Mrs. Deane-Pitt paid Kent the ten guineas a few days after the Saturday
on which she had expected to receive the Editor's cheque, and she made
no secret of being delighted with the two tales. They were based upon
rather original ideas, and after she had had them typewritten, and
read them, she talked to him about them with the frankest appreciation
possible. Kent almost lost sight of his regret that they weren't to
appear under his own name, as the lady expressed her approval, and
declared enthusiastically that to call them "excellent" was to say too
little. He found it very stimulating to hear his work praised by Mrs.
Deane-Pitt, especially as it was work done for her. Although she had
professed to be careless of the quality, it was not to be supposed
that she would not rather sign good stuff than bad, and the warmth and
gaiety of her comments took the sting from the association and lent it
a charm.
When he began her novel, it was with the discomfiting consciousness
that the breakneck speed imposed on him would prevent the labourer
being worthy of his hire. He was too hurried to be able to frame a
scenario, and neither he nor the lady who was to figure as the author
had more than a hazy idea of what the book was going to be about. He
had mentally sworn to keep his critical faculty in check and to produce
a chapter of two thousand words every day--if he did not bind himself
to the accomplishment of a fixed instalment daily, the book would not
be finished in double the time at his disposal! And he rose at seven,
and worked till about midnight, on the day on which Chapter I. was
done. He had corrected in a fashion as he composed, and he did not read
it through when he put down his pen--that would be too disheartening.
He remembered the opening chapter of _The Eye of the Beholder_, and,
contrasted with the remembrance, these pages that he had perpetrated
appeared to him puerile and painful. He folded them up, and posted them
to Mrs. Deane-Pitt with a note before he slept.
"Whether you will want the novel after you have seen this, I don't
know," he wrote; "I am sending it to you to ascertain. It is a specimen
of the rubbish the thing will be if I have to turn it out at such a
rate. I will call, on the chance of your being in, to-morrow afternoon."
He found her at home, and she welcomed him with a humorous smile.
"You have read it?" asked Kent, with misgiving.
"Yes; I've read it," she said. "Violet! Pray don't look so frightened
of me!"
"Why 'violet'? Well?"
"The type of modesty. Well, what's the matter with it? It'll do all
right."
Kent drew a breath.
"I'm glad to hear you say so. I'm bound to confess I thought it very
slovenly myself."
"Oh, nonsense!" she said. "Have you gone on with it?"
"No; I waited for your verdict. I thought you might call me names and
cry off. I'll go on with it now, though, like steam."
"Do! I suppose you couldn't manage a five-thousand-word story for me
this week, could you? It would be good business."
He stared ruefully.
"No, indeed! Not if I'm to write a chapter a day."
"Oh, the chapter a day, please! Get the novel done at the earliest
moment possible; that's the chief thing. You will, won't you? I should
be so grateful to you if you finished it in six weeks."
"I promise to finish it as quickly as I can," he said. "Even if I
didn't care to serve you, I should do that, for my own sake. When I get
two hundred pounds, I shall be at the end of my troubles."
"Happy man!" said Mrs. Deane-Pitt. "Would that two hundred pounds would
see the end of mine! And as you do want to serve me, you'll do it even
more quickly than you can?"
"Or try."
"That's very nice of you. I wonder how true it is. One of the answers
one has to make, isn't it? Then when you're behind with the work,
and your wife wants to be taken out somewhere, you'll nobly remember
there's a miserable woman in Victoria Street depending on you and
persuade Mrs. Kent to go with a sister, or a cousin, or an aunt? You'll
say to yourself 'Excelsior!' and other improving mottoes, meaning
'Loyalty forbids'?"
"I'll say 'Loyalty forbids' when I want to go out by myself; my wife's
in the country."
"Tant mieux! if it isn't shocking," she laughed. "I'm afraid a woman on
the spot would prove too strong for me. Am I grossly selfish? Poor boy
who has got no wife!"
She looked at him as she had looked across the supper-table in the
avenue Wagram. He could not think of anything to say, of a nature that
commended itself to him; and he exclaimed abruptly:
"Oh, you may rely on me, Mrs. Deane-Pitt; I'll never go anywhere; I'll
be a hermit! By the way, you don't know I'm in Soho now. Perhaps I'd
better give you the address?"
"Certainly," she said; "I may want to write to you. The Hermit of Soho!
Well, when you've been good and done penance thoroughly, hermit, you
may come and see me sometimes; I'll allow you that distraction. Come
in whenever you like, and you can tell me how the thing is going. Any
afternoon you please at this time. And don't come in trembling at me
any more; I don't expect you to write me a masterpiece in six weeks,
poor boy."
Kent kept his word to her doggedly, and, although he continued to rise
early, he was seldom free to join Turquand until about nine o'clock
in the evening. When the chapter was done, he would go downstairs,
and light another pipe, and Turquand would put away his book or his
paper without any indication of curiosity. With a woman such a state
of things would have been impossible; but Turquand's manner was so
unforced that by degrees Kent came to own that he was tired, or to
make some other allusion to his labour quite freely. And not once did
the other say to him, "Well, but what is it you're doing?" On the days
that he called on Mrs. Deane-Pitt, it was later still before he could
loll in the parlour; the temptation to go to her, however, was more
than he could resist. He realised very soon that she had an attraction
for him which was not in the least like friendship, and which he could
never term "friendship" any more. In moments, as he sat writing in his
shabby bedroom under the tiles, the thought of her would suddenly creep
into him, and beat in his pulses till he was assailed by a furious
longing to be in her presence; and though he often denied the longing,
he frequently obeyed it. He would throw down his pen, and change his
coat, and leave the house impetuously, seeing her, in fancy, all the
way to the flat. During a fortnight or so, he sought some reason for
the visit. Would she like the heroine to go on the stage when her
husband lost his money? Did she think it would be a good idea to kill
the husband, and introduce a new character to reinstate the girl in
luxury? But presently such excuses were abandoned. For one thing,
Mrs. Deane-Pitt was too much occupied with her serial to accord any
serious consideration to his work; and for another, she welcomed him
as a matter of course. It was agreeable to her to see this man who
was in love with her, and whom she liked, looking at her with eyes
that betrayed what he would not allow his tongue to acknowledge. "Oh,
I'm glad," she would say, "I was hoping it was you. Sit down and make
yourself comfortable--no, bring me that cushion first--and talk to
me, and be amusing." Sometimes she received him radiantly, sometimes
wearily. On one afternoon she declared she was in the best of spirits,
and had just been wishing for someone to bear her company; on the next
she sighed that she was worried to death, and that he had only arrived
in time to save her from extinction. "Bills," she would yawn, when he
questioned her, "bills! A dressmaker, a schoolmistress--I forget which.
Some wretch threatens something, I know. Don't look so concerned; I
shall survive. Cheer me up." Then the servant would enter with the
tea-things, and afterwards, in the cool shadows of the drawing-room,
through which the perfume of the heliotrope that grew in a huge bowl
under the crimson lamp floated deliciously, there would be cigarettes,
and a half-hour that he found exquisite in its air of intimate
familiarity. Though no verbal admission was ever made, there were
seconds in which Kent's voice, as plainly as his face, told her what he
felt for her, and seconds in which the tones of the woman said, "I'm
quite conscious of the effect I have on you; we both understand, of
course." Occasionally he had a glimpse of her children, and once when
he was there, Mrs. Deane-Pitt took the boy on her lap, among the folds
of her elaborate tea-gown, and fondled him. "Do you think I make a nice
mother, Mr. Kent?" she said, flashing a glance. "This monkey doesn't
appreciate his privileges." She kissed the child three times, and in
the gaze that she lifted over his curly head there was, for an instant,
provocation that shook the man.
But such incidents as this were exceptional, and, as a rule, Kent could
not have cited a single instance of coquetry when he took his leave
and returned to the attic. Nor did the passion she had aroused in him
militate against the success of his enterprise, taking "success" to
mean its completion by the given date. Perhaps he was more industrious,
even, in the perception that she was always warmest when he had done
the most. "I finished the thirtieth chapter last night!" Then she would
be delightful, and if she had appeared harassed at all, her languor
would speedily give place to gaiety. The tremulous afternoons were
never so quick with the sense of alliance, so entirely fascinating
to him, as when he was able to surprise her by some such report. The
desire to please the woman became fully as strong a stimulus to the
ghost as his eagerness to receive the money that would permit him
to begin a third novel for himself. The two short stories had been
published now, in a periodical in which Kent would have been very proud
to see his own name, and though he did not grudge them to her, he could
not help feeling, as he read them, that they were better than he had
known and that it would be eminently satisfactory to resume legitimate
work.
After the fortieth chapter was scrawled, conclusion was in sight, and
though he could not quite sustain his earlier pace, he never turned
out less than one thousand words a day. Had anybody told him, a couple
of months before, that he could do even this, he would have ridiculed
the statement, but the consciousness that acceptance was certain had
been very fortifying. He scarcely allowed himself leisure to eat after
passing the fortieth chapter. The stuff was undeniably poor, though
it was not so jejune as it seemed to Kent. The worst part was the
construction, for, ignorant what the next development was to be, he was
often forced to write sheets of intermediate and motiveless dialogue
until an idea presented itself; but for the style, hasty as it was,
there was still something to be said. Instinctively Kent gave to a
commonplace redundancy a literary twist, and the writing had almost
invariably a veneer, though the matter written might be of no account.
During the final week he did not go to Victoria Street at all. He could
not suppress the artist in him wholly, and for the climax he meant to
do his utmost. It was a sop to his conscience--he could remember the
last chapter and forget the rest. He had sent or taken the manuscript
to Mrs. Deane-Pitt piece by piece, and he took her the last of it
on the evening that he wrote "The End." A telegram had told her to
expect him. He had written the book in seven weeks; but he felt as
exhausted as if he had built a house in the time, brick by brick,
with his own hands. She read the pages that he had brought, while he
watched her from an arm-chair; and, with the candour which was so
striking a feature in such an association, she cried that the scene
was admirable--that she could not have done it half so well. Kent's
weariness faded from him as they talked, and momentarily he regretted
that he had not been able to write a book for her equal to _The Eye of
the Beholder_.
With regard to her negotiations, however, she was not so outspoken--it
was only by chance that Kent had seen the two short stories; she had
not even told him for what paper they were intended. There was some
delay in paying the two hundred pounds, and her explanations were
vague and various. The partner with whom she always dealt was on the
Continent; she would not sign an agreement before American copyright
was arranged; she generally ran her stories as serials before they
were issued in book-form and it was not decided what she was going to
do--half a dozen reasons for postponement were forthcoming. She gave
him his share at last, though, and very cordially, and he felt some
embarrassment in taking her cheque when the moment arrived, its being
his earliest experience of business with a woman. If he had had others,
he would have appreciated her action in paying him in full, and only a
little late, more keenly than he did, though he was far from ungrateful
to her as it was.
He put the cheque in his pocket as carelessly as he could manage, and
said:
"Well, you've done me a tremendous service, Mrs. Deane-Pitt, and, by
Jove! I thank you for it--heartily."
"Oh, rubbish!" she replied; "the work's been as useful to me as to you;
you've nothing to thank me for."
"It makes more difference to me," said Kent; "it means--you hardly know
what it means! I needn't look out for a berth now; I can sit down to
another novel. I owe you that."
"If you like to think so----" She smiled, but her tone was
constrained. "I should be glad if somebody owed me something; I'm more
used to its being the other way round."
"I feel a Croesus. We ought to celebrate this accession to wealth;
it demands a festivity! If I get seats for a theatre, will you go to
dinner with me somewhere to-morrow night? What shall we go to see? Have
you been to Daly's yet?"
"I'm engaged to-morrow night, and the next."
"To-night, then?"
"This evening I am dining out; there's the card on my desk."
"What a fashionable person you are!" exclaimed Kent, rather enviously.
"Would Friday evening suit you?"
"Yes, I'm free on Friday; but a theatre is awfully stifling this
weather, isn't it?"
"Well, we needn't go to a theatre," he said; "we might dine at
Richmond. Will you drive down to Richmond, and have dinner at the Star
and Garter on Friday?"
Mrs. Deane-Pitt promised that she would, but the animation with which
she had given him the cheque had deserted her; and after a minute, she
said:
"I suppose your starting another novel for yourself needn't stand in
the way of our business together? There are several things I can offer
you, if you care to do them."
"Oh, thanks," said Kent; "but I'm afraid I'd better stick to the novel.
I want to do all I can with it, you see."
"L'un n'empêche pas l'autre--a short story now and then won't interfere
with it, surely? I can place a ten-thousand-word story at once if you
like to write it for me."
The refusal was difficult, and he hesitated how to express himself. He
had never contemplated the association as a permanent one, and now that
an alternative was open to him, its indignity looked doubly repellant.
He was surprised that Mrs. Deane-Pitt expected it to continue. Couldn't
she understand that he felt it a humiliation--that he had adopted the
course merely as a desperate measure in a desperate case? He had taken
her comprehension for granted.
"I'd rather not, if you don't mind," he said awkwardly. "It would take
me off my own work more than you can imagine. My motive for doing this
was to make it possible for me to devote myself heart and soul to a
novel; and that is what I want to do."
She looked downcast.
"When do you mean to begin it? You could knock off ten thousand words
first, couldn't you? And I believe an occasional short story would
come as a relief to you, too! I wouldn't persuade you against your
will--pray don't think that--but, as a matter of fact, there is no
reason why you shouldn't make a few pounds a week all the time you're
writing your book, you know? if you like. I don't want another novel
yet, but I can take almost any number of short stories; or, if you
preferred it, you might write me a short thing that could be published
in paper covers at a shilling. Will you think it over? I don't want
to hurry your decision." She hummed a snatch of tune, and picked up a
new song that was lying on the piano. "Have you seen this?" she said
carelessly. "It's pretty."
Kent took it from her, and played with the leaves in a pause. He was
conscious that he must decline now, and definitely, and the insistence
of her request made the duty harder every second. Mrs. Deane-Pitt
sauntered about the room; she felt blank and annoyed with herself.
Was this her reward for liking the man enough to give him two hundred
pounds in a lump, instead of paying him by instalments, which would
have been infinitely more convenient to her?
"If you won't think me boorish," he said at last abruptly, "I'd rather
keep to my intention. I'm not a boy--I need all the time at my
disposal to succeed in."
She gave a forced laugh.
"How much younger do you want to be? If the money doesn't attract you,
it won't be in your way, I suppose; and--you can do it to oblige me!
Come, I'm quite frank! I own that you're very useful to me. You don't
mean that you're going to strike and leave me in the lurch?"
The face upturned to him was more earnest than her words. Her brown
eyes widened, and fastened on him, and for an instant his resolution
broke down. But it was his work, and his ambition, his fidelity to his
art, that she was asking him to waive--he would not!
"Nobody so sorry as the 'striker,'" he said, in a tone to match her
own. "Let me be your banker when I'm going into a dozen editions, Mrs.
Deane-Pitt, and I'll serve you all you want. The service you ask me
to-day is just the one I can't do."
"Bien," she murmured; "I suppose you know your own business best."
But she was plainly disappointed, and, though she speedily spoke of
another subject, her voice lacked spontaneity. Kent's courage knew no
approving glow, and if, during the minutes he remained, she had begged
him to assist her by returning the cheque, he would most certainly
have done it. He thought that she must hate him--though in truth he
had never appealed to her so strongly--and it was the only occasion on
which he had ever taken leave of her without regret.
To Cynthia he wrote immediately, telling her he had been paid two
hundred pounds, and enclosing twenty-five, that she might have a
surplus to draw upon without applying to him. He also remitted to Paris
the amount necessary to redeem her ring, and his watch and chain, and
the rest. He had now an opportunity of going down to see her, and
he told her that she might expect him on Monday or Tuesday in the
following week. The picture he had once seen of surprising her in the
garden had long since ceased to present itself to him, and he was not
impatient to find himself in his wife's company in the circumstances.
He questioned if Mrs. Deane-Pitt would be disposed to go with him
to Richmond after what had passed. To refuse a woman's petition to
augment her income, but to invite her to dinner at Richmond, was rather
suggestive of the bread and the stone. Yet, now that propinquity was
not her ally, he was fervently glad that he had had strength to refuse.
It was a partnership that every month would have made more difficult
to sever, and she had, apparently, looked for it to extend over years.
As to Richmond, he hoped the engagement would be fulfilled; it would
pain him intensely otherwise. He owed her too much to be reconciled
to their separating with coldness, and he determined to send a note,
reminding her of her promise.
Her reply allayed his misgivings. It was confirmed by her demeanour
when they met. Indeed, her display of even more good fellowship than
usual made him feel rather guilty.
She seemed to divine his reflections, and to assure him that such
self-reproach was needless. She had never been brighter or more
informal with him than in the hansom as they drove down. Her air
implied that their previous interview had been a trivial folly which,
as sensible people, they must banish from their minds, and she talked
of everything and nothing with the gaiety of a schoolgirl on an
unforeseen excursion, and the piquancy of a woman who had observed and
lived.
Her vivacity was infectious, and Kent's constraint gradually melted in
a rush of the warmest gratitude for her forbearance. He was so entirely
at her mercy here, and he thought that few women similarly placed would
have refrained from planting at least one little sting among their
verbal honey. His admiration began to comprise details. He remarked
the hat she wore, and the delicacy of a little ear against her hair's
duskiness. He noted with pleasure the quick, petulant twitch of a
corner of her mouth as her veil got in the way, and the appreciative
gaze of young men in the cabs that rolled towards them--a gaze which
invariably terminated in a swift scrutiny of the charming woman's
companion.
When the hotel was reached, he had never been livelier; and, often as
he had read an opposite opinion, he found it very delightful to see
the woman he was in love with eat, and drink her champagne. It was
intimate, it lessened the _noli me tangere_ mien of feminine fashion
and brought her closer. The attire of an attractive woman who has never
belonged to him has always a mystery for a man, though he may have had
three wives and kept a dressmaker's shop. But liveliness was succeeded
by a vaguer emotion, as they lounged on the terrace over their coffee
and liqueurs. Under the moon the river shone divine, limitless in its
glint and shadow. Her features took tenderness from the tremulous
light, and sometimes a silence fell which, as he yielded himself to
the subtile endearment of the moment, soft as the breath of love on
his face, Kent felt to be the supplement of speech. A woman who could
have uttered epigrams in the mood that possessed him now would have
disgusted him, and insensibly their tones sank. She spoke gently,
seriously. Presently some allusion that she made begot a confidence
about her earlier life--her marriage. It disturbed him to hear that she
had been fond of Deane-Pitt when she married him, yet he was grieved
when she owned how quickly her illusions had died. Her belief that
she might have been "a better woman" if she had married a different
man was pathetic in its revelation of unsuspected heart-aches, and
sympathy made him execrate the feebleness of words. Her voice acquired
an earnestness that he had never heard in it before, and while he was
stirred with the sincerest pity for her, a throb of rapture was in his
veins that she could be talking so to him. The minutes were ineffable,
in which she seemed to discard the social mask and surrender more and
more of her identity to his view. Spiritually she appeared to be lying
in his arms; and when she checked herself, and rallied with a laugh
which was over-taken by a sigh, he felt that he could have listened to
her for ever.
"How solemn we've become!" she exclaimed; "and we came out to be
'festive' to-night."
"I shall always remember the 'you' of to-night," he said.
They were silent again. She passed her hand across her eyes
impatiently, as if to wave away the pictures of the past. By
transitions their tones regained their former cheerfulness. She
mentioned the hour, and drew her wrap about her. It was time to return.
"It has been delicious," she murmured, looking up at the stars. "Only
you let me bore you."
"By talking of yourself?"
"So stupid of me!"
"You know," said Kent--"you know!"
"I _wanted_ to tell you; you won't think so badly of me, perhaps."
"I?"
"I'm sure you have. Now, sometimes?"
"If I confessed my thoughts, you'd never say so any more."
"Really?" Her eyes flashed mockery. "You mustn't tell me, then--I might
be vain."
The cab bowled over the white roads rapidly. The flutter of her scarf
on his shoulder stole through his blood, and the clip-clop sound of the
horse's hoofs seemed to him to waken echoes in his inside.
"Do you know, it was very indiscreet of me to come down here with
you?" she laughed.
"Supposing somebody had met us!"
"And then?"
"What would be thought?"
"_What_ could be thought?" he asked unsteadily.
"Scandal, perhaps. I'm very angry with you; you've made me do wrong.
Why did you make me do wrong when I had such faith in you?"
"You've given me the happiest evening of my life," said Kent; "is that
the wrong?"
"Do you think happiness must always be right? It's a convenient creed.
Happiness at any price--and let the woman pay it, eh? That's a man's
philosophy. You're quite right, though; but, then, you're at the
happiest time of life. No, nobody is ever that! The happiest time of
life's the past. Believe me, or believe me not, the past is always
beautiful; to-morrow I shall regret to-day."
"So shall I," said Kent. "But very much indeed I appreciate it now....
What are you cynical for? You only put it on. It's not 'you' really."
"'Wise judges are we of each other.' How do you know?"
"You said that to me once before--in Paris."
"Said what? Oh, the quotation! When?"
"At your place, after the Variétés."
"What a memory! Yes, you're certainly resolved to try to make me vain.
But I'm adamant. Did you know that? I'm made of stone. Do you treasure
up what every woman says to you? The answer is a wounded gaze; it's
dark to see expressions, but I'll take it for granted."
"I remember what _you_ said to me half an hour ago, and I know your
bitterness is a sham. You were meant to be----"
"Oh, 'meant'!" she cried recklessly; "a woman's what she's made. I'm
afraid _I've_ been made untidy. Do you mind driving in a hansom with
such a figure?"
She plucked at her veil in the strip of looking-glass, and bent her
face to him for criticism. The brilliance of the eyes that she widened
glowed into him as she leant so, and his arms trembled to enfold her.
His mouth was dry as he muttered a response.
The sweetness of June was in the air that caressed them as they sped
through the moonlight. With every sentence she let fall, with every
glance she shot at him, she dizzied him more, and he sat strained with
the struggle to retain his self-command. Through his febrile emotions,
the horror of proving false to Cynthia loomed like an angel betokening
the revulsion of his remorse. He could imagine the afterwards--he
knew how he would feel--and there were instants in which he prayed for
the drive to finish and permit escape. But there were instants also in
which he ceased to fight, and steeped in the present, yearned only to
forget his wife, though tardy remembrance should be a double scourge.
Her fingers were busy at a knot of violets in her dress; and she held
the flowers up to him, looking round, smiling.
"Shall I give you a buttonhole?" she inquired gaily. "It would be an
appropriate conclusion--my ideals, my withered hopes, and my dead
violets! Oh, I shiver to think of what I said to you! Did I gush
towards the last? I've a fearful, a ghastly misgiving that I gushed. If
you acknowledge that I did, I'll never forgive you; but you shouldn't
have encouraged me. Stoop for the souvenir! It cost a penny--symbolic
of the sentiment.... Though lost to sight, to memory dear! It will
be a very dear memory, won't it? Use me one day! I shall come in as
material--the hard woman of the world, who bares her soul on impulse,
and the Star and Garter terrace, to the man she likes and stands
revealed as--as what? I wonder what you'd make of me. Child, I shall
never get this buttonhole in if you don't turn! I've admitted I'm a
spectacle, but you might suffer for a second."
Her hair swept his cheek as she wrestled with refractory stalks, and
the dark eyes grew and; fastened on him again.
The hansom sped on. The quietude was left behind, and the lights of
the West End twinkled around them. There was the rattle of traffic.
Kent was laughing at something she had said, and he heard himself with
surprise--or was it; himself? The cab rolled to a standstill, and they
got out. The lift bore them to her landing. The servant opened the door.
"Good-night," he said; "I won't come in."
"Oh, come in; it's not ten o'clock. You'll have a brandy-and-soda
before you go?"
She entered without waiting for his reply, and he followed her
reluctantly. Only the lamp had been lighted, and the room was full of
crimson shadow. He stood watching her unpin her hat before the mirror,
and pull at her gloves.
"I don't think I'll stop," he said again, "really! I've something to
do."
"If I can't persuade you----" she answered listlessly.
Her gaiety had deserted her, and there was weariness in her attitude as
she drooped by the mantelshelf; her air, her movements, had a languor
now. She put out her bare hand slowly, and Kent's clung to it.
He stood holding her hand in a pause....
"I can't leave you," said Kent.