He talked to Cynthia.
Fruit and fowls might be admired if he liked, and she and papa took him on a tour of inspection. There were moments when he was alone with Cynthia, while her father discovered that there weren't any eggs.
"He is very good-looking," said Mrs. Walford; "don't you think so?"
"I can't say he struck me as being remarkable for beauty," said the spinster.
"I didn't say he was 'remarkable for beauty,' but he has—er—distinction—decided distinction. I'm surprised you don't see it. And he has very fine eyes."
"His eyes won't give 'em any carriage-and-pair," replied Miss Wix. "Iused to have fine eyes, my dear, but I've stared at hard times so long."
"I don't know where the 'hard times' come in, I'm sure!" exclaimed Mrs. Walford sharply. "And he wanted to give her a carriage directly they marry, but Sam's forbidden it."
The maiden sniffed.
"He is most modest for his position! I tell you, he was chased in Dieppe; the women ran after him. A baroness in the hotel positively threw her daughter at his head.... He wouldn't look at anybody but Cynthia.... The Baroness wasmiserablethe day the engagement was known."
"Cynthia ought to be very proud," returned her sister dryly.
"Oh, of course the girl is making a wonderful match—no doubt about it! He sold his novel for an extraordinary sum—quite extraordinary!—and the publishers have implored him to let them have another at his own terms; I saw the telegrams.... Astonishing position for such a young man!"
"She's in luck!"
"She's a very taking girl. Her smile is so sweet, and her teeth are quite perfect."
"She was in luck to meet such a catch—some I people didn't have the opportunity.... I once had a beautiful set of teeth," added Miss Wix morosely; "but you can't pick rich husbands off gooseberry-bushes."
On the white balcony, after dinner, Kent begged Cynthia to fix the wedding-day. After she had named one in May, it was agreed that, subject to her parents' approval, they should be married two months hence. He made his way to the station about eleven o'clock, with a flower in his coat and rapture in his soul.
The first weeks of the period were interminable.
He went to The Hawthorns daily, and Mrs. Walford was so good as to look about for a house for them in the neighbourhood. He was in love, but not a fool; he was determined not to cripple himself at the outset by a heavy rental. In conference with the fiancée he intimated that it would be preposterous for them to think of paying a higher rent than fifty pounds. Cynthia was a little disappointed, for mamma had just seen a villa at sixty-five that was a "picturesque duck." He strangled an impulse to say, "We'll take it," and repeated that as soon as their circumstances brightened they could remove. She did not argue the point, though therara avisevidently allured her, and Kent felt her acquiescence to be very gracious, and wondered if he sounded mean.
The outlay on furniture did not worry him much. As Mrs. Walford pointed out, the things would "always be there" and "once they were bought, they were bought!" In her company they proceeded to Tottenham Court Road every morning for a week, and this one sped more quickly to him than any yet. It was a foretaste of life with Cynthia to choose armchairs, and etchings, and ornaments, and the rest, for their home together. They had found a house at fifty pounds per annum; it was about ten minutes' walk from The Hawthorns, a semi-detached villa in red brick, with nice wide windows, and electric bells, and rose-trees on either side of the tessellated path. They wanted to be able to drive up to it when they returned from the honeymoon and find it ready for them. Mrs. Walford was to buy the kitchen utensils, and engage a servant while they were away. All they had to do now was to buy the articles of interest, and settle the wall-papers, and have little intermediate luncheons, and go back to the shop, and sip tea while rolls of carpet were displayed. It was great fun.
In the shops, though, the things seldom seemed to look so nice as they had done in the catalogues, and it was generally necessary to pay more than had been foreseen. But, again, "once they were bought, they were bought!" The thought was sustaining. If Kent felt blank when he contemplated the total of what they had spent, and remembered that the kitchen clamoured still, he reflected that to kiss Cynthia in such a jolly little menage would certainly be charming, and the girl averred ecstatically that the dessert service "looked better than mamma's!" He estimated that they could live in comfort on two hundred and fifty a year—for the first year, at all events; and by then he would have finished a novel, which, in view of the Press notices that he had had, he believed would bring them in as much as that. Even if it did not, there would be a substantial portion of his capital remaining; and with the third book——No, he had no cause for dismay, he told himself.
They had decided upon Mentone for the wedding trip—a fortnight. It was long enough, and they both felt that they would rather go to Mentone for a fortnight than to Bournemouth or Ventnor for a month. It would amount to much the same thing financially, and be much more pleasant.
"The morning after we come back, darling," said Kent, "I shall go straight to my desk after breakfast, and you know you'll see scarcely more of me till evening than if I were a business man and had to go to the City."
"Y-e-s," concurred Cynthia meekly. "Of course—I understand."
Mr. and Mrs. Waxford's present was to be a grand piano—or possibly a semi-grand, since the drawing-room was not extensive—and with a son being educated for the musical profession, it was natural that they shouldn't select it till he returned; they wished for the advantage of his judgment.
He was travelling. He was on the Continent with Pincocca, the master under whom he studied. On hearing of his sister's engagement, he had at once despatched affectionate letters, and now he was expected home in two or three days to make Mr. Kent's acquaintance, and tender his felicitations in person.
The better Kent learnt to know the Walfords, the more clearly he perceived how inordinately proud they were of their son. Cæsar's arrival, and Cæsar's approaching debut were topics discussed with a frequency he found tedious. Even Cynthia was so much excited by the prospect of reunion that a tête-à-tête with her lost a little of its fascination. He occasionally feared that if his prospective brother-in-law did not arrive without delay, he would have been bored into a cordial dislike for him by the time they met. He foresaw himself telling him so, at a distant date, and their joking over the matter together. Miss Wix alone appeared untainted by the prevailing enthusiasm, and the first ray of friendliness for the spinster of which he had been conscious was due to a glance of comprehension from her eyes one afternoon when Cæsar had been discussed energetically for upwards of half an hour. It struck him that there was even a gleam of ironical humour in her gaze.
"Enthralling, isn't it?" she seemed to say. "What do you think of 'em?"
He said to Cynthia later:
"They do talk about your brother and his voice an awful lot, dearest, don't they?"
She looked somewhat startled.
"Well, I suppose we do," she answered slowly, "now you point it out. But I didn't know. You see, ever since his voice was discovered, Cæsar's been brought up for the profession. When you've heard it, you'll understand."
"Is it really so wonderful?" he asked respectfully.
"Oh, I'm sure you'll say so. Signor Pincocca told mamma it would be acrimeif she didn't let him study seriously for the career. And Cæsar has been under him years since then. Pincocca says when he 'comes out' people 'll rave about him. If he had had just a 'fine voice,' he would have gone on the Stock Exchange, you know, with papa; but—but there could be no question about it with a gift like that."
Kent acknowledged that it was natural they should be profoundly interested by the young fellow's promise. Privately he wished that a literary man could also leap into fame and fortune with his debut.
The next afternoon when he reached The Hawthorns he heard that Cæsar had already come—indeed, he had divined as much by Mrs. Walford's jubilant air. At the moment the gentleman was not in the room; Cynthia ran to fetch him. Humphrey awaited his entrance with considerable curiosity, and the mother kept looking impatiently towards the door.
"I don't know what's keeping him," she said in her most staccato tones. "He went to fetch my book. Oh, he'll be here in a minute—or shall we go and look for him? Perhaps he's in the garden, and Cynthia can't find him. What do you say?"
"Just as you please," said Kent.
But as he spoke the girl returned, to announce that her brother was following her, and the next moment there was an atmosphere of brillantine and tuberoses, and Humphrey found his finger-tips being gently pressed in a large, moist palm.
"I am charmed," said Cæsar Walford with a lingering smile. "Charmed."
Kent saw a fat young man of six or seven and twenty, with an enormous chest development, and a waist that suggested that he wore stays and was already wrestling with his figure. His hair, which had been grown long, was arranged on his forehead in a negligent curl, and his shirt-collar, low in the neck, surmounted a flowing bow.
"I'm very pleased to meet you," said the author with disgust.
"I am charmed!" repeated Cæsar tenderly. "It's quite a delight. And it's you who are going to take Cynthia away from us, eh?" He glanced from one to the other, and shook a playful forefinger. "You bad man!... O wicked puss!"
Mrs. Walford viewed these ponderous antics beamingly.
"There's grace!" her expression cried. "There's dramatic gesture for you!"
Again Humphrey's gaze sought the sour spinster's, and—yes, her own was eloquent.
He sipped his tea abstractedly. So this was the gifted being of whom he had heard so much—this dreadful creature who bulged out of his frock coat, and minced, and posed, and was alternately frisky and pompous. What a connection to have! Was it possible that his voice was so magnificent as they all declared, or would that be a disappointment too? In any case, his self-complacence made a stranger ill.
It was about two hours after dinner that the young man was begged to oblige the company, and Humphrey, who was now truly eager to hear him, feared for a long while that the persuasions would not succeed, for the coming bass objected in turn to Wagner, and Verdi, and all the songs in his repertoire. He shrugged his shoulders pityingly at this one, had forgotten another, and was "not equal" this evening to a third. At last, however, Cynthia rose, and insisted that he should give them "Infelice."Ernaniwas "intolerable," but, since they would not let him alone He crossed languidly to her side.
A hush of suspense settled upon the long drawing-room. Sam Walford fixed Kent with a stare, as if he meant to watch the admiration begin to bubble in him. Louisa, the hilarious and untruthful, appeared to be experiencing some divine emotion even before the first note, Miss Wix closed her eyes, with her mouth to one side. Then the young man languished at the gasalier, and roared.
It was a prodigious roar. No one could dispute that he possessed a voice of phenomenal power, if it were once conceded to be a voice, in the musical sense, at all. It seemed as if he must burst his corsets, and shift the furniture—that the ceiling itself must split with the noise that he hurled up. Perspiration broke out on him, and rolled down his face, as he writhed at the gas-globes. His large body was contorted with exertion. But he never faltered. Bellow upon bellow he produced, to the welcome end—till Cynthia struck the final chord and he bowed.
"A performance?" asked Walford, swollen with pride.
Kent said indeed it was.
The compliments were effusive. It was discussed whether he was, or was not, "in voice" to-night. He explained that to "lose himself" when he sang he needed Pincocca at the piano. He sank into his chair again, and mopped his wet curl.
"The amateur accompaniment is very painful," he said winningly.
Kent took leave of the family earlier than was his custom, asserting that he had work to do.
The momentous date was now close at hand, and Turquand, who had not refused to be best man, had made a present that was lavish, all things considered. In the days that intervened, Humphrey and he found it impracticable to taboo the subject of the wedding; it was arranged that on the eve of the ceremony they should have a "bachelor dinner" by themselves, and subsequently smoke a few cigars together in a music-hall. Neither wanted anybody else, nor, in point of fact, did Humphrey know many men to invite. For time to attend the wedding the journalist had applied to his Editor on the grounds of "a bereavement," and as he watched Kent collect possessions, and pore over a Continental Bradshaw, and fondle the sacred ring, he was more than ever convinced that he had used the right term.
It was a wet evening—the eve of the wedding-day. A yellow mist hung over Soho, and a light rain had fallen doggedly since noon, turning the grease of the pavements to slush. On the moist air the smell of the jam clung persistently, and along the narrow streets fewer children played tip-cat than was usual in the district.
Kent's impedimenta were packed and labelled, and a brown-paper parcel among the litter contained the best man's new suit. The coat would be creased by the morrow, and he knew it; but he had a repugnance to undoing the parcel sooner than was compulsory, and once, when Kent was not looking, he had kicked it.
The two men put up their collars, and made their way across the square.
"Are you sure we'll go to the Suisse?" asked Kent. "It isn't festive, Turk."
"Yes, let's go to the Suisse," said Turquand grumpily. "It's close."
Both knew that its proximity was not the reason that it had been chosen, but the pretence was desirable.
"We'll have champagne, of course," said Humphrey, as they passed in, and took their seats at their customary little table, with its half-yard of crusty bread and damp napkins. "We'll have champagne, and—and be lively. For Heaven's sake don't look as if you were at a funeral, Turk! This is to be an enjoyable evening. Where's the wine-list?"
"Champagne? What for?" said Turquand. "Auguste will think you're getting at him."
Auguste was prevailed upon to believe that the demand was made in sober earnest. That being the case, he could run out for champagne no less easily than for "bittare"! Madame, at the semi-circular counter, waved her fat hand in their direction gaily. Monsieur had inherited a fortune, it was evident!
"Well," said Turquand, when the cork had popped, "here's luck! Wish you lots of happiness, old chap, I'm sure."
"Same to you," murmured Kent. "God knows I do!... It's awful muck, this stuff, isn't it? What's he brought?"
"It's what you ordered. Your mouth's out of taste. Eat some more kidneys."
Humphrey shook his head.
"I suppose you'll come here to-morrow evening—the same as usual, eh?"
"May as well, I suppose. One's got to feed somewhere.You'llbe all rice and rapture then. I'll think of you."
"Do! I don't know how it is, but—but just now, somehow, between ourselves But perhaps I oughtn't to say that.... I say, don't think I was going to—to——I wouldn't have you think I meant I wasn't fond of her, old boy, for the world! You don't thinkthat, do you? She—oh, Heaven!—she's a perfect angel, Turk!... Fill up your glass, for goodness' sake, man, and do look jolly! Turk, next time we dine together it'll be at Streatham, and there'll be a little hostess to make you welcome; and—and: there'll always be a bottle of Irish, old man, and we'll keep a pipe in the rack with the biggest bowl we can find, and call it yours. By God, we will!"
"Yes," said Turquand huskily.... "Going to have any more of this stew?"
"I've had enough. Help yourself!"
"No, I'm not ravenous either—smoked too much, perhaps. I say, madame doesn't know yet; better tell her."
She was induced to join them presently, and to drink a glass of champagne, enchanted by the invitation. Monsieur Kent was alwayssi gentil. But champagne! Was it that he celebrated already another romance?Comment?he was going to be married—nevare?But yes—to-morrow? Ah, mon Dieu! She rocked herself to and fro, and screamed the intelligence down the dinner-lift to her husband in the kitchen. Alors, they must drink a chartreuse with her—she insisted. Yes, and she would have one of monsieur Kent's cigarettes. To the health of the happy pair!
Outside, the rain was still falling as they left the Restaurant Suisse and tramped to a music-hall. Here their entrance was unfortunately timed. Some good turns appeared earlier in the programme, some good turns figured lower down; but during the half-hour that they remained the monotony of the material that the average music-hall "comedian" regards as humorous struck Kent more forcibly than ever. Wives eloped with the lodgers, or husbands beat their wives and got drunk with "the boys." There seemed nothing else—nothing but conjugal infelicity; it was rang-tang-tang on the one vulgar, discordant note.
"I've had enough of this," he said; "let's go. What time is it?"
"Time for a quiet pipe at home, and then to turn in early. Let's cab it!"
They were glad to take off their wet boots and to find themselves back in their own shabby chairs. But Cornelia had let the fire out, and the dismantled room was chilly. Turquand produced the whisky and the glasses, and, blowing a cloud, they drew up to the cold hearth, remarking that the weather had "turned muggy" and that a fire would have been out of place on such a night.
"It looks bare without my things, doesn't it?" observed Kent. "One wouldn't have believed they made so much difference."
"Yes," assented Turquand.
"You'll have to get some books for that shelf over there, you know—it's awful empty."
Turquand shivered, and said that he should.
"You aren't cold?"
"Cold? Not a bit—no. You were saying—-?"
"I don't know, I wasn't saying anything particular. I'll write you from Mentone, old fellow—not at once, but you shall have a line."
"Thanks," answered Turquand; "be glad to hear from you."
"Not that there'll be anything to say."
"No, of course not. Still, you may just as well twaddle, if you will."
There was a pause, while the pair smoked slowly, each busy with his thoughts, and considering if anything of what he felt could be said without its sounding sentimental. Both were remembering that they would never be sitting at home together in the room again, and though it had many faults, it assumed to the one who was leaving it a "tender grace" now. He had written his novel at that table; his first review had come to him here. Associations crept out and trailed across the floor; he felt that this room must always contain an integral portion of his life. And Turquand would miss him.
"Be dull for you to-morrow evening, rather, I'm afraid, won't it?" he said in a burst.
"Oh, I was alone while you were at Dieppe, you know. I shall jog along all right.... You've bought a desk for yourself, haven't you?"
"Yes. Swagger, eh?"
"You won't 'know where yer are'.... What's that—do you feel a draught?"
"No—I—well, perhaps there is a draught now you mention it. Yes, I shall work in style when we come back. Strange feeling, going to be married, Turk!"
"Is it?" said Turquand. "Haven't had the experience. Hope Mrs. Kent will like me—they never do in fiction. You ... you might tell her I'm not a bad sort of a damned fool, will you? And—er—I want to say, don't have the funks about asking me to your house once in a way, old chap, when I shan't be a nuisance; take my oath I'll never shock your wife, Humphrey ... too fond of you.... Be as careful as—as you can, I give you my word."
His teeth closed round his pipe tightly. Neither man looked at the other; Humphrey put out his hand without speaking, and Turquand gripped it. There was a silence again. Both stared at the dead ashes. The clock of St. Giles-in-the-Fields tolled twelve, and neither commented on it, though each reflected that it was now the marriage morning.
"Strikes me we were nearly making bally asses of ourselves," said Turquand at last, in a shaky voice. "Finish your whisky, and let's to bed!"
As the wheels began to revolve, he looked at the girl with thanksgiving. Perhaps the top feeling in the tangle of his consciousness was relief that the worry and publicity of the day were over. They were married. For good or for ill—for always—whether things went well or went badly with him, she was his wife now! He realised the fact much more clearly here in the train than he had done at the altar; indeed, at the altar he had realised little but the awkwardness of his attitude, and that Cynthia was very nervous. And he was glad; but, knowing that he was glad, he wondered vaguely why he did not feel more exhilarated.
They were alone in the compartment, and he took her hand and spoke to her. She answered by an obvious effort, and both sat gazing from the window over the flying fields. She thought of her home, and that "everything was very strange," and that she would have liked to cry "properly," without having Humphrey's eyes upon her. Kent wondered whether she would like to cry while he affected to be unaware of it behind a paper, or whether she would imagine he wanted to read and consider him unfeeling. He thought that a wedding-day was a very exhausting experience for a girl, and that her evident desire to avoid conversation was fortunate, since, to save his soul, he could not think of anything to say that wasn't stupid. He thought, also, though his palate did not crave tobacco, that a cigar would have helped him tremendously, and that it was really extraordinary to reflect that he and "Cynthia Walford" were man and wife.
Next, he questioned inwardly whatshewas thinking, and attempted, in a mental metamorphosis, to put himself in her place. It made him feel horribly sorry for her. He pitied her hotly, though he could not say so; and by a sudden impulse he squeezed her gloved fingers again, with remorseful sympathy. At the moment that he was moved to the demonstration, however, she was really wishing that the dressmaker had cut the corsage of her blue theatre frock square, instead of in a "V." She was sure it would have looked much better. He was agreeably conscious that his mind had "something feminine in it" and congratulated himself on his insight into hers. Some men would have failed to comprehend! Cynthia was distressfully conscious that the tears with which she was fighting had made her nose red, and she longed for an opportunity to use her powder-puff. The engine screamed. Both spoke perfunctorily. The train sped on.
As he sat by her side before the sea, he looked, not at the girl but within him. He thought of the book that had formed in his head, and perhaps his paramount feeling was impatience, and the desire to find the first chapter already materialising into words. They were married. The unconscious pretences of the betrothal period were over in both. To him, as well as to her, the magic, the subtile enchantment, was past. She was still Cynthia—more than ever Cynthia, he understood; but there had been a fascination when "Cynthia" was a goddess to him, which an acquaintance with strings and buttons had destroyed. Thecorylopsisstood in a squat little bottle with a silver lid among brushes and hair-pins on a toilet-table, and his senses swam no more when he detected its faintness on her frock.
Companionship, and not worship, was required now, and neither found the other quite so companionable as had been expected. This the girl in her heart excused less readily than the man.
Primarily, indeed, the latter refused to acknowledge it. It was preposterous to suppose that if they did not possess much in common, he would riot have perceived the disparity during the engagement! Then he reminded himself that his life might have tendered him a shade intolerant; he must remember that the subject of literary work, all-engrossing to his own mind, made on hers unaccustomed demands. To try to phrase a sensation, the attempt to seize a fleeting impression so delicately that it would survive the process and not expire on the pen's point, were instinctive habits with himself; to her they appeared motiveless and wearisome games.
He had endeavoured, in the novels that they read together during the honeymoon, to cultivate her appreciation of what was fine; for she had told him some of her favourite authors and he had shuddered. She had obtained a book for herself one day, and offered it to him. He had thanked her, but said that he was sure by the title that he wouldn't care for it. She answered that it was very silly and unliterary—she had acquired that word—to judge a book by what it was called. She was surprised at him! Ifshehad done such a thing, he would have ridiculed her. And, apart from that, she did not see that "Winsome Winnie"wasa bad title. What was the matter with it?
Kent said he could not explain. She declared with a little triumphant laugh that that just showed how wrong he was.
He made his endeavour very tenderly. To be looked upon as the schoolmaster abroad was a constant dread with him when he discovered that, to effect a similarity of taste between them, either she must advance, or he must regress. Sometimes—very occasionally—he handed her a passage with an air of taking it for granted that the pleasure would be mutual, but her assent was always so constrained that he was forced to realise that the cleverness of expression was lost upon her, that to her the word-painting had painted nothing at all.
He wondered if his wife's dulness of vision fairly represented the eyes with which the novel-reading public read, and if it was folly to spend an hour revising a paragraph in which the majority would, after all, see no more artistry than if it had been allowed to remain as it was written first. He knew that it was folly, in a man like himself, with whom literature was a profession, and not a luxury, though he was aware at the same time that he would never be able to help it—that to the end there would be nights when he went up to bed having written no more than a hundred words all day, and yet went up with elation, because, rightly or wrongly, he felt the hundred words to have been admirably said. He knew that there would be evenings in the future, as there had been in the past, when, after reading a page of a master's prose with delight, he would go and tear up five sheets of his own manuscript with disgust. And he knew already—though he shrank from admitting this—that when it happened he would never be able to confess it to Cynthia, as he had done to Turquand, because Cynthia would find it absurd.
The fortnight was near its conclusion, and both looked forward with eagerness to the return to England. He would plunge into his work; she would be near The Hawthorns, and have friends to come to see her. Neither of the pair regretted the step that they had taken; each loved the other; but a honeymoon was a trying institution, viewed as a whole.
Presently, where they sat, she turned and put some questions to him about his projected book. Her intentions were praiseworthy; she was a good girl, and having married an author, she understood that it was incumbent on her to take an interest in his work, though she had fancied once or twice that perhaps it would have been nicer if, like a stock-jobber, he had preferred not to discuss his business at home. Papa had never cared to do so, she knew. Discussing an author's business was not so simple as she had assumed. There seemed to be such a mass of tedious detail that really didn't matter.
"When do you think it will be finished, Humphrey?" she said.
"In nine months, I hope, if I stick to it."
"So long as nine months?" she exclaimed with surprise. "Why, I've read—let me see—two, three new ones of Mrs. St. Julian's this year! Will itreallytake so long as nine months?"
"Quite, sweetheart; perhaps longer. I don't write quickly, I'm sorry to say. Still, it won't be bad business if Cousins pay the two hundred and fifty that I expect. I think they ought to, after the way the last has been received."
"Some people get much more, don't they?"
"Just a trifle!" he said. "Yes; but I'm not a popular writer, you see. Wait a bit, though; we'll astonish your mother with our grandeurs yet. You shall have a victoria,andtwo men on the box, with powdered hair, and drive out on a wet day and splash mud at your enemies."
"I don't think I have any enemies," she laughed.
"Youwillhave when you have the victoria and pair. Some poor beggar of an author who's hoping to get two hundred and fifty pounds for nine months' toil will look at you from a bus and cuss you."
"Suppose you can't get two hundred and fifty?" she inquired. "You can't be sure."
"Oh, well, if it were only a couple of hundred, we shouldn't have to go to the workhouse, you know. If it comes to that, a hundred, the same as I got for the other, would see us through, though of course I wouldn't accept such a price. Don't begin to worry your little head about ways and means on your honeymoon, darling; there's time enough for arithmetic. And it's going to be good work. I've been practical, too. I can end it happily, and retain a conscience. It's almost a different plot from what it was when I began to think, and it's better. It ends well, and it's better—the thing's a Koh-i-noor!"
"Tell me all about it," she suggested.
He complied enthusiastically. She was being very sympathetic, and he felt with perfect momentary content how jolly it was to have a lovely wife and talk over these things with her. Just what he had pictured!
"But wouldn't it be more exciting if you kept that a mystery till the third volume?" she said, at the end of five minutes.
It was as if she had thrown a bucket of ice-water on his animation.
"I don't want it to be a mystery," he said. "That isn't the aim at all. What I mean to do is to analyse the woman's sensations when she learns it. I want to show how she feels and suffers; yes, and the temptation that she wrestles with, and loathes herself for being too weak to put aside. Don't you see—don't you see?"
She was chiefly sensible that his pleasure had vanished and that the note of interest in his voice had died. She, however, repeated her suggestion; to be a literary critic, she must be prepared to maintain her views!
"I think all that would be much duller than if you had the surprise," she declared.
He did not argue—he did not attempt to demonstrate that her suggestion amounted to proposing that he should write quite another story than the one he was talking about; he felt hopelessly that argument would be waste of time.
"Perhaps you are right," he said; "but one does what one can."
"But you should say, 'What onewill,' dear; it can be done whichever way you like."
"There's only one way possible tome, I assure you; for once 'the wrong way' is the more difficult."
"That which youthinkis the wrong way," said Cynthia, with gentle firmness.
He looked at her a moment incredulously.
"Good Lord!" he said; "let me know something about my own business! I don't want to pose on the strength of a solitary novel—I'm not arrogant—but let me knowsomething—at all events, more than you! Heavens above! a novelist devotes his life to trying to learn the technique of an art which it wants three lifetimes to acquire, and Mr. Jones, who is a solicitor, and Mr. Smith the shoe manufacturer, and little Miss Pink of Putney, who don't know the first laws of fiction —who aren't even aware there are any laws to know—are all prepared to tell him how his books should be written."
"I am not Miss Pink of Putney," she said. "And if I were, we all know whether we like a book or whether we don't."
"'Like'!" he echoed. "To 'like' and to 'criticise'——Men arepaidto criticise books when they can do it; it's thought to be worth payment. Editors, who don't exactly bubble over with generosity, sign cheques for reviews.Idon't pretend to teach Mr. Smith how to make his shoes; I've sense enough to understand that he knows the way better than I. Nor do these people think that they can teach a painter how to compose his pictures, or that they can give a musician lessons in counterpoint. Why on earth should they imagine they're competent to instruct a novelist? It is absurd!"
"Your comparisons are far-fetched," she said. "A painter and a musician, we all know, have to study; they—-"
"They're entitled to the consideration due to a certain amount of money sunk—eh? That's really it. There are thousands upon thousands of families in the upper middle classes of England to whom fiction will never be an art, because the novelist hasn't been to an academy and paid fees. As a matter of fact, it is only in artistic and professional circles that a novelist in England is regarded with any other feeling than good-humoured contempt, unless he's publicly known to be making a large income. The commercial majority smile at him. They've a shibboleth—I'm sure it's familiar to you: 'You can't improve your mind by reading novels.' They're persuaded it's true. They have heard it ever since they were children, in these families where no artist, no professional man of any kind, has ever let in a little light. 'You can't improve your mind by reading novels' is one of the stock phrases of middle-class English Philistia. Ask them if they improve their minds by looking at pictures in the National Gallery, or even at the Academy, and they know it is essential that they should answer, 'Certainly.' Ask them how they do it, and they are 'done.' Of course, they don't really improve their minds either way, because, before the contemplation of art in any form can be anything more than a vague amusement, a very much higher standard of education than they have reached is necessary; only they have learnt to pretend about pictures. It's an odd thing—or, perhaps, a natural one—that an author of the sort of book that they are impressed by, a scientist, a brain-worker of any description, literary or not, talks and thinks of a novelist with respect, while these people themselves find him beneath them."
There was a silence, in which both stared again at the sea. His irritation subsiding, it occurred to him that he might have expressed his opinions less freely, considering that Philistia was his wife's birthplace. He was beginning to excuse himself, when she interrupted him.
"Don't let us discuss it any more, Humphrey," she said, in a grieved voice, "please! I am sorry I said so much."
"Iwas wrong," said Kent; "I have vexed you."
"No; I am not vexed," she replied, in a tone that intimated she was only hurt.
"Cynthia, don't be angry!... Make it up!"
She turned instantly, with a touch of her hand, and a quick, pleased smile; and he set himself to efface the effect of his ill-humour, with entirely successful results. As they strolled back to the hotel side by side, he felt her to be a long way from him—there was even a sense of physical remoteness. Mentally, she did not seem so near as in the days of their earliest acquaintance. He caught himself wishing that he could debate a certain point in construction with Turquand, and from that it was the merest step to perceiving that Mentone would be jollier if Turquand were with him instead. He was appalled to think that such a fancy should have crossed his brain, and strove guiltily to believe that it had not; but once again he felt spiritless and blank, and it was a labour to maintain the necessary disguise. He observed forlornly that Cynthia always appeared happiest in their association when the ineptitude of it was weighing most heavily upon himself.
Mrs. Kent placed few obstacles in the way of her husband's industry, and installed in Leamington Road, Streatham, he began his novel, and deleted, and destroyed, and re-wrote, until at the expiration of three weeks he had accomplished Chapter I. Primarily he did not experience so many domestic discomforts to impede him as Turquand had predicted. Mrs. Walford had obtained a very respectable and nice-looking servant, whose only drawback was a father in a lunatic asylum and the frequently expressed fear that if she were given too much to do she might go out of her mind on the premises. Ann was so "superior," and a "general" had really proved so difficult to get, that the thought of an hereditary taint had not been allowed to disqualify her. Cynthia confessed to finding it a little awkward when a duty was neglected, but apart from this Ann was an acquisition.
The author's working hours were supposed to be from ten o'clock till seven, with an interval for luncheon, but the irregular habits of bachelorhood made it hard for him to accustom himself to them, and it was often agreed that he should take his leisure in the afternoon, and reseat himself at his desk in the alluring hours of lamplight, when the neighbours' children were at rest and scales ceased from troubling. To these neighbours he found that he was an object of considerable curiosity. He had not lived in a suburb hitherto, and he discovered that for a man to remain at home all day offered much food for conjecture there. Subsequently, in some inexplicable manner, his vocation was ascertained, and then, when Cynthia and he went out, people whispered behind their window-curtains and stared.
Of his wife's family he saw a good deal, both at The Hawthorns and at No. 64, Leamington Road, and his liking for his brother-in-law did not increase. There was an air of condescension in Mr. Cæsar Walford's self-sufficiency that he found highly exasperating. The bass's debut had been fixed, during their absence, for the coming season, and he repeated the newest compliments paid to him by his master with the languid assurance of an artist whose supremacy was already acknowledged by the world. The latest burst of admiration into which Pincocca had been betrayed had always to be dragged by his parents from reluctant lips, but he never forgot any of it.
Humphrey was sure that the artist thought even less of him than the neighbours did. Fiction he rarely read, he said. He said it with an elevation of his eyebrows, as if novels were fathoms beneath his attention. His eyebrows were, in fact, singularly expressive, and he could dismiss an author's claim to consideration, or ridicule a masterpiece, without uttering a word. There had been more truth than is usual in such statements when Humphrey said that he was not conceited on the score of his unprofitable spurs, but when he contemplated the complacent sneer by which this affected young man pronounced a novelist of reputation to be entirely fatuous, he was galled.
Cynthia had told her mother how hard he was working, and once, when they were spending an evening at The Hawthorns some weeks after their return, his industry was mentioned.
"Well," exclaimed the stock-jobber tolerantly, "and how's the story?—getting along, heh?"
"Yes," said Kent, "I'm plodding on with it fairly well, sir."
He was aware that his father-in-law did not view fiction seriously, either, and he always felt a certain restraint in speaking of his profession here.
"And what's it about?" asked Mrs. Walford, in the indulgent tone in which she might have put such a question to a child. "Have you made Cynthia your lovely heroine, and are you flirting with her at Dieppe again?Iknow what it'll be—hee, hee, hee! I'm sure you meant yourself by the hero in your last book; you know I told you that long ago!"
He knew also that she would tell him that, just as mistakenly, about the hero of every book he wrote.
"N-no," he said, "I shouldn't quite care to try to make 'copy' out of my wife. It wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't be congenial."
"You ought to know her faults better than anybody else, I should think, by this time," said Miss Wix.
"And her virtues," said Humphrey.
"Oh," said Miss Wix, with acidulated humour, "he says two months are quite long enough to find out all Cynthia's virtues, Louisa!"
"I didn't hear him say anything of the sort," Said Mrs. Walford crossly. "Well, what is it about? Tell us!"
He felt awkward and embarrassed.
"I can't explain a plot; I'm very stupid at it," he said. "You shall have a copy the moment it is published, mater, and read the thing."
"I do wish he'd call me 'mamma'!" she cried. "He makes me feel a hundred years old."
To change the subject, he inquired if she had read Henry James's new book.
"I don't know," she said. "Oh yes, they sent it me from the library this week. It isn't bad; I didn't like it much. Didyouread it, Cæsar?"
Cæsar became conscious that people talked.
"Read?" he echoed wearily. "Read what?"
"Henry James's last. I forget what it was called——Something. I saw you with it the other day. A red book."
"I looked through it. I had nothing to do."
"Quite amusing?" she said. "Wasn't it?"
"I forget," he murmured; "I never do remember these things."
"It took a clever man some time to write," said Kent; "it might have been worth your attention for a whole afternoon."
Cæsar was not disturbed. Neither his confidence nor his amiability was shaken.
"Do you think so?" he said with gentleness. "Ican'tread these things any more. There's nothing to be gained. What does one acquire? Whether Angelina marries Edwin, or whether she marries Charles——!" He shook his head and smiled compassionately. Sam Walford guffawed. "When I feel that my mind's been at too great a tension, I sometimesglanceat a novel; but I'm afraid—I'mreallyafraid—I can't concede that I should be justified in giving up an afternoon to one."
"Cæsar has his work to think of, you know," put in Cynthia; "he's not like us women."
"You'll find it a tough job to get the best of Cæsar in an argument," proclaimed Walford boisterously.
"Oh, I don't deny that Ihaveread novels in my time. There was a time when I could read a yellow-back." He made this admission in the evident belief that a book was more frivolous in cardboard covers than in the cloth of its first edition. "But I can't do it to-day."
"Well," cried Mrs. Walford, "Imust say I agree with Humphrey; I must say I think it's very clever to write a good novel—I do really!Icouldn't write one; I'm sure I couldn't—I haven't the patience."
"Oh!" exclaimed Cæsar, with charming confusion; "it's Humphrey's own line—of course it is! I always forget." He turned to Kent deprecatingly: "You know, I never associate you with it; it's a surprise every time I remember."
Kent said it was really of no consequence at all.
"Well, well, well," said Walford, "everybody to his trade! We can't all be born with a fortune in our throats. Wish we could—eh, Humphrey, my boy? Did you hear what Lassalle said about his voice the other day? Cæsar, just tell Humphrey what Lassalle said about your voice the other day."
"Oh, Humphrey doesn't want to listen to that long story," said Mrs. Walford, "I'm sure?"
He could do no less, after this, than express curiosity.
"Well, then, Cæsar, tell us what it was." "Do, Cæsar," begged his sister; "I haven't heard, either."
"A trifle," he demurred, "not interesting. I didn't know I'd mentioned it."
"Oh yes," said Miss Wix. "Don't you remember you told us the story at tea, and then you told it again to your father at dinner? But do tell Cynthia and Humphrey!"
"I—er—dined with Pincocca last night at his rooms," he drawled. "One or two men came in afterwards. He introduced me. I didn't pay much attention to the names—you know what it is—and by-and-by Pincocca pressed me to sing. He said I was 'a pupil,' and I could see that one of the men was prepared to be bored.... This really is so very personal that——"
"No, no, no! go on. What nonsense!" said his mother.
"I could see he was prepared to be bored; so I made up my mind to—sing!I was nettled—very childish, I admit it—but I was nettled. I didn't watch him while I sang—I couldn't. I did better than I expected.
"You forgoteverything," cried Sam Walford, "Iknow!"
"I did, yes. I didn't think of Pincocca, or of him, or of anybody in the room. When I had finished, he came up to me, and said, 'Mr. Walford, I am green with jealousy. Ah, Heaven! ifIcould command such a career!' The man was Lassalle."
"Flattering?" shouted his father to Kent.
"Flattering? 'IfIcould command such a career!' Eh?"
Kent asked himself speechlessly if this thing could be.
"IfIcould command such a career!'" declaimed Mr. Walford. "What do you think of that? He's coming out in the spring, you know."
"Yes, so I've heard," said Humphrey. "Where?"
"That's not settled; here in town, I expect, at Covent Garden. He sang to the manager last week. The man was—was staggered."
"Ha!" said Kent perfunctorily.
"There's never been anything heard like it. I tell you, he'll take London by storm."
"WhatIcan't understand," said Miss Wix, her mouth pursed to a buttonhole, "is how it was you didn't know Lassalle directly he came in. Is he the only musical celebrity you aren't intimate with?"
Her nephew looked momentarily disconcerted.
"One doesn't know everybody," he said feebly; "Lassalle happened to be a man I hadn't met."
"What do you mean, Emily?" flared Mrs. Walford. "You don't imagine that Cæsar made the story up, I suppose?"
"'Mean'?" said Miss Wix with wonder. "'Make it up'? Why should he make it up? I said I 'didn't understand,' that is all. Quite a simple observation."
She rose, and seated herself stiffly on a distant couch. Mrs. Walford panted, and turned to Humphrey, who she was afraid had overheard.
"How very absurd," she said jerkily—"howveryabsurd of her to make such a remark! So liable to misconstruction. By the way, do you see anything of that Mr. Turkey—Turquand—what was he called?—now? Has he—er—er—any influence with the Press?"
"He knows a good many people of a kind. Why?"
"We shall be very pleased to see him," she said; "I liked him very much. He might dine with us one night, when there's nobody particular here.... I was thinking he might be useful to Cæsar. The Press can be so spiteful, can't it—so very spiteful? Of course, Cæsar will really be independent of criticism, but still——"
"Still, you'll give Turquand a dinner."
"Oh, you satirical villain!" she said playfully. "Hee, hee, hee! You're all alike, you writing men; you'll even lash your mamma-in-law. Aren't you going to have anything to drink? Sam, Humphrey has nothing to drink. Cynthia, a glass of wine?"
The servant had entered with a salver and the tantalus, and Sam Walford proposed the toast of his son's debut. They prepared to drink it, and it was noticed then that Miss Wix sat alone in her distant corner.
"Emily, aren't you going to join us?"
"I beg your pardon, Emily," exclaimed Walford; "I didn't know you were with us, upon my word I didn't!"
"'The poor are always with us,'" said Miss Wix, in a low and bitter voice. "If it can be spared, a drop of whisky."
"Then, you'll tell Mr. Turquand we shall be happy to see him?" said Mrs. Walford to Kent. "Don't forget it. You might bring him in with you one evening. I dare say he'll be very glad of the invitation—and he can hear Cæsar sing. What's your hurry? I want to talk to Cynthia. You aren't going to write any more when you get back, I suppose?"
He acknowledged that he was—that he had taken his wife to a matinée on that understanding—but it was past twelve when they left her mother's house and turned homeward through the silent suburb. The railway had just yielded back a few theatre-goers, weary and incongruous-looking. In the cold clearness of the winter night the women's long-cloaked figures and flimsy head-gear drooped dejectedly, and the men, with their dress-trousers flapping thinly as they walked, appeared already oppressed by the thought of the early breakfast to which they would be summoned in time to hurry to the station again. The prosperous residences lying back behind spruce, trim shrubberies and curves of carriage-drive finished abruptly, and then began borders in which fifty pounds was already a distinguished rental. The monotonous rows of villas, with their little hackneyed gables, and their little hackneyed gates, their painful grandiloquence of nomenclature, seemed to Kent a pathetic expression of lives which had for the most part reached the limit of their potentialities and were now passed without ambition and without hope. Some doubtless looked forward or looked back from the red brick maze, but to the majority the race was run, and this was conquest. He was about to comment on it, but the girl was unusually quiet, and the remark on his lips was not one that would have been productive of more than a monosyllabic assent in any circumstances.
Their front-garden slept. He unlocked the door, and, saying that she was very tired, Cynthia held up her face immediately and went upstairs. After he had extinguished the gas, Kent mounted to the little room where he worked, and lit the lamp. Beyond the window, over the bare trees, the moon was shining whitely. He stood for a few moments staring out, and thinking he scarcely knew of what; then he began to re-read the last page of the manuscript that lay on the desk. He had just begun to write, when Cynthia stole in and joined him.
"Are you busy?" she asked.
"No, dearest," he said,'surprised. "What is it?"
She came forward, and hung beside him, fingering the pen that he had laid down. She had put on her dressing-gown, and her hair was loose. She was very lovely, very youthful so; she looked like a child playing at being a woman. The sleeves fell away, giving a glimpse of the delicate forearms, and he thought the softness of the neck she displayed seemed made for a parent's kisses.
"How cold it is!" she murmured; "don't you feel cold?"
"You shouldn't have come in," he said; "you'll take a chill. You'd be better off in bed, Baby."
She shook her head.
"I want to stop."
"Then, let me get you a rug and wrap you up." He rose, but she stayed him petulantly.
"I don't want you to go away; I want to speak to you.... Humphrey——"
"Is anything the matter?"
"I've something to tell you." She pricked the paper nervously with the nib. "Something ... can't you guess what it is, Humphrey? Think—it's aboutme."
A tear splashed on to the paper between them. Kent's heart gave one loud throb of comprehension and then yearned over her with the truest emotion that she had wakened in him yet. He caught her close and caressed her, while she clung to him sobbing spasmodically.
"Oh, you do love me? You do love me, don't you?" she gasped. "I'm not a disappointment,amI?"
She slipped on to the hassock at his feet, resting her head on his leg. With the tumbled fairness of her hair across his trouser as she crouched there, she looked more like a child than ever, a penitent child begging forgiveness for some fault. He swore that she had fulfilled and exceeded his most ardent dreams, that she was sweeter in reality than his imagination had promised him; and he pitied her vehemently and remorsefully as he spoke, because in such a moment she was answered by a lie. The lamp, which the servant had neglected, flickered and expired, and on a sudden the room, and the two bent figures before the desk were lit only by the pallor of the moon. Cynthia turned, and looked up in his face deprecatingly:
"Oh, I'm so sorry; I meant to remind her. I'm punished—I'm left in the dark myself!"
He stooped and kissed her. The fondness that he felt for her normally, intensified by compassion, assumed in this ephemeral circumscription of idea the quality of love, and he rejoiced to think that, after all, he was deceived and that their union was indeed, indeed, the mental companionship to which he had looked forward. He did not withdraw his lips; her mouth lay beneath them like a flower; and, his arms enclosing her, she nestled to him voicelessly, pervaded by a deep sense of restfulness and content. In a transient ecstasy of illusive union their spirits met, and life seemed to Kent divine.
As, chapter by chapter, the novel grew under his hand, Kent saw, from the little back-window, the snow disappear and the bare trees grow green, until at last a fire was no longer necessary in the room, and the waving fields that he overlooked were yellow with buttercups.
He rose at six now, and did about three hours' work before Cynthia went down. Then they breakfasted, and, with an effort to throw some interest into her voice, she would inquire how he had been getting on. He probably felt that he had not been "getting on" at all, and his response was not encouraging. After breakfast he would make an attempt to read the newspaper, with his thoughts wandering back to his manuscript, and Cynthia would have an interview with Ann. This interview, ostensibly concluded before he went back to his desk, was generally reopened as soon as he took his seat, and for some unexplained reason the sequel usually occurred on the stairs. "Oh, what from the grocer's, ma'am?" "So and so, and so forth."
"Yes, ma'am." "Oh, and—Ann!" "What do you say, ma'am?" More instructions, interrupted by a prolonged banging at the tradesman's door, and the girl's rush to open it. "What is it, Ann?" "The fishmonger, ma'am." "Nothing this morning." "Nothing this morning," echoed by Ann; the boy's departing whistle, "Ann!" "Yes, ma'am?" "Ask him how much a pound the salmon is to-day." "Hi! how much a pound's the salmon?" Meanwhile, Kent beat his fists on the desk, and swore. Once he had pitched his pen at the wall in a frenzy, and dashed on to the landing to remonstrate; but he had felt such a brute when Cynthia cried and declared that he had insulted her before the servant, and it had wasted so much of his morning kissing her into serenity again, that he decided it would hinder him less on the whole to bear the nuisance without complaint.
The ink-splashes on the wall-paper testified to his having raged in private on more than the one occasion, however, and the superior Ann's feet appeared to him to grow heavier every week. The domestic machinery was in his ears from morning till nightfall—from the time that she began to bang about the house for cleaning purposes to the hour that he heard her rattle the last of the dinner things in the scullery and go to bed. It seemed to him often that it could not take much longer to wash the plates and dishes of a Lord Mayor's banquet than Ann took to wash those of his and Cynthia's simple meals, and when, like the report of a cannon, the oven-door slammed, he yearned for his late lodging in Soho as for a lost paradise.
And this wasn't all. His wife was less companionable to him daily. Fifty times he had registered a mental oath that he would abandon his hope of cultivating her and resign himself to her remaining what she was; but he had too much affection for her to succeed in doing it yet, and with every fresh endeavour and failure that he made his dissatisfaction was intensified. He burned to talk about his work, about other men's work, to speak of his ambitions, to laugh with someone over a witty article; instead, their conversation was of Cæsar, whose debut had been postponed till the autumn; of the engagement of Dolly Brown, whom he did not know, to young Styles, of Norwood, whom he had not met; of the laundress, who had formerly charged four-pence for a blouse, and who now asked fivepence. When he pretended to be entertained, she spoke of such things with animation. When he dropped the mask, her manner was as dull as her topics, for she was as sensitive as she was uninteresting.
Her wistful question, whether she had proved a disappointment, recurred to him frequently, and to avoid wounding her he affected good spirits more often than he yawned. But the strain was awful; and when he escaped from it at last and sank into a chair alone, it was with the sense of exhaustion that one feels after having been saddled for an afternoon with a too talkative child. The oases in his desert were Turquand's visits; but Turquand never came without a definite invitation. Streatham was a long distance from Soho, and there was always the risk of finding that they had gone to the Walfords'. Besides, it was necessary to book to Streatham Hill, from the West End, and the service was appalling, with the delays at the stations and the stoppages between them, especially on the return journey, when the train staggered to a standstill at almost every hundred yards.
One evening when he dined with them, Humphrey gave him some sheets of his manuscript to read. He did not expect eulogies from Turquand, but he would rather have had to listen to intelligent disapproval than refrain from discussing the book any longer, and when the other praised the work he was delighted.
"You really think it good?" he asked. "Better than the last? You don't think they'll say I haven't fulfilled its promise? Honest Injun, you know?"
"Seems very strong," said Turquand, sucking his pipe. "No, I don't think you need tremble, if these pages aren't the top strawberries. Rather Meredithian, that line about her eyes in the pause, isn't it? You remember the one I mean, of course?"
Kent laughed gaily.
"It came like that," he said. "Fact! Does it look like a deliberate imitation? Would you alter it? Oh, I say, talking of lines, I'm ill with envy. 'Occasionally a girl, kissed from behind as she stretched to reach a honeysuckle, rent with a scream the sickly-coloured, airless evening.' The 'sickly-coloured, airless evening.' Isn't it great? What do you think of that for atmosphere? And he's got it with the two adjectives. But the 'honeysuckle'—the 'honeysuckle' with that 'sickly-coloured, airless'—you can smell it!" "Whose?"
"Moore's. I opened the book the other day, and it was the first thing I saw. I had been hammering at a lane and summer evening paragraph myself, and when I read that, I knew there wasn't an impression in all my two hundred words."
"You shouldn't let him read, Mrs. Kent, while he has work on the stocks," said the journalist. "I know this phase in him of old."
"Yes, and you used to be very rude," put in Kent perfunctorily. "My wife isn't! I can be depressed now without being abused."
Cynthia laughed. She was very pretty where she lay back in the rocker by the window. Her face was a trifle drawn now, but she looked girlish and graceful still. She looked a wife of whom any man might be proud.
"You didn't mention it," she said; "I didn't know. But I don't see anything wonderful in what you quoted, I must say! Do you, Mr. Turquand? I'm sure 'sickly-coloured, airless, doesn't mean anything at all."
"It means a good deal to me," said Kent. "I'd give a fiver to have found that line."
"Cousins wouldn't give you any more for your book if you had," said Turquand. "Put money in thy purse! I suppose you'll stick to Cousins?"
"Why not? Life's too short to find a publisher who'll pay you what you think you're worth; and Cousins are affable. Affability covers a multitude of sins, and there's a lot of compensation in a compliment. Cousins senior told me I had a 'great gift.'"
"Perhaps he was referring to his hundred pounds."
"He was referring to my talent, though I says it as shouldn't. That was your turn, Cynthia!"
"Yes," said Turquand; "a wife's very valuable at those moments, isn't she, Mrs. Kent?"
"How do you mean?" said Cynthia, who found the conversational pace inconveniently rapid.
"I shall send it to Cousins," went on Humphrey hastily; "and I want two hundred and fifty this time."
"They won't give it you."
"Why not?"
"Partly because you'll accept less. And you haven't gone into a second edition, remember." "Look at the reviews!"
"Cousins's will look at the sale. The thing will have to be precious good for you to get as much as that!"
"Itwillbe precious good," said Kent seriously. "I'm doing all I know! You shall wade right through it when it's finished, if you will, and tell me your honest opinion. I won't say it's going to 'live' or any rot like that; but it's the best work it is in me to do, and it will be an advance on the other, that I'll swear."
"Mrs. St. Julian's last goes into a fourth edition next week," observed Turquand grimly, "if that's any encouragement to you."
"Good Lord," said Kent, "it only came out in January! Is that a fact?"
"One of 'Life's Little Ironies'! Hers is the kind of stuff to sell, my boy! The largest public don't want nature and style; they want an improbable story and virtue rewarded. The poor 'companion' rambles in the moonlight and a becoming dress, and has love passages in the grounds at midnight—which wouldn't be respectable, only she's so innocent. The heiress sighs for a title and an establishment in Park Lane; I and the poor 'companion' says, 'Give me a cottage, with the man I love,' making eyes at the biggest catch in the room, no doubt, though the writer doesn't tell you that—and hooks him. Blessed is the 'companion' whose situation is in a story by Mrs. St. Julian, for she shall be called the wife of the lord. Sonny, the first mission of a novel is to be a pecuniary success—you are an ass! Excuse me, Mrs. Kent."
"You may give him all the good advice you can. I've said before that I like Mrs. St. Julian's stories, but Humphrey has made up his mind not to. That's firmness, I suppose, as he is a man!" She laughed.
"Turk didn't imply that he liked them either. Isn't it painful, though, to think of the following a woman like that can command? What a world to write for—it breaks one's heart!"
"It's an over-rated place," said Turquand; "it's a fat-headed, misguided, beast of a world!"
"It isn't the world," said Cynthia brightly; "it's the people in it!"
A ghastly silence followed her comment, a pause in which the journalist stared at the stove ornament, affecting not to have heard her, and Kent felt the sickness of death in his soul. Shame that his wife should say such a stupid thing in Turquand's presence paralysed his tongue; and Turquand, pitying his embarrassment, turned to the girl with an inquiry about her relatives. Humphrey had taken him to The Hawthorns, as requested, and Turquand, with characteristic perversity, had professed to discover a congenial spirit in Miss Wix. It was about Miss Wix that he asked now.
Cynthia laughed again.
"Yes, your favourite is quite well," she answered—"as cheerful as ever."
"Fate hasn't been kind to Miss Wix," said Turquand; "she's been chastened and chidden too much. In other circumstances——"
"Skittles!" said Humphrey.
"In other circumstances, she might have been sweeter, and less amusing. Personally, I am grateful that there were not other circumstances. I like Miss Wix as she is; she refreshes me."
"I wish she had that effect onme," said Kent, as the guest rose to go and he reflected gloomily that he would hear nothing refreshing until the next time they met. He begged him to remain a little longer. And, when Turquand withstood his persuasions, he insisted on accompanying him to the station, and parted from him on the platform with almost sentimental regret.
Only his interest in his book sustained him. He was deep enough in it for it to have a fascination for him now, and, though there were still days when he did not produce more than a single page, there were others on which composition was spontaneous and delightful, and happy sentences seemed to fall off his pen of their own accord. He wrote under difficulties when the summer came, for Cynthia required more and more attention; but while he often devoted a whole morning or afternoon to her, he made up for it by working on the novel half the night. More than once he worked on it all night, and after a bath and a shave he joined her at breakfast on very good terms with himself. To support the sprightliness, however, he needed to breakfast with someone to whom he could report his progress, and cry, "I've come to such a point," or, "That difficulty that we foresaw, you know, is overcome—a grand idea!" His exhilaration speedily evaporated at breakfast, and, if he returned to his room an hour later, he did so feeling far less fresh than when he had left it.
Yes, Cynthia demanded many attentions through the summer months; she was petulant, capricious, and dissolved into tears at the smallest provocation. There was much for Kent to consider besides the novel. Also there were anticipations in which they momentarily united and he felt her to be as close to him as she was dear. But these moments could not make a life; and despite the fact that the time when they expected their baby to be born was rapidly approaching, he was living more and more within himself. Cynthia had no complaint to make against him; if marriage was not altogether the elysium that she had imagined it would prove, she did not hold that to be Humphrey's fault. She found him, if eccentric, tender and considerate. But he was bored and weary. His feeling for her was the affection of a man for a child, tinged more or less consciously by compassion, since he knew that she would sob her heart out if she suspected how tedious she appeared to him. Though she would have been a happier woman with a different man, the cost of the mistake that they had made was far more heavy to him than to her. He realised what a mistake it had been, while she was ignorant of it. And of this, at least, he was glad.
She was very ill after her confinement, and for several weeks it was doubtful if she would recover. The boy throve, but the mother seemed to be sinking. The local doctor came three times a day, and a physician was called in, and then other consultations were held between the physician and a specialist, and it appeared to Kent that he was never remembered by Mrs. Walford, or the nurse, during this period, excepting when he was required to write a cheque. "You shall see her for a moment by-and-by," one or the other of them would say; "she is to be kept very quiet this afternoon. Yes, yes, now you're not to worry; go and work, and you shall be sent for later on!" Then he would wander round the neglected little sitting-room, and note drearily, and without its striking him that he might attend to them, that the ferns in the dusty majolica pots were dying for want of water—or he would sit down and write, by a dogged effort, at the rate of a word a minute, asking himself anxiously what sum it was safe to expect from Messrs. Cousins. His banking account was diminishing rapidly under the demands made upon it now, and he found it almost as hard to write a chapter of a novel as if he had never attempted to do such a thing before. He returned thanks to Heaven that he was not a journalist, to whom the necessity for covering a certain number of pages by a stated hour daily was unavoidable; but he wished himself a mechanic or a petty tradesman, whose vocations, he presumed, were independent of their moods.
It was not till the crisis was past and Cynthia was downstairs again, in a wrapper on the sofa, that he began to feel that he was within measurable distance of the conclusion. The nine months that he had allotted to the task had long gone by, but that it would have taken him a year did not trouble him, for he knew the work to be good. He told her so one afternoon when they were alone together again, she with her couch drawn to the fire, and he sitting at the edge, holding her hand.
"I'm satisfied," he declared. "When I say 'satisfied,' you know what I mean, of course? It's as well done as I expected to do it. Another week 'll see it finished, darling."
She patted his arm.
"Poor old boy! it hasn't been a happy time for him either, has it?"
"I've known jollier. But you're all right again now, thank God! and I'm going to pack you off to Bournemouth or somewhere soon, to bring your colour back. I was speaking to Dr. Roberts about it this morning. He says it's just what you need."
"I've been very expensive, Humphrey," she said wistfully. "How much? We didn't think it would cost so much as it has, did we? You should have married a big, strong woman, Humphrey, or——"