As the wheels began to revolve, he looked at the girl with
thanksgiving. Perhaps the top feeling in the tangle of his
consciousness was relief that the worry and publicity of the day were
over. They were married. For good or for ill--for always--whether
things went well or went badly with him, she was his wife now! He
realised the fact much more clearly here in the train than he had done
at the altar; indeed, at the altar he had realised little but the
awkwardness of his attitude, and that Cynthia was very nervous. And he
was glad; but, knowing that he was glad, he wondered vaguely why he did
not feel more exhilarated.
They were alone in the compartment, and he took her hand and spoke
to her. She answered by an obvious effort, and both sat gazing from
the window over the flying fields. She thought of her home, and that
"everything was very strange," and that she would have liked to cry
"properly," without having Humphrey's eyes upon her. Kent wondered
whether she would like to cry while he affected to be unaware of
it behind a paper, or whether she would imagine he wanted to read
and consider him unfeeling. He thought that a wedding-day was a very
exhausting experience for a girl, and that her evident desire to avoid
conversation was fortunate, since, to save his soul, he could not
think of anything to say that wasn't stupid. He thought, also, though
his palate did not crave tobacco, that a cigar would have helped him
tremendously, and that it was really extraordinary to reflect that he
and "Cynthia Walford" were man and wife.
Next, he questioned inwardly what _she_ was thinking, and attempted,
in a mental metamorphosis, to put himself in her place. It made him
feel horribly sorry for her. He pitied her hotly, though he could
not say so; and by a sudden impulse he squeezed her gloved fingers
again, with remorseful sympathy. At the moment that he was moved to
the demonstration, however, she was really wishing that the dressmaker
had cut the corsage of her blue theatre frock square, instead of
in a "V." She was sure it would have looked much better. He was
agreeably conscious that his mind had "something feminine in it" and
congratulated himself on his insight into hers. Some men would have
failed to comprehend! Cynthia was distressfully conscious that the
tears with which she was fighting had made her nose red, and she longed
for an opportunity to use her powder-puff. The engine screamed. Both
spoke perfunctorily. The train sped on.
* * * * *
As he sat by her side before the sea, he looked, not at the girl but
within him. He thought of the book that had formed in his head, and
perhaps his paramount feeling was impatience, and the desire to find
the first chapter already materialising into words. They were married.
The unconscious pretences of the betrothal period were over in both. To
him, as well as to her, the magic, the subtile enchantment, was past.
She was still Cynthia--more than ever Cynthia, he understood; but there
had been a fascination when "Cynthia" was a goddess to him, which an
acquaintance with strings and buttons had destroyed. The _corylopsis_
stood in a squat little bottle with a silver lid among brushes and
hair-pins on a toilet-table, and his senses swam no more when he
detected its faintness on her frock.
Companionship, and not worship, was required now, and neither found the
other quite so companionable as had been expected. This the girl in her
heart excused less readily than the man.
Primarily, indeed, the latter refused to acknowledge it. It was
preposterous to suppose that if they did not possess much in common,
he would riot have perceived the disparity during the engagement!
Then he reminded himself that his life might have tendered him a
shade intolerant; he must remember that the subject of literary work,
all-engrossing to his own mind, made on hers unaccustomed demands. To
try to phrase a sensation, the attempt to seize a fleeting impression
so delicately that it would survive the process and not expire on the
pen's point, were instinctive habits with himself; to her they appeared
motiveless and wearisome games.
He had endeavoured, in the novels that they read together during the
honeymoon, to cultivate her appreciation of what was fine; for she had
told him some of her favourite authors and he had shuddered. She had
obtained a book for herself one day, and offered it to him. He had
thanked her, but said that he was sure by the title that he wouldn't
care for it. She answered that it was very silly and unliterary--she
had acquired that word--to judge a book by what it was called. She
was surprised at him! If _she_ had done such a thing, he would have
ridiculed her. And, apart from that, she did not see that "Winsome
Winnie" _was_ a bad title. What was the matter with it?
Kent said he could not explain. She declared with a little triumphant
laugh that that just showed how wrong he was.
He made his endeavour very tenderly. To be looked upon as the
schoolmaster abroad was a constant dread with him when he discovered
that, to effect a similarity of taste between them, either she must
advance, or he must regress. Sometimes--very occasionally--he handed
her a passage with an air of taking it for granted that the pleasure
would be mutual, but her assent was always so constrained that he was
forced to realise that the cleverness of expression was lost upon her,
that to her the word-painting had painted nothing at all.
He wondered if his wife's dulness of vision fairly represented the
eyes with which the novel-reading public read, and if it was folly to
spend an hour revising a paragraph in which the majority would, after
all, see no more artistry than if it had been allowed to remain as it
was written first. He knew that it was folly, in a man like himself,
with whom literature was a profession, and not a luxury, though he was
aware at the same time that he would never be able to help it--that to
the end there would be nights when he went up to bed having written
no more than a hundred words all day, and yet went up with elation,
because, rightly or wrongly, he felt the hundred words to have been
admirably said. He knew that there would be evenings in the future, as
there had been in the past, when, after reading a page of a master's
prose with delight, he would go and tear up five sheets of his own
manuscript with disgust. And he knew already--though he shrank from
admitting this--that when it happened he would never be able to confess
it to Cynthia, as he had done to Turquand, because Cynthia would find
it absurd.
The fortnight was near its conclusion, and both looked forward with
eagerness to the return to England. He would plunge into his work;
she would be near The Hawthorns, and have friends to come to see her.
Neither of the pair regretted the step that they had taken; each loved
the other; but a honeymoon was a trying institution, viewed as a whole.
Presently, where they sat, she turned and put some questions to him
about his projected book. Her intentions were praiseworthy; she was
a good girl, and having married an author, she understood that it
was incumbent on her to take an interest in his work, though she had
fancied once or twice that perhaps it would have been nicer if,
like a stock-jobber, he had preferred not to discuss his business at
home. Papa had never cared to do so, she knew. Discussing an author's
business was not so simple as she had assumed. There seemed to be such
a mass of tedious detail that really didn't matter.
"When do you think it will be finished, Humphrey?" she said.
"In nine months, I hope, if I stick to it."
"So long as nine months?" she exclaimed with surprise. "Why, I've
read--let me see--two, three new ones of Mrs. St. Julian's this year!
Will it _really_ take so long as nine months?"
"Quite, sweetheart; perhaps longer. I don't write quickly, I'm sorry to
say. Still, it won't be bad business if Cousins pay the two hundred and
fifty that I expect. I think they ought to, after the way the last has
been received."
"Some people get much more, don't they?"
"Just a trifle!" he said. "Yes; but I'm not a popular writer, you see.
Wait a bit, though; we'll astonish your mother with our grandeurs yet.
You shall have a victoria, _and_ two men on the box, with powdered
hair, and drive out on a wet day and splash mud at your enemies."
"I don't think I have any enemies," she laughed.
"You _will_ have when you have the victoria and pair. Some poor beggar
of an author who's hoping to get two hundred and fifty pounds for nine
months' toil will look at you from a bus and cuss you."
"Suppose you can't get two hundred and fifty?" she inquired. "You can't
be sure."
"Oh, well, if it were only a couple of hundred, we shouldn't have to go
to the workhouse, you know. If it comes to that, a hundred, the same as
I got for the other, would see us through, though of course I wouldn't
accept such a price. Don't begin to worry your little head about
ways and means on your honeymoon, darling; there's time enough for
arithmetic. And it's going to be good work. I've been practical, too.
I can end it happily, and retain a conscience. It's almost a different
plot from what it was when I began to think, and it's better. It ends
well, and it's better--the thing's a Koh-i-noor!"
"Tell me all about it," she suggested.
He complied enthusiastically. She was being very sympathetic, and he
felt with perfect momentary content how jolly it was to have a lovely
wife and talk over these things with her. Just what he had pictured!
"But wouldn't it be more exciting if you kept that a mystery till the
third volume?" she said, at the end of five minutes.
It was as if she had thrown a bucket of ice-water on his animation.
"I don't want it to be a mystery," he said. "That isn't the aim at all.
What I mean to do is to analyse the woman's sensations when she learns
it. I want to show how she feels and suffers; yes, and the temptation
that she wrestles with, and loathes herself for being too weak to put
aside. Don't you see--don't you see?"
She was chiefly sensible that his pleasure had vanished and that the
note of interest in his voice had died. She, however, repeated her
suggestion; to be a literary critic, she must be prepared to maintain
her views!
"I think all that would be much duller than if you had the surprise,"
she declared.
He did not argue--he did not attempt to demonstrate that her suggestion
amounted to proposing that he should write quite another story than the
one he was talking about; he felt hopelessly that argument would be
waste of time.
"Perhaps you are right," he said; "but one does what one can."
"But you should say, 'What one _will_,' dear; it can be done whichever
way you like."
"There's only one way possible to _me_, I assure you; for once 'the
wrong way' is the more difficult."
"That which you _think_ is the wrong way," said Cynthia, with gentle
firmness.
He looked at her a moment incredulously.
"Good Lord!" he said; "let me know something about my own business!
I don't want to pose on the strength of a solitary novel--I'm not
arrogant--but let me know _something_--at all events, more than you!
Heavens above! a novelist devotes his life to trying to learn the
technique of an art which it wants three lifetimes to acquire, and Mr.
Jones, who is a solicitor, and Mr. Smith the shoe manufacturer, and
little Miss Pink of Putney, who don't know the first laws of fiction
--who aren't even aware there are any laws to know--are all prepared to
tell him how his books should be written."
"I am not Miss Pink of Putney," she said. "And if I were, we all know
whether we like a book or whether we don't."
"'Like'!" he echoed. "To 'like' and to 'criticise'----Men are _paid_
to criticise books when they can do it; it's thought to be worth
payment. Editors, who don't exactly bubble over with generosity, sign
cheques for reviews. _I_ don't pretend to teach Mr. Smith how to make
his shoes; I've sense enough to understand that he knows the way better
than I. Nor do these people think that they can teach a painter how
to compose his pictures, or that they can give a musician lessons in
counterpoint. Why on earth should they imagine they're competent to
instruct a novelist? It is absurd!"
"Your comparisons are far-fetched," she said. "A painter and a
musician, we all know, have to study; they---"
"They're entitled to the consideration due to a certain amount of money
sunk--eh? That's really it. There are thousands upon thousands of
families in the upper middle classes of England to whom fiction will
never be an art, because the novelist hasn't been to an academy and
paid fees. As a matter of fact, it is only in artistic and professional
circles that a novelist in England is regarded with any other feeling
than good-humoured contempt, unless he's publicly known to be making
a large income. The commercial majority smile at him. They've a
shibboleth--I'm sure it's familiar to you: 'You can't improve your
mind by reading novels.' They're persuaded it's true. They have heard
it ever since they were children, in these families where no artist,
no professional man of any kind, has ever let in a little light.
'You can't improve your mind by reading novels' is one of the stock
phrases of middle-class English Philistia. Ask them if they improve
their minds by looking at pictures in the National Gallery, or even
at the Academy, and they know it is essential that they should answer,
'Certainly.' Ask them how they do it, and they are 'done.' Of course,
they don't really improve their minds either way, because, before the
contemplation of art in any form can be anything more than a vague
amusement, a very much higher standard of education than they have
reached is necessary; only they have learnt to pretend about pictures.
It's an odd thing--or, perhaps, a natural one--that an author of the
sort of book that they are impressed by, a scientist, a brain-worker of
any description, literary or not, talks and thinks of a novelist with
respect, while these people themselves find him beneath them."
There was a silence, in which both stared again at the sea. His
irritation subsiding, it occurred to him that he might have expressed
his opinions less freely, considering that Philistia was his wife's
birthplace. He was beginning to excuse himself, when she interrupted
him.
"Don't let us discuss it any more, Humphrey," she said, in a grieved
voice, "please! I am sorry I said so much."
"_I_ was wrong," said Kent; "I have vexed you."
"No; I am not vexed," she replied, in a tone that intimated she was
only hurt.
"Cynthia, don't be angry!... Make it up!"
She turned instantly, with a touch of her hand, and a quick, pleased
smile; and he set himself to efface the effect of his ill-humour, with
entirely successful results. As they strolled back to the hotel side
by side, he felt her to be a long way from him--there was even a sense
of physical remoteness. Mentally, she did not seem so near as in the
days of their earliest acquaintance. He caught himself wishing that he
could debate a certain point in construction with Turquand, and from
that it was the merest step to perceiving that Mentone would be jollier
if Turquand were with him instead. He was appalled to think that such
a fancy should have crossed his brain, and strove guiltily to believe
that it had not; but once again he felt spiritless and blank, and it
was a labour to maintain the necessary disguise. He observed forlornly
that Cynthia always appeared happiest in their association when the
ineptitude of it was weighing most heavily upon himself.