CHAPTER XIX
BUSINESS
Helena's oppression, as of some impending blow, refused to disappear. She could not believe, whatever Geoffrey Alison might say, that their secret could be kept until the end. Every fresh notice of the book caused fresh alarm. With one accord reviewers harped upon the authorship, some of the less reputed papers embarking upon guesses.
That, to Mr. Blatchley's genuine delight, began denials. He eagerly collected all of them, and not a month had passed before Geoffrey Alison arrived full of importance and excitement. He came, now, almost daily after five; as often, quite, as in the old days before the garden-scene with Hubert; his mind full of the need to cheer this poor sad Zoë who got no joy at all from her success. Surely as it grew and there was still no prospect of detection, she would begin to think of all the money she was earning and enjoy the praise? He hoped so.
"Look at this," he said keenly, waving an extract at her.
Her tones were dull. "What is it? Another review?"
"No, an advertisement. Awfully clever and suits our game too!"
He held it out to her. In bold print it ran thus:
"WHO?
"Already the wives of the following famous authors have publicly declared that they did NOT write
CONFESSIONS OF AN AUTHOR'S WIFE."
(Here followed a list of eight names.)
"Ah! But who did?
WHO?"
"I don't see it suits us at all," she said without enthusiasm.
"Why, it's putting people on the wrong track," he tried to argue.
She would not have it. "It's making people want to know when they don't really care a bit," she said with a ripe worldly wisdom quite beyond her years.
And soon, to Mr. Blatchley's yet greater delight, people did begin to care. They cared so much, in fact, that they all read the book in order to find out. And nobody knew even then. It was, however, something to discuss at boring dinner-parties; so every one was pleased. Every one but Helena.
Reading the book afresh, she was astounded, terrified, to see how near it was to life. She had thought it all altered beyond recognition: fiction merely based on fact. But now she realised that all the parts of it which mattered—Zoë's ambitions, her husband's repression—were true, truer than she ever knew indeed: whilst all the variations—names, place, ages, children, work—made no real difference at all. In all life it is the soul alone that matters, for there lies happiness and all those others are mere accidents. And the soul of Zoë was the soul of Helena; the life of Helena, the life of Zoë. Reading her book, she realised for the first time her life.
Daily the thing became more of a nightmare.
Hubert, of course, noticed nothing: but Geoffrey Alison grew weary of her constant admonitions as to silence.
"Oh, for Heaven's sake, Zoë," he cried at last (for he was getting almost husbandly in his remarks, encouraged by their common secret), "do try and get rid of the idea that 'all is discovered' and I'm a silly ass or else a beastly cad!"
"It isn't that," she answered with a gloomy petulance; "but something might easily happen and I simply don't know how I should face Hubert."
"Hubert? Why, I expect he would be jolly proud of you."
"Proud?" she repeated bitterly; "when he has been so splendid to me always, and here I am making him out a selfish brute who sacrifices his wife's happiness to his career and me a poor little bullied creature who goes upstairs and cries. He'd never believe that it was all exaggerated—and nor, of course, would anybody else. Proud, indeed? I do like that!"
Indeed, when she thought of what an awful thing she had done, Helena very often could have gone upstairs like flabby Zoë (née Virginia) and wept.
Geoffrey Alison at length got thoroughly impatient with her.
He was enjoying it all hugely and he failed to see why she should not enjoy it too. Every day he opened his paper eagerly to see what new scheme the resourceful Blatchley had devised to spur a public interest which as yet showed no signs of flagging.
Helena, in sympathy with her whole scheme, had much exaggerated the eminence of the Husband's position. It was not a case of any back-street Kit Kats here: he was away, night after night, delivering most brilliant lectures to exclusive West End literary clubs or even travelling four hundred miles to unveil well-earned lapidary tributes of great authors who had actually managed to be dead now for a hundred years. This husband, who deserted his wife and was jealous if she went to anything with any other man, was not an author of the Hubert Brett class, so that big names were thrown about at parties where in very truth the problem soon became a topic. Each had it on the best authority that So-and-So, the celebrated author, or Mrs. So-and-So, had said this or the opposite; and nobody believed the other's story.
Nothing sells a book like talk. The printed word, paid or unpaid, is only useful to set tongues a-wagging. And as the authorship was bandied here and there, editions trickled slowly from the Press.
Mr. Blatchley was delighted. His firm was not among the old-established, and this could rank as his first great success; but it was very great. The book was only three-and-six; people actually bought it; the libraries roared out for more.
Journalists, hot upon dinner-table topics as vultures after flesh, interviewed him, each hoping to be in the office at that crucial moment when he decided the book's sale would gain by an announcement of the much-debated name.
But even when the interest began to wane—for nothing lasts Londoners more than a fortnight—Mr. Blatchley to every one's surprise was adamant. He still persisted in the stupid lie that he had not found out, himself....
"Look here, Alison," he said one day, when Geoffrey Alison had called in at his little office off the Strand, "you're not playing cricket, quite." He was a podgy little alien man, fattened beyond his years, and he said this with all a British sportsman's sternness.
"Oh come, you know; don't say that," exclaimed the other, naturally shocked. (His life average in the game itself would be a decimal.)
"I do, though," said the publisher and offered him a cigar. The artist did not care for that especial form of smoke, but felt that this was not the moment to be firm. He must not lose further prestige. He would leave soon and throw it away.
There was a pause of some seconds, broken only by a crossing of "Thanks" as they got things in order; then Blatchley lay back in his office chair and blew out the first whiff of smoke.
"I certainly do," he said more definitely. "Look at it this way. The Confessions has been out eight weeks and we have sold just over thirty thousand copies. That is pretty good, I know, and I'm extremely grateful to you. But that is the past. Now look at the present. By careful advertising I've induced the public to be really interested in the question as to Zoë's real identity. That's not going to last, my son. Somebody will do a murder or find out a home cure for corpulence. In half a week the chatty columns of the Daily will be full of something else. Every one who wants to has read Zoë and decided who she is. Very well, then. Now," and here he raised a podgy but dramatic finger, "this is the moment when we must say officially, 'The Author-Husband is Dash Blank.' In a moment the whole thing revives; every one is saying, 'I say, it was Dash Blank. I knew you were wrong. But what a show-up! What, not read it? Well, then, do.' The sales will leap up to the fifty thousand and nobody can say where they will stop. Without it, the book's dead." He stopped, dramatically sudden.
These were the only times when Geoffrey Alison shared Helena's ideas about the volume. "I'm very sorry if so," he said wearily, "but it's sold like anything and I expect it will. I still don't see why it's not cricket?" (He spoke more warmly now.) "I always warned you that I couldn't tell you who had written it."
"Bah!" The publisher waved that aside with a smooth fat hand which left a trail of smoke. "That's always so in the beginning, it's part of the game, but now it's in my interest, the book's, your friend's, your own as her adviser—I shall see you're mentioned as discoverer of the diary's great merits—in everybody's interest...."
Geoffrey Alison stood up abruptly. Each of these points had been emphasised by that fat hand; the office was the tiniest of rooms; and he disliked the smell more almost than the taste.
"I'm sorry, Blatchley," he said, as though bored with the whole affair, "but as I've told you half a dozen times...."
The man of business never fights a losing battle. "Of course, of course, my dear fellow. I understand. The feeling does you credit. Don't imagine I'm ungrateful. Not at all." He smoothed him with a diplomatic hand. His Zoë might write other books.
"Oh no, I don't," said the other dully.
"Look here," the publisher exclaimed, putting his cigar between protruding lips and drawing a note-book from a no less prominent waistcoat. "Why not dine with me one night to show there's no ill-will? I'm sure I owe you some commission! A little dinner somewhere gay, then the Empire or a supper—well, no details!—but what of something like that? Monday?"
"Thanks very much," said Geoffrey Alison more warmly. This was the sort of evening he liked, when some one else would pay. Then, suspiciously, in the old tones; "So long as you'll swear not to worry me any more about Zoë."
The publisher seemed hurt at this idea. "My dear fellow," he said, patting him again upon the back in a most soothing way, "what do you imagine? Business is business, yes," (he waved the hand once more expressively around his little office), "but pleasure's pleasure. Monday then: my flat: at eight."
CHAPTER XX
PLEASURE
Thomas Blatchley (which downright English names his mother and father did not give him in his baptism) was accustomed to boast that he was not an old-fashioned publisher. He wished of course to uphold the fine traditions of literature and so forth, but he believed in modern methods. He did not see that book-production had any essential connection with fine-panelled ante-rooms where authors waited in upholstered pomp. The modern plan was not to keep them waiting.
It may therefore be perhaps set down to his modernity of business spirit that he prepared to entertain his benefactor, Geoffrey Alison, with so much thoroughness. Here (he may be imagined to have said) was a man who had done him a good turn in business. Every care, then, must be taken to provide him with an evening exactly to his taste. Then, maybe, he might do him another.
However that may be, Geoffrey Alison was thoroughly delighted. Everything was just how he would have arranged it for himself, had he been a millionaire and not a struggling artist. When Blatchley, whom he really hardly knew, had first suggested this evening together, the programme mapped out had appealed to him; but safely home again, he had repented and been within an inch of cancelling. Yet was it wise to risk offending this man, a hard business devil, who already thought he was not playing cricket? ... So out he had come, mistrustful of the other's hospitality; with visions of Soho, and half expecting he would pay the bill.
Yet Blatchley, without any of that awkward "Where shall we dine?" business common to bad hosts, had instantly said; "Shall we try the Ritz?" as quite the natural thing. To this he had assented no less instantly, only regretting that he had decided against a white waistcoat. Then Blatchley had proposed the actual champagne he liked. Then there had come the Empire: two half-guinea stalls, in which they hardly sat, for Blatchley (who turned out to be a very decent sort) said he always liked the promenade much better than the programme. So they had sat about and had a drink or two, and laughed, and debated which of the beautiful ladies around them they should introduce themselves to without finally deciding upon any (exactly his own pet routine), and so on to the Café de l'Europe, where they had merely had a Kümmel and looked round a bit.
And now here they were at the Savoy, the proper end for any festive evening; with people, music, food, wine, light and everything exactly as it should be, and peace inside the soul of Geoffrey Alison. Blatchley was a dam good sort and not a business swine at all.
It would be untrue to say that Geoffrey Alison was drunk. No one is ever drunk at the Savoy. He was inanely genial. Blatchley was a dam good fellow....
"Well," said his host, as half the lights suddenly went out, obedient to a grandmaternal law of his adopted and free fatherland, "I think we must toast the lady to whom we owe this very pleasant evening!" He raised his glass, (they had worked back through brandy to champagne), and cried, mock-heroically: "To the unknown Zoë."
"My word, yes," answered Geoffrey Alison with a fat laugh, "I'll drink that!" He raised his glass and drank it off: no heeltaps.
The publisher had merely sipped the brim of his, but he filled up his guest's. "I dare say, my boy!" he laughed cheerily. "I dare say you will. I've my suspicions about you and Zoë."
"No, no," warmly retorted the other. He was so genial as to be nearly truculent. "I won't let you say that." He was not quite so sure now about Blatchley. "That's not right. She's a dam nice girl is Zoë, and she's as innocent as anybody makes 'em. I'm very fond of her, I tell you, and she's fond of me too." He pulled himself together in a very doggy way. "But that's all there is. I won't have you having suspicions. She doesn't know what all that means. I won't let you say that, Blatchley. She never thinks of anybody but her husband, damn him!" He looked very fierce indeed for a very few seconds: then he chuckled feebly. Dam conceited idiot, that ass Brett....
"I see," answered his host vaguely. He was waiting.
The other's swiftly-changing moods veered, the next moment, to suspicion. He gave a discordant laugh. "You're a clever swine, Blatchley," he said, with a sudden longing to strike this man flickering across the table.
"You thought I was tight! You thought I should give Zoë away. You want to know who she is, don't you? But not much! I'm less of an ass than you think, old man! Yes, that was it," he added in a sudden mood of contemplative depression; "you thought I was tight." All his anger had evaporated. It was a mere statement.
"Take more than that to make you tight," said his host, relapsing upon flattery as a safe weapon. He could afford to wait. They would not be turned out yet for a while and he had learnt already that Zoë was quite young, a girl. That ruled out many authors' wives....
But Geoffrey Alison was on his guard. An air of watchful cunning settled on him. He saw the game now, in his own fuddled way, and he did not mean to be drawn.
"Give it up, Blatchley, old man," he said so happily as not to be offensive. "Give it up. You won't get anything from me. I'm less of an ass than you think. You won't get anything from me."
He had flung his cards, bang! upon the table. The other took them up. "I hope you don't mean to imply, Alison," he said in injured tones, "I've stood you this evening just to pump your secret out of you."
"My dear fellow, my dear fellow," crooned Geoffrey Alison, stretching out a shaky hand to reassure the other's sleeve.
The publisher withdrew his arm with dignity, as one who did not intend to be patted by a man with those ideas. "It looks extremely like it," he said coldly. "I look on your remarks as damned offensive. Here have I stood you a pleasant evening—at least I hope so—from gratitude, and you attribute it to the most disgusting motives."
"My dear fellow," continued the other, who had listened to this with an open mouth suspended in the act of speech, "you misunderstand me." It came out with a rush, like one long syllable. "You misunderstand me entirely. We're gentlemen, both gentlemen. There isn't any question about anything like that. You utterly misunderstand me."
But Thomas Blatchley was not so easy to console. "It was rather hard, Alison, to understand what you said any other way."
"Look here, Blatchley old man: it's like this," said the artist, embarked now upon self-defence. "You're a good fellow, dam good fellow; very pleasant evening indeed; and I want to help you. But there's Zoë, you see; Zoë!" He laughed happily; then, more gloomy, "And there's Zoë's husband."
He sat gazing fixedly before him, as though content with having thus explained everything at last.
The great room was almost empty and yet more nearly dark, by now. A waiter who had stood anxiously close by, stepped forward eagerly, thinking that this pause would give him his chance. The publisher waved him impatiently aside with an oath easy to read from the lips.
"I don't see," he said, friendly once more, to his guest, "that Zoë's husband matters much."
Geoffrey Alison looked very wise. "Oh, but he does, you know," he answered. "He does matter. Mind you, I dislike him. Dam conceited ass. But he does matter," and he wagged his head.
"How?" asked the other, who saw the head waiter approaching. It was all or nothing.
Geoffrey Alison found that the question needed thought. "Well," he said very slowly, and there was only one more table-full for the head waiter to dislodge, "well, put yourself in his place, you know. All the dam papers with their headlines. Oh yes, he does matter."
"How headlines?" He could kill the stubborn ass. He knew that it was luck, not cleverness.
His guest, unconscious of all this emotion, aimlessly drew headlines high up in the air. "'Zoë mystery solved. Selfish swine discovered. Hubert Brett the author.' All that sort of stuff," he said, chuckling at his own journalistic readiness. "Oh yes, he does matter. Dam unpleasant for him."
"Well, I suppose so," answered Thomas Blatchley with resignation. "Ah, here's the chucker-out!" He pointed facetiously towards the splendid person now close on them. "We must go."
"A very pleasant evening, Blatchley old boy," his guest murmured without rancour, as he got up with excessive dignity and walked, grimly intent, towards the door. He was not drunk. Just genial....
As he undressed that night, he laughed suddenly, aloud. That swine Blatchley had thought he was going to pump him and in the end he had done nothing except pay the bill! Betray Helena, dear little girl? Not he!
He fell asleep, chuckling and with one sock on. People said artists were dam fools, but he had scored off a business man and got the better of a publisher....
As to Thomas Blatchley, he was far more calm. Success had long ago become a habit. He merely felt a little scorn for Geoffrey Alison.
This was by no means his first good stroke of business over two glasses—one full and one empty—of champagne. He was not a believer in mere whisky: stale, and not making towards confidence. No, a good dinner and then, at the end, quite conversational; "You know, your books don't get one half the booming they deserve. You made a mistake in not coming to me! I'd make an offer now; I would have long ago, if it was only cricket. And even now, old man, if ever...."
Of course it ran one into money. To-night, no doubt, had run him generously into double figures: but what might that sum not produce in interest? Business was bound to be expensive. You either went about or else you sat in a huge office. He merely spent on drinks what other publishers spent on glass-doors.
He wished, as he got comfortable for a well-earned night's rest, it had been some one better known than Hubert Brett.
CHAPTER XXI
EXPOSURE
"Both for you, sir!" said Lily with the air of an old friend, entering the drawing-room at nine o'clock two evenings later. She held out on a silver tray, the wedding gift of Kenneth Boyd, two letters. One was from Ruth and had been left, now, by the postman; the other, in the familiar green of the press-cutter, had lain in her pantry since the early post.
"Ah, a press cutting!" ejaculated Hubert.
"Splendid. How exciting!" Helena replied, as though delighted and surprised.
Lily went out. She did not even really want to smile by now. She had been in three places before this, and in each of them the husband had needed humouring in one way or another. She probably would never marry.
"It's very late," said Hubert expectantly. Two months had passed since the last straggling notice of Was It Worth While? and after this gap he could open his green envelopes without a sense of irritation; yes, even with excitement.
"The last one is sometimes the best, isn't it?" Helena threw the hope out soothingly, but from the corner of her eyes she watched him with a little nervousness. Certainly the most restful times were those like the last weeks, when there were no reviews. They did seem to upset him so. She wished now that she had opened this—except that she would never dare to give it him if it chanced to be good.
She wished this wicked wish a thousand times more strongly, half a minute later. Never, in these three years, had she seen Hubert so affected by a notice. Great veins swelled out on his forehead, till she was really terrified. She could pretend no longer not to notice.
"What is it, Hubert?" she asked as he said nothing. "I hope not a bad one?"
"This is too scandalous," he cried, half choked and speaking like a pompous old man in his anger. "Where will the newspapers ever stop?"
"What have they said now, dear?" He missed the tragic resignation in that one word "now."
"Read it," he said and thrust it almost roughly at her, as though blaming the whole world.
It did not seem, however, as though he could wait for her opinion. "Newer," "practically unknown," he fired out at intervals, and other adjectives.
But she heard none of them.
The paper swam before her eyes and every dim word filled her with a sick dread, a resentful wonder, an absolute despair, for this is what she saw:
"AUTHOR'S WIFE FIASCO
"OFFICIAL REVELATIONS
"Suburban tea-tables need buzz no more with questions as to the identity of that now famous Author's Wife whose recent confessions have raised such a pother. A representative of this paper found Mr. Blatchley, this morning, at last in an unbending mood.
"'The secret is out,' said the publisher, 'the author in question is Mr. Hubert Brett. The book, I may add, is naturally by his wife. There were reasons till now why her identity should not be divulged.'
"Those reasons will perhaps be guessed by all who remember the fierce controversy that raged recently and the big names that were thrown about, also the big sales. Whether these last will be helped by this official revelation will remain to be seen. The context had certainly prepared us for the wife-sacrificing author to be some one slightly better known. Mr. Hubert Brett is of the newer school of novelists, whose work is practically unknown to the bigger public. From Who's Who we learn that he has written some fourteen novels since 1899, and of these Wandering Stars is possibly the most familiar to library-readers.
"In this rather disappointing manner the Mystery of the Author's Wife leaves the select company of The Man in the Iron Mask, Jack the Ripper, Shakespeare, The Lady and the Tiger and other insolubles, to rank for ever with The Mango Tree, Fiona Macleod, The Englishwoman, and other mysteries which stupidly got solved."
Her eyes somehow deciphered the main points, and then she sat looking at the thin slip, seeing nothing.
"Practically unknown," suddenly came to her ears; "considering that Wandering Stars sold close upon six thousand!"
Then she heard herself speaking. "It's only a rag, not one of the real evening papers." She dared not say what she had got to say. She dared not face the storm. Hate, now, that was what ruled in her chaotic brain, hate and loathing for that treacherous, mean, little Mr. Alison. She knew she always had despised him, now—but he had been so kind.... Why had she trusted a weak man like him? Why had she ever written—married—been born—anything? Oh, what would happen now?
Her husband got up suddenly. That broke her tortured reverie, broke her inaction.
"Well, I shall write at once," he stormed. "Let's have the filthy thing."
She rose weakly to her feet and held it out to him. "What will you say?" she asked, still feebly trying to gain time, like men faced by a rope that they cannot possibly avoid.
"Say?" he repeated scornfully. "Tell them what they are and contradict the whole thing as a lie."
She almost staggered and caught hold of his arm. "No," she said. "Listen. You—you mustn't."
"Mustn't?" He looked curiously at her.
She suddenly burst into tears, clinging to him there as if for pity. "Hubert," she sobbed out, "don't take it as real. You're the best husband there could ever be. I wrote like you do. It was only——"
"My God!" he cried, clutching her arms roughly. "You didn't write it? You didn't——" He broke off and let go of her, holding her one moment at arm's length. She never could forget his eyes.
He stooped and picked up the cutting. He read it slowly through, as if that might help—or possibly to calm himself. Helena fell limply on the sofa. Minutes seemed to pass in silence.
Suddenly he crumpled up the little roll of paper and hurled it in the fireplace. Then he laughed and that alarmed her more than anything.
"Well," he said, trying to speak naturally, "that's that, then. It's no use having scenes, is it?" He stood very still, looking vacantly before him as though not realising what it meant.
"Hubert," she began again, as though in some way his name was a shield, and went to him, "let me explain——" but he waved her aside.
"What's the use?" he said gloomily. "It's all so obvious. The gutter Press has let itself go over me for weeks as the mysterious, self-centred Husband; the man who sacrificed his wife! I don't see why you should explain. It only makes things worse."
"But you don't see," she answered. "The husband wasn't you, any more than people in your novels. I wrote it—wrote it just for fun" (he snorted with an irony that even she observed), "never meaning the Press or any one—and then one day Mr. Alison——"
"Oh, he was in it?" Hubert asked with a swift passion. The old antipathy revived. That young ass always had been in it, somehow.
"He promised never to tell any one," said Helena. "You know, we wanted money so."
He laughed scornfully. "Oh yes, we wanted money. Money's everything. So long as we have money, what does it matter everybody knowing you think me a selfish brute or that——?" He broke off abruptly.
It was clear that he mastered himself only with an effort. "Have you got the book?" he asked with an icy calmness, presently. "I suppose as your husband I've the right to read it?"
She could not answer. Somehow she got to the door, to her own room; unlocked her jewel-case and took from it the loathsome little book in its clean, innocent, green cover: then she went down and handed it without a word to him.
"So this is it?" he said with all Scorn in the words. He opened it at random. "'I am the background,'" he read in slow, cold tones as to a child; "'the background for his work no less than the wall-paper of the one room where he can write; and I must be as quiet.'"
She stood there, thrown back fifteen years, a girl again before her governess: and he little suspected that with those words he was killing all her penitence and injuring her love.
"Anything sounds rubbish if you read it out," she suddenly blazed at him in quite another mood.
He shut the little book with a mild glance of surprise. "Don't let's have any scenes," he said once more. "This has just happened. It's pretty ghastly; don't let's make it worse. You'd better go to bed when you feel tired; I shall just sit and read—I want to know the worst. Don't wait up for me. It'd be rather a mockery to wish each other good-night!"
He moved towards the door. It was the time they always spent together, the best of her day.
She stood by the mantel-piece, leaning for support on it, wondering how any one could be so cruel—and feeling she deserved his cruelty.... It was so awful, put as he had put it: yet she had never meant——
His hand was on the door. She moved a few steps forward.
"Hugh," she cried, as though the name must surely explain everything: but he did not turn, even. He shut the door, quietly.
Helena threw herself face downwards on the sofa, but she could not cry.
CHAPTER XXII
THE IRON IN THE SOUL
To Helena the most terrible part about her husband's attitude was his astounding calmness. If he had but raged and stormed, she could have endured it. She might even have explained. What she could not bear was this chill resignation.
"We had better talk as usual in front of Lily," was all he said, coldly, before breakfast the next morning. "There's no reason why she should guess that anything is different."
"Must it be different?" she brought herself to say, though even that was difficult, with him like this.
As usual, he laughed contemptuously. "Do you expect it to be just the same, when I know, everybody knows——" He broke off. "Well," he said, "I suppose most married couples spend their time living up to their domestics. It's only we were lucky for a bit...."
They talked about the weather, then, and the day's news till Lily had gone out; he even called her "dear," but she could not live up to that: and when they were alone again, he gave a sigh which she interpreted to mean relief and finally retired behind his propped-up morning paper.
When he had finished breakfast—she ate nothing—he moved silently into his accustomed chair.
She moved across as usual to light a match for his after-breakfast pipe.
"No thanks," he said brutally. "I don't want to smoke. And I shan't work to-day of course."
She went out, hardened against such a foul attack, and half a minute later, from the next room, heard him strike a match....
Soon after eleven, when he had gone—work or no—into his own room, Lily announced Mr. Alison.
"Yes, I suppose so," she said dully.
He came in, very different from his late jaunty self, and threw a rapid glance at her, limp on the sofa. Her red eyes told their tale.
"You know then?" he asked. It was in some ways a relief.
She waited until she judged Lily to be safely through the swing-door: then she got up, by a natural instinct, and confronted him.
"I wonder," she said, "you dare come at all."
He looked anxiously about him. "Tell me," he asked almost in a whisper, "is he very sick?"
It was her turn to laugh contempt. "Oh, of course you think of yourself first! You're safe, though, here; trust him not to come near me!"
"No," said the other with an absurd dignity, "you wrong me. I meant, is he jealous?"
"Jealous?" she retorted in bewilderment. "No, why should he be? Of what?"
Geoffrey Alison suddenly found this difficult to answer and whilst he hesitated, feeling justly hurt, the storm was on him with its utmost force.
"I wonder," she said once again, for Man flies to a tag in moments of emotion, "I wonder you dare come and see me. I trusted you with all my happiness—with everything; you swore you'd never fail me; and now——" She spread her arms in a pathetic gesture; then suddenly inadequate, a girl: "It really is too bad of you."
"Oh, come I say," he started. He had arrived full of shame and dread, realising from his newspaper that he had been tricked into a betrayal; but now that her onslaught was so tame—merely "too bad,"—he visibly regained his courage. "I think," he went on, almost aggrieved, "you might give me a chance of clearing myself. It's not my fault at all, it's that swine Blatchley. I dined with him three nights ago and utterly refused to say a word about it, but he tricked me somehow. I still don't see how the cad did it, but he must have because nobody else knew. I'm awfully sorry, Zoë——"
That roused her. "Don't call me that," she broke in fiercely. "Never call me that again. As though I didn't loathe the name and everything it stands for! You wouldn't understand. It's wrecked everything, spoilt my whole life."
"Oh, come I say," he repeated automatically in a half-dazed manner.
"I hate it," she said, working herself up; "hate the book, hate everything to do with it, hate you. I wish to goodness I had never met you; then this never would have happened."
"Oh, come I say," he said a third time, still standing close beside the door, "I don't think that's fair. I only did it as a good turn to you. I thought it would be a new interest; you'd always so much time to spare; and then it might be useful too, the money——"
"Oh, I know," she interrupted. "You meant well. People always do." It was an old cynicism new to her. She saw life wrecked before her feet—and here was the fool who had tried to help her.
"Well," he mildly summed up the whole case, "I can't do more, can I, than say I'm very sorry."
She could not even gain the relief of a real scene with this flabby nerveless creature. She turned upon him with contempt.
"No," she said, "you can't do anything of course! How could you? It's a great pity that you ever did. People like you aren't meant to—and I trusted you!"
"Well, what can I do then?" he enquired in hurt, plaintive tones.
"Go away," she blazed out, getting something like her chance; "go right away and never come near here again. Leave me alone to try and put the thing straight without your silly meddling. That's what you can do." She sank upon the sofa and took up a magazine with very shaky fingers.
"All right then," he said, recovering his dignity, "I will." He had a kind of feeling that Brett was sure to come in soon if this went on, and he should hate a scene....
"I will go," he repeated at the door, "and I'll tell Blatchley, now, to act direct with you." With this reminder of all that he had done for her, he went out very stiffly. She did not call him back, although so soon she felt half sorry for the silly little man. He had meant well and he was fond of her.... No woman finds it too hard to forgive a man whose sins are due to those two causes.
Helena, not so comforted by this scene as she should have been, sat with the magazine held limply in her fingers and wondered with a numb brain whether there was no way out of her life's labyrinth.
Hugh would not listen. That was the whole difficulty. If only he would let her speak, she knew she could explain. She loved him; they had had such jolly times; he wasn't in the least like Zoë's husband; she hadn't realised, till that first review came, that life in the two homes had been even similar; and if——
Suddenly she gave a little happy laugh, the first for hours that seemed already months, then leapt up girlishly and ran to her bureau.
Of course! It was the very thing. Speaking was difficult, and somehow he always made her feel so young and nervous. But this was easy and he always loved things just a little different—what he called her "odd little ways."
Feverish with excitement, she sat down and wrote her Apologia:—
"MY OWN DEAREST HUGH
"(I can call you that on paper and in my own heart, whatever you say about speaking.)
"Let me explain. If you can bear how things are now, I can't, and I feel so terrible because although I meant absolutely nothing, I know it's all my fault. I am sorry, do believe that, go on reading, but not a word of Zoë is me, really honestly. It's just Fiction like your books, but it's the only sort of life I knew. Surely you can't believe I think of you like that? The Husband was imaginary, and I only did it in the winter, to pass all the hours while you were working. I never called it The Confessions of an Author's Wife at all, that was the publisher and people, and they never let me see it again till it was printed or I should have cut out a lot.
"Really, my own darling husband, it was not my fault. It's all very awful and I am so sorry for you, but don't let's make it worse by quarrelling ourselves. I'm sure we can live it down and nothing will be worse than if we're seen to have quarrelled. We will write a note together to the papers saying it was Fiction.
"Hugh, let me be forgiven and help you through this horrid time my stupidity, and that's all, has brought you to. You don't know how already I long to hear your laugh and just one kind word. We've not been sloppy, have we? but no one could be fonder or prouder of her husband, and I see so little of you anyhow. Don't rob me even of that. Come and tell me I'm forgiven and be your dear old comfy self again. I can't stand this.
"Your loving and Oh so sorry,
"H."
She read it over again, laughing through tears, for now everything would be all right. Then, when she had sealed it and was about to write his name, another idea came to her. He might tear it up, unread!
On the outside she wrote:
To a very dear husband from a very
sorry wife.
Quite short.
Read it!
By now she felt almost on the old terms—and how dear they had been, she could see now—with him. This was the sort of thing he always liked so much. It made him call her "child." She had sent notes before, when she had to go out or something.
Very quietly she went to his door, slipped the note silently beneath it, then with her bent finger gave it a good flick. She heard it whizz across the polished floor. He could not fail to see or hear it, as he always did.
With a new sense of peace she went back to the drawing-room and waited. She was ashamed to notice, in the glass, how red her eyelids were.
Did other wives spend awful hours like this or was it just that she was silly?
Minutes passed; the hour struck; the quarter; the half-hour.
He was not coming, then, till lunch time. What a slave of habit;—or was he trying to punish her by this suspense?...
She fought that last idea: it would not be like Hugh. Possibly he had written and left it in the hall? She went out. There was nothing there.
One o'clock struck, and almost instantly she heard his door open. She half rose, then she decided to sit where she was.
Would he never come? ... He was pottering about in the hall! Tapping the glass now! ... How could men be so curious? ... At last the handle turned. What were resolves? She could not help getting up, after all; but he must speak first.
There was no need, really. His set face told her everything. He did not come beyond the door.
"Helena," he said sternly, in a low voice that obviously considered Lily, "I think it'll be better if we don't discuss this matter any further. We may possibly forget. Anyhow, it's no time for childish games. I'd already written, as you suggest to the newspapers. We won't speak of this at all in front of Lily."
It was clearly a message learnt by heart, and with its last word the door shut. He had never let go the handle.
Helena stood gazing after him with a face no less set than his own.