"
"Why," I said angrily, "it's because it is work to which you are
quite unsuited--work for a thick-skinned, hard-hearted, uncultivated
and well-paid attendant, not for the novelist who is to be the chief
light of our generation."
He laughed at this estimate of his powers.
"Novelists, like other cattle, have to obey their owner," he said
lightly.
I thought for a moment that he meant the Major, and was breaking
into an angry remonstrance, when I saw that he meant something quite
different. It was always his strongest point, this extraordinary
consciousness of right, this unwavering belief that he had to do and
therefore could do certain things. Without this, I know that he
never wrote a line, and in my heart I believe this was the cause of
his success.
"Then you are not writing at all?" I asked.
"Yes, I write generally for a couple of hours before breakfast," he
said.
And that evening we sat by his gas stove and he read me the next
four chapters of 'Lynwood.' He had rather a dismal lodging-house
bedroom, with faded wall-paper and a prosaic snuff-coloured carpet.
On a rickety table in the window was his desk, and a portfolio full
of blue foolscap, but he had done what he could to make the place
habitable; his Oxford pictures were on the walls--Hoffman's 'Christ
speaking to the Woman taken in Adultery,' hanging over the
mantelpiece--it had always been a favourite of his.
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