The Key (Morley Roberts)/Chapter 1

VERY one said that Hector Durant was the man to write Sir George Hale's biography. They said it in the clubs, in Fleet Street, or in the chattering drawing-rooms of the West End. It seemed obvious at the first glance that, if any one who wrote knew Hale as a personality apart from his public life, it was Durant. Publishers, or more certainly two of them, wrote to him on the subject. They leaned immediately toward two heavy volumes of thick paper and large print, adorned with photographs and portraits, the price to be at least thirty shillings net.

Their idea was founded on the usual English notion of what a biography should be. They thought a biography was an unsorted mass of letters adorned with empty comment, which should be on the tomb of a dead man like heavy marble. Yet Hector Durant had never given them reason to think him capable of such an outrage on a noble but misunderstood art. He had never achieved a tumulus, never buried a friend in a dust-heap, never burned him in a holocaust of his own accumulated papers. Yet he certainly thought something might be made of Hale.

“If Lady Hale asks me definitely I think I'll do it,” he said thoughtfully. “And yet, I wonder if I can.”

Hale had died suddenly of acute pneumonia at fifty-five. Till this last illness he had seemed as robust as he was handsome. It is true his hair was beautifully white, but his skin was clear and rosy; he looked at fifty less than forty, and he had the bright eyes and alert figure of a healthy subaltern. Neither his short career in the Indian army, nor his time as private secretary to the government of Malta, nor his travels in Tunis when he was envoy extraordinary to the, had injured his health. His governorship of Barbados left it untouched; he had only resigned because Lady Hale had been frightened by a hurricane and finished by a small earthquake. After living three years in London he died. He had now been dead six months, and Lady Hale had had time to sanctify his memory and to recover from the shock.

“Yes, I'll do it, I think,” said Hector. “I suppose I'm better qualified than any one else. But did I really know him?”

Durant had been his secretary for five years in Barbados, and had continued to occupy that post in England, though he had deserted the paths of diplomacy (never leading to much for any one without influence) for letters. In eight years a private secretary of any penetration ought to know his chief's private character almost as well as his public reputation. But Hector, no fool and by no means a poor natural psychologist, owned frankly that Hale was a closed room to him.

“I never got beyond his door-step,” said Hector. “He entertained us all on the, as they say in Africa. Lady Hale declares he was the very best of men and practically a saint. I suspect her hagiology. I own I have doubts as to what he was behind the curtain. I should like to do the man as he is, or as he was, but I fear I sha'n't be able to do it; Lady Hale will be an obstacle. If he was what I fancy I can't hurt the poor dear. I'll go and see her next week.”

He had a letter from her that very night. It was, he owned, an agreeable, even a flattering, one, and it contained very handsome proposals.

This was the pith of the letter, and on the whole it was not a disagreeable proposal to a man, only just thirty, who was poor and still had his way to make in literature. The continued salary as secretary was a great deal, and to live in Park Lane free certainly not a little. Hector replied briefly but very cheerfully and packed his things and his papers.

“I wish I was sure Sir George was as great and as noble as she believes,” he thought. As one of the executors he had some reason to wonder if he was. This is even more frequently the case with executors than with biographers.