He was roused from his troubled thoughts by seeing Miss Asphodel Vincent coming along the walk towards him. Her step had lost its wonted spring, her carriage its usual buoyancy. In a minute or two she would reach him.
Would she deign to speak? He felt no compunction towards her. He had made her his heroine in the tale. By not a word had he cast a shadow over her character or her abilities. Indeed, he had pictured her as the highest ideal of an English girl. She might be flattered, she could not be offended. And yet there was no flattery in his pencil--he had sketched her in as she was.
As she approached she noticed the young author. She did not hasten her step. She displayed a strange listlessness in her movements, and lack of vivacity in her eye.
When she stood over against him, Joseph Leveridge rose and removed his hat. "An early promenade, Miss Vincent," he said.
"Oh!" she said, "I am glad to meet you here where we cannot be overheard. I have something about which I must speak to you, to complain of a great injury done to me."
"You do me a high honour," exclaimed Joseph. "If I can do anything to alleviate your distress and to redress the wrong, command me."
"You can do nothing. It is impossible to undo what has already been done. You put me into your book."
"Miss Vincent," protested Leveridge with vehemence, "if I have, what then? I have not in the least overcharged the colours, by a line caricatured you." It was in vain for him further to pretend not to be the author and to have merely read the book.
"That may be, or it may not. But you have taken strange liberties with me in transferring me to your pages."
"And you really recognised yourself?"
"It is myself, my very self, who is there."
"And yet you are here, before my humble self."
"That is only my outer sh.e.l.l. All my individuality, all that goes to make up the Ego--I myself--has been taken from me and put into your book."
"Surely that cannot be."
"But it is so. I feel precisely as I suppose felt my doll when I was a child, when it became unst.i.tched and all the bran ran out; it hung limp like a rag. But it is not bran you have deprived me of, it is my personality."
"In my novel is your portraiture indeed--but you yourself are here,"
said Leveridge.
"It is my very self, my n.o.blest and best part, my moral and intellectual self, which has been carried off and put into your book."
"This is quite impossible, Miss Vincent."
"A moment"s thought," said she, "will convince you that it is as I say.
If I pick an Alpine flower and transfer it to my blotting-book, it remains in the herbarium. It is no longer on the Alp where it bloomed."
"But----" urged Joseph.
"No," she interrupted, "you cannot undeceive me. No one can be in two places at the same time. If I am in your book, I cannot be here--except so far as goes my animal nature and frame. You have subjected me, Mr.
Leveridge, to the greatest humiliation. I am by you reduced to the level of a score of girls that I know, with no pursuits, no fixed principles, no opinions of their own, no ideas. They are swayed by every fashion, they are moulded by their surroundings; they are dest.i.tute of what some would call moral fibre, and I would term character. I had all this, but you have deprived me of it, by putting it into your book. I shall henceforth be the sport of every breath, be influenced by every folly, be without self-confidence and decision, the prey to any adventurer."
"For Heaven"s sake, do not say that."
"I cannot say anything other. If I had a sovereign in my purse, and a pickpocket stole it, I should no longer have the purse and sovereign, only the pocket; and I am a mere pocket now without the coin of my personality that you have filched from me. Mr. Leveridge, it was a cruel wrong you did me, _when you used me up_."
Then, sighing, Miss Asphodel went languidly on her way. Joseph was as one stunned. He buried his face in his hands. The person of all others with whom he desired to stand well, that person looked upon him as her most deadly enemy, at all events as the one who had most cruelly aggrieved her.
Presently, hearing the clock strike, he started. He was due at the office, and Joseph Leveridge had always made a point of punctuality.
He now went to the office, and learned from his fellow-clerk that Mr.
Stork had not returned; he had been there, and then had gone away to seek Leveridge at his lodgings. Joseph considered it inc.u.mbent on him to resume his hat and go in quest of his "boss."
On his way it occurred to him that there was monotony in bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning, and he would like a change. Moreover, he was hungry; he had left the house of Mrs. Baker without taking a mouthful, and if he returned now for a snack the eggs and the bacon would be cold. So he stepped into the shop of Mr. Box, the grocer, for a tin of sardines in oil.
When the grocer saw him he said: "Will you favour me with a word, sir, in the back shop?"
"I am pressed for time," replied Leveridge nervously.
"But one word; I will not detain you," said Mr. Box, and led the way.
Joseph walked after him.
"Sir," said the grocer, shutting the gla.s.s door, "you have done me a prodigious wrong. You have deprived me of what I would not have lost for a thousand pounds. You have put me into your book. How my business will get on without me--I mean my intellect, my powers of organisation, my trade instincts, in a word, myself--I do not know. You have taken them from me and put them into your book. I am consigned to a novel, when I want all my powers behind the counter. Possibly my affairs for a while will go on by the weight of their own momentum, but it cannot be for long without my controlling brain. Sir, you have brought me and my family to ruin--_you have used me up_."
Leveridge could bear this no more; he seized the handle of the door, rushed through the outer shop, precipitated himself into the street, carrying the sardine tin in his hand, and hurried to his lodgings.
But there new trouble awaited him. On the doorstep still sat the three gentlemen.
When they saw him they rose to their feet.
"I know, I know what you have to say," gasped Joseph. "In pity do not attack me all together. One at a time. With your leave, Mr. Vicar, will you step up first into my humble little sanctum, and I will receive the others later. I believe that the smell of bacon and eggs is gone from the room. I left the window open."
"I will most certainly follow you," said the Vicar of Swanton. "This is a most serious matter."
"Excuse me, will you take a chair?"
"No, thank you; I can speak best when on my legs. I lose impressiveness when seated. But I fear, alas! that gift has been taken from me. Sir!
sir! you have put me into your book. My earthly tabernacle may be here, standing on your--or Mrs. Baker"s drugget--but all my great oratorical powers have gone. I have been despoiled of what was in me my highest, n.o.blest, most spiritual parts. What my preaching henceforth will be I fear to contemplate. I may be able to string together a number of texts, and tack on an application, but that is mere mechanical work. I used to dredge in much florid eloquence, to stick in the flowers of elocution between every joint. And now!--I am despoiled of all. I, the Vicar of Swanton, shall be as a mere stick; I shall no more be a power in the pulpit, a force on the platform. My prospects in the diocese are put an end to. Miserable, miserable young man, you might have pumped others, but why me? I know but too surely that _you have used me up_." The vicar had taken off his hat, his bald forehead was beaded, his bristling grey whiskers drooped, his unctuous expression had faded away. His eyes, usually bearing the look as though turned inward in ecstatic contemplation of his personal piety, with only a watery stare on the world without, were now dull.
He turned to the door. "I will send up Stork," he said.
"Do so by all means, sir," was all that Joseph could say.
When the solicitor entered his red hair had a.s.sumed a darker dye, through the moisture that exuded from his head.
"Mr. Leveridge," said he, "this is a scurvy trick you have played me.
You have put me into your book."
"I only sketched a not over-scrupulous lawyer," protested Joseph. "Why should you put the cap on your own head?"
"Because it fits. It is myself you have put into your book, and by no legal process can I get out of it. I shall not be competent to advise the magistrates on the bench, and, good heavens! what a mess they will get into. I do not know whether your fellow-clerk can carry on the business. _I have been used up._ I"ll tell you what. You go away; I want you no more at the office. Whenever you revisit Swanton you will see only the ruins of the respected firm of Stork. It cannot go on when I am not in it, but in your book."
The last to arrive was Mr. Wotherspoon. He was in a most depressed condition. "There was not much in me," said he, "not at any time. You might have spared such a trifle as me, and not put me also into your book and _used me up_. Oh, dear, dear! what will my poor mother do! And how Sarah and Jane will bully me."
That same day Mr. Leveridge packed up his traps and departed from Swanton for his mother"s house.