The first time I
ever met Mr. Tallent was in the late summer of 1906, in a small, lonely inn on
the top of a mountain. For natives, rainy days in these places are not very
different from other days, since work fills them all, wet or fine. But for the
tourist, rainy days are boring. I had been bored for nearly a week, and was
thinking of returning to London, when Mr. Tallent came. And because I could not
“place” Mr. Tallent, nor elucidate him to my satisfaction, he intrigued me. For
a barrister should be able to sum up men in a few minutes.
I did not see Mr.
Tallent arrive, nor did I observe him entering the room. I looked up, and he
was there, in the small firelit parlour with its Bible, wool mats and copper
preserving pan. He was reading a manuscript, slightly moving his lips as he
read. He was a gentle, moth-like man, very lean and about six foot three or
more. He had neutral-coloured hair and eyes, a nondescript suit, limp-looking
hands and slightly turned-up toes. The most noticeable thing about him was an
expression of passive and enduring obstinacy.
I wished him good
evening, and asked if he had a paper, as he seemed to have come from
civilization.
“No,” he said
softly, “no. Only a little manuscript of my own.”
Now, as a rule I
am as wary of manuscripts as a hare is of greyhounds. Having once been a
critic, I am always liable to receive parcels of these for advice. So I might
have saved myself and a dozen or so of other people from what turned out to be
a terrible, an appalling, incubus. But the day had been so dull, and having
exhausted Old Moore and sampled the Imprecatory Psalms, I had nothing else to
read. So I said, “Your own?”
“Even so,” replied
Mr. Tallent modestly.
“May I have the
privilege?” I queried, knowing he intended me to have it.
“How kind!” he
exclaimed. “A stranger, knowing nothing of my hopes and aims, yet willing to
undertake so onerous a task.”
“Not at all!” I
replied, with a nervous chuckle.
“I think,” he
murmured, drawing near and, as it were, taking possession of me, looming above
me with his great height, “it might be best for me to read it to you. I am
considered to have rather a fine reading voice.”
I said I should be
delighted, reflecting that supper could not very well be later than nine. I
knew I should not like the reading.
He stood before
the cloth-draped mantelpiece.
“This,” he said,
“shall be my rostrum.” Then he read.
I wish I could
describe to you that slow, expressionless, unstoppable voice. It was a voice
for which at the time I could find no comparison. Now I know that it was like
the voice of the loud speaker in a dull subject. At first one listened, taking
in even the sense of the words. I took in all the first six chapters, which
were unbelievably dull. I got all the scenery, characters, undramatic events
clearly marshalled. I imagined that something would, in time, happen. I thought
the characters were going to develop, do fearful things or great and holy
deeds. But they did nothing. Nothing happened. The book was flat, formless, yet
not vital enough to be inchoate. It was just a meandering expression of a
negative personality, with a plethora of muted, borrowed, stale ideas. He
always said what one expected him to say. One knew what all his people would
do. One waited for the culminating platitude as for an expected twinge of
toothache. I thought he would pause after a time, for even the most arrogant
usually do that, apologising and at the same time obviously waiting for one to
say, “Do go on, please.’’
This was not
necessary in his case. In fact, it was impossible. The slow, monotonous voice
went on without a pause, with the terrible tirelessness of a gramophone. I
longed for him to whisper or shout— anything to relieve the tedium. I tried to
think of other things, but he read too distinctly for that. I could neither listen
to him nor ignore him. I have never spent such an evening. As luck would have
it the little maidservant did not achieve our meal till nearly ten o’clock. The
hours dragged on.
At last I said:
“Could we have a pause, just for a few minutes?”
“Why?” he
enquired.
“For… for
discussion,” I weakly murmured.
“Not,” he replied,
“at the most exciting moment. Don’t you realise that now, at last, I have
worked up my plot to the most dramatic, moment? All the characters are waiting,
attent, for the culminating tragedy.”
He went on
reading. I went on awaiting the culminating tragedy. But there was no tragedy.
My head ached abominably. The voice flowed on, over my senses, the room, the
world. I felt as if it would wash me away into eternity. I found myself
thinking, quite solemnly:
“If she doesn’t
bring supper soon, I shall kill him.”
I thought it in
the instinctive way in which one thinks it of an earwig or a midge. I took
refuge in the consideration how to do it? This was absorbing. It enabled me to
detach myself completely from the sense of what he read. I considered all the
ways open to me. Strangling. The bread knife on the sideboard. Hanging. I
gloated over them, I was beginning to be almost happy, when suddenly the
reading stopped.
“She is bringing
supper,” he said. “Now we can have a little discussion. Afterwards I will
finish the manuscript.”
He did. And after
that, he told me all about his will. He said he was leaving all his money for
the posthumous publication of his manuscripts. He also said that he would like
me to draw up this for him, and to be trustee of the manuscripts.
I said I was too
busy. He replied that I could draw up the will to-morrow.
“I’m going
to-morrow,” I interpolated passionately.
“You cannot go
until the carrier goes in the afternoon,” he triumphed. “Meanwhile, you can
draw up the will. After that you need do no more. You can pay a critic to read
the manuscripts. You can pay a publisher to publish them. And I in them shall
be remembered.”
He added that if I
still had doubts as to their literary worth, he would read me another.
I gave in. Would
anyone else have done differently? I drew up the will, left an address where he
could send his stuff, and left the inn.
“Thank God!” I
breathed devoutly, as the turn of the lane hid him from view. He was standing
on the doorstep, beginning to read what he called a pastoral to a big
cattle-dealer who had called for a pint of bitter. I smiled to think how much
more he would get than he had bargained for.
After that, I
forgot Mr. Tallent. I heard nothing more of him for some years. Occasionally I
glanced down the lists of books to see if anybody else had relieved me of my
task by publishing Mr. Tallent. But nobody had.
It was about ten
years later, when I was in hospital with a “Blighty” wound, that I met Mr.
Tallent again. I was convalescent, sitting in the sun with some other chaps,
when the door opened softly, and Mr. Tallent stole in. He read to us for two
hours. He remembered me, and had a good deal to say about coincidence. When he
had gone, I said to the nurse, ‘’If you let that fellow in again while I’m
here. I’ll kill him.”
She laughed a good
deal, but the other chaps all agreed with me, and as a matter of fact, he never
did come again.
Not long after
this I saw the notice of his death in the paper.
“Poor chap!” I
thought, “he’s been reading too much. Somebody’s patience has given out. Well,
he won’t ever be able to read to me again.”
Then I remembered
the manuscripts, realising that, if he had been as good as his word, my
troubles had only just begun.
And it was so.
First came the
usual kind of letter from a solicitor in the town where he had lived. Next I
had a call from the said solicitor’s clerk, who brought a large tin box.
“The relations,”
he said, “of the deceased are extremely angry. Nothing has been left to them.
They say that the manuscripts are worthless, and that the living have rights.”
I asked how they
knew that the manuscripts were worthless.
“It appears, sir,
that Mr. Tallent has, from time to time, read these aloud –”
I managed to
conceal a grin.
“And they claim,
sir, to share equally with the—er – manuscripts. They threaten to take
proceedings, and have been getting legal opinions as to the advisability of
demanding an investigation of the material you have.”
I looked at the
box. There was an air of Joanna Southcott about it.
I asked if it were
full.
“Quite, sir. Typed
MSS. Very neatly done.”
He produced the
key, a copy of the will, and a sealed letter.
I took the box
home with me that evening. Fortified by dinner, a cigar and a glass of port, I
considered it. There is an extraordinary air of fatality about a box. For bane
or for blessing, it has a perpetual fascination for mankind. A wizard’s coffer,
a casket of jewels, the alabaster box of precious nard, a chest of bridal
linen, a stone sarcophagus – what a strange mystery is about them all! So when
I opened Mr. Tallent’s box, I felt like somebody letting loose a genie. And
indeed I was. I had already perused the will and the letter, and discovered
that the fortune was moderately large. The letter merely repeated what Mr.
Tallent had told me. I glanced at some of the manuscripts. Immediately the room
seemed full of Mr. Tallent’s presence and his voice. I looked towards the now dusky
corners of the room as if he might be looming there. As I ran through more of
the papers, I realised that what Mr. Tallent had chosen to read to me had been
the best of them. I looked up Johnson’s telephone number and asked him to come
round. He is the kind of chap who never makes any money. He is a freelance
journalist with a conscience. I knew he would be glad of the job.
He came round at
once. He eyed the manuscripts with rapture. For at heart he is a critic, and
has the eternal hope of unearthing a masterpiece.
“You had better
take a dozen at a time, and keep a record,” I said. “Verdict at the end.”
“Will it depend on
me whether they are published?”
“Which are
published,” I said. “Some will have to be. The will says so.”
“But if I found
them all worthless, the poor beggars would get more of the cash? Damnable to be
without cash.”
“I shall have to
look into that. I am not sure if it is legally possible. What, for instance, is
the standard?”
“I shall create
the standard,” said Johnson rather haughtily. “Of course, if I find a
masterpiece –”
“If you find a
masterpiece, my dear chap,’’ I said, “I’ll give you a hundred pounds.”
He asked if I had
thought of a publisher. I said I had decided on Jukes, since no book, however
bad, could make his reputation worse than it was, and the money might save his
credit.
“Is that quite
fair to poor Tallent?” he asked. Mr. Tallent had already got hold of him.
“If,” I said as a
parting benediction, “you wish you had never gone into it (as, when yon have
put your hand to the plough, you will), remember that at least they were never
read aloud to you, and be thankful.”
Nothing occurred
for a week. Then letters began to come from Mr. Tallent’s relations. They were
a prolific family. They were all very poor, very angry and intensely
uninterested in literature. They wrote from all kinds of view-points, in all kinds
of styles. They were, however, all alike in two things—the complete absence of
literary excellence and legal exactitude.
It took an
increasing time daily to read and answer these. If I gave them any hope, I at
once felt Mr. Tallent’s hovering presence, mute, anxious, hurt. If I gave no
hope, I got a solicitor’s letter by return of post. Nobody but myself seemed to
feel the pathos of Mr. Tallent’s ambitions and dreams. I was notified that
proceedings were going to be taken by firms all over England. Money was being
recklessly spent to rob Mr. Tallent of his immortality, but it appeared, later,
that Mr. Tallent could take care of himself.
When Johnson came
for more of the contents of the box, he said that there was no sign of a
masterpiece yet, and that they were as bad as they well could be.
“A pathetic chap,
Tallent,” he said.
“Don’t, for God’s
sake, my dear chap, let him get at you,” I implored him. “Don’t give way. He’ll
haunt you, as he’s haunting me, with that abominable pathos of his. I think of
him and his box continually just as one does of a life and death plea. If I sit
by my own fireside, I can hear him reading. When I am just going to sleep, I
dream that he is looming over me like an immense, wan moth. If I forget him for
a little while, a letter comes from one of his unutterable relations and
recalls me. Be wary of Tallent.”
Needless to tell
you that he did not take my advice. By the time he had finished the box, he was
as much under Tallent’s thumb as I was. Bitterly disappointed that there was no
masterpiece, he was still loyal to the writer, yet he was emotionally harrowed
by the pitiful letters that the relations were now sending to all the papers.
“I dreamed,” he
said to me one day (Johnson always says “dreamed”, because he is a critic and
considers it the elegant form of expression), “I dreamed that poor Tallent
appeared to me in the watches of the night and told me exactly how each of his
things came to him. He said they came like ‘Kubla Khan’.”
I said it must
have taken all night.
“It did,” he
replied. “And it has made me dislike a masterpiece.”
I asked him if he
intended to be present at the general meeting.
“Meeting?”
“Yes. Things have
got to such a pitch that we have had to call one. There will be about a hundred
people. I shall have to entertain them to a meal afterwards. I can’t very well
charge it up to the account of the deceased.”
“Gosh! It’ll cost
a pretty penny.”
“It will. But
perhaps we shall settle something. I shall be thankful.”
“You’re not
looking well, old chap,” he said, “Worn, you seem.”
“I am,” I said.
“Tallent is ever with me. Will you come?”
“Rather. But I
don’t know what to say.”
“The truth, the
Whole truth—”
“But it’s so awful
to think of that poor soul spending his whole life on those damned… and then
that they should never see the light of day.”
“Worse that they
should. Much worse.”
“My dear chap,
what a confounded position!”
“If I had foreseen
how confounded,” I said, “I’d have strangled the fellow on the top of that
mountain. I have had to get to clerks to deal with the correspondence. I get no
rest. All night I dream of Tallent. And now I hear that a consumptive relation
of his has died of disappointment at not getting any of the money, and his wife
has written me a wild letter threatening to accuse me of manslaughter. Of
course that’s all stuff, but it shows what a hysterical state everybody’s in. I
feel pretty well done for.”
“You’d feel worse
if you’d read the boxful.”
I agreed.
We had a stormy
meeting. It was obvious that the people did need the money. They were the sort
of struggling, under-vitalised folk who always do need it. Children were
waiting for a chance in life, old people were waiting to be saved from death a
little longer, middle-aged people were waiting to set themselves up in business
or buy snug little houses. And there was Tallent, out of it all, in a spiritual
existence, not needing beef and bread any more, deliberately keeping it from
them.
As I thought this,
I distinctly saw Tallent pass the window of the room I had hired for the
occasion. I stood up; I pointed; I cried out to them to follow him. The very
man himself.
Johnson came to
me.
“Steady, old man,”
he said. “You’re overstrained.”
“But I did see
him,” I said. “The very man. The cause of all the mischief. If I could only get
my hands on him!”
A medical man who
had married one of Tallent’s sisters said that these hallucinations were very
common, and that I was evidently not a fit person to have charge of the money.
This brought me a ray of hope, till that ass Johnson contradicted him, saying
foolish things about my career. And a diversion was caused by a tremulous old
lady calling out, ‘’The Church! The Church! Consult the Church! There’s
something in the Bible about it, only I can’t call it to mind at the moment.
Has anybody got a Bible?”
A clerical nephew
produced a pocket New Testament, and it transpired that what she had meant was,
“Take ten talents.”
“If I could take
one, madam,” I said, “it would be enough.’’
“It speaks of that
too,” she replied triumphantly. “Listen! ‘If any man have one talent…’ Oh,
there’s everything in the Bible!’’
“Let us,” remarked
one of the thirteen solicitors, ‘’get to business. Whether it’s in the Bible or
not, whether Mr. Tallent went past the window or not, the legality or
illegality, of what we propose is not affected. Facts are facts. The deceased
is dead. You’ve got the money. We want it.”
“I devoutly wish
you’d got it,” I said, “and that Tallent was haunting you instead of me.”
The meeting lasted
four hours. The wildest ideas were put forward. One or two sporting cousins of
the deceased suggested a decision by games-representatives of the would-be
beneficiaries and representatives of the manuscript. They were unable to see that
this could not affect the legal aspect. Johnson was asked for his opinion. He
said that from a critic’s point of view the MSS. were balderdash. Everybody
looked kindly upon him. But just as he was sunning himself in this atmosphere,
and trying to forget Tallent, an immense lady, like Boadicea, advanced upon
him, towering over him in a hostile manner.
“I haven’t read
the books, and I’m not going to,” she said, “but I take exception to that word
balderdash, sir, and I consider it libellous. Let me tell you, I brought Mr.
Tallent into the world!” I looked at her with awesome wonder. She had brought
that portent into the world! But how… whom had she persuaded?… I pulled myself
up. And as I turned away from the contemplation of Boadicea, I saw Tallent pass
the window again.
I rushed forward
and tried to push up the sash. But the place was built for meetings, not for
humanity, and it would not open. I seized the poker, intending to smash the
glass. I suppose I must have looked rather mad, and as everybody else had been
too intent on business to look out of the window, nobody believed that I had
seen anything.
“You might just go
round to the nearest chemist’s and get some bromide,” said the doctor to
Johnson. “He’s over-wrought.”
Johnson, who was
thankful to escape Boadicea, went with alacrity.
The meeting was,
however, over at last. A resolution was passed that we should try to arrange
things out of court. We were to take the opinions of six eminent lawyers-judges
preferably. We were also to submit what Johnson thought the best story to a
distinguished critic. According to what they said we were to divide the money
up or leave things as they were.
I felt very much
discouraged as I walked home. All these opinions would entail much work and
expense. There seemed no end to it.
“Damn the man!” I
muttered, as I turned the corner into the square in which I live. And there,
just the width of the square away from me, was the man himself. I could almost
have wept. What had I done that the gods should play with me thus?
I hurried forward,
but he was walking fast, and in a moment he turned down a side-street. When I
got to the corner, the street was empty. After this, hardly a day passed
without my seeing Tallent. It made me horribly jumpy and nervous, and the fear
of madness began to prey on my mind. Meanwhile, the business went on. It was
finally decided that half the money should be divided among the relations. Now
I thought there would be peace, and for a time there was—comparatively.
But it was only
about a month from this date that I heard from one of the solicitors to say
that a strange and disquieting thing had happened – two of the
beneficiaries were haunted by Mr. Tallent to such an extent that their reason
was in danger. I wrote to ask what form the haunting took. He said they
continually heard Mr. Tallent reading aloud from his works. Wherever they were
in the house, they still heard him. I wondered if he would begin reading to me
soon. So far it had only been visions. If he began to read…
In a few months I
heard that both the relations who were haunted had been taken to an asylum.
־While they were in the asylum they heard nothing. But, some time after, on
being certified as cured and released, they heard the reading again, and had to
go back. Gradually the same thing happened to others, but only to one or two at
a time.
During the long
winter, two years after his death, it began to happen to me.
I immediately went
to a specialist, who said there was acute nervous prostration, and recommended
a “home־’. But I refused. I would fight Tallent to the last. Six of the
beneficiaries were now in “homes”, and every penny of the money they had had
was used up.
I considered
things. “Bell, book and candle” seemed to be what was required. But how, when,
where to find him? I consulted a spiritualist, a priest and a woman who has
more intuitive perception than anyone I know. From their advice I made my
plans. But it was Lesbia who saved me.
“Get a man who can
run to go about with you,” she said. “The moment He appeal’s, let your companion
rush round by a side-street and cut him off.”
“But how will that
– ?”
“Never mind. I
know what I think.”
She gave me a wise
little smile.
I did what she
advised, but it was not till my patience was nearly exhausted that I saw
Tallent again. The reading went on, but only in the evenings when I was alone,
and at night. I asked people in evening after evening. But when I got into bed,
it began.
Johnson suggested
that I should get married.
“What?” I said,
‘’offer a woman a ruined nervous system, a threatened home, and a possible end
in an asylum?”
“There’s one woman
who would jump at it. I love my love with an L.”
“Don’t be an ass,”
I said. I felt in no mood for jokes. All I wanted was to get things cleared up.
About three years
after Tallent’s death, my companion and I, going out rather earlier than usual,
saw him hastening down a long road which had no side-streets leading out of it.
As luck would have it, an empty taxi passed US. I shouted. We got in.
Just in front of Tallent’s ghost we stopped, leapt out, and flung ourselves
upon him.
“My God!” I cried.
“He’s solid’:
He was perfectly
solid, and not a little alarmed.
We put him into
the taxi and took him to my house.
“Now, Tallent!’’ I
said, “you will answer for what you have done.”
He looked scared,
but dreamy.
“Why aren’t you
dead?” was my next question.
He seemed hurt.
“I never died,” he
replied softly.
”It was in the
papers.”
“I put it in. I
was in America. It was quite easy.”
“And that
continual haunting of me, and the wicked driving of your unfortunate relations
into asylums?” I was working myself into a rage. “Do you know how many of them
are there now?”
“Yes. I know. Very
interesting.”
“Interesting?”
“It was in a great
cause,” he said. “Possibly you didn’t grasp that I was a progressive
psycho-analyst, and that I did not take those novels of mine seriously. In
fact, they were just part of the experiment.”
“In heaven’s name,
what experiment?”
“The plural would
be better, really,” he said, “for there were many experiments.”
“But what for, you
damned old blackguard?” I shouted.
“For my magnum
opus he said modestly.
“And what is your
abominable magnum opus, you wicked old man?”
“It will be famous
all over the world,” he said complacently. “All this has given me exceptional
opportunities. It was so easy to get into my relations’ houses and experiment
with them. It was regrettable, though, that I could not follow them to the asylum.”
This evidently
worried him far more than the trouble he had caused. So it was you reading,
every time?”
“Everytime.”
“And it was you
who went past the window of that horrible room when we discussed your will?”
“Yes. A most
gratifying spectacle!”
“And now, you old
scoundrel, before I decide what to do with you,” I said, “what is the magnum
opus?”
“It is a
treatise,” he said, with the pleased expression that made me so wild. “A
treatise that will eclipse all former work in that field, and its title is – ‘An
Exhaustive Enquiry, with numerous Experiments, into the Power of Human
Endurance’.”