter, dated from a station deep in the heart of
the Queensland bush. "_Do what you like with it, dear boy_," the letter
runs, "_so long as you keep me out of it. Thanks for your complimentary
regrets, but I cannot share them. I was never fitted for a literary
career. Lucky for me, I found it out in time. Some poor devils don't.
(I'm not getting at you, old man. We read all your stuff, and like it
very much. Time hangs a bit heavy, you know, here, in the winter, and we
are glad of almost anything.) This life suits me better. I love to feel
my horse between my thighs, and the sun upon my skin. And there are the
youngsters growing up about us, and the hands to look after, and the
stock. I daresay it seems a very commonplace unintellectual life to you,
but it satisfies my nature more than the writing of books could ever do.
Besides, there are too many authors as it is. The world is so busy
reading and writing, it has no time left for thinking. You'll tell me,
of course, that books are thought, but that is only the jargon of the
Press. You come out here, old man, and sit as I do sometimes for days
and nights together alone with the dumb cattle on an upheaved island of
earth, as it were, jutting out into the deep sky, and you will know that
they are not. What a man thinks--really thinks--goes down into him and
grows in silence. What a man writes in books are the thoughts that he
wishes to be thought to think_."
Poor Jephson! he promised so well at one time. But he always had strange
notions.
CHAPTER I
When, on returning home one evening, after a pipe party at my friend
Jephson's, I informed my wife that I was going to write a novel, she
expressed herself as pleased with the idea. She said she had often
wondered I had never thought of doing so before. "Look," she added, "how
silly all the novels are nowadays; I'm sure you could write one."
(Ethelbertha intended to be complimentary, I am convinced; but there is a
looseness about her mode of expression which, at times, renders her
meaning obscure.)
When, however, I told her that my friend Jephson was going to collaborate
with me, she remarked, "Oh," in a doubtful tone; and when I further went
on to explain to her that Selkirk Brown and Derrick MacShaughnassy were
also going to assist, she replied, "Oh," in a tone which contained no
trace of doubtfulness whatever, and from which it was clear that her
interest in the matter, as a practical scheme, had entirely evaporated.
I fancy that the fact of my three collaborators being all bachelors
diminished somewhat our chances of success, in Ethelbertha's mind.
Against bachelors, as a class, she entertains a strong prejudice. A
man's not having sense enough to want to marry, or, having that, not
having wit enough to do it, argues to her thinking either weakness of
intellect or natural depravity, the former rendering its victim unable,
and the latter unfit, ever to become a really useful novelist.
I tried to make her understand the peculiar advantages our plan
possessed.
"You see," I explained, "in the usual commonplace novel we only get, as a
matter of fact, one person's ideas. Now, in this novel, there will be
four clever men all working together. The public will thus be enabled to
obtain the thoughts and opinions of the whole four of us, at the price
usually asked for merely one author's views. If the British reader knows
his own business, he will order this book early, to avoid disappointment.
Such an opportunity may not occur again for years."
Ethelbertha agreed that this was probable.
"Besides," I continued, my enthusiasm waxing stronger the more I
reflected upon the matter, "this work is going to be a genuine bargain in
another way also. We are not going to put our mere everyday ideas into
it. We are going to crowd into this one novel all the wit and wisdom
that the whole four of us possess, if the book will hold it. We shall
not write another novel after this one. Indeed, we shall not be able to;
we shall have nothing more to write. This work will partake of the
nature of an intellectual clearance sale. We are going to put into this
novel simply all we know."
Ethelbertha shut her lips, and said something inside; and then remarked
aloud that she supposed it would be a one volume affair.
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