Not George Washington: An Autobiographical Novel Excerpt: ...narrative continued) I had been relating, on the morning after the Blake affair, the stirring episode of the previous night to Julian. He agreed with me that it was curious that our potato-thrower of Covent Garden market should have crossed my path again. But I noticed that, though he listened intently enough, he lay flat on his back in his hammock, not looking at me, but blinking at the ceiling; and when I had finished he turned his face towards the wall-which was unusual, since I generally lunched on his breakfast, as I was doing then, to the accompaniment of quite a flow of languid abuse. I was in particularly high spirits that morning, for I fancied that I had found a way out of my difficulty about Margaret. That subject being uppermost in my mind, I guessed at once what Julian's trouble was. "I think you'd like to know, Julian," I said, "whether I'd written to Guernsey." "Well?" "It's all right," I said. "You've told her to come?" "No; but I'm able to take my respite without wounding her. That's as good as writing, isn't it? We agreed on that." "Yes; that was the idea. If you could find a way of keeping her from knowing how well you were getting on with your writing, you were to take it. What's your idea?" "I've hit on a very simple way out of the difficulty," I said. "It came to me only this morning. All I need do is to sign my stuff with a pseudonym." "You only thought of that this morning?" "Yes. Why?" "My dear chap, I thought of it as soon as you told me of the fix you were in." "You might have suggested it." Julian slid to the floor, drained the almost empty teapot, rescued the last kidney, and began his breakfast. "I would have suggested it," he said, "if the idea had been worth anything." "What! What's wrong with it?" "My dear man, it's too risky. It's not as though you kept to one form of literary work. You're so confoundedly versatile. Let's suppose you did sign your work with a nom de plume." "Say, George Chandos." "All right. George... |
