The Collaborators

The Collaborators, by Robert S.
Hichens

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Title: The Collaborators 1896
Author: Robert S. Hichens
Release Date: November 8, 2007 [EBook #23421]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
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COLLABORATORS ***

Produced by David Widger

THE COLLABORATORS.
By Robert S. Hichens
1896

I.
"Why shouldn't we collaborate?" said Henley in his most matter-of-fact
way, as Big Ben gave voice to the midnight hour. "Everybody does it
nowadays. Two heads may be really better than one, although I seldom
believe in the truth of accepted sayings. Your head is a deuced good
one, Andrew; but--now don't get angry--you are too excitable and too
intense to be left quite to yourself, even in book-writing, much less in
the ordinary affairs of life. I think you were born to collaborate, and to
collaborate with me. You can give me everything I lack, and I can give
you a little of the sense of humour, and act as a drag upon the wheel."
"None of the new humour, Jack; that shall never appear in a book with
my name attached to it. Dickens I can tolerate. He is occasionally
felicitous. The story of 'The Dying Clown,' for instance, crude as it is it
has a certain grim tragedy about it. But the new humour came from the
pit, and should go--to the Sporting Times."
"Now, don't get excited. The book is not in proof yet--perhaps never
will be. You need not be afraid. My humour will probably be old
enough. But what do you y to the idea?"
Andrew Trenchard sat for awhile in silent consideration. His legs were
stretched out, and his slippered feet rested on the edge of the brass
fender. A nimbus of smoke surrounded his swarthy features, his shock
of black hair, his large, rather morose, dark eyes. He was a man of
about twenty-five, with an almost horribly intelligent face, so observant
that he tried people, so acute that he frightened them. His intellect was
never for a moment at rest, unless in sleep. He devoured himself with
his own emotions, and others with his analysis of theirs. His mind was
always crouching to spring, except when it was springing. He lived an
irregular life, and all horrors had a subtle fascination for him. As
Henley had remarked, he possessed little sense of humour, but
immense sense of evil and tragedy and sorrow. He seldom found time
to calmly regard the drama of life from the front. He was always at the
stage-door, sending in his card, and requesting admittance behind the

scenes. What was on the surface only interested him in so far as it
indicated what was beneath, and in all mental matters his normal
procedure was that of the disguised detective. Stupid people disliked
him. Clever people distrusted him while they admired him. The
mediocre suggested that he was liable to go off his head, and the
profound predicted for him fame, tempered by suicide.
Most people considered him interesting, and a few were sincerely
attached to him. Among these last was Henley, who had been his friend
at Oxford, and had taken rooms in the same house with him in Smith's
Square, Westminster. Both the young men were journalists. Henley,
who, as he had acknowledged, possessed a keen sense of humour, and
was not so much ashamed of it as he ought to have been, wrote--very
occasionally--for Punch, and more often for Fun, was dramatic critic of
a lively society paper, and "did" the books--in a sarcastic vein--for a
very unmuzzled "weekly," that was libellous by profession and truthful
by oversight. Trenchard, on the other hand, wrote a good deal of very
condensed fiction, and generally placed it; contributed brilliant fugitive
articles to various papers and magazines, and was generally spoken of
by the inner circle of the craft as "a rising man," and a man to be afraid
of. Henley was full of common-sense, only moderately introspective,
facile, and vivacious. He might be trusted to tincture a book with the
popular element, and yet not to spoil it; for his literary sense was keen,
despite his jocular leaning toward the new humour. He lacked
imagination; but his descriptive powers were racy, and he knew
instinctively what was likely to take, and what would be caviare to the
general.
Trenchard, as he considered the proposition now made to him, realized
that Henley might supply much that he lacked in any book that was