Mrs. Kent placed few obstacles in the way of her husband's industry,
and installed in Leamington Road, Streatham, he began his novel, and
deleted, and destroyed, and re-wrote, until at the expiration of three
weeks he had accomplished Chapter I. Primarily he did not experience
so many domestic discomforts to impede him as Turquand had predicted.
Mrs. Walford had obtained a very respectable and nice-looking servant,
whose only drawback was a father in a lunatic asylum and the frequently
expressed fear that if she were given too much to do she might go out
of her mind on the premises. Ann was so "superior," and a "general" had
really proved so difficult to get, that the thought of an hereditary
taint had not been allowed to disqualify her. Cynthia confessed to
finding it a little awkward when a duty was neglected, but apart from
this Ann was an acquisition.
The author's working hours were supposed to be from ten o'clock till
seven, with an interval for luncheon, but the irregular habits of
bachelorhood made it hard for him to accustom himself to them, and
it was often agreed that he should take his leisure in the afternoon,
and reseat himself at his desk in the alluring hours of lamplight,
when the neighbours' children were at rest and scales ceased from
troubling. To these neighbours he found that he was an object of
considerable curiosity. He had not lived in a suburb hitherto, and
he discovered that for a man to remain at home all day offered much
food for conjecture there. Subsequently, in some inexplicable manner,
his vocation was ascertained, and then, when Cynthia and he went out,
people whispered behind their window-curtains and stared.
Of his wife's family he saw a good deal, both at The Hawthorns and at
No. 64, Leamington Road, and his liking for his brother-in-law did not
increase. There was an air of condescension in Mr. Cæsar Walford's
self-sufficiency that he found highly exasperating. The bass's debut
had been fixed, during their absence, for the coming season, and he
repeated the newest compliments paid to him by his master with the
languid assurance of an artist whose supremacy was already acknowledged
by the world. The latest burst of admiration into which Pincocca had
been betrayed had always to be dragged by his parents from reluctant
lips, but he never forgot any of it.
Humphrey was sure that the artist thought even less of him than the
neighbours did. Fiction he rarely read, he said. He said it with an
elevation of his eyebrows, as if novels were fathoms beneath his
attention. His eyebrows were, in fact, singularly expressive, and
he could dismiss an author's claim to consideration, or ridicule a
masterpiece, without uttering a word. There had been more truth than is
usual in such statements when Humphrey said that he was not conceited
on the score of his unprofitable spurs, but when he contemplated the
complacent sneer by which this affected young man pronounced a novelist
of reputation to be entirely fatuous, he was galled.
Cynthia had told her mother how hard he was working, and once, when
they were spending an evening at The Hawthorns some weeks after their
return, his industry was mentioned.
"Well," exclaimed the stock-jobber tolerantly, "and how's the
story?--getting along, heh?"
"Yes," said Kent, "I'm plodding on with it fairly well, sir."
He was aware that his father-in-law did not view fiction seriously,
either, and he always felt a certain restraint in speaking of his
profession here.
"And what's it about?" asked Mrs. Walford, in the indulgent tone in
which she might have put such a question to a child. "Have you made
Cynthia your lovely heroine, and are you flirting with her at Dieppe
again? _I_ know what it'll be--hee, hee, hee! I'm sure you meant
yourself by the hero in your last book; you know I told you that long
ago!"
He knew also that she would tell him that, just as mistakenly, about
the hero of every book he wrote.
"N-no," he said, "I shouldn't quite care to try to make 'copy' out of
my wife. It wouldn't be easy, and it wouldn't be congenial."
"You ought to know her faults better than anybody else, I should think,
by this time," said Miss Wix.
"And her virtues," said Humphrey.
"Oh," said Miss Wix, with acidulated humour, "he says two months are
quite long enough to find out all Cynthia's virtues, Louisa!"
"I didn't hear him say anything of the sort," Said Mrs. Walford
crossly. "Well, what is it about? Tell us!"
He felt awkward and embarrassed.
"I can't explain a plot; I'm very stupid at it," he said. "You shall
have a copy the moment it is published, mater, and read the thing."
"I do wish he'd call me 'mamma'!" she cried. "He makes me feel a
hundred years old."
To change the subject, he inquired if she had read Henry James's new
book.
"I don't know," she said. "Oh yes, they sent it me from the library
this week. It isn't bad; I didn't like it much. Did _you_ read it,
Cæsar?"
Cæsar became conscious that people talked.
"Read?" he echoed wearily. "Read what?"
"Henry James's last. I forget what it was called----Something. I saw
you with it the other day. A red book."
"I looked through it. I had nothing to do."
"Quite amusing?" she said. "Wasn't it?"
"I forget," he murmured; "I never do remember these things."
"It took a clever man some time to write," said Kent; "it might have
been worth your attention for a whole afternoon."
Cæsar was not disturbed. Neither his confidence nor his amiability was
shaken.
"Do you think so?" he said with gentleness. "I _can't_ read these
things any more. There's nothing to be gained. What does one acquire?
Whether Angelina marries Edwin, or whether she marries Charles----!" He
shook his head and smiled compassionately. Sam Walford guffawed. "When
I feel that my mind's been at too great a tension, I sometimes _glance_
at a novel; but I'm afraid--I'm _really_ afraid--I can't concede that I
should be justified in giving up an afternoon to one."
"Cæsar has his work to think of, you know," put in Cynthia; "he's not
like us women."
"You'll find it a tough job to get the best of Cæsar in an argument,"
proclaimed Walford boisterously.
"Oh, I don't deny that I _have_ read novels in my time. There was a
time when I could read a yellow-back." He made this admission in the
evident belief that a book was more frivolous in cardboard covers than
in the cloth of its first edition. "But I can't do it to-day."
"Well," cried Mrs. Walford, "_I_ must say I agree with Humphrey; I must
say I think it's very clever to write a good novel--I do really! _I_
couldn't write one; I'm sure I couldn't--I haven't the patience."
"Oh!" exclaimed Cæsar, with charming confusion; "it's Humphrey's
own line--of course it is! I always forget." He turned to Kent
deprecatingly: "You know, I never associate you with it; it's a
surprise every time I remember."
Kent said it was really of no consequence at all.
"Well, well, well," said Walford, "everybody to his trade! We can't all
be born with a fortune in our throats. Wish we could--eh, Humphrey, my
boy? Did you hear what Lassalle said about his voice the other day?
Cæsar, just tell Humphrey what Lassalle said about your voice the other
day."
"Oh, Humphrey doesn't want to listen to that long story," said Mrs.
Walford, "I'm sure?"
He could do no less, after this, than express curiosity.
"Well, then, Cæsar, tell us what it was." "Do, Cæsar," begged his
sister; "I haven't heard, either."
"A trifle," he demurred, "not interesting. I didn't know I'd mentioned
it."
"Oh yes," said Miss Wix. "Don't you remember you told us the story at
tea, and then you told it again to your father at dinner? But do tell
Cynthia and Humphrey!"
"I--er--dined with Pincocca last night at his rooms," he drawled. "One
or two men came in afterwards. He introduced me. I didn't pay much
attention to the names--you know what it is--and by-and-by Pincocca
pressed me to sing. He said I was 'a pupil,' and I could see that one
of the men was prepared to be bored.... This really is so very personal
that----"
"No, no, no! go on. What nonsense!" said his mother.
"I could see he was prepared to be bored; so I made up my mind
to--_sing!_ I was nettled--very childish, I admit it--but I was
nettled. I didn't watch him while I sang--I couldn't. I did better than
I expected.
"You forgot _everything_," cried Sam Walford, "_I_ know!"
"I did, yes. I didn't think of Pincocca, or of him, or of anybody
in the room. When I had finished, he came up to me, and said, 'Mr.
Walford, I am green with jealousy. Ah, Heaven! if _I_ could command
such a career!' The man was Lassalle."
"Flattering?" shouted his father to Kent.
"Flattering? 'If _I_ could command such a career!' Eh?"
Kent asked himself speechlessly if this thing could be.
"If _I_ could command such a career!'" declaimed Mr. Walford. "What do
you think of that? He's coming out in the spring, you know."
"Yes, so I've heard," said Humphrey. "Where?"
"That's not settled; here in town, I expect, at Covent Garden. He sang
to the manager last week. The man was--was staggered."
"Ha!" said Kent perfunctorily.
"There's never been anything heard like it. I tell you, he'll take
London by storm."
"What _I_ can't understand," said Miss Wix, her mouth pursed to a
buttonhole, "is how it was you didn't know Lassalle directly he came
in. Is he the only musical celebrity you aren't intimate with?"
Her nephew looked momentarily disconcerted.
"One doesn't know everybody," he said feebly; "Lassalle happened to be
a man I hadn't met."
"What do you mean, Emily?" flared Mrs. Walford. "You don't imagine that
Cæsar made the story up, I suppose?"
"'Mean'?" said Miss Wix with wonder. "'Make it up'? Why should he
make it up? I said I 'didn't understand,' that is all. Quite a simple
observation."
She rose, and seated herself stiffly on a distant couch. Mrs. Walford
panted, and turned to Humphrey, who she was afraid had overheard.
"How very absurd," she said jerkily--"how _very_ absurd of her to make
such a remark! So liable to misconstruction. By the way, do you see
anything of that Mr. Turkey--Turquand--what was he called?--now? Has
he--er--er--any influence with the Press?"
"He knows a good many people of a kind. Why?"
"We shall be very pleased to see him," she said; "I liked him very
much. He might dine with us one night, when there's nobody particular
here.... I was thinking he might be useful to Cæsar. The Press can be
so spiteful, can't it--so very spiteful? Of course, Cæsar will really
be independent of criticism, but still----"
"Still, you'll give Turquand a dinner."
"Oh, you satirical villain!" she said playfully. "Hee, hee, hee! You're
all alike, you writing men; you'll even lash your mamma-in-law. Aren't
you going to have anything to drink? Sam, Humphrey has nothing to
drink. Cynthia, a glass of wine?"
The servant had entered with a salver and the tantalus, and Sam Walford
proposed the toast of his son's debut. They prepared to drink it, and
it was noticed then that Miss Wix sat alone in her distant corner.
"Emily, aren't you going to join us?"
"I beg your pardon, Emily," exclaimed Walford; "I didn't know you were
with us, upon my word I didn't!"
"'The poor are always with us,'" said Miss Wix, in a low and bitter
voice. "If it can be spared, a drop of whisky."
"Then, you'll tell Mr. Turquand we shall be happy to see him?" said
Mrs. Walford to Kent. "Don't forget it. You might bring him in with you
one evening. I dare say he'll be very glad of the invitation--and he
can hear Cæsar sing. What's your hurry? I want to talk to Cynthia. You
aren't going to write any more when you get back, I suppose?"
He acknowledged that he was--that he had taken his wife to a matinée on
that understanding--but it was past twelve when they left her mother's
house and turned homeward through the silent suburb. The railway had
just yielded back a few theatre-goers, weary and incongruous-looking.
In the cold clearness of the winter night the women's long-cloaked
figures and flimsy head-gear drooped dejectedly, and the men, with
their dress-trousers flapping thinly as they walked, appeared already
oppressed by the thought of the early breakfast to which they would
be summoned in time to hurry to the station again. The prosperous
residences lying back behind spruce, trim shrubberies and curves of
carriage-drive finished abruptly, and then began borders in which fifty
pounds was already a distinguished rental. The monotonous rows of
villas, with their little hackneyed gables, and their little hackneyed
gates, their painful grandiloquence of nomenclature, seemed to Kent a
pathetic expression of lives which had for the most part reached the
limit of their potentialities and were now passed without ambition and
without hope. Some doubtless looked forward or looked back from the
red brick maze, but to the majority the race was run, and this was
conquest. He was about to comment on it, but the girl was unusually
quiet, and the remark on his lips was not one that would have been
productive of more than a monosyllabic assent in any circumstances.
Their front-garden slept. He unlocked the door, and, saying that she
was very tired, Cynthia held up her face immediately and went upstairs.
After he had extinguished the gas, Kent mounted to the little room
where he worked, and lit the lamp. Beyond the window, over the bare
trees, the moon was shining whitely. He stood for a few moments staring
out, and thinking he scarcely knew of what; then he began to re-read
the last page of the manuscript that lay on the desk. He had just begun
to write, when Cynthia stole in and joined him.
"Are you busy?" she asked.
"No, dearest," he said,'surprised. "What is it?"
She came forward, and hung beside him, fingering the pen that he
had laid down. She had put on her dressing-gown, and her hair was
loose. She was very lovely, very youthful so; she looked like a child
playing at being a woman. The sleeves fell away, giving a glimpse of
the delicate forearms, and he thought the softness of the neck she
displayed seemed made for a parent's kisses.
"How cold it is!" she murmured; "don't you feel cold?"
"You shouldn't have come in," he said; "you'll take a chill. You'd be
better off in bed, Baby."
She shook her head.
"I want to stop."
"Then, let me get you a rug and wrap you up." He rose, but she stayed
him petulantly.
"I don't want you to go away; I want to speak to you.... Humphrey----"
"Is anything the matter?"
"I've something to tell you." She pricked the paper nervously with the
nib. "Something ... can't you guess what it is, Humphrey? Think--it's
about _me_."
A tear splashed on to the paper between them. Kent's heart gave one
loud throb of comprehension and then yearned over her with the truest
emotion that she had wakened in him yet. He caught her close and
caressed her, while she clung to him sobbing spasmodically.
"Oh, you do love me? You do love me, don't you?" she gasped. "I'm not a
disappointment, _am_ I?"
She slipped on to the hassock at his feet, resting her head on his
leg. With the tumbled fairness of her hair across his trouser as she
crouched there, she looked more like a child than ever, a penitent
child begging forgiveness for some fault. He swore that she had
fulfilled and exceeded his most ardent dreams, that she was sweeter
in reality than his imagination had promised him; and he pitied her
vehemently and remorsefully as he spoke, because in such a moment she
was answered by a lie. The lamp, which the servant had neglected,
flickered and expired, and on a sudden the room, and the two bent
figures before the desk were lit only by the pallor of the moon.
Cynthia turned, and looked up in his face deprecatingly:
"Oh, I'm so sorry; I meant to remind her. I'm punished--I'm left in the
dark myself!"
He stooped and kissed her. The fondness that he felt for her normally,
intensified by compassion, assumed in this ephemeral circumscription
of idea the quality of love, and he rejoiced to think that, after all,
he was deceived and that their union was indeed, indeed, the mental
companionship to which he had looked forward. He did not withdraw his
lips; her mouth lay beneath them like a flower; and, his arms enclosing
her, she nestled to him voicelessly, pervaded by a deep sense of
restfulness and content. In a transient ecstasy of illusive union their
spirits met, and life seemed to Kent divine.