“D’you remember that Persian carpet you gave me?” asked Philip.

Cronshaw smiled his old, slow smile of past days.

“I told you that it would give you an answer to your question when you asked me what was the meaning of life.  Well, have you discovered the answer?”

“No,” smiled Philip.  “Won’t you tell it me?”

“No, no, I can’t do that.  The answer is meaningless unless you discover it for yourself.”

LXXXIII

Cronshaw was publishing his poems.  His friends had been urging him to do this for years, but his laziness made it impossible for him to take the necessary steps.  He had always answered their exhortations by telling them that the love of poetry was dead in England.  You brought out a book which had cost you years of thought and labour; it was given two or three contemptuous lines among a batch of similar volumes, twenty or thirty copies were sold, and the rest of the edition was pulped.  He had long since worn out the desire for fame.  That was an illusion like all else.  But one of his friends had taken the matter into his own hands.  This was a man of letters, named Leonard Upjohn, whom Philip had met once or twice with Cronshaw in the cafes of the Quarter.  He had a considerable reputation in England as a critic and was the accredited exponent in this country of modern French literature.  He had lived a good deal in France among the men who made the Mercure de France the liveliest review of the day, and by the simple process of expressing in English their point of view he had acquired in England a reputation for originality.  Philip had read some of his articles.  He had formed a style for himself by a close imitation of Sir Thomas Browne; he used elaborate sentences, carefully balanced, and obsolete, resplendent words:  it gave his writing an appearance of individuality.  Leonard Upjohn had induced Cronshaw to give him all his poems and found that there were enough to make a volume of reasonable size.  He promised to use his influence with publishers.  Cronshaw was in want of money.  Since his illness he had found it more difficult than ever to work steadily; he made barely enough to keep himself in liquor; and when Upjohn wrote to him that this publisher and the other, though admiring the poems, thought it not worth while to publish them, Cronshaw began to grow interested.  He wrote impressing upon Upjohn his great need and urging him to make more strenuous efforts.  Now that he was going to die he wanted to leave behind him a published book, and at the back of his mind was the feeling that he had produced great poetry.  He expected to burst upon the world like a new star.  There was something fine in keeping to himself these treasures of beauty all his life and giving them to the world disdainfully when, he and the world parting company, he had no further use for them.

His decision to come to England was caused directly by an announcement from Leonard Upjohn that a publisher had consented to print the poems.  By a miracle of persuasion Upjohn had persuaded him to give ten pounds in advance of royalties.