CHAPTER 9

‘In Media Res’

Perhaps the method of rushing at once ‘in media res’ is, of all the ways of beginning a story, or a separate branch of a story, the least objectionable.  The reader is made to think that the gold lies so near the surface that he will be required to take very little trouble in digging for it.  And the writer is enabled,—­at any rate for a time, and till his neck has become, as it were, warm to the collar,—­to throw off from him the difficulties and dangers, the tedium and prolixity, of description.  This rushing ‘in media res’ has doubtless the charm of ease.  ’Certainly when I threw her from the garret window to the stony pavement below, I did not anticipate that she would fall so far without injury to life or limb.’  When a story has been begun after this fashion, without any prelude, without description of the garret or of the pavement, or of the lady thrown, or of the speaker, a great amount of trouble seems to have been saved.  The mind of the reader fills up the blanks,—­if erroneously, still satisfactorily.  He knows, at least, that the heroine has encountered a terrible danger, and has escaped from it with almost incredible good fortune, that the demon of the piece is a bold demon, not ashamed to speak of his own iniquity, and that the heroine and the demon are so far united that they have been in a garret together.  But there is the drawback on the system,—­that it is almost impossible to avoid the necessity of doing, sooner or later, that which would naturally be done at first.  It answers, perhaps, for a half-a-dozen chapters;—­ and to carry the reader pleasantly for half-a-dozen chapters is a great matter!-but after that a certain nebulous darkness gradually seems to envelope the characters and the incidents.  ’Is all this going on in the country, or is it in town,—­or perhaps in the Colonies?  How old was she?  Was she tall?  Is she fair?  Is she heroine-like in her form and gait?  And, after all, how high was the garret window?  I have always found that the details would insist on being told at last, and that by rushing ‘in media res’ I was simply presenting the cart before the horse.  But as readers like the cart the best, I will do it once again,—­trying it only for a branch of my story,—­and will endeavour to let as little as possible of the horse be seen afterwards.

‘And so poor Frank has been turned out of heaven?’ said Lady Mabel Grex to young Lord Silverbridge.

‘Who told you that?  I have said nothing to anybody.’

‘Of course he told me himself,’ said the young beauty.  I am aware that, in the word beauty, and perhaps, also, the word young, a little bit of the horse appearing; and I am already sure that I shall have to show his head and neck, even if not his very tail.  ‘Poor Frank!  Did you hear it all?’

‘I heard nothing, Lady Mab, and know nothing.’

’You know that your awful governor won’t let him stay any longer in Carlton Terrace?’