Helena Brett's Career

CHAPTER XV

DISCOVERIES

An Ethical Society might pass a winter's evening in this debate: Does it need more strength to endure failure or to bear success? The dangers upon either road stand out easily, for all but the actual wayfarer. By the one he may fall into the slough of Bitterness, whilst the other, far more pleasant as it draws him on, may lead to no more than the pitiable, luxurious cities of Arrogance and Meanness.

The problem certainly needs no elaboration in this place, since Hubert's path lay all too clearly towards failure. "I fear," wrote his publisher as an old friend, "it is no use concealing the fact that people do not want the book. There have as yet been no repeat orders from libraries or booksellers. We can only face the fact and hope to do better with the next. As you know, in my opinion the book was not up to your usual high level."

"Who wants his damned opinion?" growled Hubert out loud, though alone, and crumpled up the letter. Why, publishers weren't even critics!

As to these last, their unanimity for once was wonderful.

There are ingenious authors who amuse themselves by printing excerpts from reviews of their last novel, alternately conflicting, thuswise; "An able novel: Tooting Sentinel. Weak and formless: Times. An arresting piece of work, whoever by: Stafford News. An amateur affair: Standard;"—thinking in this manner to have blackened for evermore the ancient art of Criticism in any decent-minded person's eyes. They scarcely realise, poor injured souls, that the thing is an Art. Were it but a machine, it doubtless would attain the same result from each book, whether put before it by a Fleet Street expert or a Stafford tyro. Because it is an Art, however, and all Art is merely the expression of an individual emotion, it follows that each book must react on every critic in a different way. These notices, so pompous with The Times or Stafford News above them, are not worked out with prayer by the whole paper's staff; they stand for one opinion, no less—and no more—than the opinion of a woman-reader over the tea-tray. Opinions, moreover, vary; praise to God! How fresh and hopeful, what a message, seems this story to the un-read Staffordian; how stale and hopeless, what an ancient dish, it appears to him of Printing House Square, who has read more than he can hope ever to forget!

And yet beneath it all there is a principle. Bad Of Its Sort is bad, whatever sort one likes; which is all Plato's Ideas in a convenient nutshell.

And every one agreed that Was it Worth While? was bad of its sort. It tried to be something it was not, and what can be more shocking?

Hubert, then, had an admirable chance of showing what effect a failure, after some years of moderate success, had on his character; and took it to the full. As the reviews came in, he grew more and more violent. It was not many days before he countermanded all the extra papers, but his faithful Press-Cutters sent in the notices religiously and he could not help reading them. Helena would come down first (she always did) at breakfast time and hide the small green envelopes, which then arrived by the last post and were brought in at 9 p.m. by the complaisant Lily.

Then what a flow of words! Poor critics, publishers, and readers; what a set they were, how blind, how asinine, how spiteful! Sometimes he would at once go to his study and write a reply, which Helena did not in every case succeed in rescuing before it got into the pillar-box, though certainly her score was bigger.

It was a trying month and he did not spare even her. When there were no reviews to tear verbally—and sometimes other ways—in fragments, he would moan plaintively that this meant he would never get another sou out of the book beyond the small advance already paid, and nobody would want to read the next one either, and Heaven knew how they would pay the house-bills.

"I don't suppose any one will even publish it," he would say, almost gloating, like a schoolboy probing his cut finger.

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried, believing him, "it does seem awful. And to think you were so successful till you married me and had to write this terrible pot-boiler. Oh, how I wish you'd never done it!"

"What, married you?" he asked, suddenly laughing. "Bother shop! Come along out and see if we can't find a good stick to throw for the hound;" and as he passed, he kissed her on the hair and drew her up on to her feet.

His moods were so abrupt, just now, that sometimes she grew frightened.

It was lucky, then, that she had got her consolation; the great secret. Geoffrey Alison was far less frequent in the house these days, not having totally forgotten yet that grip upon his throat, and she would have been very desolate when Hubert was locked in with his work if she could not have flown excitedly to hers. Absorbed entirely in the opinion and career of the increasingly contemptible Virginia, she found herself free for a while from all the worries of real life, returning to them with a mind refreshed as by the most luxurious of sleep; the reason why there will be always writers, even when cinemas and cheap editions have made it not a paid, but an extravagant, profession.

So utterly absorbed was she, indeed, about six weeks after the fatal day of publication, that the drawing-room door was open before she had noticed any warning noise outside. Helena realised that it was far too late by now to hide the sheets of manuscript and substitute a letter, as she always did. Any attempt like that would only make detection certain—and far worse.

To her relief it was not Hubert, only Mr. Alison, with Lily holding the door open. She would not so much mind his knowing—he was so encouraging—supposing that he noticed.

And this of course he promptly did.

"Hullo!" was in fact his very first remark. "Are you too among the authors?" He waved his hand towards the little pile of manuscript that should have been inside a drawer.

"Yes," she said, hoping that she was not blushing. "But not too loud as it's an awful secret. Hubert doesn't know."

He tip-toed at it with exaggerated caution. "Oh-ho!" he whispered. "Then I guess: it's all about him! It is a safety-valve."

This was a little joke: they were devoted, he knew, though he could never understand what she saw in the great, conceited, selfish brute: but Helena felt sure now that the blush was there.

"No," she was bound to answer, and when he asked, "Fiction?" in surprise, it must be "Yes." And so it was, by now, she argued. A safety-valve at first perhaps, because Hugh seemed to loathe her having even the most usual ideas, but fiction certainly by now, for the ideas of Virginia were not her own ideas; the silly, sloppy thing!

"I'm going to read it please," he said and began collecting the loose pages (the book had long ago been cast aside).

"Certainly not," she answered, very dignified, and trying to forget that they were the words of a comic song she had heard on the gramophone.

"Oh, but yes," he answered.

"Give it to me," she said, turning now to melodrama for her catch-phrase.

He held the prize by sitting on it. "Listen," he began, as staidly argumentative as though he had been drunk: and then he paused. "If you let me read it," he said presently, "I'll tell you what I think of it and I bet it's original. If you don't let me read it, I shall tell—your husband!"

"You wouldn't be such a cad," she answered. She never knew when he was serious, because he often looked most funny then.

"I'm not so sure," he said. "Anyhow let me? I'll begin to-night."

"You won't do that," she retorted laughingly, "because the first bit's in a volume, locked away upstairs."

He whistled. "What! An opus? Tut! Now don't be selfish. When you first wanted to know about Art, I told you all I could, and now you're doing things, I think it's only fair that I should be the first to see."

He looked so funny, leaning forward eagerly yet taking care to keep his weight still on the manuscript, that she laughed heartily. He surely wasn't serious now?

He looked extremely hurt. "Very well," he said, getting up. "If you think it's so funny, that's all right. I suppose, now, you've done with me: you've got all out of me you needed: so now you don't even tell me that you're trying to create." He got up from the bureau with much dignity and moved towards the door. One sheet of the manuscript stuck to his clothes until he reached the centre-table. She was just wondering what to do about this, when it fluttered downward. That broke her inaction.

"Oh, no," she said, "don't be stuffy. I never meant it. I thought you were being ironical about my 'art' and I can't ever see it. Please don't be offended, Ally." In spite of her announced resolve she hardly ever called him that, and now she said it with a slight burr, dwelling on it till the name became a thing of beauty, almost a caress.

He wavered at the door; but he was shrewd in business by heredity. "Well, will you let me read it?" he said firmly.

"Yes, if you really want to," she replied. "I'll fetch the other half." Secretly she longed for an opinion, and she would never dare to ask for Hubert's. "Promise not to look at this bit," she said, coy as a young singer. "I couldn't bear you to see it till you are right away."

He promised and she left him to his thoughts, which were of an expectant nature. She was a girl that he had never really understood (in actual practice he had very small experience of girls), and he knew well enough that first books, even when all fiction, are half true. He was amused inwardly at her simplicity in lending him the manuscript.

She came back with something like a baby scrap-book in her hand. "I got bored with writing in this," she said. "It was so uncomfortable, the edges cut my hand." Then, as though half repenting; "You must promise not to look at it till you get home and never to tell Hubert."

"Is that likely?" he asked, referring to the last condition. It made the business far more thrilling.

He had the common sense, however, to see that she was already doubtful of her wisdom: so that as soon as volume and loose sheets were in his hand, he changed the subject tactfully.

"Well," he asked, "and how is the new book going?"

"Oh, isn't it awful?" Helena replied. "I don't know if I ought to tell you, but it's not sold at all: not, I mean, except those sold before publication and I never understand quite how that happens."

"Then I expect it's good," said Geoffrey Alison a trifle cheaply.

Helena replied with emphasis, as though rebutting a grave charge. "No, not at all. That's just it: it's much worse than his other ones. He's in an awful way. I don't believe he's sold a thousand copies!"

"My dear Mrs. Brett," he said (he always hated calling her that, but he dared not embark on "Helena"), "comfort yourself with the idea that a thousand copies is a very good sale for any decent novel. Each copy, after all, is read by twenty people in these days of libraries, so that means twenty thousand readers. Of course if Hubert wrote for shop-girls, he might find a million: but do you think that any really serious study of real life—the sort of book that simply gets at character and doesn't fuss with plot: the real, artistic novel—is going to find more than twenty thousand people in dull old England who can understand it? And that's your thousand-copy sale! I don't mind betting no really 'artistic' novel—it's a beastly word—ever sells more than that."

His one idea in all this had been to console her, for he guessed a little what it meant when Hubert Brett was "in an awful way"; but now she seemed if anything more troubled. She sat in dazed silence, looking like a small child who has seen something which it absolutely cannot understand at all.

"But Wandering Stars," she said presently, "I've often heard, sold quite five thousand."

"Oh yes, I dare say," came the unthinking answer. Had she forgotten about her MS.?

"Well, wasn't that artistic?" There was a note of battle in her voice.

He saw now where he had drifted. "Oh yes," he began. "But not quite in the way I meant. That was a good story, very, and was popular. I meant, really, quite a different sort of book." He floundered in excuses.

"What sort?" she asked pitilessly. "Better ones?"

"Oh no," he said, more and more embarrassed. "Not that exactly. You can't say that. You can't compare different kinds in Art. You've got to judge a man by his success in what he has attempted. A good caricature is much better than a bad Madonna," and firmly upon Art with the feeling of a mariner safe in port after a storm, he drew her mind away—or so he thought, this man who knew so little about women—and after a while, sooner than usual, made his excuses and departed.

Outside he got as near to saying "Whew!" as any live man ever has. He had jolly nearly put his foot in it! He wouldn't for millions let that little girl suspect that really artistic people—his own set—did not think so much of Brett's work as Brett did himself. What a lumbering idiot he had been! The fact was, he had thought she meant to get that writing of hers back and he had wanted to distract her mind. In that, anyhow, he had succeeded.

On the way back, he could not resist dipping into the book as he walked.

He skimmed a page and chuckled Fiction? He recognised himself already!

CHAPTER XVI

A MATTER OF SALES

Long after Geoffrey Alison had gone, Helena sat motionless at her desk, biting a pen-holder; looking out into the garden and thinking.

She was not thinking, as he would have imagined, about her manuscript. She was thinking about Hubert's work.

In one sense she had no great opinion of Geoffrey Alison, although she liked to have him as her friend. She did not respect him, did not think him manly, would never be swayed by his estimate of her: he was an odd, amusing, clever, little thing and she was never altogether sure when he was serious. But in another way she thought more of his words than even she had ever admitted to herself. Hubert had never taken her development as serious at all; had made it clear he thought her stupid, as he said once, "to burden her dear little head with brains, when she was so original already"; so that it had been Mr. Alison (who must be really very kind, at any rate) that had initiated her into the thrilling mysteries of Art. He had taken her round galleries, to lectures; told her this was bad or that good, then tried to show her why; and though they argued nowadays, her basic views were his: she judged things by the touchstone he had given her. What then more natural than that she should value his ideas on Art?

And now—now he had told her (oh, without meaning it, she knew, but that made it no better)—told her that Hubert's novels were not thought artistic really, they were good stories but no more, and not in the same class as vague others which sold always badly. She had been so proud of them, until Was It Worth While? appeared; and now it seemed that all the others had belonged to a class of no merit, too. They were good of their sort—like a caricature...! Hubert had always spoken with such scorn of novels which were "popular": and now she had heard Mr. Alison joining that fatal adjective to his pet Wandering Stars....

It may be thought peculiar that Helena should have believed so easily; but as she sat there and gazed out through unseeing eyes, nothing of any weight stood in the other balance.

When she had married him, proud of his name, she was a simple girl. She had not read a word of his until she was engaged: and how could she judge after that, if she had been the best of critics? Then, once his wife—well, who would tell her anyhow? Ally, she knew, had never meant to and she liked him better than she had, for it. Hubert was so contemptuous about his paintings, that she knew he must have often felt the obvious temptation to revenge.

Hubert, in fact, had been so scornful about everybody else's work. In Literature—she now recalled—she had relied entirely on his estimates. Mr. Alison, till now, had said he really was no judge of books and told her she must ask her husband.... She had got the idea that Hubert's work was of the best sort, the most properly artistic, and when she wondered why it did not make more money, he had said that it was too good....

Now with a shock that somehow loosened far more than merely her ideas on books, this young wife learnt that the great Hubert Brett, with all his endless moods—the house revolving round his inspiration—only created novels which were "popular" in class, yet nearly always failed to sell!

She had not of course got the matter quite so definite as that in her own mind, when there came to her ears the warning sound of his door opening. There were no sheets of manuscript to hide to-day, but she put down a cedar pen-holder which had grown very ragged at the top in a half-hour.

"Well," she said, leaping up and forcing herself, like a trained wife, to be cheery, "what success to-day?" She always asked him that. He liked it.

Hubert was not satisfied to-day. "Rotten," he said; "absolutely rotten. That idiot Lily had put all the candle-sticks and things the wrong way round on my writing-desk and I'd to move them all, just when I got there feeling in the mood to work."

"Oh, I'm so sorry, dear," she answered humbly. "I will tell her." She knew, you see, the whole of a wife's duty now.

"Don't worry about that, my dear," he said without much conviction; "but these housemaids seem to think an artist is a sort of navvy who only wants a pen and everything's all right. They don't seem to understand that when you're doing work like mine, the least thing out of its accustomed place catches your eye and absolutely breaks the inspiration: you get up to move it. I never worked back to the proper state at all this morning. I might as well have played a round of golf."

Helena, with a curious sensation that was almost fear—fear, it may be, of herself—realised that his plaint, oft-heard, left her cold this morning. Till now she had always thought how wonderful he was, how different from her dull self, how sensitively made. To-day she felt—she felt that it was all a needless fuss! This last half-hour had crystallised thoughts vaguely growing during a whole year.

She could not trust herself to any comment. She felt that probably all writers had these affectations, and yet there was this sudden lack of sympathy about the candlesticks....

"But I hope," she merely said, "the new book's working out all right?"

Hubert dropped upon the sofa, a dead weight of hopelessness. "I don't believe," he said, "I'm meant for an author—not in these days anyhow, when it's a trade. You know, my dear, it's too absurd but I can not forget those beastly critics! They've put me off entirely. Every line I write, I think that such and such a paper won't like that: just as though I was writing for them and not for the public!" He took up a magazine and flung it down violently on the sofa. "I tell you though," he said confidently, as though that changed his mood, and rose to go: "I jolly well mean to get at the public, this time."

"Hugh," she said, ludicrously horror-struck, "it's not another pot-boiler?" She had not dared to ask and he had vouchsafed literally nothing yet.

He smiled grimly, standing by the door. "You'll see," he said. "I'm nearly through with the synopsis now and I'll read you the first chapter soon. It's not like the last, anyhow. It's called Eternity. And there's one thing," he went on with a kind of brutal joy, "if it's a frost, we shall absolutely have to pack up and move off into cheaper quarters: I can't afford to keep you here!"

"But, Hugh," she began in sympathetic protest.

But he had closed the door, outside.

CHAPTER XVII

THE TEMPTER

Helena did not possess the vice of introspection.

Conscious as she was that something had changed in her attitude towards her husband's moods and work, those tyrants of her married life to which till now she had bowed down so humbly, she told herself in a general way that things would soon shake down again, that it was probably her fault, and that she must make sure what Mr. Alison had really meant. This time she would keep him to it and not let him drift off to Madonnas. She wished he would make haste and call. Why had she lent him all that stuff about Virginia? He was probably wondering what on earth to say to her about it and that was why he did not call. What a nuisance he was! She longed to ask him definitely what people really thought of Hubert's work and whether he had meant all that. You never really knew, with him....

When, however, he finally arrived, it was with such an air of mysterious excitement that she was forced to wait a moment.

He stood in silence until Lily's heavy steps had died away and then, in a stage whisper: "Is Hubert safely out of hearing?"

"Yes," she laughed. He always amused her when he was funny like this. "He always works, you know quite well, from five till seven. I suppose all this 'sshing is because you want to give me back my silly manuscript. Where is it?" She was glad, in a way, that he was going to be stupid over it.

"Ah," he replied, "that's it," and raised a cryptic finger.

"You are funny," she said lazily from her armchair, like some one who claps in the stalls.

He looked slightly hurt. "You always say that if I'm serious," he protested. Then less plaintively, as though heartened by what was to come: "As a matter of fact though, I've done you a very good turn."

"Me?" asked Helena, as he made an effective pause and there seemed nothing else to say. She couldn't thank, in case it really was a joke.

"Yes, you. Your silly manuscript, as you like to call it, is good—jolly good. I don't suppose you realise that, do you? It's something original, these days, and that is everything. It's——"

"I'm glad it amused you," Helena said, thinking that he had quitted himself well and now she must help him out; "but——"

"But where's the good turn?" he broke in, interpreting her wrongly. "Well, I'll tell you. I showed it—I knew you wouldn't mind——" (and here he looked a little timidly at her sideways), "I showed it to a publisher I've met about, a very decent fellow——"

"How dare you?" Helena flashed out youthfully, just as though they were playing Interruptions. "I lent it you to read and I think——"

He kept up the game. "Listen," he said with a firmness rare in him, confident of what he had to tell. "He said it was new and vital and had money in it: those are his exact words; and he wants to publish it if you can think of a good ending. There!"

At last it was out and he stood complacent, waiting for her thanks: but she was not even appeased. "I don't care what he said," she cried, and for this moment of her childish anger it was true. "I only know I lent it you and not to him; do you think I want everybody reading all my diaries?"

"But it was not a diary," he answered, keeping his head clear, "and he had no idea of course who wrote it."

"He would, though, if he published it." She thought that she had crushed him; but he merely gained fresh hope, seeing her dally thus with the idea.

"Never," he replied dramatically. "Nobody will ever know except yourself and me."

Before that masterly touch, "will," she crumpled up, and fell back on a new line of defence. "I can't believe," she said, more peaceable, "he's serious. I know quite well, and so do you, it's nothing: just to make the time go while I was alone. I took no trouble: wrote it any odd old time."

"You surely don't imagine," he said, "writers really have to wait for times and seasons and the proper mood? They could work ten to six like anybody else, except it wouldn't be artistic. Do you imagine nothing's good unless it's written with a lobelia in front of you and all that sort of thing? Some of the world's best stuff has come out of an attic. The whole thing's nothing but a pose."

She had her answer about Hubert, without asking. Geoffrey Alison, two years discreet, had suddenly begun to throw bricks in this happy home, and never even heard the crash.

"Oh," she said, lingering on the syllable till it grew into three.

He did not understand. He saw her hesitate and he threw all his weight to drive her the way he desired. "After all," he said, using that most persuasive of openings to a temptation or a fallacy, "what right have you, artistically, to keep to yourself a thing that may please and help millions? You especially, who don't even approve of private Art Galleries because you can't see them! ... I know what it is, exactly; you're thinking of your husband, naturally; but he need never know. I'll do the business, all of it, and show you any notices and no one else will ever guess at all. Think what fun it would be!" (He saw her eyes light up and knew that he had won.) "Besides there'll be the money too and any one can do with that."

"Yes," said Helena, clinging to an earlier sentence, as women will, "but the manuscript gives it away hopelessly that I'm an author's wife, on almost every page."

"Well, how many authors do you think there are?" he said; then with the Tempter's fluency, "and they notoriously marry more than any one. Who in the world could guess? Every one would think that it was by a man. They always do if anybody writes a very intimate peep at a woman's soul." He smiled, remembering how intimate the peep in question sometimes was. "Fancy reading all their silly guesses! Come on! You can't be so selfish!"

Her eyes glistened and she moved on to an earlier point. "It wouldn't really bring much money, would it?" she asked. "Books don't seem to, ever."

"Blatchley—that's the publisher—thinks it would sell like anything: he says it's new. That's why he wants it. There isn't any sentiment in Blatchley. He's right, too: people love these human documents. I dare say it'd bring in several hundred pounds."

Helena gasped. He had offered her the proper fruit at last, this worried little child of Eve, who, feigning to cut down the household bills, had long time satisfied a husband intolerant of change by drawing on her bank account, now perilously near its end.

"What should I call myself?" she answered simply. Several hundred pounds—and all the fun as well!

He thought a moment. "Not Helena," he said with firmness. "They'd guess. Besides no authoress could ever be called Helena: it sounds like Eleanor after a careless housemaid's accident."

"Joan is my second name," she answered humbly.

"Joan," he repeated, and she felt quite ashamed already: he made it sound so long and flat. "No, no; not Joan. That is like Jones with the last letter dropped. It must be something literary. I know." He hesitated, as though weighing the discovered nugget: then, satisfied; "We'll call you Zoë Baskerville."

"Splendid!" she laughed. Already this was a new interest in life. Then a doubt struck her. "Are those literary names? Who were they both?"

"I'm blest if I know," he confessed; "but I've seen both in catalogues." So that was settled.

"I never liked Helena for you," he said. "Zoë is just the name. I shall always think of you as Zoë." Then, greatly daring, with a swift rush; "May I call you Zoë?"

He felt as though he were upon the absolute edge of his chair, but she seemed to think nothing of his question. "If you like it," she said, off-hand. "You want some revenge for Ally! But not in front of Hugh or he'll guess when the book comes out, and that would be too terrible."

"No," he said with feeling, "that shall be our secret," and leant slightly forward.

"When will it appear?" she asked excitedly: and he was as near cursing the book, now, as he had been to blessing it, a moment earlier.

He left the house, however, shortly before seven o'clock, stepping upon air. He had never expected to get her consent. Old Blatchley would think him no end of a clever devil and Blatchley was a useful man. Besides, the comedy and excitement of it all! And, best of all, it was a new bond with—Zoë!

Gad, fancy having a ripping little girl like that as pal; and a secret between them absolutely, from her husband even; and calling her Zoë, which he knew in some odd Greek way was a jolly daring sort of name, though he forgot quite how....

Yes, Geoffrey Alison was satisfied.

And as for Helena, with certain shapeless misgivings and fears there mingled a most natural exaltation: since whether one writes for fame or mere "fun," what can be more exciting than the acceptance of one's first book by the first publisher who sees it?

She still could not understand it. She did not realise of course how fresh her view of married life had been: she did not guess perhaps in quite what sense her new-appointed agent had used the word "intimate"; she did not realise that the book's very blemishes were its chief claim to Truth. She could see nothing in the thing at all.

But it was all exciting, very. She would just end it up: make poor Virginia, who was Zoë now, work her way round to happiness, as Ally had said that she must not kill her; then send it up to him and he had vowed she should not even get a single letter; he literally would "do the rest." Then if it failed, no harm was done and she had made her secret yet more thrilling: whilst if in some mad way the book caught on and she received those hundreds—well what a blessing they would be just now with bills, and Hubert who was so silly with practical affairs like that would merely imagine that she was running things more cheaply. (Every woman, deep down, thinks every man a child.)

Besides—if Geoffrey Alison stepped lightly homewards upon air, Helena too felt that the grey world stretched a little softer under her. That shapeless longing for development of a real Self, that almost morbid shame of her own ignorance, had issued finally in something tangible. She was an authoress!

No doubt her book was not like Hubert's, built up carefully on scientific scaffolding; but still—it had pleased Mr. Alison and it had satisfied a publisher!

Small wonder, then, if totally forgetful though she was of her new theories on Hubert's mode of work—immersed by now in the palpitating thrill of her new secret—she yet sat opposite to him this night at dinner with a less feeling of abasement, a new confidence. She found it hard at moments to attend to him and throw in, as she usually did, appreciative comments now and then.

"Of course," he was saying now, criticising a review, "all this about 'painting' with a pen is rubbish. The two arts have no resemblance. The painter used to be a monk—and is a mountebank! He never yet has been a writer."

"Oh, I don't know. What about Rossetti? Or even Whistler?" she put in absently, just as though it had been Geoffrey Alison.

Hubert was brought up with a jerk. He hated people who corrected one. It was like Mrs. Boyd, exactly. Of course he knew that she was right and he wrong, handsomely—although he'd no idea she knew—but it would be so dull if every one was accurate!

"My dear," he said coldly, "I know all about that, but do you think you need interrupt my argument to tell me? I shall be afraid to speak at all if I am going to be heckled!"

He waved the thing aside with a short laugh, as though to say she was forgiven. But something in his manner had annoyed Helena to-night.

"I wasn't 'heckling'," she said, trying to speak lightly; "but you know, Hugh, it's a bit mediæval if I know things and mayn't say anything!"

Hubert gaped at her.

Mediæval! That was a real Mrs. Boyd idea. He made no answer, but he was more than vaguely annoyed. This was his simple little Helena no longer. It was those damned lectures....

He felt that from this moment they stood on a new footing.

PART III

HELENA BRETT'S CAREER

CHAPTER XVIII

ZOË

Helena unfolded the slip, pasted on its blue half-sheet, and began to read it, thoroughly engrossed. She seemed forgetful of Geoffrey Alison, who in turn watched her with hardly less attention, more anxiety. He knew the thing by heart.

"Confessions of an Author's Wife (Blatchley & Co.) is by its name confessed as of the Human Document category, and this sort of book is never without its attraction. The present volume, chastely bound in green appropriately virginal, recounts the growth of a young girl married to a more or less successful author. Zoë Baskerville, who on one page lets somebody call her Virginia (a lapse not making for conviction), tells in the first person her laudable efforts to develop an ego in the face of a husband who has enough of it for ten. His selfish absorption in his own moods and the conditions suitable to his own labours not unnaturally create in Zoë a feeling of thwarted ambition, which results in a watered, girlish, form of cynicism about Man and Woman. This, however, passes off in the last chapter, where for some reason not easy of access to the mere reader Zoë suddenly sloughs her despondency and bursts into an exultant Credo: 'I believe that Life, all in all, is the most splendid gift a kind God could give to his children. I believe that Man'—and so on for the last four pages.

"It will be seen that subtlety and cohesion are not the strongest points in these confessions, which we hope we have taken seriously enough. About their popularity there can be no doubt. The book possesses pathos, humour, freshness; a mixture beyond failing; and moreover, impinges on life, married life, at moments with a frankness more essentially French than English. This fact may induce those still in Zoë's earlier mood of cynicism to suspicion a male, Fleet Street, author: but for our part, remembering the naïveté of female Youth and that incriminating name Virginia, we are quite ready to accept the volume's authenticity, if we misdoubt somewhat The End's sincerity.

"Taken thus, as a real document, the book has a persuasive charm. Pathetic little Zoë is a figure as real as her selfish husband, who emerges in some way as less great than has been actually stated. (Perhaps we were wrong in denying the book any subtlety.) We can foresee a long and lucrative discussion as to the Author's identity. For our part, we make a gift of the discovered clue 'Virginia,' and shall wait patiently until the publisher, as a good man and true, duly announces the authorship before issuing a cheap edition. Till that day we shall hope to live our lives in much the same round as before."

Helena stared so long at the narrow slip, obviously deep in thought, that Geoffrey Alison found his anxiety turn to a nervous guilt.

Of course, he told himself, he knew the part that worried her in this, her first review. He would have kept it back if he had been quite sure that she would never see it. He rather wished now that he had. It was that stupid bit of course about more French than English. He only hoped they wouldn't all be like that—and none of them worse.

He recalled, as moment joined past moment, his own amusement at some of the passages. They had solved all his problems about Helena. No one but a really innocent girl could be so frank, because to the impure all truth is suspicious. It was only after reading these delicious passages two or three times that Geoffrey Alison, getting a tardy view of the whole book, realised how it might interest the world at large and seem worth while to that shrewd devil Blatchley.

Now, when still she sat impassive, looking at that notice with a slight frown on her forehead, he began to suspect that possibly he had been just a little of a cad. He ought perhaps to have warned her that some of it, though absolutely all right if everybody had pure minds,——

Yet after all, how could he have told her that? It would be jolly awkward, you know, and only putting ideas into her head. Besides, of course, with those bits cut out, Blatchley would probably have called it tame and struck.... His silence had been really for her good.

At last these alternate surges of guilt and self-justification grated on his nerves. He could endure her silence not a moment longer.

"That's only the first one," he said; "and it's not much of a paper." Now for the reproaches! Better to turn the tap on than to shiver, waiting.

But not for the first time he had misjudged her. It was not that part of the review which had struck home to her so different mind.

"Do you really think the husband stands out as such a brute as all that?" she surprised him by asking.

"No. I thought it exactly like Hubert," was his answer. He could not read her mind; he said the first thing that came into his.

He could not have said a worse. It strengthened all her doubts, fears, and regrets. She really had forgotten, almost, what was in the book. It had been written in such hot excitement and she had scarcely read it since. Ally would not let her see the proofs; he said it wasn't safe, with Hubert there.... She had imagined that the wife was far more silly than herself, the husband altogether different from Hubert. Now, reading that synopsis, she saw (for the first time), how truly that summed up their married life: she had wished to "develop an ego," he had thwarted her. He would read it too, that or another, and suspect. Then he would get the book—and know. And he would think she meant it all, meant all the wild complaints of Zoë, Zoë whom at first she used to think of as "sloppy" Virginia!

It was too horrible. She loathed the stupid book, she wished that she had never shown it. She loathed Geoffrey Alison. If poor old Hubert ever saw...!

"I suppose we can't possibly suppress the book?" she jerked out suddenly.

Her conversation was more startling than ever to the male brain, to-day. "Suppress it on the strength of the first notice? When it's been out two days? And when the notice says there can't be any doubt about its popularity? Suppress it, indeed! What about friend Blatchley?"

Helena gave a little sigh of absolute despair. It had been so exciting until now: the little green book, locked away upstairs, and libraries actually buying it before it was out, just in the weird way they did Hubert's and real people's!

Now she loathed the book and feared it.

There was terror indeed in her very tones. "But you don't think," she said, "they really can ever find out who the writer was? They seem to think it's only a question of time. Mr. Blatchley couldn't be so mean."

"My dear Zoë" (he felt bound to soothe her and it was so thrilling to say), "how can they possibly? There isn't any 'they' about it. I'm the only person in the world who knows and I suppose you can trust me?" He got up from the sofa whilst speaking and struck an attitude quite close to her, at the last words.

"Of course I do, Ally; you're a splendid pal and I know you will never breathe a word. It means a lot to me you see;" and she just pressed his hand.

It was not much perhaps, but it meant a great deal to him. He did not loathe the book.