CHAPTER X
HONOUR
Hubert meanwhile was enjoying quite another sort of artistic evening. On first arrival, indeed, at the Club (which proved to meet in a Hotel Coffee Room), he found himself wondering whether he might not have been wiser in keeping to the old arrangement. The Lewisham Kit Kats, on entry to their circle, did not promise so much intellectual reward as G. K. Shaw and the scorned Institute. They had not the exotic charm of their great prototype.
He had imagined, always, a band of young enthusiasts in Literature, fresh maybe from the 'Varsity, who would be glad to hear what he had got to say and welcome him to their—it might be—weekly dinner. But here were no evening suits except his own, of which he grew now only too aware. The common dress was dark suit, bow-tie, and moustache; or with the women—for it was "mixed"—what he imagined would be blouse and skirt. They were a frowsy-looking lot, he told himself; horribly genial; and he more than suspected them of being Bohemian. There was a tortured look of gladness upon every face. They bowed elaborately and shook hands with fervour, until the whole room buzzed with brotherly salutes. And Hubert, in his dress-suit, stood among them. One by one the members were brought up and all of them shook hands. Not one among the sixty who failed to be very proud to meet him. Hubert sighed for Helena and G. K. Shaw, finding his only means of consolation in elaborating it as a good story. He wished that he could say with truth that they had not an h among them, but this was not so. He would have liked them better, he decided, if that had been true. They were snobs in their own way, he felt confident, and their gentility was an affair of effort. They were that trying set, the in-betweens....
It was with genuine relief he heard that dinner was now served, and in they trooped: he first with his allotted woman; the rest, all apologetic smiles, falling in anyhow behind. They settled at the tables in a hungry silence. Hubert could see the waiters smiling at his evening dress,—or thought he could, which was equally unpleasant. He turned hurriedly to his neighbour, whose name he had failed to catch in his agitation. He only remembered the friendly President murmuring in his ear: "Her brother is a book-reviewer," as though that gave her a niche all apart.
"How often do you have these dinners?" he decided to begin.
She aimed a toothy smile straight at him. Hubert had never noticed how unusually fat she was before, and tried hard not to seem as though he had observed it now. He looked doggedly at her light yellow hair, and then looked down again when he saw that it was not real.
"I'm not a Kit Kat, you know, Mr. Hubert Brett," she answered coyly. "They meet every Tuesday, but we ladies are only asked when there is some special attraction, so you see you should feel very honoured! I find it most interesting" (she laid the accent upon the third syllable), "because you see, my brother is a book reviewer, so I naturally take a special interest."
"Naturally," answered Hubert.
"We always say," she went on, very animated, "just for a joke, you know, only among ourselves, that the Kit Kats have a far gayer time when we ladies are not admitted: we see them on their best behaviour!"
"Yes?" Hubert said absently, forgetting to smile or to live up in any way to this pet joke amongst the ladies. He was thinking. "What does your brother review for?" he enquired as a result.
The big lady looked on him a little sternly, not at all sure whether he had not intended to be rude. He had been very short with her pleasantry, and now was he doubting about Harold? He ought to know the name.
"For several books," she said with dignity, and turned to the man on her other side, who might not be a famous author but was the Mayor's cousin and far less stuck-up.
Hubert knew that he had failed, and his other neighbour proved unhappily to be deaf on the near side. He spent the rest of a long and essentially British meal in trying to appease the critic's sister. It was all rather difficult, and he was glad now that he had told the President he must leave early, as his wife was nervous and he had a long way to go. He could escape a little before half-past nine and they would be much happier without him. He wished now that he had refused the whole thing. Still, it was something to be chosen as the guest of honour....
And, indeed, when all the meal had gone except its odour and the President had facetiously announced that the ladies might now smoke, it proved to be a very big thing indeed to be the Kit Kats' guest of honour.
Even Hubert Brett's tried capacity for absorbing flattery was strained when Mr. President, as everybody called him always, spoke minute after minute in praise of his books: recalling their names (from a list propped up on his cigar-tray), although he was sure Kit Kats would not need reminding. These sterling merits which he had just enumerated had won, he said, for Hubert Brett, if he might drop the Mr. in Art's fellowship (applause), a big following in Lewisham, and to-night's event, he felt confident, would render it yet bigger. Frankly, as President, when he thought of this fixture he had felt pleased. (Applause.) Of the distinguished novelist's affability in acceding to their desire in spite of the many calls upon his time and recent marriage (laughter), he intended to say nothing. (Some applause.) He here read out, he confessed with a certain pride, the names of distinguished authors who had so acceded formerly, and Hubert was half disappointed yet half flattered to find himself able to agree with the President's remark that none of them was so popular or well-known an author as their guest to-night. "He has told me," slyly concluded the orator, "that the trains home are bad and that his wife is sitting up for him. (Laughter.) Those of us who are married men will understand." (Loud laughter and a high-voiced "Shame," then female tittering.) "I only pull aside the veil in this way so as to let you realise why I draw my remarks short to-night and call upon our guest of honour, Hubert Brett, for the pleasure of a few words upon the literature of to-day, in which he plays so considerable a part."
Enormous applause greeted this conclusion and to it was added the clapping of white gloves (for all the ladies wore them), as Hubert rose and stood behind his chair. Even the lady whose brother reviewed, possibly melted by hearing that her neighbour was a genius to whom much always is forgiven, smacked him playfully on the back as he got up to speak.
He was not a good speaker and prudently had written out the headings of his speech and a few epigrams that might pass as impromptu after wine. There had not, unluckily, been any wine and all the early epigrams passed quite unnoticed. A speech devised for 'Varsity enthusiasts was not of the true Kit Kat bouquet.
Hubert had so far got the instincts of an orator that he could realise this fact. The chilly aspect of his listeners told him that he had not gripped them; a swift ranging back to the last speech supplied the cause. He was not broad enough in his effects. They did not care for theories on writing; they wanted something personal. They wanted reminiscences. Their welcome, when he first got up, had shown they took him seriously. Nobody of his own set was there! What harm?
Hubert Brett's speech (for no one ever used the Mr. of him afterwards) is still remembered as the most enjoyable of all the Kit Kats ever heard. Such interesting people had he met and known, known well; such vivid lights he threw upon the full life of a famous literary man.
No single member who got up to join in the discussion afterwards but started with an eulogy of their guest's work and speech.
Hubert was very pleased. He had warmed to the Kit Kat manner. He should not tell it as a comic story; it would not be fair. After all, perhaps they were not an artistic set, but then not everybody could belong to that, and they were very genial. You only had to get to know them. They were the Public anyhow, the class for whom one wrote, and possibly they might have influence, some few of them. This woman next door, now so affable, had got a brother who reviewed for several papers. All of this must help. It was absurd to be exclusive when one came to Art. He looked upon this evening as one of the most encouraging in his whole life. Wouldn't Helena be pleased to hear it all?
And that reminded him.
With a hot shame he drew out his watch.
His speech had been long and one of many after a full dinner. It was very nearly half-past ten and a long journey home....
Full of guilt, he pulled himself together, to make his excuses. There was a gap now. No one seemed to volunteer as speaker. He——
But Mr. President was on his feet. He must not interrupt.
"Gentlemen—and Ladies!" said the President amid appreciative laughter, "all the volunteers now being exhausted, I shall proceed in accordance with Kit Kat tradition to call out the reserve and ask them to speak, whether they wish it or no. And the first gentleman I think we all feel we should like to hear speak is our old valued friend and excellent critic, Mr. Henry Jenks."
This met with such general applause that Hubert felt it would be ridiculous to get up now. It also would be rude and pointed. Besides, "critic"—did he mean professional? It might be silly to offend him. After all, these people who were asked to speak would surely be better, their estimate of his work more worth while, than those who simply wanted to hear their own voice?
Helena wouldn't mind. She was so easy-going, bless her. She would love to hear.
To the flattered relief of a vigilant President, who had observed the guest of honour's restless movement, Hubert settled once more in his chair.
He would stay ... just a little.
CHAPTER XI
PINK PAPERS AND ST. ANTHONY
It is both easy and comforting to divide men simply into opposites. Honest, dishonest; truthful, lying; clean, dirty;—what a lot of worry it undoubtedly prevents. You trust one person all the way, another nowhere; you tell your secrets to the first and to the second nothing; it is so simple that few people can resist it, when they come to life. And it is good enough for working purposes.
But in reality it is not so. A man all white or all black is but rarely met: the last is soon removed, the first impossible for common use. Man was devised from a more subtle palette; and if in all the millions of faces no two are alike, that is yet truer, said about the heart. The man you trust so freely has his see-saw moments, like anybody else, and if as a rule he lands the right end down, it may have been your very confidence that lent him weight. It is the same with all. They must be entered for convenience beneath the colour which they most display, but every one of them is a true moral rainbow and much more. Take it all in all, we humans are the most mixed thing that any one has ever yet invented: the reason why some scorn all other hobbies or amusements, so long as there is Man.
Geoffrey Alison was an especially odd mixture—all of course kept rigidly inside. To the mere eye he was, like most, quite simple, almost to the point of dulness. Oh yes; I see, yes; the artistic type; a gentleman though; trustworthy but slack; quite modest although jolly clever; pretty much of a white man... But inwardly he was a thing to watch because his types conflicted, and that ends with fireworks.
He joined the artist's soul—a real love for the beautiful and noble—to what perhaps may be most easily described as a pink-paper mind. He could sit and gaze happily for hours at a Corregio, forgetting the plush benches and the noisy tourists, utterly absorbed; he found a joy that was almost physical in a sudden landscape or the moon which breaks loose from its clouds and gleams on a rough sea; he would watch with a smile of pleasure the way of a woman with her child or a child with its toy; he shrank with loathing from all that was ugly, sordid—the sight of needless misery or the sound of a woman's oath; and yet—and yet he could not rid himself of the idea that there was something palpitating, wicked, spicy, about a shop-girl who held up her skirt to cross a muddy road. There was a thrill for him each time that he passed a stage-door. Garters—champagne (always known as fizz)—corsets—chorus girls—these all held for him a brimming measure of romance. He was convinced that there was something specially cryptic and alluring about bar-maids, though he would never enter bars as he did not like other people's glasses. Paris to him stood for a riot of continued orgies shaming a white dawn. He was of those who for peculiar reasons can thoroughly enjoy a really English ballet. The thought of studios and models had half consciously affected the choice of his career; and if he now knew that to be illusion, so far as his experiences went, he still liked—well, one half of him—to read the old exciting fairy-tales. Perhaps they happened somewhere, still.
At times, when he was on a holiday or anywhere except at his own news-shop, he would buy, half-ashamed and furtive, those strange, elemental papers whose main task it is to tickle the broad tastes of City youths or Army officers. And he thoroughly enjoyed them—until afterwards.
Army men, in fact, who had glared at him all through a long dinner-party, often revised their estimate when coffee had come in and their wives departed; if, be it understood, the conversation drifted into a right channel. On the way home, should their wives say; "I liked that Mr. Alison, so clever!" they would reply: "M'yes? Rather an affected ass, my dear: I can't stand those artistic johnnies. Still, he came out a bit over the wine and showed he had got something in him. Not a bad fellow I dare say; bit of a sportsman possibly—in spite of his long hair. But I'm not sure we want to have him calling?" Which only shows how useful it may be for any man to have two sides. You never can please all the world with one!
Of course the one in question was entirely abstract. Geoffrey Alison would never have even dreamt of doing all the things he liked to read on paper. It would perhaps have been more healthy if he had; but no, he realised, himself, that it was only an idea.
It was an idea, too, that he shared with no one. His friends—artists and authors—somehow were not amused by anything of that sort, although the papers he enjoyed were read by millions. It was curious! He kept it to himself, and that was bad as well. To Hubert he had raised the curtain for one moment, with those sketches of his own, but the audience had not seemed keen for more. And as for Helena—well, inwardly Geoffrey Alison was an odd mixture; but he remained a gentleman outside.
All the same, to-night was trying him a little hard.
Helena's friendliness had thrilled him from the day they met. He had never met a woman—anyhow not young and pretty—who had taken to him like that from the first. He never had regarded himself as a lady's man; he was too small and timid; yet she had seemed to find nothing wrong with him. She had adopted him as her guide and philosopher in art; gone about with him more, almost, than with that absurdly busy fellow Brett; until the cattish vicar's wife——!
And now——!
Of course he knew that she was just a girl, and jolly innocent and all that sort of thing (Brett liked to keep her back), but even so, any one surely would admit that it was a little bit exciting and peculiar. The way she asked him in; and then he could not make out why she changed her mind about the dining-room and came into the drawing-room where she sat down upon the sofa and looked simply ripping. It was all very odd!
Of course she was innocent and jolly, but he believed that she was fond of him and some day he would love—when they were all alone like this—if only half in fun—to give her just one kiss. She surely couldn't mind? It would be splendid and exciting. (It may be added that Geoffrey Alison thought more of its excitement than its splendour.)
The very idea made being with her like this so difficult and trying. He could not think of anything to say. It all sounded wrong.
Even Helena noticed, at last.
"How dull you are to-night!" she said peevishly, for they were old friends and she never troubled to sort out her words. "I believe you did want to work or else had something else to do."
"Of course not," he protested, feeling horribly wronged in the circumstances. "This is awfully jolly." Why couldn't he be natural?
Helena was not so confident about the jollity. "Hugh must be here soon," she remarked rather wearily.
"Why do you call him Hugh?" he asked, jumping at a topic. "Surely that's not really short for Hubert? It ought to be Bert!"
"Oh, how dare you?" she asked gaily; she felt that they had got back on to the old easy paths. "Bert indeed—for him! I wonder how you——" and she clapped her hands excitedly. "Yes," she said, her boredom all forgotten, "that's it! I always thought that Mr. Alison was far too stiff; I've got a name for you."
"For me?" That silly blood was jumping in his brain.
"Yes," she cried. "Ally! I shall call you Ally, just like Ally Sloper! That's better than Bert."
Ally. It was not romantic, no; but still——
Gad, what a ripping little girl she was!
He wished to goodness he hadn't ever thought about that kiss. He could have been ever so much more amusing, make her like him more, if only he hadn't got that possibility before him. And yet ... perhaps it was worth while.
But Helena had no such abstract thrill to keep her eyes open and it was well after eleven. She wished now that Mr. Alison had not come in. When Hubert got back, they'd sit and have drinks. She wished that he would go. And how she longed to yawn! If only he would even be amusing....
"Have you seen my snap-shot album?" she asked. In their two years of friendship, it had never come to this before.
"No," he said. "May I?" feeling very young. He knew that he was being entertained.
She leant down wearily to get it from the bookshelfs lower row. Her smooth white neck stretched in a rounded slope before him. By Gad! His hands moved restlessly towards her. This was his great chance. She might not even ever know!
And then—she was so innocent. Suppose she boxed his ears or anything like that? Supposing she told Brett?...
"No, don't worry with it," he said, finding it quite hard to speak. "I think I'd better go. It's too late for snap-shots! He must have missed his train."
"He'll be here any moment now," she felt compelled to say.
"I know," he answered meaningly, as though that explained his going. She did not notice of course, was just puzzled for a moment, but it gave him another thrill. As he passed through the hall, with her beside him, he saw the minute hand was nearer to midnight than to any other hour; a very dissipated time....
And outside, in the little garden, he drew a long breath, as though to set free the vanquished evil thoughts. He felt he had been very good to-night in face of opportunities for other things.
St. Anthony himself could not have felt much more complacent.
CHAPTER XII
DEVILS
Hubert groped his way homewards along the ill-lit road, filled by a certain shame but also nearly chuckling to himself.
What a splendid, encouraging night it had been! Those last and most important speakers were if anything even more enthusiastic about all his novels. It was nice to get into touch with those for whom you wrote and know that they are pleased. It took away the great drawback of a writer's job as compared with the vocalist's or actor's; that you never heard the clapping. (He did not, of course, think about the hisses.)
Wouldn't Helena be glad to hear it all!
He had forgotten by now that there had been any trouble as to this evening's fixture, remembering only how delighted she was always, bless her, with his least success. Imagine, now, if he were going back to lonely digs—or Ruth!
By this time he had reached the crossroads whence the house is visible, and now his bubbling pleasure suddenly went flat. He could see their bedroom windows from here, and there was no light.... He had told her not to sit up, certainly, but he had naturally thought that she would read in bed and keep awake to hear about the evening. Of course he was a little late; but still, he thought resentfully, she might——
Then he remembered.
How feminine! She wished to spite him for deserting her in favour of the Kit Kats! She was asleep, or anyhow pretending, and thought to punish him, like comic-paper husbands, by making him fumble his way into bed in a considerate darkness!
He smiled at her simplicity. How like her! She knew nothing about anything. He'd soon show her how childish she had been. He meant to turn the light on and bang drawers and then—it really would be rather comic to see her, like the child she was, pretending to awake. In this grim mood of resolution, creditable to a bullied sex, he turned into his gate and as he moved slowly out into the dark garden from under the thick ivy arch, was conscious of a male figure not three feet away.
Instantly his trained imagination nimbly leapt from point to point. He understood now why there was no light up there; he could fancy the poor frightened girl listening to a scraping noise; the useless, snoring servants; possibly a struggle, she was so brave——
God, if anything had happened to her!
In a second flash he had seen, for the first time possibly, how much she meant to him. We moan our tragedies and scarcely notice blessings till they go.
And whilst his brain sped along those twin paths, his arm sprang out and gripped the fellow by the throat.
"I say, Brett," cried a strangled voice, "it's me."
"Who is it?" asked Hubert. "Alison?" and he released his hold.
"Yes," said the other, making sure that all his throat was there. Brett, he ruefully reflected, was one of those big devils and big devils never knew their strength. "I've been taking your wife to the causerie."
"Oh!" answered Hubert. Perhaps it was excitement only, but he felt of a sudden as though he could resume his grip with pleasure. "It must have been a long affair."
The sneer was obvious. He never had been jealous about Helena before—but things were happening to-night.
"Oh," laughed the other apologetically: and Hubert realised what an ass he was, wondered why he had ever got to know him, "we've been in some time."
"I see," said Hubert. "Well, good-night." He could not trust himself much longer. It was so dark, and that grip had been vaguely satisfying to some primæval side of him....
Geoffrey Alison returned the greeting and slid away with definite relief. He had not liked the way that Brett said that "I see." It was so obvious he did. And then about the causerie having been long——!
When he grew cooler, sitting in the tube, he began to wonder nervously how this would affect his friendship with Helena (he always thought of her as that), and looked rather doubtfully along the future. Well, he should see. He wouldn't call again until she wrote.
Only one thing was certain. Her husband suspected him—and he felt wickeder than ever....
Hubert meanwhile let himself into the dark hall and merely throwing down his hat, without taking off his coat, strode full of war into the drawing-room. Helena had just finished the postponed yawn with some luxuriance and decided that Mr. Alison must get up very early and do all his work then, and that made him so dull at night. She turned delightedly as the door opened. Good: Hugh already!
"Helena," he said, storming in, "why did you pretend you weren't going to the show to-night?"
"What do you mean, Hugh?" she asked, utterly surprised. "I wasn't." She hoped that he had not been drinking. Men, she believed, mostly did when they got out alone.
"You must think me a fool," he said. "But I don't intend to have an argument about it. I only want to say at once that I think it would be far better if you saw less of your friend Mr. Alison. I meant to say it anyhow. People are talking."
"But I don't understand," she faltered, almost as a question.
He laughed scornfully. "I know you're ignorant but you are not a fool, so don't pretend you are. Of course married women don't need chaperons, I know all that, but a mere girl like you and that young ass and almost midnight—but don't let's go into all that." He calmed himself, swallowing his wrath, and said more gently; "I know it's all right really, dear, don't think I don't, it's only—well, you know what people say."
"What do they say?" she asked indignantly.
"As you ask," he answered, letting the words out coldly, "I heard one man telling another at the Golf Club yesterday that Mrs. Herbertson was saying she had not yet found out whether Alison or I was Mr. Brett, but thought he was as you saw more of him. That's a local joke! It's jolly, isn't it?"
"I think it's disgusting," she answered oddly calm. "I shouldn't ever care what people with that sort of mind think."
"Well I do," he almost shouted at her, "and I want you to understand as my wife that I forbid you to see that young Alison again. I don't know anything about him except that I did him a favour once. And I don't mean to have it."
"I think you're excited," she said calmly, not at all like the child that he had always known. She gathered new strength from his sudden weakness. One of them must have reserve.
"Excited!" he mocked. "Well, who wouldn't be? A dirty-minded little cad like that!"
"Hubert," she said roused at last, "you've got no right to call him that. It's you and Mrs. Herbertson and every one that have the dirty minds. I don't know what you think. He's not a cad. He's your friend and I like him. He's been nice to me." A devil tempted her, urging her on beyond the point of a good friend's defence. "I'm very fond of him," she said, provocatively.
And then that devil entered into Hubert Brett. It had been a full night and excitement all the way. He had not yet recovered from that garden scene. And now, listening to her words, hearing his rival praised, he felt again as he had felt when he thought that some harm had come to her. He seized her in his arms with an unreasoning passion; held her there, resisting; kissed her furiously on lips, eyes, everywhere; laughing and saying: "You are mine, mine. You belong to me, I tell you. You're all mine!"
"Let me go, Hubert," she cried terrified. She could not understand.
He let her go, at that. She moved away and stood behind the table, as though that gave her protection. He gazed at her smiling, panting.
"I'm sorry," he said presently. "It was your fault: you were so maddening. You don't see what it means to me."
The little gods of Comedy laughed out upon the tragic spectacle of a man released by oddly joined emotions from his chains of Self and a wife who wondered in fear whether Kit Kats drank champagne....
"And how did the dinner go off?" she asked soon, in her usual tones.
CHAPTER XIII
SECRETS
Helena came to the conclusion that her mother had been right in one point: life was difficult. She decided further that it was the Mrs. Herbertsons who caused the trouble. Things would be all right if no one ever thought about them!
But she had Consolations beyond this Philosophy.
For one thing, Hubert almost instantly relented, the next day to be precise, about poor Mr. Alison. She, giving way in turn, had said she would appease the vicar's wife and golfers by seeing less of him. So all that stupid fuss was over.
This, however, was not the real Consolation. No, she had a secret.
Helena Brett's secret was not a typically wifely one. It was based, rather, on her childish games. Every little girl has secrets—to the scorn of boys—and when, like Helena, she is an only child, she has them to herself. Of course it is less satisfactory, because although by its nature even a pretending secret needs but one, the whole fun lies in telling it to some one else.
Helena told no one about hers. And it was much more thrilling than those early Devonshire affairs, which largely hinged on the exact position of a fast-decaying mole.
The secret differed too from those of many wives in this, that it was all about a woman; a woman she had never met, a woman she could never meet.
For over a year now, since causeries and lectures on assorted topics began to fit into a shapeless enough whole—a something that explained or might explain what Helena called "Things"—she had put stray thoughts down into a shilling diary. At first they had been merely sentences that touched her or inspired, things heard and read. Then as her mind began to feel its way, she wrote these extracts down, and half ashamed at first, though nobody would ever see them, added her comments on their theories. How elementary the first had been! She blushed, re-reading them. "'The best pilots are ashore'" (ran one on page two). "Then are they really pilots?"
Soon, as was to be expected, she could not endure these accusing words, even herself; and throwing the slim volume pell-mell in the fire, bought and embarked upon a more ambitious tome.
Then indeed began the proper secret, for up till now though nobody had ever known, (she could hear Hubert laughing at her and calling her "so refreshing" ...) it had not been tremendously exciting.
Now it was, however, for the new book, started ambitiously enough as a sort of brief record of her daily moods—she had so much time now that she saw less of Geoffrey Alison—gradually burgeoned into something even more colossal.
They never had been quite her own sensations in this second volume. Those were so extremely dull! No, they had been those of some one like herself: a young wife with a busy husband, some one who felt a fool and wanted not to, wanted very much, but he quite liked it really——oh yes, sometimes, the first day or two, she felt a cad. Hubert really wasn't the least bit like that; it was all over-done; but she supposed that it was easier—he always said it was—if you exaggerated than if you just kept to the truth. It all seemed rather horrid, somehow. She thought about tearing up the book.
And then—just about the time of the Kit Kat affair—began the real, astounding, secret.
Virginia, as she called the wife inwardly (for it was all in the first person)—Virginia began to grow!
It was not Helena's own moods and feelings now that went upon the paper: something endlessly more thorough, more intense, more—well, Helena's own word was "sloppy."
Frankly she despised Virginia. That scene about the Kit Kats came into her diary (it was not Helena's), quite different, about a different thing in fact, and more hysterical. She hoped she would not end up like Virginia! Yet in a way she saw herself there too, just as beneath the husband she could detect ever so cruel a parody of Hubert in his most naughty moments....
But oh, what fun it was!
When Hubert got up nowadays with some remark like; "Well, I must do my work!" she no longer felt lonely or out in the cold or inferior or anything. She just said to herself: "And so must I."
It was too splendid, having secrets.
She told nobody; not even Ally, who liked her to be ambitious.
No, it was her secret.
CHAPTER XIV
WAS IT WORTH WHILE?
Love in a cottage is admittedly no failure, quite delightful; but those who have tried it usually end by owning that love in comfort would be no less charming.
So it was with Hubert.
Nobody, he told himself, could be a better little housekeeper than Helena, no little home more fresh and dainty than their own: but though she never worried him, cleverly adapting their ways to a variable income, he was always faced by the uncomfortable thought: "If this book fails—" or "unless I write some short stories—" and after a while these things begin to tell. Within two years from marriage they had told upon Hubert Brett.
And so had come into being that pot-boiler, confessed to Helena with such solemnity on the wide, prudent, spaces of the Heath.
At first he had thought that it would be a hardship to exchange his own realistic method, his studies of character, for those banalities of plot and action independent of all motive, which wearied him even when read, boiled down, in a magazine. But slowly his mood of cynical disdain changed to a real enjoyment, for any task is splendid so soon as a man gets at firm grips with it. He began to see that when once you had got rid of the idea that action must proceed from character, there was a certain joy in letting wild event pile up on wild event and then be rapidly forgotten under even wilder. When once you had abandoned all reserve, there was a fierce delight in splashing pages with unfettered sentiment; making frank puppets think, love, and renounce as they had thought, loved, and renounced since the old fruity days of the three-volume novel. Of course it was all footle, balderdash, but still (he told himself with pride) it was good footle, splendid balderdash. He had bought some of the most "popular" of recent novels in six-penny editions, novels that had brought fortunes to their authors, and by comparison with his, they did the same thing in a bungling manner. No able novelist, he cynically told his wife, had ever tried till now to write a really good bad novel!
Helena loathed the whole enterprise, not only because she vaguely felt that it was marriage with her which had made it needful, but because she thought it so unworthy. And not least unworthy, not least loathsome, did she find his way of talking. It had been so splendid to hear him speak about his work in the old days: and now it was so horrible.
"I've found a title at last," he said, emerging at lunch-time one day when the book was in its revision-stage, and coming to her in the drawing-room as usual.
"Hooray!" she cried, genuinely pleased because he had been worried as to that and this would mean a cheery walk. "What is it? Is it good?"
"Couldn't be better," he replied, and as usual she missed the irony. He paused and then; "Was It Worth While?"
"Oh, Hugh," she could not help exclaiming. "That isn't the title?"
"Don't you like it?" he enquired sardonically and let himself down cheerily upon the sofa.
Helena of late had begun to express quite elaborate opinions even to Hubert, who somehow always terrified her, rather, when it came to intellect. He was so much cleverer, she knew, and never seemed to take her views as anything except a joke. She always spoke a little timidly. He would have been surprised to hear how cleverly she talked to Alison and others. But that is true of many married couples.
"No," she began slowly. "It's so—I don't know, but—well, so cheap. All your others were so dignified and simple; I think Wandering Stars was simply excellent; but this—it sort of reminds me of those plays with names like Did She Do It? You know what I mean!"
Hubert smiled grimly. "You seem to think I'm trying to be dignified. Not a bit of it: we're out for money! Money, my dear Helena: no more worry about bills, and our own motor-car!" She could not bring herself to be amused and he went on more moodily: "Do you imagine any woman wants novels with titles that are dignified? and men aren't fools enough to read them. Of course you picked out my best seller for your argument; but look at The Bread of Idleness. That was dignified enough and splendidly reviewed and sold two thousand copies; just about a hundred pounds for me for one year's work! No thanks, I've done with dignity, pro tem. There may be just about two thousand women with a taste in dignity, but I want all the shop-girls this time: I'm out for my hundred thousand! I want them when they go to the seaside library and pay their twopences to notice Was It Worth While? in big letters on a purple ground. That'll make them think! No more dignity for me: you want to make them think, to make them wonder "Why?" I'd call the book Why Smith Left Home, if only it was new."
She did not answer for a few moments: then she said very gently but with a new firmness; "Hugh dear, is it really necessary to do all this? Can't we just go on as we have been doing? I dare say I could manage better, really, and I've often told you I simply don't know what to do with my allowance: it's eating its head off in the bank! Surely we're not so hard up as all that? I hate the whole idea."
"What whole idea?" he asked coldly. One did look for encouragement from one's own wife. He got up to leave her.
"This pot-boiler, as you call it; the title; the way you talk about it; everything. It's all so different, and I've been so proud of the others." She gathered courage and went on: "Look here, Hugh, why not give it up; start on a really good one that'll help your name; and we'll live meanwhile on all that from my allowance in the bank?" She rose and took him by the arm persuasively.
"My dear child," he said with condescension, "you seem to think it's all just money. Tear the whole book up? Don't worry your little head with such things, but just go and see if Lily can't give us some early lunch and then we'll go to Kew for tea!"
Helena, released with a kiss, went out feeling oddly rebellious in spite of the Kew treat; and as for him, he was annoyed. Give it up, indeed! She talked as though "all this" (for she had called it that) were something criminal, instead of merely a book that was bound to sell! He certainly had no idea of sacrificing all his work for her absurd dislikes....
Even the best artists do not so much object to popularity, when they reach thirty-eight.
Hubert Brett, indeed, was more excited over this novel's birth than over that of any other. Almost every day he had to go up to see agent, publisher, or editor. He told Helena, as his excuse for leaving her so much, that it was most important this book, as a "popular" one, should be widely advertised and publishers were such eternal fools about that sort of thing. They always spent all their money upon other people's trash and then said they could not afford to help on your own books!
As the day for publishing drew nearer, this theory bulked almost into an obsession. Helena came to dread the paper boy's arrival. Hubert would tear the dailies open, dash by instinct to the literary page, and then give a discordant laugh of scorn or anger.
"Of course not," he would say. "They won't tell any one till it's been out a week! They mean to keep it dark, trust them!"
"I dare say they're saving up for later on, dear," was her soothing reply. It was not always she, by now, who was the child.
But he would not be soothed.
Helena was glad when the day arrived, although it was a nervous time. He had been full, the night before, of how amusing it would be to hear the critics slang him for a change, instead of finding all those dull superlatives that put the public off: but remembering his past fury with those few reviews which found some blemish in his work, she had her misgivings.
"Only I expect," she said, "it may seem rather curious at first—having bad notices, I mean." She looked across at him covertly and anxiously. She had begun, by now, to knit waistcoats for him and felt as though they had been married for eternity.
Hubert, lounging idly in the other armchair, merely laughed. "Curious? Well, amusing.... It'll certainly be something new to be slated by the critics and rushed after by the libraries. It's usually been the other way about!" He knew, himself, that he would feel the blame from critics who had liked his work, but then—— After all, if the readers liked it and were thousands where they had been hundreds——! And there was the money....
Next morning the paper boy delivered a specially large roll of papers and Hubert flung himself upon them with unusual vigour. Helena, her eyes fixed on a letter where the words all flickered, was anxious to what might seem an unjustified extent. She could just see him with one corner of her eye.
Paper after paper was torn open; his gaze ran greedily along the columns; but he never paused to read.
At length he flung the last one down with a fierce gesture.
"It's a boycott," he cried petulantly. "I've always had at least two notices, for years, upon the day. We sent them out early on purpose. It's nothing but a boycott."
He seemed to find some consolation in that word with its historical immensity.
"How too bad, dearest," murmured Helena, in duty and with a sinking heart. She saw no cause for any boycott. And she knew that his other novels had better deserved any privilege.
On four dreary mornings the same tragic farce took place, and also with the evening papers. Then on the fifth day Hubert's fast-travelling eyes stopped abruptly, he said "Ha!" and then read out with a naïve joy "Was It Worth While?"
"Good," exclaimed Helena, still doubtful.
Suddenly he gave a wild laugh. "I like that," he said. "That is rich." He put the paper down very gently on the table. Then he raised the cover from the buttered eggs.
"What is it, dear?" she compelled herself to ask.
"They say," announced Hubert in extremely level tones, "this habit of publishing a well-known author's early works as new is one that has grown far too common."
Then, letting himself go; "Early works? I'll show them! It is libellous. I can prove my case to the hilt."
"I shouldn't worry with them," she said, feeling inadequate. "Perhaps it will just make the book sell? We expected them to be all nasty, didn't we?" She tried to speak brightly. Then an inspiration came to her. "Perhaps there are some better ones?" she said. The great thing would be to divert his mind. A law-case would be terrible. Nobody got anything, ever, except the barristers.
He passed the heap of unopened papers scornfully across to her. "You look at them," he said. "I don't know why I do or why one cares. They're just a pack of failures. I always despise myself for looking at their stuff at all." He opened a letter with unneeded violence.
With slow unpractised fingers Helena began to search for reviews. "No, no," she said at each, until she thought (he was so quiet), that this might be annoying him and went on with her task in silence.
Then her hands suddenly clutched the paper tightly, symbolic of her effort to say nothing, for her eyes had caught the heading, Was It Worth While? The notice ran to half a column and this was an important paper. She blessed her cleverness in having looked.
One moment later, she was blessing her forethought in not saying anything. For this was the review: