During the greater part of that summer Lucian had been working steadily on two things: the tragedy which Mr. Harcourt was to produce at the Athen?um in December, and a new poem which Mr. Robertson intended to publish about the middle of the autumn season. Lucian was flying at high game in respect of both. The tragedy was intended to introduce something of the spirit and dignity of Greek art to the nineteenth-century stage—there was to be nothing common or mean in connection with its production; it was to be a gorgeous spectacle, but one of high distinction, and Lucian’s direct intention in writing it was to set English dramatic art on an elevation to which it had never yet been lifted. The poem was an equally ambitious attempt to revive the epic; its subject, the Norman Conquest, had filled Lucian’s mind since boyhood, and from his tenth year onwards he had read every book and document procurable which treated of that fascinating period. He had begun the work during his Oxford days; the greater part of it was now in type, and Mr. Robertson was incurring vast expense in the shape of author’s corrections. Lucian polished and rewrote in a fashion that was exasperating; his publisher, never suspecting that so many alterations would be made, had said nothing about them in drawing up a formal agreement, and he was daily obliged to witness a disappearance of profits.

‘What a pity that you did not make all your alterations and corrections before sending the manuscript to press!’ he exclaimed one day, when Lucian called with a bundle of proofs which had been hacked about in such{159} a fashion as to need complete resetting. ‘It would have saved a lot of trouble—and expense.’

Lucian stared at him with the eyes of a young owl, round and wondering.

‘How on earth can you see what a thing looks like until it’s in print?’ he said irritably. ‘What are printers for?’

‘Just so—just so!’ responded the publisher. ‘But really, you know, this book is being twice set—every sheet has had to be pulled to pieces, and it adds to the expense.’

Lucian’s eyes grew rounder than ever.

‘I don’t know anything about that,’ he answered. ‘That is your province—don’t bother me about it.’

Robertson laughed. He was beginning to find out, after some experience, that Lucian was imperturbable on certain points.

‘Very well,’ he said. ‘By the bye, how much more copy is there—or if copy is too vulgar a word for your mightiness, how many more lines or verses?’

‘About four hundred and fifty lines,’ answered Lucian.

‘Say another twenty-four pages,’ said Robertson. ‘Well, it runs now to three hundred and fifty—that means that it’s going to be a book of close upon four hundred pages.’

‘Well?’ questioned Lucian.

‘I was merely thinking that it is a long time since the public was asked to buy a volume containing four hundred pages of blank verse,’ remarked the publisher. ‘I hope this won’t frighten anybody.’

‘You make some very extraordinary remarks,’ said Lucian, with unmistakable signs of annoyance. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Oh, nothing, nothing!’ answered Robertson, who was on sufficient terms of intimacy with Lucian to be able to chaff him a little. ‘I was merely thinking of trade considerations.’

‘You appear to be always “merely thinking” of{160} something extraordinary,’ said Lucian. ‘What can trade considerations have to do with the length of my poem?’

‘What indeed?’ said the publisher, and began to talk of something else. But when Lucian had gone he looked rather doubtfully at the pile of interlineated proof, and glanced from it to the thin octavo with which the new poet had won all hearts nearly five years before. ‘I wish it had been just a handful of gold like that!’ he said to himself. ‘Four hundred pages of blank verse all at one go!—it’s asking a good deal, unless it catches on with the old maids and the dowagers, like the Course of Time and the Epic of Hades. Well, we shall see; but I’d rather have some of your earlier lyrics than this weighty performance, Lucian, my boy—I would indeed!’

Lucian finished his epic before the middle of July, and fell to work on the final stages of his tragedy. He had promised to read it to the Athen?um company on the first day of the coming October, and there was still much to do in shaping and revising it. He began to feel impatient and irritable; the sight of his desk annoyed him, and he took to running out of town into the country whenever the wish for the shade of woods and the peacefulness of the lanes came upon him. Before the end of the month he felt unable to work, and he repaired to Sprats for counsel and comfort.

‘I don’t know how or why it is,’ he said, telling her his troubles, ‘but I don’t feel as if I had a bit of work left in me. I haven’t any power of concentration left—I’m always wanting to be doing something else. And yet I haven’t worked very hard this year, and we have been away a great deal. It’s nearly time for going away again, too—I believe Haidee has already made some arrangement.’

‘Lucian,’ said Sprats, ‘why don’t you go down to Simonstower? They would be so glad to have you at the vicarage—there’s heaps of room. And just think{161} how jolly it is there in August and September—I wish I could go!’

Lucian’s face lighted up—some memory of the old days had suddenly fired his soul. He saw the familiar scenes once more under the golden sunlight—the grey castle and its Norman keep, the winding river, the shelving woods, and, framing all, the gold and purple of the moorlands.

‘Simonstower!’ he exclaimed. ‘Yes, of course—it’s Simonstower that I want. We’ll go at once. Sprats, why can’t you come too?’

Sprats shook her head.

‘I can’t,’ she answered. ‘I shall have a holiday in September, but I can’t take a single day before. I’m sure it will do you good if you go to Simonstower, Lucian—the north-country air will brighten you up. You haven’t been there for four years, and the sight of the old faces and places will act like a tonic.’

‘I’ll arrange it at once,’ said Lucian, delighted at the idea, and he went off to announce his projects to Haidee. Haidee looked at him incredulously.

‘Whatever are you thinking of, Lucian?’ she said. ‘Don’t you remember that we’re cramful of engagements from the beginning of August to the end of September?’ She recited a list of arrangements already entered into, which included a three-weeks’ sojourn on Eustace Darlington’s steam-yacht, and a fortnight’s stay at his shooting-b............