Here, where all is falling into dimness and dissolution, and
we walk in cedarn gloom, and the very air of heaven goes mouldering to
the lungs, I cannot remain commonplace. I look at that deep glow on the
panes, and the house lies all enchanted; that very room, I tell you, is
within all blood and fire." ADVENTURE OF THE GOLD TIBERIUS. The acquaintance between Mr. Dyson and Mr. Charles Phillipps arose from
one of those myriad chances which are every day doing their work in the
streets of London. Mr. Dyson was a man of letters, and an unhappy
instance of talents misapplied. With gifts that might have placed him in
the flower of his youth among the most favored of Bentley's favorite
novelists, he had chosen to be perverse; he was, it is true, familiar
with scholastic logic, but he knew nothing of the logic of life, and he
flattered himself with the title of artist, when he was in fact but an
idle and curious spectator of other men's endeavors. Amongst many
delusions, he cherished one most fondly, that he was a strenuous worker;
and it was with a gesture of supreme weariness that he would enter his
favorite resort, a small tobacco shop in Great Queen Street, and
proclaim to any one who cared to listen that he had seen the rising and
setting of two successive suns. The proprietor of the shop, a
middle-aged man of singular civility, tolerated Dyson partly out of good
nature, and partly because he was a regular customer; he was allowed to
sit on an empty cask, and to express his sentiments on literary and
artistic matters till he was tired or the time for closing came; and if
no fresh customers were attracted, it is believed that none were turned
away by his eloquence. Dyson, was addicted to wild experiments in
tobacco; he never wearied of trying new combinations, and one evening he
had just entered the shop and given utterance to his last preposterous
formula, when a young fellow, of about his own age, who had come in a
moment later, asked the shopman to duplicate the order on his account,
smiling politely, as he spoke, to Mr. Dyson's address. Dyson felt
profoundly flattered, and after a few phrases the two entered into
conversation, and in an hour's time the tobacconist saw the new friends
sitting side by side on a couple of casks, deep in talk. "My dear sir," said Dyson, "I will give you the task of the literary man
in a phrase. He has got to do simply this: to invent a wonderful story,
and to tell it in a wonderful manner." "I will grant you that," said Mr. Phillipps, "but you will allow me to
insist that in the hands of the true artist in words all stories are
marvellous, and every circumstance has its peculiar wonder. The matter
is of little consequence, the manner is everything. Indeed, the highest
skill is shown in taking matter apparently commonplace and transmuting
it by the high alchemy of style into the pure gold of art." "That is indeed a proof of great skill, but it is great skill exerted
foolishly, or at least unadvisedly. It is as if a great violinist were
to show us what marvellous harmonies he could draw from a child's
banjo." "No, no, you are really wrong. I see you take a radically mistaken view
of life. But we must thresh this out. Come to my rooms; I live not far
from here." It was thus that Mr. Dyson became the associate of Mr. Charles
Phillipps, who lived in a quiet square not far from Holborn. Thenceforth
they haunted each other's rooms at intervals, sometimes regular, and
occasionally the reverse, and made appointments to meet at the shop in
Queen Street, where their talk robbed the tobacconist's profit of half
its charm. There was a constant jarring of literary formulas, Dyson
exalting the claims of the pure imagination, while Phillipps, who was a
student of physical science and something of an ethnologist, insisted
that all literature ought to have a scientific basis. By the mistaken
benevolence of deceased relatives both young men were placed out of
reach of hunger, and so, meditating high achievements, idled their time
pleasantly away, and revelled in the careless joys of a Bohemianism
devoid of the sharp seasoning of adversity. One night in June Mr. Phillipps was sitting in his room in the calm
retirement of Red Lion Square. He had opened the window, and was smoking
placidly, while he watched the movement of life below. The sky was
clear, and the afterglow of sunset had lingered long about it; and the
flushing twilight of a summer evening, vying with the gas-lamps in the
square, had fashioned a chiaroscuro that had in it something unearthly;
and the children, racing to and fro upon the pavement, the lounging
idlers by the public, and the casual passers-by rather flickered, and
hovered in the play of lights than stood out substantial things. By
degrees in the houses opposite one window after another leaped out a
square of light, now and again a figure would shape itself against a
blind and vanish, and to all this semi-theatrical magic the runs and
flourishes of brave Italian opera played a little distance off on a
piano-organ seemed an appropriate accompaniment, while the deep-muttered
bass of the traffic of Holborn never ceased. Phillipps enjoyed the scene
and its effects; the light in the sky faded and turned to darkness, and
the square gradually grew silent, and still he sat dreaming at the
window, till the sharp peal of the house bell roused him, and looking at
his watch he found that it was past ten o'clock. There was a knock at
the door, and his friend Mr. Dyson entered, and, according to his
custom, sat down in an armchair and began to smoke in silence. "You know, Phillipps," he said at length, "that I have always battled
for the marvellous. I remember your maintaining in that chair that one
has no business to make use of the wonderful, the improbable, the odd
coincidence in literature, and you took the ground that it was wrong to
do so, because, as a matter of fact, the wonderful and the improbable
don't happen, and men's lives are not really shaped by odd coincidence. Now, mind you, if that were so, I would not grant your conclusion,
because I think the "criticism-of-life" theory is all nonsense; but I
deny your premise. A most singular thing has happened to me to-night." "Really, Dyson, I am very glad to hear it. Of course I oppose your
argument, whatever it may be; but if you would be good enough to tell me
of your adventure I should be delighted." "Well, it came about like this. I have had a very hard day's work;
indeed, I have scarcely moved from my old bureau since seven o'clock
last night. I wanted to work out that idea we discussed last Tuesday,
you know, the notion of the fetish-worshipper." "Yes, I remember. Have you been able to do anything with it?" "Yes; it came out better than I expected; but there were great
difficulties, the usual agony between the conception and the execution. Anyhow I got it done at about seven o'clock to-night, and I thought I
should like a little of the fresh air.