The man who
should thus be buried was the first question: a good man, whose
return to life would be hailed by the reader and the other
characters with gladness? This trenched upon the Christian
picture, and was dismissed. If the idea, then, was to be of any
use at all for me, I had to create a kind of evil genius to his
friends and family, take him through many disappearances, and make
this final restoration from the pit of death, in the icy American
wilderness, the last and the grimmest of the series. I need not
tell my brothers of the craft that I was now in the most
interesting moment of an author's life; the hours that followed
that night upon the balcony, and the following nights and days,
whether walking abroad or lying wakeful in my bed, were hours of
unadulterated joy. My mother, who was then living with me alone,
perhaps had less enjoyment; for, in the absence of my wife, who is
my usual helper in these times of parturition, I must spur her up
at all seasons to hear me relate and try to clarify my unformed
fancies.
And while I was groping for the fable and the character required,
behold I found them lying ready and nine years old in my memory.
Pease porridge hot, pease porridge cold, pease porridge in the pot,
nine years old. Was there ever a more complete justification of
the rule of Horace? Here, thinking of quite other things, I had
stumbled on the solution, or perhaps I should rather say (in
stagewright phrase) the Curtain or final Tableau of a story
conceived long before on the moors between Pitlochry and
Strathardle, conceived in Highland rain, in the blend of the smell
of heather and bog-plants, and with a mind full of the Athole
correspondence and the memories of the dumlicide Justice.
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