“Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,Thy way is long to the sun and south,But I, fulfilled of my heart’s desire,Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,From tawny body and sweet small mouth,Feed the heart of the night with fire!”
“Sister, my sister, O fleet sweet swallow,Thy way is long to the sun and south,But I, fulfilled of my heart’s desire,Shedding my song upon height, upon hollow,From tawny body and sweet small mouth,Feed the heart of the night with fire!”
And she cried disappointedly:
“You mean, when summer is over, you will go to your South?”
(South, where all Troubadours live!)
And he, unheeding that Thatch Lane lay on the London and North-Western Railway, gave careless acquiescence. “I never stop long in any one place. We are birds of passage, Lady Auburn-hair, and when summer is over we will sing our songs in other lands.”
We? Our?—so what had been to her a thrilling pastime, he, deluded Troubadour, had actually meant? He had been building dreams of continuing their golden idyll in other lands? Aureole replied, in curiously vibrant tones:
“Once—I struck you—for suggesting—less than that.”
Bertram, still humming, could not remember what was the direful suggestion he had just inadvertently let fall; but supposing it to have been for a caress, as wereusually his demands, he merely stated with a mirthless laugh—not caring to risk again the sting of Aureole’s little fingers:
“Then I must continue to exist without,—somehow,” added in a lower tone of pain.
Aureole had since three years been striving to teach Oliver this language, which came so naturally to the man beside her. To “work up a scene” with her husband had held as much—or as little—intoxication, as going to a ball, in a blouse and skirt, at eleven o’clock of a November morning. Aureole had an insatiable greed for ‘powerful’ scenes; she took dalliance seriously, inasmuch as she always saw herself as a coquette with a heart of stone, scratching at hearts of flesh to see how they bled. “I’m a beast!” she that night adjured her image in the looking-glass—since without a looking-glass impassioned monologues sound never very convincing. “Oh, Iama beast. I don’t care a damn for him, and he thinks I do care; he thinks I’m—coming.” During the month of September, the vision of her Troubadour, a lonely swallow to the South, became almost too poignant to be born.
Summer was dropping her days as faintly and imperceptibly as the first faintly yellowing leaves from the trees. A sense of depression, of the closing-down of the year, drifted over the Farme. Some of the visitors were leaving; as entities they did not matter; but as a symbol of evanescence, their departure affected Aureole with profound melancholy. The Troubadour Quartette sang no more of an evening in the Pavilion Gardens. Bertram rented a room in the town, and lingered on; but at any moment, she felt, the call of the South might peal too clearly for him; and then, with or without her, he too would depart.
With or without her.
Climax was heralded by poisoned fish....
Stuart went nearly every day now to his business in High Holborn, returning to Bournemouth in time for dinner in the evening. On a certain Friday, he was met in the hall by the Cabbage-rose, who informed him in sprightly tones:
“We shall betête-à-têtefor dinner to-night, Mr. Heron.”
On the grounds that some things are too bad to be true, Stuart did not at once grasp the prospect:
“Where’s everybody, then?”
“All ill!” announced the Cabbage-rose triumphantly; and some of her evening-dress fell off.
“All?”
“My poor Johnny has been terribly bad, and so has Mrs. Percival. And, if you listen, you will hear Sir James groaning. There was mackerel for breakfast this morning, and it can’t have been quite good. I took a boiled egg, and you, of course, had gone off to town before the fish came, so you see we are sole survivors!” she adjusted a slippery shoulder-strap, and trilled with laughter at the compromising situation.—Then her face fell, as she spied the Disagreeable Female marching down the stairs.
“I’m better. Not well, but better. I’ve had no food and no attention all day, so I trust there’s a substantial dinner. Good evening, Mr. Heron; I wish to complain of the fish we had for breakfast to-day. We’ve all been seriously indisposed. One has to eat mackerel or nothing, because there was only one egg, and naturally we couldn’tallhave that,” and here she glared at the Cabbage-rose. “I believe I am voicing the dissatisfaction of all the visitors here, Mr. Heron, when I say that I consider it your duty to be at home during the day to control these matters.—Ah! there is the gong, thank goodness. Even if you are running a second boarding establishment in London, it can hardly warrant neglect of us. Please pass the potatoes. I am bound tosay that matters were improved during the fortnight you had entire control.”
Stuart bowed: “You overwhelm me.”
“Mustard, please. And as for Mrs. Strachey, I cannot say she ever struck me as a very competent person; but since she spends her days running about with that very disreputable beach-performer—in my time they blacked their faces, so that one might know they weren’t gentlemen,—she has let everything go to rack and ruin.”
“Oh, but he’s hardly what you’d call a nigger,” put in the Cabbage-rose. “He has one of those nice olive complexions, you know; and he has sung before all the crowned heads of Europe. Certainly, dear Mrs. Strachey is making herself ratherconspicuous——”
But the Disagreeable Female continued stonily: “I am purposely calling your attention to the scandal, Mr. Heron, as if she is also deceiving you, who pass yourself off as her husband’sfriend——”
“Pardon me, Iamher husband’s friend. And both he and I have implicit confidence in Mrs. Strachey’s choice of acquaintances; so that there’s no need at all for scandal. If you’ve any more complaints to make about thefood, I shall be pleased to listen.”
The Disagreeable Female, quelled for the moment, merely suggested that Stuart should bring two dozen eggs every day from London, as they seemed to be scarce in Bournemouth “And not fresh. Wealllike eggs,” and again her eye roamed towards the Cabbage-rose.
But in spite of his championship of Aureole, Stuart’s principles of morality were severely outraged by this account of her flirtation. Defiance of the standing social and domestic code, was in his eyes only permissible to what he termed free-lance adventurers, like himself, Peter, or Sebastian. But Aureole was a wife; and, moreover, his pal’s wife. Running about all day with—anorgan-grinder, was it? It would not be too much to state that Heron of Balliol, Heron of Heron & Carr, was genuinely shocked.—“It isn’t done!” Besides which, he had obstinately determined that Aureole should eventually be handed over, as far as possible undamaged, to her husband. He had written several letters to Oliver, at the latter’s bank and office, hoping that either of these would receive an address to which to forward correspondence. Pending his arrival, Aureole must be kept spotless as snow. Very worried at the new development in his responsibilities, Stuart tackled her the following evening:
“How are the invalids? Anybody dead?”
“They’re all up, except Mr. Johnson. He had it worst. Stuart, will I have to pay the doctor for all of them? The old cat says I’m liable.” The old cat was the Disagreeable Female.
“Indeed you are. Why don’t you examine fish when it comes in?”
“I don’t care for the smell. I ... just don’t care for it. And I was out.”
“Where?”
Aureole smiled; a slow mutinous smile. “You grow more like Oliver every day.”
“I hope so,” quoth Stuart virtuously; “he’s a better man than I am. Wouldn’t it be as well to see in future that your guests aren’t poisoned as well as starved?”
“Dear man, it would bore me.”
He strove to be moderate: “Quite so. But you’ve only five weeks still to run here, and confound it, Aureole! surely it’s more fun to get through a stodgy job decently and with credit, than just bungle it. Even if you hate it, it’s more fun.”
“Our ideas of fun differ,” she laughed, impenitent. And then Stuart realized with horror that she was looking remarkably pretty. He knew enough of neurotic women to be assured that they did not sparkle andbloom unless danger was imminent. He did not know enough of them to refrain from making a mistake in his next remark:
“I’ve reason to believe your husband will be here shortly. He won’t be over-pleased to fork out, among other things, for thirteen doctor’s bills on attending thirteen bilious attacks.”
“Damn doctors!” she stamped her foot viciously. “Damn bilious attacks and fish and boarding-houses and husbands and ... and you....” She fled to Bertram, awaiting her among the pines. A soft drizzling moisture filled the air. In the garden she passed Sebastian and Letty, whose mission it seemed to leave themselves lying about to act as goads in critical moments.—“Damn lovers....”
—“Lady Auburn-hair, this is almost our good-bye. In a very fewdays——”
“You must go? Is that it?” the chill in the air crept into her very soul.
“Not that I must go, but that I must not stay,” parried Bertram, skilfully implying unutterable things. Sooth to say, he was weary of troubadouring.
South ... South ... he on his lonely voyage to the sun; and she remaining to examine fish at the door ... colder drearier days ... Oliver coming back to scold her ... other lovers, two and two and two ... and romance, masked and cloaked, abandoning her for ever?...
“Non ti scordar di me!” he throbbed forth suddenly, in his passionate tenor. “Non ti scordar di me!”
And Aureole replied: “Ask me again, Troubadour, as you asked me once ... and perhaps—perhaps I will come with you.”
After her departure, Bertram still sat on the damp bench beneath the trees, gazing helplessly before him. He found himself pledged, he knew not how, and, tendays hence, he knew not why, to a journey South, he knew not where. He believed he had been guilty of describing, in vivid spirited narrative, some such adventure across the water; because—deuce take it! with the reputation of a troubadour, a traveller, a pedlar of songs, a lover of fair women, a comrade of lords and beggars alike, he could hardly leave acquiescence at a tame: “Yes. Let’s. How jolly,” when she proposed their hazardous plunge together into the unknown. Well, he had still, as result of a successful summer tour, some thirty odd pounds in his pocket, and a store of faithful attachment in his heart. As to their ultimate destiny, when love and the thirty pounds were exhausted,—that was a problem too deep for a mazed troubadour, sitting disconsolately beneath a dripping pine tree. Floating in the vague backwaters of his mind was the supposition that, at worst, he could always take Aureole to Miss Esther Worthing—his sister-in-law—and leave her there. After all, Esther had made Chavvy very welcome. Meanwhile ... Bertram’s inflammable heart had certainly landed him in some awkward situations of late; he didn’t know what women were coming to, when one willy-nilly married you, and another ran away with you! He wondered if it would ever be his lot to meet with a nice modest girl, content with a few kisses and endearments; a girl like his daughter Peter!
—“Lord! I wonder what Peter would say to this mess.Whendid I promise?Whatdid I ask? I’m hanged if I can remember....”
Stuart came to the conclusion that it was no good plunging into this affair before it had reached its zenith. Just at present there was nothing to get at. It was best as rapidly as possible to hasten the ultimate climax, which he strongly believed would be a romantic elopement, and then, somehow, smash it!
So, in furtherance of these plans, he came to Aureole; and meekly, as though in atonement for his former surliness, placed his sailing-yacht at the disposal of herself and her visitors.
“I’ve brought it over from the Haven, and it’s lying anchored at the foot of the Chine. If at any time you care to use it, old Dan Truefitt will act skipper; he’s perfectly trustworthy; and he has my orders.”
It struck Aureole how delightfully ironical it would be to employ Stuart’s boat—just Stuart’s boat—for the means of transport, when she and Bertram escaped from the old to the new. At present, her chiefest joy in the prospect of the elopement, was in contemplating Stuart’s reception of the tidings. And if the latter should come to him flavoured by the final audacity ofhisproperty as the vehicle of sin——!
“Thank you, Stuart,” demurely; “it’s very thoughtful of you; and it’s so difficult, now that the real summer weather is over, to keep everyone amused. We play coon-can, of course. But there’s something more virile about sailing, isn’t there?”
“Much more virile,” he agreed. And wondered if his bait had been swallowed. At all events, he must assume it had. He calculated that the pair would not make their flight by day, both for practical reasons of concealment, and from a sense of atmosphere. On the other hand, Aureole would scarcely wait for the arrival of her ‘gaoler’ from town, by the 7.40 train every evening. Between six and seven, then, the twilight hour, he fixed as the time when two cloaked figures might be expected at the foot of the Chine, where the boat lay at anchor. At this spot, therefore, in the shadow of the cliff, Stuart waited secretly, patiently, every evening between six and seven o’clock. Baldwin demanded frequently why he left the office so early; and confided to Arthur Heron that he believed Stuart to be mixed up in “some affair with a woman.”
—“Would you advise me to move in the matter?”
“No,” replied Uncle Arthur, always inclined to be taciturn.
“Not find out who she is? and call on the female? and attempt to square her?”
“No.”
“Well then, shall I tackle Stuart? Remind him what he owes to the name? Set forth, from experience, how helpless a young fellow can be in the hands of a clever adventuress? Tellhim——”
This time the other man answered at greater length: “My God, no.”
And Baldwin left it at that.
“I should say it would be very soon now,” reflected Stuart, on the ninth day of waiting. This he deduced from Aureole’s demeanour; she being quite incapable of restraining herself from inscrutable smiles, eyes dream-laden, spurts of brilliantly hectic conversation, bouts of feverish consideration for others, speech and comment pregnant with triple meanings, and other indications of a swiftly approaching crisis; all of which Stuart found extremely useful. He had no notion of exactly how he was to effect thedébâcle, but trusted for his inspiration to that solemn moment when, about to embark, the guilty couple should hear the shuffle of footsteps in the sand, and, turning, gaze into his accusing eyes.... “Is this prophetic sight, or did I ever read about it?” mused Stuart.
He paid Aureole the compliment of not for a moment believing that she was taking her fun all this while in a squalid furtive fashion, attempting to blend outward respectability with hidden romance. No; decidedly she had the courage of her emotional caprices; this had been proved by her prompt flight from Norfolk, directly she had convinced herself that it was necessary for her soul’s development and for the stimulation of Oliver’s after-marriage courtship.—“She’ll burn her boats rightenough—little fool!” Stuart muttered; “and I hope it will be to-night.” He was beginning to find his shadowy watches both wearisome and chilly.
“But, sweetheart, Ican’tsail a yacht,” cried the Troubadour in despair, when Aureole unfolded her latest scheme.
“You can row, then; and we’ll reef the sails—tie them up in a bundle. It’s a pity ... but yet ... plash of oars on the calm still water....”
Bertram hoped it would indeed be calm still water. He did not care to disturb her imagination by mere facts,—but he had no liking for the sea. He asked if he were expected to row all the way to France, to Provence, golden land of minstrelsy, which she had chosen as their first background for unending and virile scenes of love.
Aureole sighed. “It’s a pity,” she repeated. “However, we’ll row along the coast to Poole, and hire a man, a strange fierce-eyed man, to sail the boat across the Channel. And then, after landing us, he shall sail her back again”—and she added, in a vicious undertone,—“to Stuart Heron!”
To Stuart Heron, crouching far back in an indentation hollowed out of the cliff, the events of that night were swift and improbable as scenes reeled off the film. The white line of wave hissed and broke with exactly that sound; and the twilight had sucked the background of all colour save lifeless greys; clearly etched against the pale sky, rose the mainmast of the boat; beside it, the tall figure of a man stood immovable, wrapped in heavy folds of cloak, his face blurred by the deepening shadows. The white line of wave hissed and broke. Then, quite tiny at first, but gradually growing to life-size, a woman’s figure fled down the winding road of the Chine. The man stepped forward to meet her, held her for a moment silently in his arms, then drew her along the shore tothe boat. They gesticulated with sharp little movements. Another figure stole out of hiding; crept towards the couple, whose backs were turned to him. His steps were noiseless on the sand. So that still no sound shattered the picture, save of the white line of wave that monotonously hissed and broke....
All this, Stuart watched with mingled amusement and interest. His was the stealthy shape which might have been a spy among conspirators, a Customs Officer amid smugglers, an Indian with a tomahawk, or the hero to the rescue.
—Then he spoke, casually:
“Going for a sail? Can I be of any use?”
Aureole did not shriek. She swayed slightly, recovered herself, looked at the intruder steadily, and said: “You ... beast!”
He smiled. “Oh, yes, I think the breeze is strong enough.” Then he turned to meet full-face the eyes of—Bertram Kyndersley. “You? the devil!”
Bertram betrayed no surprise at the sudden apparition. He was already a stricken man this night. Aureole’s wishes he had carried out in a dazed mazed sort of fashion, still not sure how he came to be involved in this medieval escapade. He had eloped before; but sensibly,—never like this. He was just aware that for one who had troubadoured not wisely but too well, there were no honourable means of withdrawal. Wondering whether for the rest of his life he would be doomed to carry a guitar, without its case, exposed to the mockery of all men; whether, once at sea, he would ever again be able to induce a demoniacal boat shorewards; whether his little store of gold would vanish in a single night, and leave him a beggar in Provence; wondering all this, he yet acquiesced to his fate; and even, when the string was pulled, said: “Lady Auburn-hair,” passionately, and added a few lyrical snatches expressive of his enamoured condition.
So that Stuart Heron, from whom he remembered once borrowing ten pounds in the garden of Bloemfontein, now took his place quite naturally as part of the scenery imported by Aureole; for what purpose Bertram knew not, and cared not; while things were happening to him, they might as well happen one way as another. And when Stuart, having unroped the boat, said: “Would you mind sitting to windward, Mr. Kyndersley?” then he obediently sat in the spot indicated, beside Aureole; and alternately watched Stuart in a deft manipulation of sheets, and the waves that split in a white lather of fury along the bows.
“Not the weather I’d have chosen to take you for a pleasure-trip,” remarked the skipper to his passengers, when he had finally got her running with dangerous speed before the wind. “However——” he shrugged his shoulders, implying it was their choice, not his.
Presently a silence fell upon Bertram, different from the numb passivity of his bearing hitherto; a more pregnant sort of silence, eloquent of a thousand words unspoken....
“Care to smoke?” enquired Stuart, with brutal courtesy. He made fast the sheet, and lit a cigarette. Then, ruthlessly, held the shielded flame for Bertram; that instant of light showed him—many things! All his previous indignation with Aureole was now shifted to Aureole’s partner in crime: Bertram Kyndersley—who was a father—Peter’s father—Why, the man must be an arrant scoundrel! Aureole, Stuart observed thankfully, dumb with scorn and hatred and apprehension, was yet being spared the worst; she was a good sailor. Hitherto she had bravely maintained the pretence that this was merely a delightful half-hour’s excursion on the water; but now she leant forward, and demanded tensely:
“What are you going to do with us?”
“Where were you bound for?” replied Stuart.
“Does that matter ... now?”—a guitar slid suddenly between them, fallen from a limp hand, and bounded against the rail.
Stuart said, eyes fixed upon the slant of the sail: “This man has a wife.” His speech was bound to be curt, for the increasing wind broke up every sentence as it fell from the salt-stiff lips, and tossed the words sportively hither and thither.
“This man has a wife.”
“It’s not true!” cried Aureole.
And Bertram muttered something about “man to man” and “code of honour”—
“Oh, honour!” Stuart did some malicious act which caused the bows to dip slowly into the trough of a wave, then suddenly rear, and roll over sideways with a lurch; “why should I be bound in honour to uphold you in your dishonourable acts, because you happen to be of my sex? Where’s your honour where Chavvy is concerned? little Chavvy, yours by right of England’s sacred laws, and by her unwavering love! It’s men like you,” continued Stuart Heron, “who wreck the sanctity of the home and violate the sanctity of the heart”—seeing that Bertram was perforce not attending to his eloquent harangue, he addressed himself to Aureole: “I’ve told you the truth, Aureole; and I can prove it to be the truth. You’ve come into his arms only over the body of another woman. Even now, she’s waiting patiently for his return; she—damn! the wind’s changed!” ... and only just in time the sheet was unlashed and pulled in.... “About ship!” he roared. Aureole obeyed instantly; but Bertram, not at home in nautical phraseology, had to be lugged forcibly from the drenched scuppers.
Stuart went on: “And, in the same way, brutally, remorselessly, he would desert you, when he got tired of the episode; and you would be stranded, an outcast from respectability, a derelict of life, without asingle fighting weapon left; your looks raddled and faded”—he felt he might as well pile it on while he was about it,—“no money, no hope, your husband alienated, your faith shattered,—all for the sake of a man who should be labelleddangerous!for everyone with whom he comes in contact, to see and beware!”
A ray of moon pierced the drifting clouds, and showed him Aureole, huddled on the seat, a woebegone little figure, with wisps of soaked veil and hair blown flat on to her pinched white face; not a trace left of the flare and defiant glow with which she had started on her pursuit of loveà latroubadour. And he became suddenly human, and very sorry for her, and rather embarrassed at his former rant and rhetoric.
“Never mind, dear; we’re tacking landwards now; and not a soul need ever know the facts of this. If anyone asks, you’ve been for a spin with a tomfool skipper who didn’t know dirty weather when he saw it. I expect Mr. Kyndersley can be trusted to keep his mouth shut,” with a scathing glance at the second of the romantic pair, who, at the moment, was emphatically not fulfilling these expectations.
They landed at the same spot where they had previously embarked. Stuart was eager to get Aureole home; he saw she was on the verge of a breakdown; and recognizing perhaps the new note of solicitude and pity in his tones, she seemed to cling to him. Without a word of farewell, they left Bertram standing on the shore; carrying in one hand a smashed guitar, with the other hand striving to gather closer about his shivering figure, the sodden folds of his cloak. It was not till his two companions were finally gulped by the darkness, as they passed up the winding road of the Chine, that his bewildered consciousness was slowly illumined by recognition of his freedom.
“Did you have any luggage?” Stuart demanded of Aureole, as he supported her up the drive of the Farme.
“No—yes; only a small bag; it’s still in the boat.”
“Then what——?”
“Bertram was going to buy me all I wanted.”
Stuart wondered if his ten-pound note, as well as his boat, was to have been pressed into service for the elopement.
They found the hall deserted; from behind the dining-room door could be heard sounds indicative of dinner progressing within.
“Excellent; nobody need see you; go up to your room, and put on something dry; and I’ll have hot soup sent up to you, and tell them to light you a fire.”
Aureole bestowed on him a wan smile of gratitude, and droopingly went upstairs. Stuart gave the necessary orders; then, not caring either to join the rest of the company, or change his wet clothes, remained fidgeting restlessly about the hall. Like Bertram, he was feeling “strangely disturbed in his innards,” though from different causes. Bertram ... how diabolically the man’s eyes, in spite of the puffiness beneath, had recalled Peter’s.... “Infernal old reprobate!” muttered Stuart; “one would think he might have a sense of decency, with a grown-up daughter.”
Peter ... Stuart swore softly as he meandered from staircase to window, from dining-room door to front door.
Presently the latter opened, and Oliver Strachey walked in.
“Hullo, Nigger!”
“Hullo. Where’s my wife?”
“In her room,” replied Stuart, with deep inner thankfulness that this should be so.
“Which room?” Oliver prepared to mount.
“First floor, second on the left. And go easy; she’s a bit nervous to-night; I took her for a sail, and it upset her.”
“So I should think; in this weather. What a crazy old slogger you are! Your first letter was forwarded to me ages ago; so, knowing Aureole was all right with you, I stopped on in New York, and did some business.”
“Um.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Second door on the left.”
Oliver ran up the stairs, two at a time, and vanished.
“Nice old mess-up it might have been, but for me,” reflected Stuart complacently. “And I wonder if that’s going to be something on my credit side of the ledger, at last.Whopulled ’em out?—little Tommy Stout!”
—But who put ’em in?... Stuart remembered suddenly his debit account; and ceased to crow.
A sad little Pierrette crouched in front of the fire. Pierrot had gone away. Would he ever come back? Pierrette had waited so long.
The wind lashed and sobbed at the windows. Up the street crept the solitary figure of a man. Outside the house he paused, cast away a phantom cloak and mask—(oh, the infinite relief!) and donned a phantom skull cap and white frill. Metamorphosis easily effected.
Pierrette opened to the knock at the door. And, with a cry of joy, held out both hands to welcome in the truant.
“I knew you would come home, Pierrot,” quoth Chavvy.
The end of September saw the Johnsons back again in their Turnham Green residence, named, somewhat misleadingly: “Town House.” Thus it was an easy matter for Mr. Johnson to say, wherever he might chance to spend his summer holidays: “Mother, this time next week we’ll be in our Town House!” airily creating out of his harmless little vanity, a whole host of shooting-boxes, country mansions, river bungalows, and Riviera villas. Mrs. Johnson would smile tolerantly; she encouraged originality, even in her husband.
Sebastian Levi took a room near by, where he wrote the final chapters of his book, and impatiently awaited the return of Stuart from Bournemouth, that the whole might receive his sanction and benediction. A fortnight afterwards, and he was summoned one evening to Carlton House Terrace; and in an apartment which was curiously ordinary for the shrine of so exalted a being, found Stuart sprawling in a low shabby arm-chair, and poking at the smouldering coals with his foot.
“Hullo, Levi, how’s—let me see, I’ve forgotten thename——”
“‘Shears,’” supplemented Sebastian excitedly; “I’ve got it with me.”
“No, you ardent flame-headed lover. Letty. How’s Letty?”
“Letty’s all right, except the days when she has tostarve herself to make her father receive me. I say, Heron,” looking about him, “what a queer sort of room—for you.”
“What’s queer about it?”
“Well, mainly that it isn’t queer at all, I suppose; it might be anybody’s study.” And Sebastian thought with a smothered sigh, of the suite of apartments he had renounced in his father’s house in Hampstead. He had attained so exactly the effects his artistic eye desired, beautiful subdued effects of lighting and drapery. Editha and Ivy had been nothing like as successful in their more blatant furnishings.
“What do chairs and tables matter?” queried Stuart calmly.
“But don’t you want to impress your personality——?”
“On a firescreen? no, I’d choose something softer than that.” But though a gleam in Stuart’s eye betokened plainly what was the “something softer” he had chosen, Sebastian, turning over the leaves of his precious manuscript, and awaiting a desirable opening to introduce it into the conversation, noticed nothing.
“How’s the Menagerie? Have you left it to muddle on by itself?”
“No; Mr. Strachey returned from America last week, and I resigned management. I don’t think he was keen on bearing the burden, but they’ve only got the place for a month still.”
“Is Aureole very fond of him?” Sebastian wondered in a fever of impatience when Stuart was going to ask him about “Shears.”
Stuart smiled, as at some secret joke. “Just at present she’s the very model of a meek and devoted wife.” Then, at last, held out his hand towards the bundle on Sebastian’s knees. “Finished? Let’s have a look?”
“No—I say—if it won’t bother you——” ButStuart was already at the first page, on which was inscribed the dedication:
“ToStuart HeronIn thanksFor all that he took from meAnd all that he gave to me.”
He threw the young author an embarrassed look. “I don’t know, really, that I did take anything; you flung down,—that’s rather different.”
“I’m flinging down now—this book!” cried Sebastian, much happier than his companion when emotion was to the fore. “It’s yours, every line of it; your thoughts, your creed, your visions and ideals. It’s—well, I owed you something really big, and this was the best I could do. The very best.” His tone pleaded, but at the same time boasted his achievement.
Stuart began to read. Presently it dawned upon him that this was a very bad book. The style, at first, held recollections of Sebastian’s Oxford days; it echoed, somewhat pretentiously, the polished laboured phrasing of Walter Pater. Then, uncertainly, it began to jerk and flicker; to pass from one key into another; to offend by a great many flaunting passages of which the writer was obviously proudest. It soon became apparent that the hero, a flashy young man in the worst possible taste, was intended for a loving presentment of Stuart himself, drawn by a blind worshipper, and consequently now giving the writhing original a few of the most poignant moments he had ever thought to endure.
“My God!” he muttered once or twice.
Moreover, Sebastian had apparently just fallen short of the main idea—idea of the Shears and the Hairpin Vision; glimpsed it at moments and then lost it again,so that it carried no conviction, and was merely far-fetched and misty.
In short, when he had turned twenty pages, Stuart would have given much never to have owned a creed, nor yet a disciple; that he should live to see the one so perverted, and the other sitting opposite him with dumbly questioning gaze. “Well? ... well? ...” it seemed to say.
Stuart laid aside the scribbled-over sheets. “I can’t possibly go on reading while you sit there and hang out your tongue at me, Levi; I’m not strong-minded enough. You’d better leave the book behind for me to finish.”
And so, cravenly, he postponed the evil hour of criticism. And afterwards wrote a letter which was a diplomatic miracle; ending:
—“You will understand that the book and all it contains has affected me more profoundly than I can express in words—just yet. Perhaps when it is published, and I can get a better perspective, I shall be able to say more of what I feel....”
Not having seen the vicious contortions of Stuart’s features as he penned these sentences, Sebastian was for the nonce satisfied.—“When it is published”—how devoutly he longed for this consummation of his labours. To lay at Stuart’s feet a pile of scribbled paper was comparatively nothing; but to be the means of spreading the master’s word throughout the British Isles, in a bound volume of sturdy print, containing the master’s name at the beginning, for all to reverence and comment upon,—this, surely, was a worthy tribute, sufficient to win the “well done!” that the disciple so burningly coveted. Sebastian’s desire to publish was completely unselfish; he was proud of his book only inasmuch as it reflected Stuart; thirsted for fame merely that the rays might fall on Stuart’s head. The utmost he wished for himself was sufficient recognition of the VisionSplendid, that men might say, men and his father and the Johnsons: “I thought young Levi mad at the time, to have chucked such excellent worldly prospects; but now I marvel how right he was, how much clearer was his sight than ours, how quickly responsive was his soul to what has taken us three-hundred-and-sixteen pages of solid reading to recognize!”... He could not quite hear Mr. Johnson uttering these precise words, but a homely vernacular would be forgiven for the sake of lofty sentiment. At present Sebastian was only received at Town House on sufferance; and trifling matters, such as the parlour left empty for him and Letty during four hours or so, were not arranged as willingly as might have been the case had the young man still been in possession of his fifteen hundred a year. Letty herself, however, compensated him richly for her parents’ unkindness. She grew ever prettier, ever more yielding, ever more necessary for Sebastian’s peace of mind and body. Ned Levi’s humble birth and ancestry had implanted a strain in the boy which found curious pleasure in his fiancée’s slightly common turn of phrase, her occasional lack of refinement in taste and clothes, her childish unpretentious longings, her tiny little vulgarisms. These were never sufficiently strident to jar him; they merely gave him a sense of returning to rest after a long journey; cessation of a cry in him that no riches or dissipations or intellectual strivings could ever thus lull to silence. Moreover, Letty clung to him; and he knew she believed herself clinging to a rock; supposition soothing to his own inner doubts.
The one thing in her that puzzled him was her continual reference to a near future when, as a matter of course, they should be as wealthy as before his renunciation of wealth. It could not be that she depended for this on his book, which, he had explained to her many times, was not a money-making proposition. And once, when he had laughingly asked if she proposed robbingAladdin’s Cave or the Bank of England, for the fulfilment of her plans, she laid both hands on his shoulders, and demanded wistfully:
“Aren’t you sureyet, Sebastian?”
“Sure of what, sweetheart?”
She sighed, and turned away her head. Perhaps he had decided for a year-long test; if so, she must just be patient.—The door opened to admit Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Baker, mother of that Violet who even now contemplated breaking off her engagement because Letty’s Sebastian had ‘a lovely mouth and jaw,’ and her own Ernie a receding chin. But Mrs. Baker bore no malice for this; her nature was soft as sponge, and formless as the garments which dripped and cascaded from indiscriminately outjutting portions of her figure; garments without end or beginning; rather dirty garments, of a period unknown to history.
“Disturbin’ your billing and cooing, are we?” she cried genially; “there, it’s a shame! But I only wanted to be introduced to your friend, Letty, my dear.” She beamed on Sebastian, noted at once that he was a Jew, and kindly resolved not to mention the fact that her late husband had been a parson. Then she changed her mind, and instead of tactfully skirting the subject of Sebastian’s misfortune—which, poor boy, was probably an accident and not his fault—she decided to refer to It exactly as if It didn’t matter, and thus put him entirely at his ease. So she started:
“And where are these young folk going to have the knot tied, Frances Johnson? At a registrar’s, I suppose,—as it can’t be done in Church. So nice ... dear things ...” wheezily.
Letty and her mother looked at one another. “Now that’s funny!” exclaimed Mrs. Johnson; “I never thought of that.”
“Thought of what?” asked Sebastian.
“Why, that you couldn’t be married in a church.”
“But a Synagogue is a sweet place,” put in Mrs. Baker; “though of course it wouldn’t do for Letty. But I’m sure the Hebrew ceremony is beautiful, even if one can’t understand a word of it, because they pronounce it upside down, don’t they? I remember going once to see a Jewish girl we knew get married; such a good-looking girl ... dear thing ... Laura Silberstein; did you know her, Mr.——?”
“Levi,” supplemented Sebastian gravely, wishing it had been something worse.
“And I remember too that the white flowers and the satin tent and that lovely singing made me feel—I told Mr. Baker afterwards—quite as religious and miserable as if I’d been to one of our own weddings. And he had no objection at all, and said I might certainly go again every time the younger sisters married; there were eight Silberstein girls, you see. And he told me to take Violet next time. Mr. Baker liked us always to be nice to Jews; he was very particular about that.”
Sebastian had a happy moment picturing Mr. Baker being particular about it. He was sorry Mr. Baker was dead.
“And did the other seven poor girls get married?” Letty enquired earnestly, very sorry for them because they could not all or any marry Sebastian.
“Only one; Pearl, the youngest; and she married a High Church gentleman, and got quickly baptised, and it was held at St. George’s, Hanover Square. And that time,” Mrs. Baker concluded triumphantly, “my husband wouldnotlet me attend. He said Jews were delightful and clever peopleintheir faith, but disapproved of them marrying out of it.”
... Then she realized the horror of her mistake.
Letty slipped her fingers into Sebastian’s arm, and looked defiantly at the purpling Mrs. Baker. Mrs. Johnson said hurriedly:
“Of course they are quite wonderfully clever; sucha head for business. That’s why we’re so sorry, Sebastian, that you gave up your partnership at the Stores.”
“What is Mr. Levi doing then?” queried Mrs. Baker faintly. And Letty trumpeted forth that Sebastian had written a book.
“Oh, but then he must have quite wonderful brains; now I like that; yes, I like people to have brains... dear things ...” and Mrs. Baker nodded and smiled several times to show her tolerance, while, in the same key, Mrs. Johnson carried on:
“Yes, I must say that personally I don’t object to even a woman with a man’s brain; we hear a lot about it spoiling her charm, butIthink a girl can be both feminine and intellectual, don’t you, Milly?”
Mrs. Baker said: “Yes, indeed, and sporting too. They say that hockey is bad for the figure, but I like a fine open-air girl ... dear healthy things. Though of course I admire the dainty type as well,andthe clever woman who wears glasses.”
And Mrs. Johnson wound up this display of the boundless broadness of mind existing among Turnham Green matrons, by a magnificent declaration thatshebelieved a girl could be brainy without wearing glasses! There is no knowing to what Rabelaisian extent the conversation might have widened, had not Luke burst in, with a gruff demand for tea; and dragging in his wake the fifteen-year-old flapper from the boarding-house next door:
—“Don’t look at me, Mrs. J. I’m sky blue with cold; this horrid kid kept me standing hours and hours listening to a stupid old man on a tub at a street-corner. I declare, I wish I’d gone biking with Tommy Cox; he asked me to come on his carrier.”
“Pity you didn’t, then,” growled Luke, eyes fixed on Sebastian.
Jinny tossed back the curly brown hair which lapped her shoulders; an enormous black bow stood outpertly from the nape of her neck. She wore a blue woolly tam-o’-shanter, a string of green glass beads round her bare throat, a striped flannel shirt, a green serge skirt, very short to show her high brown boots, and a brooch of her school badge and motto.
“I say, may I stop to tea?” she asked of Mrs. Johnson, ignoring Luke.
“Certainly, Jinny; it won’t be ready till five o’clock,—but some of us can wait in the dining-room.”
Mrs. Baker instantly apprehended Mrs. Johnson’s sympathetic intentions towards Letty and Sebastian, and with great alacrity went to the door.
“Come on, Jinny, dear; how’s your mother, this sudden cold snap? ... ah, bless them ... sweet things ... young things ...” this last in a diminishing purr of benediction.
“Oh, she’s all right, thanks. Not much sense in going in to tea till tea’s there, is it?—Oh, I see! All right!” Jinny grinned at Letty, and followed in the wake of the two ladies. “Come along, Luke.”
“In a minute.” Luke had planted himself on the parlour sofa, with the obvious intention not to budge.
“Now, you boss-eyed mule. They want to be alone together; they don’t want you.” Jinny conveyed to him their probable intentions when quit of the crowd, by an expressive pantomime of eating withspoons.
“Shut it! We’re not all such babies for jam.”
“I didn’t say a word about jam,” exasperated by his denseness. “And I’m jolly sure I shan’t come to tea with you again.”
Luke growled something inarticulate; and Jinny, head high in air, marched out and banged the door. Luke’s coolness hurt her sometimes. She wore his ring on the third finger of her left hand—a ring from an expensive cracker,—and he escorted her to school every morning, on the way to his own; not infrequently he carried her satchel; when both their machines were inrepair, they biked; but this was not often. He was a year older than she; a hobbledehoy youth of sixteen; rather spotty about the face; and with a taste in ties, that, starting in a bout of violent enthusiasm, had suddenly stopped, before it emerged from the crude-colour stages to something really tasteful. He was surly in the company of ladies; and when his mother spoke to him, always mumbled his replies; though it was owing to her advanced views that on his sixteenth birthday he was given a latchkey: “Show the boy he’s free to come and go about the house as he likes, Matthew, and he’ll never break out as he would if he was too much kept in.” But as Mat Johnson could not be prevailed upon at the same time to raise his son’s pocket-money to more than sixpence a week, there seemed indeed very small chance for Luke to break out. Once or twice he had hung about at the end of his street till the house was locked up at half-past ten, for the pride of letting himself in at five-and-twenty to eleven; but that was all. Dating from his sister’s engagement, however, a subtle change had passed over him; he was seen to read, instead of the cricket or football papers he had been wont to patronize, a two-sheet Socialist rag, named, with misleading mildness: “Mine and Yours,”—and containing mostly threatening references to “Yours.” Also, though he rarely spoke to Sebastian, he evinced a dogged preference for that young gentleman’s company; and very often, as now, would sit in gloomy silence in the same room as the twain; and refuse to move till Letty actually ordered him forth. She hated doing this, as it looked as if she “wanted Sebastian alone,” which in its turn rather looked as if she “wanted Sebastian to kiss her.” Which she did. But it was inconsiderate of Luke to force her to the tacit admission.
“Can you make out why he’s so odd with Sebastian, mother?”
“Letty, dear,” solemnly, “have I ever tried to force my children’s confidence? Everything they tell me is of their own free will,”—and indeed, it was extremely little.
The tea-bell freed the couple in the parlour from the infliction of Luke’s scrutiny. Jinny ignored her chum throughout tea, by way of punishment for his defection. And when the last rock-cake had been consumed, declared she had to be going: “I’ve got piles of arith., and a four-page comp. for Monday, and Ma won’t let me work Sundays because of the old tabby-cats in the house and what they’ll say. Good-bye, Mrs. J. I’ve had a scrumptious tea.”
Luke followed her into the hall.
“You’d better run along back to the parlour,” she informed him crushingly.
“Why?”
“You seem to find the Levi man better company than me.”
“Jinny, I like you better than any other girl”; he fumbled for her hand. Since months he had tried to substitute ‘love’ for ‘like,’ but somehow Jinny made it so hard for a fellow; she was always laughing or snubbing him.
“Thanks; I’m honoured.”
Luke kicked the umbrella-stand. “One must be polite—the Guvnor’s such a beast to him—and he’s going to be my brother-in-law.... I don’t care a hang about him, really.”
“Who would you like best for Letty’s sister-in-law?” Jinny demanded, casually swinging her bulging satchel of books.
“Who wouldIlike forLetty’ssister-in-law?”
Jinny waited a bit. “Well—slowcoach?”
“I don’t see what on earth you mean,” he said, pondering the matter. And he hadn’t found her hand yet.
“Bright boy!” she taunted him, and leaping the three steps, tore up the three of the next house, and vanished through the open front door.
An hour afterwards, Luke said: “Oh!” It had dawned upon him.
That evening, before retiring to bed, he banged at Letty’s door, and, not waiting for permission, slouched into her room. Quickly she covered up some mysterious occupation at the writing-table.
“Hullo, what’s up?”
“Nothing.” Luke stood by the mantelpiece, and closely examined likenesses of Violet Baker, Michael Mordkin, and Sebastian. Letty, really alarmed by his uncanny behaviour, came up behind him, and slipped an arm around his shoulders. “What is it, old boy?”
“Nothing.”
“Luke, have you been betting?”
“Not such a fool.”
She waited, head snuggled against his arm. Presently he said, with great difficulty: “That fellow of yours,Letty——”
“Sebastian?”
“Haven’t got more than one, have you?”
“Of course not,” indignantly she straightened herself. And he blurted out:
“Look here—did he really—I mean, why was he such an ass about his money?”
Letty re-seated herself at the writing-table, and propping her short round little chin on her hands, smiled pensively down at the blotting-paper, and made no reply.
“Do you know what made him do it?” Luke persisted.
“How should I?”
But he seemed unable to leave the subject, now he had embarked upon it. “You don’t seem to mind much.”
“I don’t mind one bit.”
“Pater’s mad about it. He’s always thinking of money.” Luke, having to provide neither for the household nor yet for himself, was duly contemptuous. “But I’ve nevermeta fellow who chucked away a fortune—till now,” he muttered, sitting astride of the writing-table. His sister peered mischievously up into his face:
“You like Sebastian, don’t you, Luke?”
“Oh, I dunno about liking him,” hastily; “I think he’s a bit off his chump, that’s all.” But as the rustics gaped and marvelled at the lunacy of Don Quixote, so hobbledehoy regarded with bewildered admiration his future brother-in-law.
“—But as long as you’re not crying your eyes red over itall——”
“What would you have done, if I had been, Luke?” Letty enjoyed teasing her wretched young brother.
“Oh ... spoken to him, I suppose,” edging towards the door. “’Night, Letty.”
“Luke, supposing he was—oh, just playing a game; and one day came and said: ‘I’m as rich as I was before!’”
“Wouldn’t build on that if I were you. Chaps don’t play those silly sort of games. Good night.”
And: “I know why, right enough,” reflected Luke, in the passage; “but I wasn’t going to tell her. By gum, though! fancy a fellow actually doing it....”
In Luke’s pocket, a column of “Mine and Yours,” marked in red pencil, discoursed eloquently on the Utopian conditions to be attained by mankind, when those unfairly in possession of unearned increment, should voluntarily fling their wealth into a common pool, that it might be divided into equal shares for all. The discourse wound up, with unconscious humour, by the remark:—“But alas! only we who are willing to share our sixpences have as yet seen the light; thosewith pounds weighing down their pockets, turn their faces stubbornly away. And we labour on....”
Luke re-read all this, carefully; hallucination pointing with her forefinger along the printed lines.—“By gum!” he muttered again. And his eyes were those of a disciple who has at length sighted the master....
“Of course I know why,” reflected Letty; “but I wasn’t going to tell him.”
But it was the need to express the joyous and amazing romance of this which Sebastian had done, and the rejection of each confidant in turn as “not able to understand,” that had prompted Letty to cover so many sheets of paper with her round schoolgirlish handwriting, and to head these scrawlings with the title: “To Test Her Love,” A Story. By Lettice Johnson.
The hero of her tale, one Geoffrey Challoner of Challoner Park, becomes enamoured of Mavice, a village maiden; and is goaded by the sneers of his wicked cousin Jasper (—“You fool! she loves you only because you are the Lord Geoffrey!”—) into putting her love to the test by pretending to the discovery of hidden papers whereby Jasper (of the younger branch of the family) is proved master of Challoner Park in his stead, and he a mere pauper. Affairs at this juncture grow complicated; as Mavice, unshaken in her love for Geoffrey, is yet forced to jilt him, without giving a reason, in favour of Jasper, who most unfortunately holds in his power the honour of Cyril, Mavice’s younger brother, a weakling and a craven. With a bitter: “You were right, Jasper; and I a fool to think any girl, even the fairest, free from worldly motives!” Geoffrey departs for the populous Bush, leaving Jasper in unlawful possession of Challoner Park and Mavice’s broken heart.
Letty was now engaged in a general clearing-up and adjustment of the circumstances of her novelette. Mavice and Geoffrey must be brought together; and the heroine must have occasion to vow, with brimming eyes: “Love you though you are poor, Geoffrey?—I would love you if you came to me scorned by the whole world,—old and ugly and in rags. Geoffrey, you believe me, don’t you?” Then his great speech, beginning: “Oh, my darling, how could I ever doubt that your love would stand the test....” Letty scribbled the subsequent scene, her cheeks aflame, her fingers trembling so that it was a matter of difficulty to guide the pencil. One day, yes, one day, Sebastian would come to her, and say: “Oh, my darling, how could I ever doubt...?”
She had never before experienced the fascination of setting on paper, fragments of her own life, of glorifying characters with whom she had actually come in contact. To be sure, Luke had needed a little doctoring before he was altogether fit to take his place as Cyril Derincourt; but Sebastian accorded so perfectly with the Lord Geoffrey, that Letty was able to derive more voluptuous pleasure from the impassioned duets of her fancy, than ever from those actually enacted. Sebastian in the flesh was sometimes a little too fervent, too realistic even, for timid girlhood; or else incomprehensibly remote; but Geoffrey never by any chance made a remark that Mavice could not entirely understand. So Letty wrote with her heart, unhampered by literary standards, literary judgment; knowing naught of those over-intellectualized circles wherein Geoffrey and Mavice, Jasper and Cyril, and the alluring adventuress Esmée de Courcy (lately added), would meet with laughter and contempt. Letty wrote on, her evenings stabbed through and through by this secret excitement,—till, reading over the completed story, it struck her, with happy surprise, as not a whit lessconvincing or enthralling than all those other tales which had fed her imagination since flapper days: the “White Heather” Novelette Series; the “Silver Chimes” Complete Novel, published every Tuesday; the Myrtle Library; the Pink-and-Blue Boudoir Supplement; fiction in coloured paper covers, stacked, crumpled and torn, behind her bed-valance.
“I wonder,” brooded Letty, as she affixed a wobbling signature to the manuscript, “if Sebastian would be pleased to see me in print....”
To her, the be-all and end-all of literature was to “get into print”; written stuff was of absolutely no value otherwise. This secret of hers was swelling rather too big to be borne alone; Violet Baker was, under many vows, admitted to Letty’s confidence. Violet was shorthand-typist to a firm of solicitors, and volunteered to type, in her spare moments, “To Test Her Love,” which she considered a veritable masterpiece.
“What made you think of it, I don’t know?”—And on this point Letty continued to keep silence. Her sole fear was that her achievement would mysteriously rob her of feminine charm; place her in the same category as those “clever girls,” “gifted women,” “the kind men don’t like.” In which case, Letty decided, her talent should at once, definitely, and for ever, be abandoned.
Finally, after much deliberation of choice, the type-script was dispatched to the Editress of “Silver Chimes.” After a little delay, came a letter offering five guineas for full and complete rights in the fortunes of Geoffrey, Mavice, Cyril, Esmée, and Jasper.
“That means they’re going to print it!” Letty flew across the road to Violet Baker.
“Vi, they’re going to print it!”
Her tidings were not received with the acclamation she expected. “Oh, everything’s all right for you,” came muffled from the depths of a damp pocket-handkerchief.
“Toothache?” queried Letty sympathetically.
“No, Ernie.”
“Not—not dead?”
... Presently Letty, her joy somewhat damped, went tiptoeing back to Town House. It seemed appropriate to tiptoe, for though Ernie was not dead, Violet had sent him about his business. The frequent comparison between his profile and Sebastian’s, his manners and Sebastian’s, Sebastian’s ‘romantic air’—and Ernie’s, had done their fell work. And now for Letty to come rushing in with Fame in a typewritten oblong envelope, and because of it expect Violet to go capering round the dining-room,—well, it was rather too much to ask even of Real Friendship.
“You jolly well get everything,” complained Violet bitterly; “you’ve got the looks, and all the fuss made over you, and a fellow who can say all the speeches, and now you’ve got this too. And I was idiot enough to type it for you, and give old Tomkyns the page about where Jasper plots with Esmée de Courcy, instead of a letter about somebody’s insurances, and he hopping mad. You get everything.” Violet again immersed herself in the handkerchief, and Letty departed, very, very sorry, but rather resentful that having ‘everything’ she should therefore have to do without Violet. “But I understand about Ernie,” she mused, sitting down to reply to the Editress. If Sebastian had not come along, would not she, Letty, with all her advantages and prettiness, probably have drifted into a sort of engagement with Balaam Atkins? very much of the Ernie type, but older, and with slightly more jut to his jaw. And then they would all have been cosy together, and even Luke would probably not have snubbed Jinny so frequently as he did now. The advent of Sebastian had completely demoralized this corner of Turnham Green.
With an effort, Letty managed to keep the secret ofher letter from the family; she wanted Sebastian to be the first to hear about it. Three days later, at tea-time, she spied him walking dejectedly up the road. She was alone in the dining-room; her mother was out, and Luke not yet home from school.
“Hurrah! we can have tea together, just us two; what a darling you are to come to-day,—and I’ve got something too frightfully exciting to tell you ... your hands are frozen; why don’t you wear gloves, you bad boy?” joyfully she welcomed him, chafed his cold fingers with her warm palms, hung about him like a solicitous kitten. But still he didn’t speak. And, just on the verge of pouring forth her great news, Letty stopped, struck by the tragedy in his face.
“Oh, what is it?” she cried piteously.
“They’ve rejected it.”
Then the pall descended upon her also. The Book. They had rejected it. There was no more to be said. And for the second time she was baffled of an elated audience for her own triumph. How dared she presume tell him of a tale accepted, when his great work had been refused.
“The beasts!” she cried, with quivering lips.
“Don’t be silly, Letty!” but whatever consolation she had attempted would have been wrong. He was in that mood. “Of course, they can’t take everything that gets offered to them. My stuff’s not good enough, that’s all. They—they wrote it wasn’t good enough,” he finished, asking again for that sympathy which he flung back when it came. He had been divided by the pride which bade him keep his shame to himself, and a childish longing for solace and encouragement and the presence of someone who believed in him. Not sure yet which need was the stronger, he announced his defeat casually, as though it hardly affected him, hotly resented Letty’s correct assumption that his world lay shattered; and then, almost boasting the humiliation,showed her a note from the publisher’s reader, who had kindly taken the trouble to point out how and why his work was not marketable, instead of merely enclosing the formal slip: “—unable to make an offer.” “You fail to convince,” was the phrase which left most sting.
“So you see I’m a failure, Letty. Not a publisher will look at the book. This fellow knows what he’s talking about.” Sebastian refused the muffins she tendered him.
“You mean—it will never get into print, you don’t think?”
“Never. But it isn’t that; it’s—Heron.”
“Your friend?” She remembered the two had been a great deal together, at the Farme.
He nodded, too full of bitterness to speak. Why was it that all his burnt-offerings, like Cain’s, were doomed to be beaten, sullen fumes, along the earth, instead of mounting in steady columns of smoke, upwards to their destination? That he might be worshipping false gods, did not for a moment present itself as a possible solution; Sebastian’s loyalty was convinced the sacrifices were at fault, not the altar. The book was Stuart’s book, for Stuart, of Stuart, to Stuart,—the whole declension. The author had sweated his share, and now the publishers withheld theirs, and all the accomplished labour was in vain. It wasmaddening—
“I wanted it out!” Sebastian broke out, aloud.
“He wanted it in print, of course he did,” passionately Letty shared his mutinous sorrow. And when he had gone, and she was in her room, changing into an evening blouse, she fingered the letter she had not had the courage to show him; all her joy gone from the anticipation of her story in print, since thus it would only serve to point a contrast.
“I’ve half a mind not to send it,” picking up that other letter into which was folded her eager acceptance of the five-guinea offer.
“I wish it was him instead of me,” wistfully. For one does not lightly say ‘no’ to an Editress of “Silver Chimes”; not if one is Letty Johnson.
She stood uncertain, an envelope in either hand....
“Supposing.... After all, it was his idea and not mine, about pretending to be poor, and all that.... Almost, really, it’s as if I’d stolen it. Then supposing....”
Supposing what? That she should put his name, instead of hers, to the novelette? That she should surprise him by showing him a story by Sebastian Levi, in print, as he so much wanted to be? Just to make up for that other disappointment. Well, supposing you did, Letty? Nobody need ever know that Sebastian hadn’t written it, except Violet Baker; and she could be pledged to silence.
“I will!” resolved Letty, her grey-blue eyes clouded to seriousness beneath the tumbling fringe of her hair. “I’ll go and see the Editress myself.”
This was rather a tremendous undertaking. But the notion of being in a position to offer Sebastian the very thing he deemed lost to his desire, so inflated Letty’s courage, that she hardly faltered when the next day seeking an interview with—“yourrealfriend and cousin, the Editress,” as the energetic little woman signed “Cousin Belle’s Chat with Her Girls,” which appeared every week on the last page of “Silver Chimes.”
—“You want to publish your little tale with anom-de-plume? Why, certainly. We have one lady who always writes for us under the name: Joyella; and My Girls like her touch immensely.”
Letty groped in vain after some association of ideas between “Joyella” and a sale-of-underwear catalogue that she had seen in her mother’s hand that morning. Then gave up the search, and listened to what the Editress was saying in praise of “To Test Her Love.”
“We’ll have to alter it in several places, of course; you’ve had no experience, I can see that; but what we liked about your characters, Miss Johnson, was that you wrote as if you felt them. My girls always know the difference. And that’s why, when a high-class authoress comes along with her nose in the air and offers to scribble me something in her spare time, I know it will be no good. I tell her so, straight out. One can’t write for My Girls with one’s nose in the air. They recognize sincerity when they see it. You’ve got the sincere touch, Miss Johnson; My Girls are sure to take to you.” She brought forth her Girls as if they were a compact little jury; she herself the judge; and Letty, or Joyella, or the authoress writing with nose in air, the prisoners on trial.
“Now, under what name do you want us to publish?” Miss Symes drew her pencil through Lettice Johnson, and looked up from the manuscript, with an encouraging smile. Every line and angle and inflection proclaimed her as orthodox Church of England. It was rather a bad moment for Letty.
“Sebastian——” she paused. Miss Symes wrote it down. “Yes?” with pencil poised.