the publishers told you he behaved badly, did they? they didn't know the truth about the "wrackham memoirs."
you may well wonder how grevill burton got mixed up with them, how he ever could have known charles wrackham.
well, he did know him, pretty intimately, too, but it was through antigone, and because of antigone, and for antigone's adorable sake. we never called her anything but antigone, though angelette was the name that wrackham, with that peculiar shortsightedness of his, had given to the splendid creature.
why antigone? you'll see why.
no, i don't mean that wrackham murdered his father and married his mother; but he wouldn't have stuck at either if it could have helped him to his literary ambition. and every time he sat down to write a book he must have been disgusting to the immortal gods. and antigone protected him.
she was the only living child he'd had, or, as burton once savagely said, was ever likely to have. and i can tell you that if poor wrackham's other works had been one half as fine as antigone it would have been glory enough for burton to have edited him. for he did edit him.
they met first, if you'll believe it, at ford lankester's [pg 178] funeral. i'd gone to chenies early with young furnival, who was "doing" the funeral for his paper, and with burton, who knew the lankesters, as i did, slightly. i'd had a horrible misgiving that i should see wrackham there; and there he was, in the intense mourning of that black cloak and slouch hat he used to wear. the cloak was a fine thing as far as it went, and with a few more inches he really might have carried it off; but those few more inches were just what had been denied him. still, you couldn't miss him or mistake him. he was exactly like his portraits in the papers; you know the haggard, bilious face that would have been handsome if he'd given it a chance; the dark, straggling, and struggling beard, the tempestuous, disheveled look he had, and the immortal attitude. he was standing in it under a yew tree looking down into lankester's grave. it was a small white chamber about two feet square—enough for his ashes. the earth at the top of it was edged with branches of pine and laurel.
furnival said afterward you could see what poor wrackham was thinking of. he would have pine branches. pine would be appropriate for the stormy child of nature that he was. and laurel—there would have to be lots of laurel. he was at the height of his great vogue, the brief popular fury for him that was absurd then and seems still more absurd to-day, now that we can measure him. he takes no room, no room at all, even in the popular imagination; less room than lankester's ashes took—or his own, for that matter.
yes, i know it's sad in all conscience. but furnival seemed to think it funny then, for he called my attention to him. i mustn't miss him, he said.
perhaps i might have thought it funny too if it hadn't been for antigone. i was not prepared for [pg 179] antigone. i hadn't realized her. she was there beside her father, not looking into the grave, but looking at him as if she knew what he was thinking and found it, as we find it now, pathetic. but unbearably pathetic.
somehow there seemed nothing incongruous in her being there. no, i can't tell you what she was like to look at, except that she was like a great sacred, sacrificial figure; she might have come there to pray, or to offer something, or to pour out a libation. she was tall and grave, and gave the effect of something white and golden. in her black gown and against the yew trees she literally shone.
it was because of antigone that i went up and spoke to him, and did it (i like to think i did it now) with reverence. he seemed, in spite of the reverence, to be a little dashed at seeing me there. his idea, evidently, was that if so obscure a person as i could be present, it diminished his splendor and significance.
he inquired (for hope was immortal in him) whether i was there for the papers? i said no, i wasn't there for anything. i had come down with burton, because we—— but he interrupted me.
"what's he doing here?" he said. there was the funniest air of resentment and suspicion about him.
i reminded him that burton's "essay on ford lankester" had given him a certain claim. besides, mrs. lankester had asked him. he was one of the few she had asked. i really couldn't tell him she had asked me.
his gloom was awful enough when he heard that burton had been asked. you see, the fact glared, and even he must have felt it—that he, with his tremendous, his horrific vogue, had not achieved what grevill burton had by his young talent. he had never known [pg 180] ford lankester. goodness knows i didn't mean to rub it into him; but there it was.
we had moved away from the edge of the grave (i think he didn't like to be seen standing there with me) and i begged him to introduce me to his daughter. he did so with an alacrity which i have since seen was anything but flattering to me, and left me with her while he made what you might call a dead set at furnival. he had had his eye on him and on the other representatives of the press all the time he had been talking to me. now he made straight for him; when furnival edged off he followed; when furnival dodged he doubled; he was so afraid that furnival might miss him. as if furnival could have missed him, as if in the face of wrackham's vogue his paper would have let him miss him. it would have been as much as furny's place on it was worth.
of course that showed that wrackham ought never to have been there; but there he was; and when you think of the unspeakable solemnity and poignancy of the occasion it really is rather awful that the one vivid impression i have left of it is of charles wrackham; charles wrackham under the yew tree; charles wrackham leaning up against a pillar (he remained standing during the whole of the service in the church) with his arm raised and his face hidden in his cloak. the attitude this time was immense. furnival (furny was really dreadful) said it was "brother mourning brother." but i caught him—i caught him three times—just raising his near eyelid above his drooped arm and peeping at furnival and the other pressmen to see that they weren't missing him.
it must have been then that burton saw, though he says now he didn't. he won't own up to having seen him. we had hidden ourselves behind the mourners in the chancel and he swears that he didn't see anybody but antigone, and that he only saw her because, in spite of her efforts to hide too, she stood out so; she was so tall, so white and golden. her head was bowed with—well, with grief, i think, but also with what i've no doubt now was a sort of shame. i wondered: did she share her father's illusion? or had she seen through it? did she see the awful absurdity of the draped figure at her side? did she realize the gulf that separated him from the undying dead? did she know that we couldn't have stood his being there but for our certainty that somewhere above us and yet with us, from his high seat among the undying, ford lankester was looking on and enjoying more than we could enjoy—with a divine, immortal mirth—the rich, amazing comedy of him. charles wrackham there—at his funeral!
but it wasn't till it was all over that he came out really strong. we were sitting together in the parlor of the village inn, he and antigone, and grevill burton and furnival and i, with an hour on our hands before our train left. i had ordered tea on antigone's account, for i saw that she was famished. they had come down from devonshire that day. they had got up at five to catch the early train from seaton junction, and then they'd made a dash across london for the 12.30 from marylebone; and somehow they'd either failed or forgotten to lunch. antigone said she hadn't cared about it. anyhow, there she was with us. we were all feeling that relief from nervous tension which comes after a funeral. furnival had his stylo out and was jotting down a few impressions. wrackham had edged up to him and was sitting, you may say, in furny's pocket while he explained to us that his weak health would have prevented him from coming, but [pg 182] that he had to come. he evidently thought that the funeral couldn't have taken place without him—not with any decency, you know. and then antigone said a thing for which i loved her instantly.
"i oughtn't to have come," she said. "i felt all the time i oughtn't. i hadn't any right."
that drew him.
"you had your right," he said. "you are your father's daughter."
he brooded somberly.
"it was not," he said, "what i had expected—that meager following. who were there? not two—not three—and there should have been an army of us."
he squared himself and faced the invisible as if he led the van.
that and his attitude drew burton down on to him.
"was there ever an army," he asked dangerously, "of 'us'?"
wrackham looked at burton (it was the first time he'd taken the smallest notice of him) with distinct approval, as if the young man had suddenly shown more ability than he had given him credit for. but you don't suppose he'd seen the irony in him. not he!
"you're right," he said. "very right. all the same, there ought to have been more there besides myself."
there was a perfectly horrible silence, and then antigone's voice came through it, pure and fine and rather slow.
"there couldn't be. there couldn't really be anybody—there—at all. he stood alone."
and with her wonderful voice there went a look, a look of intelligence, as wonderful, as fine and pure. it went straight to burton. it was humble, and yet there was a sort of splendid pride about it. and there [pg 183] was no revolt, mind you, no disloyalty in it; the beauty of the thing was that it didn't set her father down; it left him where he was, as high as you please, as high as his vogue could lift him. ford lankester was beyond him only because he was beyond them all.
and yet we wondered how he'd take it.
he took it as if antigone had been guilty of a social blunder; as if her behavior had been in some way painful and improper. that's to say he took no notice of it at all beyond shifting his seat a little so as to screen her. and then he spoke—exclusively to us.
"i came," he said, "partly because i felt that, for all lankester's greatness, this—" (his gesture indicated us all sitting there in our mourning)—"this was the last of him. it's a question whether he'll ever mean much to the next generation. there's no doubt that he limited his public—wilfully. he alienated the many. and, say what you like, the judgment of posterity is not the judgment of the few." there was a faint murmur of dissent (from furnival), but wrackham's voice, which had gathered volume, rolled over it. "not for the novelist. not for the painter of contemporary life."
he would have kept it up interminably on those lines and on that scale, but that antigone created a diversion (i think she did it on purpose to screen him) by getting up and going out softly into the porch of the inn.
burton followed her there.
you forgive many things to burton. i have had to forgive his cutting me out with antigone. he says that they talked about nothing but ford lankester out there, and certainly as i joined them i heard antigone saying again, "i oughtn't to have come. i only came because i adored him." i heard burton say, [pg 184] "and you never knew him?" and antigone, "no, how could i?"
and then i saw him give it back to her with his young radiance. "it's a pity. he would have adored you."
he always says it was ford lankester that did it.
the next thing furnival's article came out. charles wrackham's name was in it all right, and poor antigone's. i'm sure it made her sick to see it there. furny had been very solemn and decorous in his article; but in private his profanity was awful. he said it only remained now for charles wrackham to die.
