“‘Well but—’ I said to her—‘that’s all very well. But you’re not going
to abandon _Eden Walls_, are you?’ Then it all came out. Yes, she was.
She knew I was right. She wasn’t conceited. She quite saw that the book
was useless. It just meant that she couldn’t write novels and that she
mustn’t waste any more time. ‘But, my dear Miss Grey,’ I said, ‘you mean
to say that you’d rather leave the book unpublished than alter a couple
of chapters, remodel a couple of characters?’ ‘But I can’t,’ she said,
‘I can’t. They happened that way.’ ‘Then make them happen differently,’
I said. But no, she couldn’t. ‘Oh well,’ I said at last—‘if you’re so
absolutely sure of yourself, if you’re prepared to set up your
judgment——’ That distressed her. I can hear her now. ‘But I don’t set up
my judgment. I’ll burn the wretched stuff tomorrow if you say it’s
trash. I knew it would be, in my heart. But—I can’t alter it,
because—because it happened that way.’ Then I had an idea. ‘To you?’ I
said. She looked at me. She laughed. She said—‘Miss Serle, you’ve
written ten books to my one. Don’t pretend you don’t know how a story
happens.’” Anita nodded at us. “You see? Evasive. I think it was from
that moment that I began to have my theory of her.”
“Well—and what next?” demanded Miss Howe.
“She would have said good-bye if I had let her. I stopped her.
‘Reconsider it,’ I said. She beamed at me, chastened but quite cheerful.
‘Oh, I’ll try another some day,’ she said. ‘I suppose I’m not old
enough. I was a fool to think I could.’ At that, of course, I gave in. I
wasn’t going to lose sight of _Eden Walls_. I told her to bring it as it
was and I’d see what I could do. As you know, Mitchell and Bent jumped
at it.”
“But it was banned,” said the Baxter girl.
“Yes, but everybody read it. You can get it anywhere now. And I can say
now—‘Thank the gods she didn’t touch it.’”
“Then she was right?”
“Of course she was right. I knew it all the time.”
“And she didn’t?”
“Of course she didn’t. Mine was critical knowledge. Hers the mere
instinct of—whatever you choose to call it. I was afraid of the critics.
She didn’t know enough to be afraid.”
“There’s something big about you, Anita!” said Miss Howe suddenly.
Mr. Flood gave the oblique flicker of eyes and mouth that was his smile.
“Yes,” he said slowly, “it fits her quite well.”
“What?” said Anita sharply.
“The mantle, dear lady.”
She shrugged her shoulders.
“Ah—_Gentle dullness ever loves a joke_. What, Beryl?”
“I don’t see,” the Baxter girl had harked back, “how you can call a book
that has been banned conventional.”
“Only the plot——”
“Ah, that plot!” Nobody could snub Mr. Flood. “Think, dear lady! Village
maiden—faithless lover—lights o’ London—unfortunate female—what more do
you want?”
“Of course.” Anita resumed the reins. “It’s as old as _The Vicar of
Wakefield_.”
“Oh, _that_!” The Baxter girl looked interested. “Do you know, I’ve
never seen it. One of Irving’s shows, wasn’t it?”
I laughed. I couldn’t help it. But they were all quite solemn, even
Anita. But then she never did listen to the Baxter girl. She had talked
straight through her sentences.
“But it’s not the material. It’s the way it’s handled. It’s never been
done quite so thoroughly, from the woman’s point of view—so unadornedly.
People are afraid of their ‘_poor girls_.’ There’s a formula that even
the Immortals follow. They are all young and beautiful, and they all
die. They must. They wouldn’t be tragic in continuation. But Madala’s
woman doesn’t. That’s the point. There’s no pretence at making her a
heroine. She’s just the ordinary stupidish sheep of a creature, ‘gone
wrong.’ There’s no romantic halo, no love-glamour, no pity and terror,
just the chronicle of a sordid life. And yet you can’t put the book
down. At least I couldn’t put it down.”
“Do _you_ like it?” I said to Kent Rehan, as he paused beside me in his
eternal pacing from room to room.
He looked at me oddly.
“I respect it,” he said. “I don’t like it. People misjudged——”
“If it had been the recognized love story”—Mr. Flood’s high voice
silenced him—“the regularized irregularity, so to speak, it wouldn’t
have been banned. It was the absence of a love story that the British
public couldn’t forgive. It was cheated. It was shocked.”
“But there is a love story at the beginning, isn’t there?” I said. “I
haven’t read far.”