The Inheritors. Joseph Conrad
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of some delicacy. I myself should have hesitated to broach it before a third party, even one so negligible as myself. But Mr. Polehampton apparently did not. He had to catch the last post.
Lea, it appeared, had advised him to publish a manuscript by a man called Howden – a moderately known writer…
"But I am disturbed to find, Mr. Lea, that is, my daughter tells me that the manuscript is not … is not at all the thing… In fact, it's quite – and – eh … I suppose it's too late to draw back?"
"Oh, it's altogether too late for that" Lea said, nonchalantly.
"Besides, Howden's theories always sell."
"Oh, yes, of course, of course," Mr. Polehampton interjected, hastily, "but don't you think now … I mean, taking into consideration the damage it may do our reputation … that we ought to ask Mr. Howden to accept, say fifty pounds less than…"
"I should think it's an excellent idea," Lea said. Mr. Polehampton glanced at him suspiciously, then turned to me.
"You see," he began to explain, "one has to be so careful about these things."
"Oh, I can quite understand," I answered. There was something so naïve in the man's point of view that I had felt my heart go out to him. And he had taught me at last how it is that the godly grow fat at the expense of the unrighteous. Mr. Polehampton, however, was not fat. He was even rather thin, and his peaked grey hair, though it was actually well brushed, looked as if it ought not to have been. He had even an anxious expression. People said he speculated in some stock or other, and I should say they were right.
"I … eh … believe I published your first book … I lost money by it, but I can assure you that I bear no grudge – almost a hundred pounds. I bear no grudge…"
The man was an original. He had no idea that I might feel insulted; indeed, he really wanted to be pleasant, and condescending, and forgiving. I didn't feel insulted. He was too big for his clothes, gave that impression at least, and he wore black kid gloves. Moreover, his eyes never left the cornice of the room. I saw him rather often after that night, but never without his gloves and never with his eyes lowered.
"And … eh …" he asked, "what are you doing now, Mr. Granger?"
Lea told him Fox had taken me up; that I was going to go. I suddenly remembered it was said of Fox that everyone he took up did "go." The fact was obviously patent to Mr. Polehampton. He unbent with remarkable suddenness; it reminded me of the abrupt closing of a stiff umbrella. He became distinctly and crudely cordial – hoped that we should work together again; once more reminded me that he had published my first book (the words had a different savour now), and was enchanted to discover that we were neighbours in Sussex. My cottage was within four miles of his villa, and we were members of the same golf club.
"We must have a game – several games," he said. He struck me as the sort of man to find a difficulty in getting anyone to play with him.
After that he went away. As I had said, I did not dislike him – he was pathetic; but his tone of mind, his sudden change of front, unnerved me. It proved so absolutely that I was "going to go," and I did not want to go – in that sense. The thing is a little difficult to explain, I wanted to take the job because I wanted to have money – for a little time, for a year or so, but if I once began to go, the temptation would be strong to keep on going, and I was by no means sure that I should be able to resist the temptation. So many others had failed. What if I wrote to Fox, and resigned?.. Lea was deep in a manuscript once more.
"Shall I throw it up?" I asked suddenly. I wanted the thing settled.
"Oh, go on with it, by all means go on with it," Lea answered.
"And …?" I postulated.
"Take your chance of the rest," he supplied; "you've had a pretty bad time."
"I suppose," I reflected, "if I haven't got the strength of mind to get out of it in time, I'm not up to much."
"There's that, too," he commented, "the game may not be worth the candle." I was silent. "You must take your chance when you get it," he added.
He had resumed his reading, but he looked up again when I gave way, as I did after a moment's thought.
"Of course," he said, "it will probably be all right. You do your best.
It's a good thing … might even do you good."
In that way the thing went through. As I was leaving the room, the idea occurred to me, "By the way, you don't know anything of a clique: the Dimensionists —Fourth Dimensionists?"
"Never heard of them," he negatived. "What's their specialty?"
"They're going to inherit the earth," I answered.
"Oh, I wish them joy," he closed.
"You don't happen to be one yourself? I believe it's a sort of secret society." He wasn't listening. I went out quietly.
The night effects of that particular neighbourhood have always affected me dismally. That night they upset me, upset me in much the same way, acting on much the same nerves as the valley in which I had walked with that puzzling girl. I remembered that she had said she stood for the future, that she was a symbol of my own decay – the whole silly farrago, in fact. I reasoned with myself – that I was tired, out of trim, and so on, that I was in a fit state to be at the mercy of any nightmare. I plunged into Southampton Row. There was safety in the contact with the crowd, in jostling, in being jostled.
CHAPTER SIX
It was Saturday and, as was his custom during the session, the Foreign Secretary had gone for privacy and rest till Monday to a small country house he had within easy reach of town. I went down with a letter from Fox in my pocket, and early in the afternoon found myself talking without any kind of inward disturbance to the Minister's aunt, a lean, elderly lady, with a keen eye, and credited with a profound knowledge of European politics. She had a rather abrupt manner and a business-like, brown scheme of coloration. She looked people very straight in the face, bringing to bear all the penetration which, as rumour said, enabled her to take a hidden, but very real part in the shaping of our foreign policy. She seemed to catalogue me, label me, and lay me on the shelf, before I had given my first answer to her first question.
"You ought to know this part of the country well," she said. I think she was considering me as a possible canvasser – an infinitesimal thing, but of a kind possibly worth remembrance at the next General Election.
"No," I said, "I've never been here before."
"Etchingham is only three miles away."
It was new to me to be looked upon as worth consideration for my place-name. I realised that Miss Churchill accorded me toleration on its account, that I was regarded as one of the Grangers of Etchingham, who had taken to literature.
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