My question was soon asked and sooner answered.  Father Payne beamed upon me with an indulgent air, and I said:  “May I ask what you were doing?”

“You may,” he said.  “I rejoice to talk about it.  It’s my novel.”

“Your novel!” I said.  “I didn’t know you wrote novels.  What sort of a book is it?”

“It’s wretched,” he said, “it’s horrible, it’s grotesque!  It’s more like all other novels than any book I know.  It’s written in the most abominable style; there isn’t a single good point about it.  The incidents are all hackneyed, there isn’t a single lifelike character in it, or a single good description, or a single remark worth making.  I should think it’s the worst book ever written.  Will you hear a bit of it?  Do, now! only a short bit.  I should love to read it to you.”

“Yes, of course,” I said, “there is nothing I should like better.”

He read a passage.  It was very bad indeed, I couldn’t have imagined that an able man could have written such stuff.  I had an awful feeling that I had heard every word before.

“There,” he said at last, “that’s rather a favourable specimen.  What do you think of it?  Come, out with it.”

“I’m afraid I’m not very much of a judge,” I said.

His face fell.  “That’s what everyone says,” he said.  “I know what you mean.  But I’ll publish it—­I’ll be d——­d if I won’t!  Oh, dash it, that’s five minutes more.  No—­I wasn’t working, was I?  Just conversing.”

“But why do you write it, if you are so dissatisfied with it?” I said feebly.

“Why?” he said in a loud voice.  “Why?  Because I love it.  I’m besotted by it.  It’s like strong drink to me.  I doubt if there’s a man in England who enjoys himself more than I do when I’m writing.  The worst of it is, that it won’t come out—­it’s beautiful enough when I think of it, but I can’t get it down.  It’s my second novel, mind you, and I have got plans for three more.  Do you suppose I’m going to sit here, with all you fellows enjoying yourselves, and not have my bit of fun?  But it’s hopeless, and I ought to be ashamed of myself.  There simply isn’t anything in the world that I should not be better employed in doing than in scribbling this stuff.  I know that; but all the authors I know say that writing a book is the part they enjoy—­they don’t care about correcting proofs, or publishing, or seeing reviews, or being paid for it.  Very disinterested and noble, of course!  Now I should enjoy it all through, but I simply daren’t publish my last one—­I should be hooted in the village when the reviews appeared.  But I am going to have my fun—­the act of creation, you know!  But it’s too late to begin, and I have had no training.  The beastly thing is as sticky as treacle.  It’s a sort of vomit of all the novels I have ever read, and that’s the truth!”

“I simply don’t understand,” I said.  “I have heard you criticise books, I have heard you criticise some of our work—­you have criticised mine.  I think you one of the best critics I ever heard.  You seem to know exactly how it ought to be done.”