_ I said that I was Clio's servant. And I felt, when I said it, that you
looked at me dubiously, and murmured among yourselves.
Not that you doubted I was somewhat connected with Clio's household.
The lady after whom I have named this book is alive, and well known to
some of you personally, to all of you by repute. Nor had you finished
my first page before you guessed my theme to be that episode in her
life which caused so great a sensation among the newspaper-reading
public a few years ago. (It all seems but yesterday, does it not? They
are still vivid to us, those head-lines. We have hardly yet ceased to
be edified by the morals pointed in those leading articles.) And yet
very soon you found me behaving just like any novelist--reporting the
exact words that passed between the protagonists at private interviews
--aye, and the exact thoughts and emotions that were in their breasts.
Little wonder that you wondered! Let me make things clear to you.
I have my mistress' leave to do this. At first (for reasons which you
will presently understand) she demurred. But I pointed out to her that
I had been placed in a false position, and that until this were
rectified neither she nor I could reap the credit due to us.
Know, then, that for a long time Clio had been thoroughly
discontented. She was happy enough, she says, when first she
left the home of Pierus, her father, to become a Muse. On those
humble beginnings she looks back with affection. She kept only one
servant, Herodotus. The romantic element in him appealed to her. He
died, and she had about her a large staff of able and faithful
servants, whose way of doing their work irritated and depressed her.
To them, apparently, life consisted of nothing but politics and
military operations--things to which she, being a woman, was somewhat
indifferent. She was jealous of Melpomene. It seemed to her that her
own servants worked from without at a mass of dry details which might
as well be forgotten. Melpomene's worked on material that was
eternally interesting--the souls of men and women; and not from
without, either; but rather casting themselves into those souls and
showing to us the essence of them. She was particularly struck by a
remark of Aristotle's, that tragedy was "more philosophic" than
history, inasmuch as it concerned itself with what might be, while
history was concerned with merely what had been. This summed up for
her what she had often felt, but could not have exactly formulated.
She saw that the department over which she presided was at best an
inferior one. She saw that just what she had liked--and rightly liked
--in poor dear Herodotus was just what prevented him from being a good
historian. It was wrong to mix up facts and fancies. But why should
her present servants deal with only one little special set of the
variegated facts of life? It was not in her power to interfere. The
Nine, by the terms of the charter that Zeus had granted to them, were
bound to leave their servants an absolutely free hand. But Clio could
at least refrain from reading the works which, by a legal fiction, she
was supposed to inspire. Once or twice in the course of a century, she
would glance into this or that new history book, only to lay it down
with a shrug of her shoulders. Some of the mediaeval chronicles she
rather liked. But when, one day, Pallas asked her what she thought of
"The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire" her only answer was "ostis
toia echei en edone echei en edone toia" (For people who like that
kind of thing, that is the kind of thing they like). This she did let
slip. Generally, throughout all the centuries, she kept up a pretence
of thinking history the greatest of all the arts. She always held her
head high among her Sisters. It was only on the sly that she was an
omnivorous reader of dramatic and lyric poetry. She watched with keen
interest the earliest developments of the prose romance in southern
Europe; and after the publication of "Clarissa Harlowe" she spent
practically all her time in reading novels. It was not until the
Spring of the year 1863 that an entirely new element forced itself
into her peaceful life. Zeus fell in love with her.
To us, for whom so quickly "time doth transfix the flourish set on
youth," there is something strange, even a trifle ludicrous, in the
thought that Zeus, after all these years, is still at the beck and
call of his passions. And it seems anyhow lamentable that he has not
yet gained self-confidence enough to appear in his own person to the
lady of his choice, and is still at pains to transform himself into
whatever object he deems likeliest to please her. To Clio, suddenly
from Olympus, he flashed down in the semblance of Kinglake's "Invasion
of the Crimea" (four vols., large 8vo, half-calf). She saw through his
disguise immediately, and, with great courage and independence, bade
him begone. Rebuffed, he was not deflected. Indeed it would seem that
Clio's high spirit did but sharpen his desire. Hardly a day passed but
he appeared in what he hoped would be the irresistible form--a
recently discovered fragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the
forthcoming issue of "The Historical Review," the note-book of
Professor Carl Voertschlaffen . . . One day, all-prying Hermes told
him of Clio's secret addiction to novel-reading. Thenceforth, year in,
year out, it was in the form of fiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole
result was that she grew sick of the sight of novels, and found a
perverse pleasure in reading history. These dry details of what had
actually happened were a relief, she told herself, from all that
make-believe.
One Sunday afternoon--the day before that very Monday on which this
narrative opens--it occurred to her how fine a thing history might be
if the historian had the novelist's privileges. Suppose he could be
present at every scene which he was going to describe, a presence
invisible and inevitable, and equipped with power to see into the
breasts of all the persons whose actions he set himself to watch . . .
While the Muse was thus musing, Zeus (disguised as Miss Annie S.
Swan's latest work) paid his usual visit. She let her eyes rest on
him. Hither and thither she divided her swift mind, and addressed him
in winged words. "Zeus, father of gods and men, cloud-compeller, what
wouldst thou of me? But first will I say what I would of thee"; and
she besought him to extend to the writers of history such privileges
as are granted to novelists. His whole manner had changed. He listened
to her with the massive gravity of a ruler who never yet has allowed
private influence to obscure his judgment. He was silent for some time
after her appeal. Then, in a voice of thunder, which made quake the
slopes of Parnassus, he gave his answer. He admitted the disabilities
under which historians laboured. But the novelists--were they not
equally handicapped? They had to treat of persons who never existed,
events which never were. Only by the privilege of being in the thick
of those events, and in the very bowels of those persons, could they
hope to hold the reader's attention. If similar privileges were
granted to the historian, the demand for novels would cease forthwith,
and many thousand of hard-working, deserving men and women would be
thrown out of employment. In fact, Clio had asked him an impossible
favour. But he might--he said he conceivably might--be induced to let
her have her way just once. In that event, all she would have to do
was to keep her eye on the world's surface, and then, so soon as she
had reason to think that somewhere was impending something of great
import, to choose an historian. On him, straightway, Zeus would confer
invisibility, inevitability, and psychic penetration, with a flawless
memory thrown in.
On the following afternoon, Clio's roving eye saw Zuleika stepping
from the Paddington platform into the Oxford train. A few moments
later I found myself suddenly on Parnassus. In hurried words Clio told
me how I came there, and what I had to do. She said she had selected
me because she knew me to be honest, sober, and capable, and no
stranger to Oxford. Another moment, and I was at the throne of Zeus.
With a majesty of gesture which I shall never forget, he stretched his
hand over me, and I was indued with the promised gifts. And then, lo!
I was on the platform of Oxford station. The train was not due for
another hour. But the time passed pleasantly enough.
It was fun to float all unseen, to float all unhampered by any
corporeal nonsense, up and down the platform. It was fun to watch
the inmost thoughts of the station-master, of the porters, of the
young person at the buffet. But of course I did not let the holiday-
mood master me. I realised the seriousness of my mission. I must
concentrate myself on the matter in hand: Miss Dobson's visit. What
was going to happen? Prescience was no part of my outfit. From what I
knew about Miss Dobson, I deduced that she would be a great success.
That was all. Had I had the instinct that was given to those Emperors
in stone, and even to the dog Corker, I should have begged Clio to
send in my stead some man of stronger nerve. She had charged me to be
calmly vigilant, scrupulously fair. I could have been neither, had I
from the outset foreseen all. Only because the immediate future was
broken to me by degrees, first as a set of possibilities, then as a
set of probabilities that yet might not come off, was I able to fulfil
the trust imposed in me. Even so, it was hard. I had always accepted
the doctrine that to understand all is to forgive all. Thanks to Zeus,
I understood all about Miss Dobson, and yet there were moments when
she repelled me--moments when I wished to see her neither from without
nor from within. So soon as the Duke of Dorset met her on the Monday
night, I felt I was in duty bound to keep him under constant
surveillance. Yet there were moments when I was so sorry for
him that I deemed myself a brute for shadowing him.
Ever since I can remember, I have been beset by a recurring doubt as
to whether I be or be not quite a gentleman. I have never attempted to
define that term: I have but feverishly wondered whether in its usual
acceptation (whatever that is) it be strictly applicable to myself.
Many people hold that the qualities connoted by it are primarily
moral--a kind heart, honourable conduct, and so forth. On Clio's
mission, I found honour and kindness tugging me in precisely opposite
directions. In so far as honour tugged the harder, was I the more or
the less gentlemanly? But the test is not a fair one. Curiosity tugged
on the side of honour. This goes to prove me a cad? Oh, set against it
the fact that I did at one point betray Clio's trust. When Miss Dobson
had done the deed recorded at the close of the foregoing chapter, I
gave the Duke of Dorset an hour's grace.
I could have done no less. In the lives of most of us is some one
thing that we would not after the lapse of how many years soever
confess to our most understanding friend; the thing that does not bear
thinking of; the one thing to be forgotten; the unforgettable thing.
Not the commission of some great crime: this can be atoned for by
great penances; and the very enormity of it has a dark grandeur.
Maybe, some little deadly act of meanness, some hole-and-corner
treachery? But what a man has once willed to do, his will helps him to
forget. The unforgettable thing in his life is usually not a thing he
has done or left undone, but a thing done to him--some insolence or
cruelty for which he could not, or did not, avenge himself. This it is
that often comes back to him, years after, in his dreams, and thrusts
itself suddenly into his waking thoughts, so that he clenches his
hands, and shakes his head, and hums a tune loudly--anything to beat
it off. In the very hour when first befell him that odious
humiliation, would you have spied on him? I gave the Duke of Dorset an
hour's grace.
What were his thoughts in that interval, what words, if any, he
uttered to the night, never will be known. For this, Clio has abused
me in language less befitting a Muse than a fishwife. I do not care. I
would rather be chidden by Clio than by my own sense of delicacy, any
day. _