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&mdas............