XI
I said that I was Clio's servant. And I felt, when I said it, that youlooked at me dubiously, and murmured among yourselves.
Not that you doubted I was somewhat connected with Clio's household. Thelady after whom I have named this book is alive, and well known to someof you personally, to all of you by repute. Nor had you finished myfirst page before you guessed my theme to be that episode in her lifewhich caused so great a sensation among the newspaper-reading public afew years ago. (It all seems but yesterday, does it not? They are stillvivid to us, those head-lines. We have hardly yet ceased to be edifiedby the morals pointed in those leading articles.) And yet very soon youfound me behaving just like any novelist--reporting the exact wordsthat passed between the protagonists at private interviews--aye, and theexact thoughts and emotions that were in their breasts. Little wonderthat you wondered! Let me make things clear to you.
I have my mistress' leave to do this. At first (for reasons which youwill presently understand) she demurred. But I pointed out to her that Ihad been placed in a false position, and that until this were rectifiedneither 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 looksback with affection. She kept only one servant, Herodotus. The romanticelement in him appealed to her. He died, and she had about her a largestaff of able and faithful servants, whose way of doing their workirritated and depressed her. To them, apparently, life consisted ofnothing but politics and military operations--things to which she, beinga woman, was somewhat indifferent. She was jealous of Melpomene. Itseemed to her that her own servants worked from without at a mass of drydetails which might as well be forgotten. Melpomene's worked on materialthat was eternally interesting--the souls of men and women; and notfrom without, either; but rather casting themselves into those soulsand showing to us the essence of them. She was particularly struck by aremark of Aristotle's, that tragedy was "more philosophic" than history,inasmuch as it concerned itself with what might be, while history wasconcerned with merely what had been. This summed up for her what shehad often felt, but could not have exactly formulated. She saw that thedepartment over which she presided was at best an inferior one. She sawthat just what she had liked--and rightly liked--in poor dear Herodotuswas just what prevented him from being a good historian. It was wrong tomix up facts and fancies. But why should her present servants deal withonly one little special set of the variegated facts of life? It was notin her power to interfere. The Nine, by the terms of the charterthat Zeus had granted to them, were bound to leave their servants anabsolutely free hand. But Clio could at least refrain from reading theworks which, by a legal fiction, she was supposed to inspire. Once ortwice in the course of a century, she would glance into this or that newhistory book, only to lay it down with a shrug of her shoulders. Someof the mediaeval chronicles she rather liked. But when, one day, Pallasasked 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 theylike). 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 thesly that she was an omnivorous reader of dramatic and lyric poetry.She watched with keen interest the earliest developments of the proseromance in southern Europe; and after the publication of "ClarissaHarlowe" she spent practically all her time in reading novels. It wasnot until the Spring of the year 1863 that an entirely new elementforced itself into her peaceful life. Zeus fell in love with her.
To us, for whom so quickly "time doth transfix the flourish set onyouth," there is something strange, even a trifle ludicrous, in thethought that Zeus, after all these years, is still at the beck and callof his passions. And it seems anyhow lamentable that he has not yetgained self-confidence enough to appear in his own person to the ladyof his choice, and is still at pains to transform himself into whateverobject 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 disguiseimmediately, and, with great courage and independence, bade him begone.Rebuffed, he was not deflected. Indeed it would seem that Clio's highspirit did but sharpen his desire. Hardly a day passed but he appearedin what he hoped would be the irresistible form--a recently discoveredfragment of Polybius, an advance copy of the forthcoming issue of "TheHistorical Review," the note-book of Professor Carl Voertschlaffen...One day, all-prying Hermes told him of Clio's secret addiction tonovel-reading. Thenceforth, year in, year out, it was in the form offiction that Zeus wooed her. The sole result was that she grew sick ofthe sight of novels, and found a perverse pleasure in reading history.These dry details of what had actually happened were a relief, she toldherself, from all that make-believe.
One Sunday afternoon--the day before that very Monday on which thisnarrative opens--it occurred to her how fine a thing history might be ifthe historian had the novelist's privileges. Suppose he could be presentat every scene which he was going to describe, a presence invisible andinevitable, and equipped with power to see into the breasts of all thepersons whose actions he set himself to watch...
While the Muse was thus musing, Zeus (disguised as Miss Annie S. Swan'slatest work) paid his usual visit. She let her eyes rest on him. Hitherand thither she divided her swift mind, and addressed him in wingedwords. "Zeus, father of gods and men, cloud-compeller, what wouldst thouof me? But first will I say what I would of thee"; and she besought himto extend to the writers of history such privileges as are granted tonovelists. His whole manner had changed. He listened to her with themassive gravity of a ruler who never yet has allowed private influenceto 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 historianslaboured. But the novelists--were they not equally handicapped? They hadto treat of persons who never existed, events which never were. Onlyby the privilege of being in the thick of those events, and in the verybowels of those persons, could they hope to hold the reader's attention.If similar privileges were granted to the historian, the demand fornovels would cease forthwith, and many thousand of hard-working,deserving men and women would be thrown out of employment. In fact, Cliohad asked him an impossible favour. But he might--he said he conceivablymight--be induced to let her have her way just once. In that event, allshe would have to do was to keep her eye on the world's surface, andthen, so soon as she had reason to think that somewhere was impendingsomething 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 fromthe Paddington platform into the Oxford train. A few moments later Ifound myself suddenly on Parnassus. In hurried words Clio told me how Icame there, and what I had to do. She said she had selected me becauseshe 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 ofgesture which I shall never forget, he stretched his hand over me, and Iwas indued with the promised gifts. And then, lo! I was on the platformof Oxford station. The train was not due for another hour. But the timepassed pleasantly enough.
It was fun to float all unseen, to float all unhampered by any corporealnonsense, up and down the platform. It was fun to watch the inmostthoughts of the station-master, of the porters, of the young person atthe buffet. But of course I did not let the holiday-mood master me. Irealised the seriousness of my mission. I must concentrate myself onthe 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 tha
t she would be a great success. That was all. Had I had theinstinct that was given to those Emperors in stone, and even to thedog Corker, I should have begged Clio to send in my stead some man ofstronger nerve. She had charged me to be calmly vigilant, scrupulouslyfair. I could have been neither, had I from the outset foreseen all.Only because the immediate future was broken to me by degrees, first asa set of possibilities, then as a set of probabilities that yet mightnot come off, was I able to fulfil the trust imposed in me. Even so, itwas hard. I had always accepted the doctrine that to understand all isto forgive all. Thanks to Zeus, I understood all about Miss Dobson, andyet there were moments when she repelled me--moments when I wished tosee her neither from without nor from within. So soon as the Duke ofDorset met her on the Monday night, I felt I was in duty bound to keephim under constant surveillance. Yet there were moments when I was sosorry for him that I deemed myself a brute for shadowing him.
Ever since I can remember, I have been beset by a recurring doubt asto whether I be or be not quite a gentleman. I have never attempted todefine that term: I have but feverishly wondered whether in its usualacceptation (whatever that is) it be strictly applicable to myself. Manypeople hold that the qualities connoted by it are primarily moral--akind heart, honourable conduct, and so forth. On Clio's mission, I foundhonour and kindness tugging me in precisely opposite directions. In sofar 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 didat one point betray Clio's trust. When Miss Dobson had done the deedrecorded at the close of the foregoing chapter, I gave the Duke ofDorset an hour's grace.
I could have done no less. In the lives of most of us is some one thingthat we would not after the lapse of how many years soever confess toour most understanding friend; the thing that does not bear thinkingof; the one thing to be forgotten; the unforgettable thing. Notthe commission of some great crime: this can be atoned for by greatpenances; and the very enormity of it has a dark grandeur. Maybe, somelittle deadly act of meanness, some hole-and-corner treachery? Butwhat a man has once willed to do, his will helps him to forget. Theunforgettable thing in his life is usually not a thing he has done orleft undone, but a thing done to him--some insolence or cruelty forwhich he could not, or did not, avenge himself. This it is that oftencomes back to him, years after, in his dreams, and thrusts itselfsuddenly into his waking thoughts, so that he clenches his hands, andshakes his head, and hums a tune loudly--anything to beat it off. In thevery hour when first befell him that odious humiliation, would you havespied on him? I gave the Duke of Dorset an hour's grace.
What were his thoughts in that interval, what words, if any, he utteredto the night, never will be known. For this, Clio has abused me inlanguage less befitting a Muse than a fishwife. I do not care. I wouldrather be chidden by Clio than by my own sense of delicacy, any day.