“‘Sour!’ said the fox at her feet,‘How can she ripen windy-high?Sour!’ said the fox with his nose to the sky—”
“‘Sour!’ said the fox at her feet,‘How can she ripen windy-high?Sour!’ said the fox with his nose to the sky—”
“‘Sour!’ said the fox at her feet,‘How can she ripen windy-high?Sour!’ said the fox with his nose to the sky—”
“‘Sour!’ said the fox at her feet,
‘How can she ripen windy-high?
Sour!’ said the fox with his nose to the sky—”
He was as pleased as a child with a toy when she capped it—
“Then a grape dropped off. It was rotten sweet.
“Then a grape dropped off. It was rotten sweet.
“Then a grape dropped off. It was rotten sweet.
“Then a grape dropped off. It was rotten sweet.
There!” she flushed at him triumphantly. And then—“Now did you mean——? Who was in your mind? Were they anyone we know? I’ve always wanted to ask you.”
But before he could answer her the blonde lady leaned forward and whispered in his ear. He turned to her with a glance of interest and amusement, but with his lips still moving and his mind still running on an answer to the Baxter girl. The blonde lady whispered again, and then he turned right round to answer her, shelving his arms on her knees. I couldn’t hear what they said, but it was just as if she had beckoned him into another room. He was withdrawn from the conversation and from the Baxter girl for as long as that blonde lady chose.
Miss Howe looked at them with her broad smile.
“Tell us, Beryl! We’re listening, anyhow!” she said invitingly.
But the Baxter girl’s chin went up. The touch of annoyance in her voice made it twang, made her commonness suddenly noticeable. She was bearable when she was in awe of them, but now she was asserting herself, and that meant that she was inclined to be noisy.
“Oh, my opinion doesn’t count, of course! But”—she swung like a pendulum between her two manners—“oh, Ididenjoy myself at first. It was the way you all talked. You knew everyone. You’d read everything. You frothed adventures. Like champagne it was, meeting all the people. I used to write my head off, the week after. And you were all kind to me from the first. I suppose it was Madala. She never let one feel out of it. But I thought it was all of you. I had the feeling—‘the godsaren’tjealous gods.’ But now it’s”—she looked at them pertly—“it’s fog on Olympus.”
“You needn’t—honour us, you know, Beryl,” said Anita sharply.
She answered with her furtive look.
“I know. And I don’t think—I don’t want to come as much as I did.”
“In that case——” Anita ruffled up.
“Fog! Fog!” cried Miss Howe clapping her hands. And then—“All the same, Nita, people are dropping off. The Whitneys haven’t been for weeks. When did Roy Huth come last? And the Golding crowd? I marvel thatheturns up still.” She nodded towards Kent Rehan. “Oh, you know, we’re like a row of beads when the string’s been pulled out. We lie in a line for a time, but a touch will send us rolling in all directions.”
“Yes,” said the Baxter girl vehemently, “the heart’s out of it somehow. I’m not ungrateful. It’s just because I used to love coming so.”
Miss Howe looked down at Anita, not unkindly.
“Give it up, Nita! The Nights have served their turn. It sounds ungracious, but things have to end sometime or other. Hasn’t the time come? Hasn’t it come tonight?”
“But you’ve been coming all this year just the same,” said Anita stubbornly.
Miss Howe shrugged her shoulders. It was the Baxter girl who answered—
“Ah, but there was always just a chance of seeing Madala.”
At that Anita, who had been sitting as steely stiff as a needle in a pin-cushion, got up, shaking off Miss Howe’s persuasive, detaining hand and the overflow of her skirts. The cushions tumbled after her on to the floor.
“As to that,” she said, “and don’t imagine that I haven’t known what you came for, all of you——”
“Eh?”
Her voice was sharp enough to have recalled anyone and it recalled Mr. Flood. He returned to the conversation with the air of dragging the blonde lady after him. She had the manner of one hanging back and protesting, and laughing still over some secret understanding. “Eh?” said he. “What’s that about Madala?”
Anita looked from one to another.
“I’m telling you,” she said. “I’ve told you already, I can give you Madala Grey. Come here and I’ll give you Madala Grey still. That’s what you want, isn’t it, to be amused? She amused you.”
“She did, bless her!” said Miss Howe.
“It was her brains,” said the Baxter girl.
“A beautiful creature,” said Mr. Flood slowly.
“Not she!” The lady behind him was smiling. “She made you think so. She made men think so. But how? That intrigued me. Oh, she was prettyish: but that was all. I used to watch her——”
“Envy?” said he.
“No, not envy,” said that woman slowly. “She was too—innocent—how could one envy? She didn’t know her own strength. She said—‘Don’t hurt me,’ with a sword at her side.”
“Excalibur.” It came from Mr. Flood. “Magic.”
“No, Madala—just Madala.” Miss Howe sighed. “It’s no good, Anita, you can’t give us back Madala.”
But my cousin, looking at them, laughed in her turn.
“Madala? You fools! You’ve never had her. But you shall! Oh, wait! My books are dull, aren’t they? Yet you’ll be here, you know, every month, thick as bees, to listen to me. A chapter a month, that’s all I’ll give to you.Idon’t write three novels a year. But you’ll come, you’ll come. Proof? There’s plenty of proof. See here.”
She went swiftly across to the outer room. There was a large carved desk standing on the little table by the window. She picked it up. It was too big for her. It filled her arms so that she staggered under the weight.
“Oh, Kent!” she called.
He came back to the foggy room with a visible wrench.
“Here, that’s too heavy for you. Let me.” He took it from her.
“The table—here. Thank you, oh, thank you, Kent.” She veiled her voice as she spoke to him. “It’s heavy—it’s so full—books—papers——”
He put it down for her and nodded, and was straying away again when she stopped him.
“Kent! Don’t sit by yourself. We”—her voice was for him alone—“we’re talking about—her. I was going to show them—Kent, stay here with us.”
He waited while she talked to him. And she talked very sweetly and kindly. She was the quiet, chiffony little creature again with the pretty, pure voice.Icouldn’t make her out. She looked up at him and said something too low for me to catch, and then—
“There’s your chair. Isn’t that always your chair?” And so left him and turned to the table and the box and the others.
But he did not take the saddle-bag near Anita’s own seat. He looked irresolutely from one to another of the group that watched Anita fumbling with her keys. He looked, and his face softened, at Great-aunt, muttering over her needles. He looked at the empty chair beside me. He looked at me and found me watching him. Then, as I smiled at him just a little, he came to me and sat down. But he said nothing to me, and so I was quiet too.
But Anita was busy, hands and eyes and tongue all busy.
“When she married, you know, in that hole-and-corner fashion——” Then, as if in answer, though nobody had spoken—“Well, what else was it, when nobody knew?—when even I didn’t know——”
There was a movement in the chair beside me, and turning, I caught the ending of a glance towards my cousin. A new look, I found it, on that passive face, a roused and wondering and scornful look that transformed it. But, even as I caught it, it faded again to that other look of bleak indifference, a look to know and dread on any creature’s face, a look that must not stay on any fellow-creature’s face. I knew that well enough. So I said the first words that came, in my lowest voice, lest they should hear.
But they were talking. They did not hear.
“I’m sure that Great-aunt knew.” Indeed I thought so. I think that Great-aunt would always be kind and guessing with a girl. Then I wondered at myself for daring it and thought nervously—‘He’ll snub me. He’ll be right to snub me——’
But he looked across at Great-aunt kindly and said, in just such a withdrawn voice as mine—
“Yes, of course, if ever there was a time when——” Then he half smiled. “Poor old lady! But she’s changed. She used to be so brisk and managing, more like fifty than seventy. But this year’s aged her. She wanted, you know, to give some pearls—her own pearls. But pearls spell sorrow. And Anita would have objected. She told me all about it.”
“She was speaking of them tonight.” We both turned again and looked at her. She had dropped her knitting, or it had slipped from her knee, and she sat in her chair staring down at it with a terrible, comical air of helplessness. Then she caught his eye and forgot the knitting and nodded at him.
“I think—” I said, “I don’t think she understands. She asked me—she forgets I’m a stranger. She asked me——” I broke off. I couldn’t say to him—‘She asked me about Miss Grey and she doesn’t realize that she’s dead.’ One’s afraid of the brutality of words. But he understood. There was a simplicity about him that re-assured one. And he never said—‘It’s Anita’s business. It’s not your business,’ as anyone else might have done. He just said, once again—
“Poor old lady!” and hesitated a minute. Then he got up and went across to her and picked up her wools. I don’t think the others noticed him go. Anita didn’t. She was talking too fast.
“—left a trunk-full of papers and so on. I’d often stored boxes for her. Somehow it never got sent down. I came across it only yesterday. I thought to myself that there was no harm in putting things straight. You know I’m literary executor? Oh yes. She said to me soon after her marriage, half in joke, that she supposed she had got to make a will—and what about her MSS.? ‘I can’t havehimworried.’ I offered at once. You see I know so exactly her attitude in literature. There’s a good deal of unpublished stuff—early stuff. But all in hopeless confusion. Tumbled up with bills and programmes and one or two drafts of letters—or so I imagine. She had that annoying habit—that ugly modern habit—of beginning without any invocation, and never a date. But there’s one letter—there’s the draft of a letter that’s important from my point of view.” She broke off with a half laugh. “It sounds a ridiculous statement to make about Madala Grey of all people, but do you know that she couldn’t express herself at all easily on paper?”
Miss Howe nodded.
“Do I know? I’ve known her re-write a letter half a dozen times before she got it to her liking—no, not business letters, letters to her intimates. A most comical trick. Scribble, scribble, scribble—slash! and then crunch goes the sheet into a ball, into the grate, or near it, till it looked as if she were playing snow-balls, and then Madala begins again—and again—and again. Yet she talked well. She talked easily.”
“Isn’t that in keeping?” Mr. Flood struck in. “She didn’t express so much herself in her speech as the mood of the moment.”
“As the mood of the companion of the moment more likely,” the blonde lady corrected.
He nodded agreement.
“But for herself—go to her books.”
“Or her letters—her careful, conscientious letters. But she was careless about her drafts,” said Anita significantly.
Mr. Flood looked at her curiously.
“What’s up that sleeve of yours, Anita?”
She was quick.
“You shall read it, in its place. But the trouble is——” She hesitated. She gave the little nervous cough that always ushered in her public lectures. “We’ve all written books,” she said, “all except you, Blanche——”
The blonde lady blinked her sleepy eyes.
“You’re all so strenuous,” she purred. “I love to watch you being strenuous. So soothing.”
“Well, I was going to say, it’s easy enough to end a book, but have you ever got to the beginning? I never have. One steps backward, and backward again——”
“I know,” cried the Baxter girl. “Till you get tired of it at last and begin writing from where you are, but you never really get your foot on the starting-point, on the spring-board, as you might say.”
“That’s it. Yes, Jasper, I’ve got material up my sleeve, but frankly, I don’t know how to place it. I don’t know where to begin. The facts of her life, her conversation, her literary work, her letters—I go on adding to my material till I am overwhelmed with all that I have got to say about her. But I don’t want to begin with facts. Facts are well enough, but think how one can twist them! I want the woman behind the facts. I want the answer to the question that is the cause of a biography such as mine is to be—the question—‘What was Madala Grey?’ Not who, mark you, but further back, deeper into herself—‘Whatwas Madala Grey?’”
“Why, a genius,” said the Baxter girl glibly.
Anita neither assented nor dissented.
“Ah—” she said, frowning, “but that’s not the beginning either. At once we take our step backward again—‘What is genius?’”
“Isn’t talent good enough?” said Mr. Flood acidly.
“But does one mean talent?” She was still frowning. “Everyone’s got talent. I’m sick of talent. But she—she mayn’t be a great one—how she’d have laughed at being called a great one!—but she makes her dolls live. And isn’t that the blood-link between the greatest gods and the littlest gods? Life-givers? Life-makers? Oh, I only speak for myself; but she made her book-world real to me, therefore for me she had genius. Whether or not I convince you is the test of whether my life-work, myLifeof her—fails or succeeds.”
“I suppose you wouldn’t trust it to Madala?” said Miss Howe softly.
“Trust what?”
“To convince us.”
She answered, suspicious rather than comprehending, for indeed Miss Howe’s tone was very smooth—
“What do you mean?I’m writing her life.”
Miss Howe was inscrutable.
“Of course you are. Fire ahead. Genius, wasn’t it?”
Anita shrugged her shoulders.
“What’s in a name? It’s the quality itself that fascinates me. I want to account for it. I want to trace it to its source. Worth doing, isn’t it? But do you realize the difficulties? Sometimes I feel hopeless. I’ve known her five years, and her books I know by heart, and I’m only just beginning to decide whether to call her a romantic or a realist.”
“A realist. Look atEden Walls,” said the Baxter girl.
“A romantic. Look atThe Resting-place,” said Miss Howe.
Mr. Flood over-rode them.
“Dear ladies, you confuse the terms. It amazes me how people always confuse the terms. Your so-called realist, your writer who depicts what we call reality, the outward life, that is, of flesh and dirt and misery—don’t you see that he is in truth a romantic—a man (or woman) who lives in a fair world of his own, a paradise of the imagination? Out of that secure world of his he peers curiously at ours, and writes of it as we dare not write, writes down every sordid, garish, tragic-comic detail. Your so-called realist can afford the humour of Rabelais, the horror of Dostoevsky, the cheerful flesh and blood of Fielding. Why shouldn’t he be truthful? It’s not his world. Don’t you see? But your so-called romantic, he lives in this real world. He knows it so well that he has to shut his eyes or he would die of its reality. So he escapes into the world of romance, the world of beauty within his own mind—nowhere but in his own mind. Who is our dreamer of dreams? Shelley, the realist! Blake jogged elbows with poverty and squalor all his life, and he was the prophet and the king of all spirits. Don’t you see? And Goethe—the biographers will tell you that Goethe began as a realist and ended as a romantic. I say it was the other way round. What did he know of reality in the twenties? Its discovery was the romantic adventure of his young genius. But when he was old and worldly and wise—then he wrote his romances, to escape from his own knowledge. Oh, I tell you, you should turn the words round. Now take Shakespeare——”
“It’s not fair to take Shakespeare,” said Miss Howe. “It’s the Elephant and the Crawfishes over again. Let’s keep to the crawfishes! Let’s keep to our own generation!”
“Well, if I were Anita I should begin by showing Madala as a romantic—as the young romantic producing the most startlingly realistic book we’ve had for a decade. Indeed to me, you know, her development is marked by her books in the sharpest way. It’s the young, the curious, the observant Madala inEden Walls. The whole book is a shout of discovery, of young, horrified discovery, of the ugliness of life. It’s as if she said—‘Listen! Listen! These things actually happen to some people. Isn’t it awful?’ She dwells on it. She insists on every detail. She can’t get away from it. And yet she can hardly believe it, that young Madala. But inPloughed Fieldsalready the tone’s changing. It’s a pleasanter book, a more sophisticated book. It interests profoundly, but it’s careful not to upset one—an advance, of course. Yet I, you know, hear our Madala’s voice in it still, an uneasy voice—‘Hush! Hush! These things happen to most people. Pretend not to notice.’ And in the last book, in the pretty, impossible romance, there you have your realist full-fledged—‘Shut your eyes! Come away quickly! These things are happening tome!’” He leant back again, folding his arms and dropping his chin. And then, because Miss Howe was looking at him as if she were amused—“I tell you I know. I recognize the symptoms. I’m a realist myself. That’s why I write romantic poetry. Have to. It’s that or drugs. How else shall one get through life?”
“Jasper!” said the blonde lady. But for once he didn’t turn to her. He shrugged his shoulders.
“Don’t worry. Who’ll believe me?”
The Baxter girl was breathless.
“Oh, but I do. It’s a new Madala, of course. But I believe it explains her.”
“But the facts of her life don’t agree,” began Miss Howe.
“Ah, Anita’s got to make ’em,” said Mr. Flood languidly. “Isn’t that the art of biography?”
But Anita was deadly serious.
“You don’t begin far enough back. My spring-board is not—what is Madala? but—what is genius? How does it happen? Is it immaculate birth? or is it begotten of accident upon environment? That is to say—is it inspiration or is it experience? I speak of the divine fire, you understand, not of the capacity for resolving it into words or paint or stone. That’s craft, a very different thing. You say that Madala was not a genius in the big sense—yes, I’ll admit that even, for the argument’s sake—but even you will concede her the beginnings of it. So my difficulty is just the same. I’ve never believed in instinctive genius. Yet how can she, at twenty, have had the experience (that she had the craft is amazing enough) to cope withEden Walls? Romantic curiosity isn’t enough explanation, Jasper! Look at her certainty of touch. Look at her detail. Look how she gets inside that woman’s mind. That’s the fascination of it. It’s such a document. Now how does she know it? That’s what intrigues me. Madala and a street woman! Where’s the connection? How does she get inside her? Because she does get inside her.”
“Oh, it’s real enough,” said the blonde lady.
“It must be. You should have seen the letters she received! Amazing, some of them.”
“Anita, they amazedher. I remember her getting one while she was staying with us. She looked thoroughly frightened. She said—‘But, Lila, I didn’t realize—it was just a story. But this poor thing, she says it’s true! She says it’s happened to her! What are we to do?’ You know, she was nearly crying. It was some hysterical woman who had read the book. But Madala always believed in people. I know she wrote to her. I believe she helped her. But she never told you much about her doings.”
“Oh, her sentimental side doesn’t interest me. What I ask myself is—how does she know, as she obviously does know, all that her wretched drab of a heroine thought and felt and suffered?”
“Instinct! Imagination!” said the Baxter girl. “It must be the explanation.”
“It isn’t. It isn’t. Oh, I’ve puzzled it out. I’m convinced that from the beginning it’s experience. Don’t flare, Lila, I don’t mean literal experience. Not inEden Walls, anyhow. Later, of course—but we’re discussingEden Walls. Imagination, do you say, Beryl? But the imagination must have a fact for its root. I’ll grant you that imagination is so essentially a quality of youth that the merest rootlet of a reality is enough to set a young artist beanstalk climbing. But the older he grows, the wiser, the more versed in reality, the less he trusts his imagination, the more, in consequence, his imagination flags and withers; till he ends—one sees it happen again and again—as the recorder merely of his own actual experiences and emotions. It’s only the greatest who escape that decay of the imagination. Do you think that Madala did? Look atEden Walls. Remember what we know about her. Can’t you see that the skeleton ofEden Wallsis Madala’s own life? Consider her history. She leaves what seems to have been a happy childhood behind her and sets out on adventure—very young. So does the woman inEden Walls. The parallel’s exact. Madala’s Westering Hill and theBreckonridgeof the novel are the same place. The house, the lane, the country-side, she doesn’t trouble to disguise them. Again—Madala’s adventure is ushered in by calamity: and tragedy—(you can see the artist transmuting the mere physical calamity into tragedy) tragedy happens to the woman inEden Walls. Remember how much more Madala dwelt on the sense of loneliness and lovelessness, on the anguish of the loss of something to love her, than on what one might call the—er—official emotions of a betrayed woman. Didn’t it strike you? Doesn’t that show that she was depending on her experience rather than on her imagination, fitting her own private grief to an imaginary case? Then, in America, she has the struggle for meat and drink, for mere existence. So does the woman inEden Walls. Madala does not go under. The woman inEden Wallsdoes. It’s the first real difference. But I maintain that in reality the parallel still continues, that, in imagination, Madala did go under over and over again: that she had ever in front of her the ‘suppose, suppose,’ that, in drawing the woman inEden Walls, she is saying to herself—‘Here, but for the grace of God, go I.’ And then, you know, when you think of her, hating that big city, saving up her pennies, and coming home at last in a passion of homesickness (if it was homesickness—sickness anyhow), can’t you see how it makes her write of that other woman? It’s the gift, the genius, stirring in her: born, not immaculately, but of her own literal experience. Jasper’s right—you can always make facts fit if you think them out: and because I possess that underlying shadow-work (I admit it’s no more) of fact to guide me in deciphering her method in the first book, therefore, in the second book and the third book, I find it safe todeducefacts to cover the stories, even when I don’t possess them. I consider that I’m justified, thatEden Wallsjustifies me. Don’t you?”
“It’s plausible,” said Mr. Flood thoughtfully.
“Oh, it’s convincing,” said the Baxter girl reverently. “I feel I’ve never known Madala Grey before. What it will be when you get it into shape, Miss Serle——”
“In fact,” said Miss Howe, “there’s only one drawback——”
“And that?” said Anita swiftly.
“Only Madala’s own account.”
“She never discussed her methods,” said Anita sharply.
“Just so! You’re not the only person who’s—pumped. I remember seeing her once surrounded, in her lion days. I remember her ingenuous explanations. She did her best to oblige them—‘Honestly, I don’t know. One just sits down and imagines.’ And then—‘That’s quite easy. But it’s awfully difficult writing it down.’ That’s the explanation, Nita. A deliberate, even unconscious self-exploitation is all nonsense. Madala’s not clever enough.”
“Not clever enough!”
“No. You’re much cleverer than she was. You have twice her brains. You can’t think, Anita, what brains you’ve got. You’ve got far too many to understand a simple person. I don’t agree, you know, with ‘genius.’ I can’t throw a word like that about so lightly. But as far as it went with Madala, it was the same sort of genius that makes a crocus push in the spring. Your theory—oh, it’s plausible, as Jasper says, but don’t you see that it destroys all the charm of her work? It’s the innocence of her knowledge, the simplicity of her attitude to her own insight that to me is moving. She touches pitch, yet her fingers are clean. It’s her view of her story that arrests one, not her story, not her facts, not her mere plot.”
“No, the plot is conventional, I’ll grant you that. She was always content with old bottles.”
“Yes, and when the new wine burst them and made a mess on the carpet, Madala was always so surprised and indignant.”
Mr. Flood giggled.
“Pained is the word, dear lady—surprised and pained. Do you remember whenEden Wallswas banned?”
“I don’t suppose she talked to you about it, Jasper,” said Miss Howe sharply.
“I? I was never of her counsels. But I got my amusement out of the affair. Dear, delightful woman? She behaved like a schoolgirl sent to Coventry. I remember congratulating her on the advertisement, and she would hardly speak to me. But it suited her, the blush.”
“Wasn’tit an advertisement!” said the Baxter girl longingly.
“If one could have got her to see it,” said Anita. “But no, she insisted on being ashamed of herself. She said to me once that the critics had ‘read in’ things that she had never dreamed of—that it made her doubt her own motives—that she felt dirtied and miserable. And yet she wouldn’t alter one of those scenes. Obstinate! She could be very obstinate.”
“Oh, which scenes?” The Baxter girl stuck her elbows on the table and her chin in her fists. Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, then, Miss Serle, did you—? did she come to you in the early days? Did you help her too?”
“My daughter—very kind to young people!”
It was a mere mutter, but I recognized the swing of the phrase. Anita didn’t. She was busy with the Baxter girl.
“I don’t say that there would be no Madala Grey today if I——”
“But——” said Mr. Flood.
“But—” said Miss Howe, “she’s Anita’s discovery. We’re never to forget that, are we, darling?”
“Oh, I knew that,” said the Baxter girl, trying to be tactful. “ButEden Wallswas written before you knew her, wasn’t it? I understood—I didn’t know, I mean,” she explained to them, “that Miss Serle had—blue-pencilled——”
“I did and I didn’t.” Anita laughed, as if in spite of herself. “I confess I thought at the time that it needed revision. Mind you, I never questioned the quality, but I knew what the public would stand and what it wouldn’t. Of course, I didn’t want the essentials altered. But there were certain cuts——However, nothing would move her.”
“That’s funny. She never gave me the impression that she believed in herself so strongly.”
“Oh, herposewas diffidence,” said the blonde lady.
“But she didn’t believe in herself. It was obvious. When I went through her MS. and blue-pencilled, she was most grateful. She agreed to everything and took the MS. away to remodel.”
“And then?”
“I heard nothing more of her—for weeks. Finally I wrote and asked her to come and see me. She came. She was delightful. I had told her, you know, about theAnthologythe first time I met her. I remember that I was annoyed with myself afterwards. I’m not often indiscreet. But she had a—a knack—a way with her. I hardly know how to describe it.”
“One told her things,” said the Baxter girl.
“Just so. One told her things. And she had brought me a mass of material—some charming American verse (you remember? in the last section but one) that I had never come across. She had been reading for me at the British Museum in her spare time. I confess I was touched. We talked, I remember——” She sighed reminiscently. “It was not until she made a move to go that I recollected myself. ‘Well,’ I said, ‘and how aboutEden Walls?’ She fidgeted. She looked thoroughly guilty. At last it came out. She hadn’t altered a line. She had tried her utmost. She had drafted and re-drafted. She had finally given it up in despair and just got work in some obscure newspaper office—‘a most absorbing office!’ But there—you know Madala when she’s interested—was interested——”
“Don’t,” said Miss Howe softly.
But Anita went on—
“‘Well but—’ I said to her—‘that’s all very well. But you’re not going to abandonEden Walls, are you?’ Then it all came out. Yes, she was. She knew I was right. She wasn’t conceited. She quite saw that the book was useless. It just meant that she couldn’t write novels and that she mustn’t waste any more time. ‘But, my dear Miss Grey,’ I said, ‘you mean to say that you’d rather leave the book unpublished than alter a couple of chapters, remodel a couple of characters?’ ‘But I can’t,’ she said, ‘I can’t. They happened that way.’ ‘Then make them happen differently,’ I said. But no, she couldn’t. ‘Oh well,’ I said at last—‘if you’re so absolutely sure of yourself, if you’re prepared to set up your judgment——’ That distressed her. I can hear her now. ‘But I don’t set up my judgment. I’ll burn the wretched stuff tomorrow if you say it’s trash. I knew it would be, in my heart. But—I can’t alter it, because—because it happened that way.’ Then I had an idea. ‘To you?’ I said. She looked at me. She laughed. She said—‘Miss Serle, you’ve written ten books to my one. Don’t pretend you don’t know how a story happens.’” Anita nodded at us. “You see? Evasive. I think it was from that moment that I began to have my theory of her.”
“Well—and what next?” demanded Miss Howe.
“She would have said good-bye if I had let her. I stopped her. ‘Reconsider it,’ I said. She beamed at me, chastened but quite cheerful. ‘Oh, I’ll try another some day,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’m not old enough. I was a fool to think I could.’ At that, of course, I gave in. I wasn’t going to lose sight ofEden Walls. I told her to bring it as it was and I’d see what I could do. As you know, Mitchell and Bent jumped at it.”
“But it was banned,” said the Baxter girl.
“Yes, but everybody read it. You can get it anywhere now. And I can say now—‘Thank the gods she didn’t touch it.’”
“Then she was right?”
“Of course she was right. I knew it all the time.”
“And she didn’t?”
“Of course she didn’t. Mine was critical knowledge. Hers the mere instinct of—whatever you choose to call it. I was afraid of the critics. She didn’t know enough to be afraid.”
“There’s something big about you, Anita!” said Miss Howe suddenly.
Mr. Flood gave the oblique flicker of eyes and mouth that was his smile.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “it fits her quite well.”
“What?” said Anita sharply.
“The mantle, dear lady.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Ah—Gentle dullness ever loves a joke. What, Beryl?”
“I don’t see,” the Baxter girl had harked back, “how you can call a book that has been banned conventional.”
“Only the plot——”
“Ah, that plot!” Nobody could snub Mr. Flood. “Think, dear lady! Village maiden—faithless lover—lights o’ London—unfortunate female—what more do you want?”
“Of course.” Anita resumed the reins. “It’s as old asThe Vicar of Wakefield.”
“Oh,that!” The Baxter girl looked interested. “Do you know, I’ve never seen it. One of Irving’s shows, wasn’t it?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. But they were all quite solemn, even Anita. But then she never did listen to the Baxter girl. She had talked straight through her sentences.
“But it’s not the material. It’s the way it’s handled. It’s never been done quite so thoroughly, from the woman’s point of view—so unadornedly. People are afraid of their ‘poor girls.’ There’s a formula that even the Immortals follow. They are all young and beautiful, and they all die. They must. They wouldn’t be tragic in continuation. But Madala’s woman doesn’t. That’s the point. There’s no pretence at making her a heroine. She’s just the ordinary stupidish sheep of a creature, ‘gone wrong.’ There’s no romantic halo, no love-glamour, no pity and terror, just the chronicle of a sordid life. And yet you can’t put the book down. At least I couldn’t put it down.”
“Doyoulike it?” I said to Kent Rehan, as he paused beside me in his eternal pacing from room to room.
He looked at me oddly.
“I respect it,” he said. “I don’t like it. People misjudged——”
“If it had been the recognized love story”—Mr. Flood’s high voice silenced him—“the regularized irregularity, so to speak, it wouldn’t have been banned. It was the absence of a love story that the British public couldn’t forgive. It was cheated. It was shocked.”
“But there is a love story at the beginning, isn’t there?” I said. “I haven’t read far.”
Instantly the Baxter girl exhibited me—
“Yes, imagine! She hasn’t read it!”
“I’ve readThe Vicar of Wakefield,” I said. And then I was annoyed that I had shown I was annoyed. But at once Miss Howe helped me. Miss Howe was always nice to me.
“How far have you got? Where the man tires of her? Ah, yes! Well, after that it’s just her struggle. She—she earns her living—in the inevitable way. She grows into a miser. She hoards.”
Mr. Flood looked acute.
“That’s what upset them. They don’t mind a Magdalen; but Magdalen unaware, unrepentant, Magdalen preserving her ill-gotten gains—no, that’s not quite nice.”
“Well, I don’t know,” said Miss Howe. “If anyone can’t feel the spirit it’s written in, the passion of pity—I think it’s the most pitiful thing I’ve ever read. It made me shiver. That wretched creature, saving and sparing——” And then to me, for I suppose I showed I was interested—“She wants to get away, you know, to get back into the country. It’s her dream. The homesickness——”
“I suppose such a woman could——?” said the Baxter girl.
“I used to argue it with Madala. Madala always said that, with some people, that animal craving for some special place was like love—a passion that could waste you. She said that every woman must have some devouring passion, for a man, or a child, or a place—everywoman. And that for a beaten creature like that, it would beplace—the homing instinct of a cat or a bird. And mixed up with it, religion—the vague shadowy ideal of peace and cleanly beauty—all that the wretched creature tries to express in her phrase—‘getting out and living quiet’—that Madala typifies in the word ‘Eden.’ It meant much to Madala. Don’t you remember that passage towards the end of the book where she meets the man, the first man, and brings him home with her—and he doesn’t even recognize her, and she doesn’t even care.” She picked up a bundle of tattered proofs and turned them over. “Where is it? What an appalling hand she had!” She stood a moment, reading a page and pursing her lips. “Oh, well, what’s the use of reading it? We all know it.” She flung it down.
“Let me see,” I said to the Baxter girl. She drew it towards me. It was the first proof I’d ever seen. It was corrected till it was difficult to read. But I made it out at last.
With the closing of the door she dismissed him with one phrase for ever from her mind—
“And that’s that!”
She had long been accustomed thus to summarize her clients, dispassionately, as one classes beasts at a show; and she judged them, not by their clothing or their speech, not by the dark endured hours of their love or by the ticklish after-moment of the reckoning, but rather, as she hovered at the door with her provocative night smile dulled to a business friendliness, by their manner of leaving her.
Always there was the fever to be gone; but some went furtively, with cautious, tiptoe feet that set the stairs a-squeak with mockery. Her smile did not change for the swaggerer who stayed long and took his luck-kiss twice, but her eyes would harden. Mean, cheating mean, to kiss again and never pay again! And some she watched and smiled upon who left her in a brutal silence. For them she had no resentment, rather the sullenness beneath her smile reached out to the revulsion of their bearing as to something welcomed and akin. And some gave back her smile with kindly words—and those she hated.
But when, after his manner, the man had gone, she had, as always, her ritual.
She locked her easy door and pulling out the key, put it before her on the table at the bedside. Left and right of it she laid her money down, adding to the night’s gains the meagre leavings of her purse. Left and right the little piles grew, one heaped high for the needs of her day and her night, for food and roof and livery, and one a thin scatter of coppers and small silver that took long weeks to change into the dear, the exquisite, the Eden-opening gold. It was the bigger pile that she thrust so carelessly back into her bag, and the scattered ha’pence that she warmed in the cup of her two hands, holding them, jingle-jingle, at her ears, dropping them to her lap again to count anew, piling them before her to a little, narrowing tower, before she opened the child’s jewel-case beside her, and, lifting the sheaf of letters that she never read but kept still and would always keep, for the savage pain they gave her when her eyes saw them and her fingers touched them, she poured out the new treasure upon the sacred hoard beneath.
Tenpence saved—and yesterday a shilling! Five shillings last week. Fifty pounds! She would soon have fifty pounds!
She put away the box of money, and so, surrendering at last to the awful bodily fatigue, lay down again upon the tousled bed, not to sleep—her sleeping time was later in the day—but to shut her eyes.
For, by the amazing pity of God, a secret that is not every man’s, was hers—the secret of the refuge appointed, behind shut eyes, of the return into eternity that is the shutting down of lids upon the eyes. The window glare, the screaming street below, the blank soiled ceiling with the flies, the walls, the unending pattern of the hateful walls, the clock, the finery, the beastly scents, the loathed familiars of stuff and wood and brass that blinked and creaked at her like voices crying—“Misery! misery! misery!”—these were her world. Yet not her only world. She, who was so dim and blunted a woman-thing, could pass, with the warm dark velvet touch of dropping lids, not into the nullity of sleep, but into the grey place, limitless, timeless, where consciousness knows nothing of the flesh.
She shut her eyes with the sigh of a tired dog, and instantly her soul lay back and floated, resting.
There was no time, no thought, no feeling. There was peace—quiet—greyness. At unmeasured intervals realization washed over her like waves, waves of peace—quiet—greyness. Greyness—she worshipped the blessed greyness. She wanted to give it a beloved name and knew none. ‘When I am dead!’—‘For ever and ever, Amen!’—So she came nearest to ‘Eternity.’
Peace—quiet—greyness: greyness enduring for ever, that could yet be rent asunder like a temple veil and let in misery—the window glare, the reeking room, the clodding footsteps, the fingers tapping at her door—a frail eternity whose walls were slips of flesh.
She called harshly—
“Get out! Get away! Put it down outside then, can’t you?”
There was a mutter and the clank of a scuttle-lid, and a thud. The footsteps shuffled out of hearing.
She shut her eyes again.
Peace—quiet—greyness. The waves were rocking her.
She did not dream. There are, by that same pity of God, no dreams permitted in the place of refuge. But, as she lay in peace, she watched her own memorial thoughts rising about her, one by one, like bubbles in a glass, like cocks crowing in the dark of the dawn.
A white road ... the hill-top wind panting down it like a runner ... dust ... bright blue sky ... sky-blue succory in the gutter ... succory is so difficult to pick ... tough ... it leaves a green cut on one’s finger ... succory in a pink vase on the mantel-piece ... the fire’s too hot for flowers ... hot buttered toast ... the armchair wants mending ... the horsehair tickles one’s ears as one lies back in it and warms one’s toes and watches the rain drowning the fields outside ... empty winter fields, all tousled and tussocky from cow dung ... grey skies ... snow ... not a soul in sight ... and succory in a pink vase on the mantel-piece ... because one’s back in Eden ... summer and winter are all one in Eden ... picking buttercups in Eden as one used to do ... all the fields grown full of buttercups ... fifty buttercups make a bunch ... fifty golden buttercups with the King’s head on them ... hurry up with the buttercups ... one more bunch of buttercups will buy back Eden—Eden—ah!
So, with a long gasping sigh would come the end. “Eden—” and the longing would be upon her, tearing like a wild beast at her eyes and her throat and her heart—“I want to go home. Oh, God, let me go home! Let me out! I want to go home——”
The chapter ended.
“And does she?” I looked up at the Baxter girl. “I’m always afraid of a bad ending. Does she get back in the end?”
The Baxter girl fluttered through the pages.
“The money’s stolen first—a man takes it—while she’s asleep——Oh, it’s beastly, that scene. She has to save it all up again. It takes her years. But—oh, yes, she does go back.”
“The railway journey,” said Miss Howe. “Do you remember?”
“If you want happy endings”—the Baxter girl flattened out the last page with a jerk—“there you are!”
I read over her shoulder. The strong scent that hung about her seemed to float between me and the page.
“Here we are—where she gets to the station. ‘Eden,’ Madala calls it, but the woman calls it ‘Breckonridge.’
At last and at last the station-board with the familiar name flashed past her window. She thrilled. The station lamps repeated it as the train slowed down. She thought—how long the platform’s grown! ... a bookstall! ... a bookstall on each side! ... there used not to be ... wasn’t the station smaller?...
She spoke to the ticket collector shyly, blushing, like a girl going to an assignation and thinking that all the world must know it.
He answered, already catching at the ticket of the traveller behind her—
“How far to Breckonridge? A mile, maybe—but you get the tram at the corner.”
She stared. She would have questioned him again, but the throng of people pressed her forward.
A tram through the village? ... queer! ... not that it mattered to her ... she would take the old short cut through the fields outside the station yard.... There was a stile ... and a wild cherry tree....
She left the yard, the unfamiliar yard with asphalt and motors and a great iron bridge, crossed the road, and stopped bewildered.
There were no fields.
‘Station Road.’ The labelled yellow villas were like a row of faces. Eyes, nose, mouth—windows, porch, steps—steps like teeth. They grinned.
In a sort of panic she ran past them down the road, a lumbering, clumsy woman. She trod on her skirt, and recovered herself with difficulty. She heard a small boy laugh and call after her. She clambered on to the tram.
“I want to go to the village—to Breckonridge——”
“It’s all Breckonridge. ’Ow far?”
She stared.
“I don’t remember. He said a mile.”
“Town ’All, I expect.” He took his toll and passed on.
She turned vaguely to a neighbour.
“Town Hall? I don’t remember. The road’s all different Where are the fields?”
The neighbour nodded.
“Built over. When were you here last? Thirty years? My word, you’ll find changes! I notice it, even in five. Very full it’s getting. Good train service. My husband can get to his office under the hour.”
She said dazedly—
“It was—it is—a little village.”
The woman laughed.
“I daresay. But how long ago?”
“There were fields,” she said under her breath. “There were flowers——”
“Here’s the Town Hall. Didn’t you want the Town Hall?”
Unsteadily she rose and got out. The tram clanged forward.
She stood on an island where four roads met and looked about her. The sun stared down at her, a brazen city sun. The asphalt was hot and soft under her feet. Road-menders were at work in the fair-way. They struck alternately at the chisel between them and it was as if the rain of blows fell upon her. She felt stupid and dizzy. She did not know where to turn. There was nothing left of her village, and yet the place was familiar. There were drab houses and rows of shops and a stream of traffic, and the figures of women and men—menacing, impersonal figures of men—that hurried towards her down the endless streets.
“Well?” said the Baxter girl.
“But that’s not theend?” I said.
The Baxter girl looked at me oddly.
“Why not?” And then—“How else could it end? How would you make it end?”
“Oh, I don’t mean——” I began. I hesitated. “I don’t think I quite understand,” I said.
That was the truth. At the time I couldn’t follow it. It moved me. It swept me along. But whether it was good or bad I didn’t know. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what it was driving at. I felt in a vague way that the people at home wouldn’t have liked it.
“What does it mean?” I said to the Baxter girl.
“That you can’t eat your cake and have it, I suppose. You can get out of Eden, but you can’t get back.”
Anita answered her contemptuously—
“Is that all it means to you?”
And yet we had spoken very softly. But Anita had eyes that ate up every movement in a room, and her small pretty ears never seemed to miss a significant word though ten people were talking. I had seen her glance uneasily at us and again at the two in the other room. I knew Great-aunt’s mutter was too low even for her, and Kent Rehan only nodded now and then, but even that annoyed her. She lifted her own voice to be sure that they should hear all that she said, as if afraid lest, even for a moment, she should be left out of their thoughts.
“Oh!” she said loudly and contemptuously, “I tell you whatIsee.”
She succeeded, if that pleased her. Kent Rehan raised his head and stared across at her with that impersonal expression of attention that, I was beginning to realize, could always anger her on any face. She had said a little while ago that she only cared for Miss Grey as an artist, and I believe that she believed it. But I don’t think—I shall never think it true. I think Anita depended—depends, on other people more than she dreams. Poor Anita! I can see her now, her whole personality challenging those dark abstracted eyes. But she spoke to the Baxter girl—
“When Madala Grey choseEden Wallsfor her title—when she flung it in the public face——”
I saw him give a shrug of fatigue or distaste—I couldn’t tell which. Great-aunt, who had been sitting, her head on one side, with her sharp poll-parrot expression, crooked her finger at me. I went across to her and behind me I heard the Baxter girl—
“You talk as if she were in a passion——”
And Anita—
“So she was. I’m telling you. It’s the wrongs, not of one woman, but of all women, of all ages of women, that burn behind it.”
“Votes for Women!” It was Mr. Flood’s voice.
There was a laugh and I lost an answer. I caught only a vehement blur of words, because Great-aunt had me by the wrist.
“Chatter, chatter! I can’t hear ’em. What’s my daughter talking about?”
I hesitated.
“About books, Auntie.”
“Whose books?” she pounced.
“Some writer, Auntie.”
“What’s she saying about her, eh?” She held me bent down to her. I glanced at Kent Rehan. He was listening to us. I felt harried.
“About—oh—whether a genius—whether she was a genius——”
“Madala, eh?”
“Yes, Auntie.”
I thought I heard him sigh. And at that—why, I don’t know—I turned on him. I was rude, I believe. I sounded silly and cruel, I know. Yet, heaven knows, that that was the last thing I wanted to be.
I said angrily to him—
“Oh, why do you stand there and listen? Don’t you see that I can’t help myself? Why don’t you go away? What good can it do you to stay here, to stay and listen to it all?”
Then I stopped because he looked at me for a moment, and flushed, and then did turn away, back again to his old dreary post at the street window.
Great-aunt chuckled.
“That’s right, little Jenny. Take your own way with them, Jenny!”
I said—
“Let me go, Auntie dear,” and I loosed her hand from my wrist and went after him; for of course the instant the words were out of my mouth I was ashamed of myself. I couldn’t think what had possessed me. I was badly ashamed of myself.
I came to him and said—
“Mr. Rehan—I don’t mean to be rude. Great-aunt—she doesn’t understand. She made me talk. It wasn’t rudeness; but you stood there, and I knew—I thought I knew, what you must think, must be thinking—” (but ‘feeling’ was the word I meant) “and I was sorry. I was angry because I was sorry. I didn’t mean to be rude.”
He said—
“It’s all right. I didn’t think you rude.”
Then I said—
“But I meant it. Why do you stay? What good can it do you? Why don’t you go away from it all?”
And he—
“Where is there to go? I’ve been tramping all day.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. Up and down streets. It’s—it’s blinding, it’s stifling——”
“The fog is,” I said quickly. But we didn’t mean the fog.
He let himself down into the low wicker chair. I stood leaning against the sill, watching him.
“You’re just dead tired,” I said.
He nodded. Then, as if something in my words had stung him—
“Where else? I’ve always come here. Every month. It was natural to come.”
“But now” I said (and I was so urgent with him because of all their talk that drummed still in my mind like a wasps’ nest)—“I’d go away if I were you. What good does it do you? They talk. It’s—it’s rather hateful. I’ve been listening. I’d go.”
“Where?” he said again. And I—
“Haven’t you anyone—at home?”
But as I asked I knew that he hadn’t. He had the look. Oh, he wore good clothes and I knew he wasn’t poor. But it was written all over him that he looked after himself and did it expensively and badly. He had, too, that other look that goes with it—of a man who has never found anyone more interesting to him than himself. And the queer part was that it didn’t seem selfish in him—and I’m sure it wasn’t. It was just like the way a child takes you for granted, and tells you about its own big affairs, and never guesses that you have your own little affairs too. I suppose it was a fault in him; but it made me like him. And he talked to me simply and almost as if he needed helping out; as if he’d been just anybody. I never had to help out anyone before: it had always been the other way round. I’d thought, too, that celebrated people were always superior and brilliant and overwhelming, like Anita and Mr. Flood. But he wasn’t. He was as simple as A, B, C. I liked him. I did like him. I felt happier, more at peace, standing there with him than I had felt since I had been in Anita’s house. I think he would have gone on talking to me too, if it hadn’t been for the Baxter girl. She spoilt it. She tilted back her chair, yawning, and so caught sight of us, and laughed, and leaning over to Miss Howe, whispered in her ear. She was a crazy girl. At once I got up and came across to them, panic-stricken, hating her. I had to. I didn’t want him worried, and you never knew what hateful thing the Baxter girl wouldn’t say, and think that she was pleasing you.
But without knowing it, Anita helped me. Her voice, rising excitedly in answer to some word of Mr. Flood’s, recalled the Baxter girl.
“Mystery? Of course there’s a mystery! She was at the height of her promise inPloughed Fields. It’s as good asEden Wallsin matter and, technically, better still. The third book ought to have settled her place in modern literature for good and all. It ought to have been her master-piece. But what does she do? We expect a chaplet of pearls, and she gives us a daisy-chain. Isn’t that a mystery worth solving? Won’t people read theLifefor that if for nothing else? Am I the only person who has asked what happened to her between her second and her third books?”
“I tell you, but you won’t listen,” Mr. Flood insisted. “Your romantic has become a realist and is flying from it to the resting-place of romance.”
“I do listen. Just so. You use your words and I use mine, but we mean the same thing. She’s been bruising herself against facts. She has been walled up by facts. Her vision is gone. Now what was, in her case, the all-obscuring fact?”
“She was a woman,” said the blonde lady. “It could only be one thing. Don’t I know the signs? She even lost her sense of humour.”
“Yes, she did, didn’t she?” cried the Baxter girl in a voice of relief. “Oh, I remember one day, just before the engagement was announced——”
“As if that had anything to do with it,” said Anita scornfully.
“—and she’d been so absent-minded I couldn’t get anything out of her. I thought I knew her well enough to tease her. I had told her allmyaffairs. So—‘I believe you’re in love,’ I said. ‘Oh, well, you’ll get over it. It’s a phase.’ Was there any harm in that? It was only repeating what you had said to me about her, you know,” she reminded the blonde lady. “But she froze instantly. She made no comment. She just changed the subject. But I felt as if I had been introduced to a new Madala. I wished I hadn’t said it.”
“You are a little fool, Beryl,” said the blonde lady tolerantly.
“But shewasaltered,” insisted the Baxter girl. “The old Madala would have laughed.”
“Yes, she was altered,” said Anita. “Her whole attitude to herself and her work changed that spring. How she horrified me one day. It was soon afterPloughed Fieldscame out, and we were talking about her new book, at least I was, pumping a little, I confess, and suddenly she said—‘Anita, I don’t think I’ll write any more. This stuff—’ she had her hands onEden Walls, ‘it’s harsh, it’s ugly; and so’sPloughed Fields. Isn’t it?’ ‘It’s true to life,’ I said, ‘that’s the triumph of it.’ ‘Is it?’ she said. She looked at me in an uneasy sort of way. And then—‘I’d like to write a kind book, a beautiful book.’ I told her that she couldn’t, that she was a realist. ‘That’s why,’ she said, ‘I don’t think I’ll write any more.’ I laughed, of course. Anybody would have laughed. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I mean it. I haven’t an idea in my head. I’m tired and empty. I think I shall go away for a wander. There’s always the country, anyhow.’ ‘Well, Madala,’ I said, ‘I think you’re ungrateful. You’re a made woman. You’ve got your name: you’ve got your line: you’ve got your own gift——’ ‘Oh, that!’ she said, as if she were flicking off a fly. I was irritated. It was so arrogant. ‘What more do you want?’ I asked her. ‘What morecanyou want?’ She said—‘I don’t know,’ looking at me, you know, as if she expected me to tell her. I disliked that mood of hers. One did expect, with a woman of her capacity, to be entertained as it were, to have ideas presented, not to be asked to provide them. Then she began, à propos of nothing at all—‘If I ever marry——’ That startled me. We’d never touched on the subject before. ‘Oh, my dear Madala,’ I said, ‘you must never think of anything so—so unnecessary. For you, of all people, it would be fatal. It would waste your time, it would distract your thoughts, it would narrow your outlook, it would end by spoiling your work altogether. I’ve seen it happen so often. It’s terrible to me even to think of a woman with a future like yours, throwing it away just for the——’ She interrupted me. ‘I wouldn’t marry for the sake of getting married, if you mean that. Not even for children.’”
“You didn’t mean that, did you, Anita?” said Miss Howe smiling a little.
“Certainly not. But I had always been afraid that she might be tempted to marry for the adventure’s sake, for the mere experience, for the——”
“Copy,” said Mr. Flood. “I always said so. Yes?”
“‘Oh well, Madala,’ I said to her, ‘you know what I think. I’m not one to quote Kipling, but—He travels fastest who travels alone.’ She looked at me so strangely. ‘Alone?’ she said. ‘Alone. Its the cruellest word in the language. There’s drowning in it.’ ‘Well, without conceit, Madala,’ I said, ‘I can affirm that I have been alone, spiritually, all my life.’ ‘Ah, yes,’ she said, ‘but you’re different.’ And that,” Anita broke off, “was what I liked in Madala. She did recognize differences. She could appreciate. She wasn’t absorbed in herself. She said to me quite humbly—‘I’m not strong, I suppose; but I don’t suffice myself. I can’t bear myself sometimes. I can’t bear the burden of myself. Can’t you understand?’ ‘Frankly,’ I said, ‘I can’t. I’m a modern woman, and the modern woman is a pioneer. She’s the Columbus of her own individuality. She must be. It’s her career. It’s her destiny.’ She answered me pettishly, like a naughty child—‘I don’t want to be a pioneer.’ ‘You’re that,’ I said, ‘already, whether you want to be or not.’ Then she said to me, with that dancing, impish look that her eyes and her lips and her white teeth used to manage between them—‘All right! If I’ve got to be, I will. But I’ll be a pioneer in my own way. I swear I’ll shock the lot of you.’”
“Oho!” said Mr. Flood with exaggerated unction.
“Exactly!” Anita gave his agreement such eager welcome. “That put me on the qui-vive. Knowing her as I did, it was a very strong hint. I awaited developments. Frankly, I was prepared for a scandal, a romance, anything you please in the way of extravagance. That’s why the Carey marriage, that tameness, upset me so. It was not what I was expecting. Really, I don’t know which was more of a shock to me,The Resting-placeor the marriage. Hardly had I recovered from the one when——”
“Oh,The Resting-placewas the shock of my life too.” He giggled. “I mourned, I assure you that I mourned over it. That opening, you know—‘There was once’—And the end again—‘So they were married and had children and lived happily ever after.’ Pastiche! And then to be invited to wade through a conscientious account of how they achieved it! Too bad of Madala! As if the poor but virtuous artist’s model weren’t a drug on the market already! And the impecunious artist himself—stooping, you know! Oh, I sat in ashes.”
Miss Howe clapped her hands.
“Jasper, I love you. Idolove you. Did she pull your leg too? Both legs? She did! She did! Oh, there’s only one Madala!”
Mr. Flood’s vanity was in his cheeks while she rattled on.
“Darling Jasper, I thought better of you! Can’t you see the whole thing’s a skit? Giving the jampot public what they wanted! Why, it’s been out a year and they’re sucking the spoon still. It’s the resting-place! Ask the libraries! Oh, can’t you see?”
“If it is parody,” said Mr. Flood slowly, “then, I admit, it’s unique.”
“What else? You’ll not deny humour to her?”
“I do!” the blonde lady nodded her head. “Once a woman is in love she’s quite hopeless.”
“I don’t see how parody could be in question,” Anita broke in. “Anybody reading the book carefully must see that she’s in earnest. That’s the tragedy of it.”
“The literary tragedy?”
“Not only literary. The psychological value is enormous. It’s not art, it’s record. It’s photography. That happened. That happened, tragically, to Madala. Oh, not the trimmings, of course, not the happy-ever-after. But to me it’s perfectly clear that that lapse intoFamily Heraldromance has had its equivalent in Madala’s own life. I’ve always felt a certain weakness in her character, you know—a certain sentimentalism.”
“In the author ofEden Walls?” said Miss Howe contemptuously.
“No, dear lady! But in the author ofThe Resting-place.” Mr. Flood had recovered himself.
“Skit, I tell you, skit!” she insisted. And they continued to bicker in undertones while Anita summed up the situation.
“No, my theory is this—Madala Grey met some man——”
“Carey?” asked Mr. Flood, dividing his allegiance.
“No, Carey comes later. There was—an episode——”
“Episodes?” he amended.
“Possibly. But an episode anyhow, that I place myself at the end of thePloughed Fieldsperiod. It may have been later, it may have been the following summer while she was working atThe Resting-place. I’m open to conviction there. But an episode there must have been. InThe Resting-placeshe wrote it down as it ought to have happened.”
“Why ought?”
“Well, obviously it didn’t happen or she wouldn’t have become Mrs. Carey.”