I
“You funny little thing!” he said patronisingly.
Adela resented the term violently, but because he was the only man who
had ever attempted to talk personalities with her, she accepted it
smilingly.
“I must read some of those books of yours. Tell me what the names are.”
“Oh, it doesn’t matter! Never mind about my books,” she said hurriedly.
Adela could not imagine Willoughby reading anybody’s books, unless
definitely of that class which deals with a fictitious Secret Service
or the intrigues of an imaginary kingdom.
Her own books were small masterpieces of psychology, subtly ironical. A
shudder, half-humorous, half-despairing, came over her at the idea of
Hal Willoughby, bored and mystified, ploughing his way through one of
her books.
“Never mind about my books,” she repeated. “I’d rather you thought of
me as a girl than as a writer.”
She felt wildly daring in so speaking, partly because she had called
herself a girl, although she was thirty, and partly because it was
the first time that she had ever attempted what she supposed to be a
flirtation.
Her reputation for cleverness had always been so great and so terrible
that young men had never dared to approach her.
She supposed that must be the reason for their aloofness, since she had
always been passably pretty; and even now, by artificial light, she
looked five years younger than she was.
Her hair and her colouring were charming in a subdued and unvivid
way, her features straight and very clean-cut. She hardly realised
how much too thin were the lips of her tiny mouth, how intense and
over-prominent her large hazel eyes.
“I never can imagine how anybody can write a book,” said Willoughby.
Adela moved uneasily. She could tell what was coming.
“Do you think of a plot first, or do you just make it up as you go
along?”
“It all depends.”
She made the meaningless reply that had so often served her before.
“I should never know what to make the people say next. Aren’t
conversations awfully difficult?”
“Sometimes.”
“I suppose you are always on the look-out for people to put into your
books--under invented names, of course.”
“I don’t think I am.”
“Oh, but I expect you are! I expect really you sit there, taking it all
in, you know.”
Why did people always think it necessary to talk to her like this?
“You ought to write a play. They say it pays like fun.”
“But, you see, I’m not a dramatist.”
“Oh, rubbish! If you’re clever enough to write books, of course you
could write a play. I should, if I were you--really I should.” His
voice was charged with encouragement.
“No, I couldn’t. Don’t let’s talk about that.”
“Why not? I want to hear about these books of yours. I’ve never met a
literary lady before.”
It was of no use. He would not talk to her as she was almost sure
that he would have talked to any other woman in the room, given those
distant sounds of music from the ballroom, that hazy moonlight above
the bench beneath the syringa-bushes.
Adela grimly sacrificed her art, perjuring her soul away. “I expect
you think it’s very funny of me to write books,” she said, desperately
adapting her vocabulary to his own. “I really do it mostly--a good
deal--because it brings in money.” She tried to laugh, and hated
herself for the artificiality of the sound.
“I suppose girls are always glad of extra pocket-money,” he assented
indifferently.
A girl--that was how he thought of her.
She was pleased at that, but she struggled for a more serious
recognition of her capabilities, too. “It’s not only pocket-money. I
can really get a living from my writing, though I’m always at home with
my mother. But I could be independent to-morrow if I liked.”
“Oh, come now!” The words might have expressed remonstrance,
incredulity, astonishment.
“The advance royalty--that’s the money the publishers give me in
advance--on my last book was two hundred pounds,” she said calmly.
She had never gone away to work, never had to pay for her food or for
a roof over her head, never tried her strength or the strength of her
resources in the struggle for livelihood amongst unsupported women.
Two hundred pounds for her year’s work was a large sum, with no calls
upon it.
Willoughby repeated after her: “Two hundred pounds! I say! You don’t
expect me to believe you get that just for writing a story?”
“Yes.” She was uncertain of the reason for his disbelief, and even
whether he really did disbelieve her.
“But was it a serious book, or just a novel?” He really sounded
perplexed.
“Oh, ‘just a novel’!” she said bitterly.
“Good Lord! How many do you write in a year?”
“That last one took me over a year. My first one I worked at, on and
off, for five years.”
“I suppose it doesn’t matter to you, taking your time, but it would
be quite worth scribbling them off one after the other, if you can
get money like that without working for it, so to speak,” said Hal
Willoughby.
He fingered his thick, fair moustache, and Adela looked up at him
furtively in the moonlight.
He was very big and good-looking; and when she danced with him, and met
his full, bold gaze, Adela could almost forget about such conversations
between them as the present one.
Besides, he had not always talked like this. Once he had pretended not
to know what colour her eyes were, and once he had told her about his
life in India. She wished intensely that the conversation now would
shift to some such topic.
The moonlight and the heavy scent of the syringa seemed to mock her.
“And what are your books about?” said Willoughby laboriously. “Love,
I suppose?” He broke into a roar of laughter. “Does the heroine fall
fainting into the hero’s arms in the last chapter, eh? That’s the
style, isn’t it?”
Adela stood up, trembling. “I think I want to go in now, please.
The--the dance must be finished now.”
He stood up also. “But I say! What’s the matter? You’re not ratty,
are you?” He pulled unceremoniously at the prim velvet ribbons that
hung from her waist. “Sit down again. Don’t you know I’m going away
to-morrow? You might be a little bit nice to me, I do think.”
“I didn’t know you wanted me to be,” she said swiftly.
He laughed, and pulled her on to the bench again.
Adela’s mother, with whom she always lived, had told her very often
that men never really respected a woman who let them “take liberties.”
Adela, never before put to the test, recklessly determined to disregard
the parental axiom.
When Willoughby caught hold of her chilly little ringless hand, she
made no movement of withdrawal.
He looked down at her and laughed again. “What an odd little thing you
are! I don’t believe you’ve ever been kissed, have you?”
She was silent.
“Has anybody ever made love to you, now?”
“Yes,” she said defiantly and untruly.
He laughed quite openly, and declared, “I don’t believe it!”
Still laughing, he put his hand under her chin, tilting up her face,
and kissed her.