CHAPTER XIII

Nor did the conference, which was protracted until a late hour, provide an outlet to the dilemma; it was agreeable, but it did not lead anywhere. If he should hear of anything, he would certainly let the other know; that was the most the sub-editor could say. Authors are not offered salaries to write their novels, and Kent was not a journalist by temperament, nor possessed of any journalistic experience. As to tales or articles for _The Outpost_, that paper did not publish fiction, and their rate for other matter was seven and sixpence a column. However, some attempt had to be made, and Kent went to town every day, and Cynthia saw less of him than when he had been writing _The Eye of the Beholder_. He hunted up his few acquaintances, and haunted the literary club that he had joined in the flush of his success. He applied for various posts that were advertised vacant, and he inserted a skilfully-framed advertisement. No answer arrived; and the tradesmen's bills, and the poor rates, and the gas notices, and the very; competent nurse's wages, continued to fall due in the meanwhile. When the competent nurse's were not due, the incompetent "general's" were. Dr. Roberts' account came in, and the sight of his pass-book now terrified the young man.

They had not been married quite two years yet, and he asked himself if they had been extravagant, in view of this evidence of the rapidity with which money had melted; but, excepting the style in which they had furnished, he could not perceive any cause for such self-reproach. They had lived comfortably, of course, but if the novel had been placed when it was finished, they could have continued to live just as comfortably while he wrote the next. He feared they would have to take a bill of sale on the too expensive furniture, and that way lay destitution. Cynthia's composure in the circumstances surprised him. He told her so.

"It'll all come right," she said. "You are sure to get something soon, and perhaps Fendall and Green will accept _The Eye of the Beholder_--fulsomely!"

This was an improvement, for a few months since she would have been unable to recollect their name and have referred to them vaguely as "the publishers." He felt the sense of intimacy deepen as "Fendall and Green" dropped glibly from her lips, and the "fulsomely" made him feel quite warm towards her.'

"Have you told your people what a tight corner we're in?" he asked.

She shook her head.

"Why should I? That's our affair."

"So it is," he assented. "Poor little girl! it's 'orrible rough on you, though; I wonder you aren't playing with straws. You didn't know what economy meant when we married."

Praise from him was nectar and ambrosia to her. She wanted to embrace him, but felt that if she embraced the opportunity to give a happy definition of "economy" it would be appreciated better. She perched herself on the arm of his chair, and struggled to evolve an epigram. As she could not think of one, she said:

"What nonsense!"

"I wish you had read the book, and liked it," said Kent, speaking spontaneously.

"Say you wish I'd read it?" replied his wife. "Oh, you'd like it, because it was mine. But I mean I wish----"

"What?"

"I don't know."

She twisted a piece of his hair round her finger.

"My taste is much maturer than it was," she averred, with satisfaction. "Somehow, I can't stand the sort of things that used to please me; I don't know how I was able to read them. They bore me now."

He smiled. As she had often done to him before, she seemed a child masquerading in a woman's robes.

"You're getting quite a critic!"

"Well," she said happily, "you'll laugh, but I got _A Peacock's Tail_ from the library, and when the review in _The Chronicle_ came out, the reviewer said just what I'd felt about it. He did! I'm not such a silly as you think, you see."

"My love!" he cried, "I never thought you were a 'silly.'"

"Not very wise, though! Oh, I know what I lack, Humphrey; but I _am_ better than I was--I am really! Remember, I never heard literature talked about until I met you; it was all new to me when we married, and--if you've noticed it--you aren't very, _very_ interested in anything else. The longer we live together, the more--the nicer I shall be."

He answered lightly:

"You're nice enough now."

But he was touched.

After a long pause, as if uttering the conclusion of a train of thought aloud, she murmured: "Baby's got _your_ shaped head."

"I hope to God it'll be worth more to him than mine to me!" he exclaimed.

She was silent again.

"What are you so serious for, all of a sudden?" he said, looking round.

Cynthia bent over him quickly with a caress, and sprang up.

"It was you who wanted the _t's_ crossed for once!" she said tremulously. "There, now I must go and knock at the nursery door and ask if I'm allowed to go in!"

The man of acute perceptions wondered what she meant, and in what way he had shown himself dull at comprehending so transparent a girl.

It was in October, when less than twenty pounds remained to them, that something at last turned up. Turquand had learnt that an assistant-editor was required on _The World and his Wife_, a weekly journal recently started for the benefit of the English and Americans in Paris. The Editor was familiarly known as "Billy" Beaufort, and the proprietor was a sporting baronet who had reduced his income from fourteen thousand per annum to eight by financing, and providing with the diamonds, which were the brightest feature of her performance, a lady who fancied that she was an actress. Beaufort had been the one dramatic critic who did not imply that she was painful, and it was Beaufort who had latterly assured the Baronet that _The World and his Wife_ would realise a fortune. He had gone about London for thirteen years assuring people that various enterprises would realise a fortune--that was his business--but the Baronet was one of the few persons who had believed him. Then Billy Beaufort took his watch, and his scarf-pin, and his sleeve-links away from Attenborough's--when in funds he could always pawn himself for a considerable amount--and turned up again resplendent at the club, whose secretary had been writing him sharp letters on the subject of his subscription. The only alloy to his complacence, though it did not dimmish it to any appreciable degree, was that he was scarcely more qualified to edit a paper than was a landsman to navigate a ship. He described himself as a journalist, and the description was probably as accurate as any other he could have furnished of a definite order; but he was a journalist whose attainments were limited to puffing a prospectus and serving up a réchauffé from _Truth_. Never attached to a paper for longer than two or three months, he was, during that period, usually attached to a woman too. He drove in hansoms every day of the year; always appeared to have bought his hat half an hour ago; affected a big picotee as a buttonhole, and lived--nobody knew how. While he was ridiculed in Fleet Street as a Pressman, he was treated with deference there on account of his reputed smartness in the City, and--while the City laughed at his business pretensions--there he was respected for his supposed abilities in Fleet Street. So he beamed out of the hansoms perkily, and drove from one atmosphere of esteem to another, waving a gloved hand, on the way, to clever men who envied him.

In days gone by he had tasted a spell of actual prosperity. By what coup he had made the money, and how he had lost it, are details, but he had now developed the fatal symptom of dwelling lovingly on that epoch when he had been so lucky, and so courted, and so rich. There is hope for the man who boasts of what he means to do; there is hope for the boaster who lies about what he is doing; but the man whose weakness is to boast of what he once did is doomed--he is a man who will succeed no more. If the sporting Baronet had grasped this fact, _The World and his Wife_ would never have been started, and Billy Beaufort would not have been looking for an assistant-editor to do all the work.

Kent obtained the post. The man with whom Beaufort had parted was a thoroughly experienced journalist, who had put his chief in the way of things, but had subsequently called him an ass, and what Billy sought now was a zealous young fellow who would have no excuse for giving himself airs. Beaufort believed in Turquand's opinion, and had always thought him a fool for being so shabby, knowing him to have ten times the brain-power that he himself possessed, and Turquand had blown Humphrey's trumpet sturdily. He did more than merely recommend him; he declared--with a recollection of the nurse and baby--that Kent was _the_ man to get, but that he was afraid it would not be worth his while to accept less than seven pounds a week. When the matter was settled, Humphrey sought his friend again, and, wringing his hand, exclaimed:

"You're a pal; but--but, I say! What are an assistant-editor's duties?"

Exhilaration and misgiving were mixed in equal parts in his breast.

Turquand laughed, as nearly as he could be said ever to approach a laugh.

"The assistant-editor of _The World and his Wife_ will have to cut pars nimbly out of the English society journals and the Paris dailies, and 'put 'em all in different language--the more indifferent, the better!' He must handle the scissors without fatigue, and arrange with someone on this side to supply a column of London theatrical news every week--out of _The Daily Telegraph_. Say with _me_! It's worth a guinea, and I may as well have it as anybody else."

"You're appointed our London dramatic critic," said Kent. "Won't you have thirty bob?"

"A guinea's the market price; and I can have some cards printed and go to the theatres for nothing, you see, when I feel like it; they don't take any stock in _The Outpost_. He must attend the _répétitions générales_ himself--if he can get in--and make all the acquaintances he can, against the time when the rag dies."

"'Dies'?" echoed Kent. "Is it going to die?"

"Oh, it won't live, my boy! If it had been a permanent job, I shouldn't have handed it over to you--I'm not a philanthropist. But it will give you a chance to turn round, and an enlightened publisher may discern the merits of _The Eye of the Beholder_ in the meanwhile. You'd better go on looking for something while you are on the thing; perhaps you'll be able to get the Paris Correspondence for a paper, if you try."

"What more? What besides the scissors--nothing?"

"There's the paste; I don't imagine you'll need much else."

"You're a trump!" repeated Kent gratefully. "I feel an awful fraud taking such a berth, Turk; but in this world one has to do what one----"

"Can't!"

"Exactly. By George! it seems to be a paying line."

"There is always room at the top, you know," said Turquand. "When you rise in what you can't do, the emolument is dazzling."

Beaufort was returning to Paris the same day, and he was anxious for Kent to join him there with all possible speed. Kent's first intention was to go alone and let Cynthia follow him at her leisure; but when he reached home and cried, "'Mary, you shall drive in your carriage, and Charles shall go to Eton!'" she refused to be left behind.

"I can be ready by Wednesday or Thursday at the latest," she exclaimed delightedly, when explanations were forthcoming. "What did you mean by 'Charles' and 'Mary'? Oh, Humphrey, didn't I tell you it would all come all right? How lovely! and how astonished mamma and papa will be!"

"Yes, I fancy it will surprise 'em a trifle," he said. "We'll go round there this evening, shall we? And we'll put the salary in francs--it sounds more." He hesitated. "I say, do you think Nurse will mind living in Paris?"

Cynthia paled.

"I must ask her; I hadn't thought of that. Oh ... oh, I dare say I shall be able to persuade her! It's rather a hurry for her, though, isn't it? She does so dislike being hurried."

"Tell her at once," he suggested; "she'll have all the more time to prepare in. Run up to her now."

"Let--let us think," murmured Cynthia; "we'll consider.... Ann must be sent away, and we shall have to give her a month's wages instead of notice."

"She's no loss," he observed. "I don't know I what your mother ever saw in her. She can't even cook a steak, the wench!"

"She fries them, dear."

"I know she does," said Kent. "A woman who'd fry a steak would do a murder. Well, we shall have to give her a month's wages instead of notice--it's an iniquitous law! But what about Nurse?"

"Perhaps," said Cynthia nervously, "if _you_ were to mention it to her, darling, if you don't I mind----"

"Of course I don't mind," he answered, but without alacrity. "What an idea! Tell Ann to send her down."

She entered presently, an important young person in a stiff white frock; and he played with the newspaper, trying to feel that he had grown quite accustomed to seeing an important young person in his service.

"You wished to speak to me, madam, but baby will be waking directly----"

"I shan't keep you a moment," said Kent. "Er--your mistress and I are going to Paris; we shall be there some time. I suppose it's all the same to you where you live? We want you to be ready by Thursday, Nurse."

"To Paris?" said Nurse, with cold amazement, and a pause that said even more.

Cynthia became engrossed by a bowl of flowers, and Kent felt that, after all, Paris was a long way off.

"I suppose it's all the same to you where you live?" he said again, though he no longer supposed anything of the sort. "And there are three days for you to pack in, you know--three nice full days."

"Three days, sir?" she echoed reproachfully. "To go abroad! May I ask you if you would be staying in a place like that all the winter, sir?"

"Yes, certainly through the winter--or probably so. It mightn't be so long; it depends."

"I could not undertake to leave 'ome for good, Sir," said the nurse. "I am engaged. My friend lives in 'Olloway, and----"

"Oh, it wouldn't be for good," declared Cynthia ingratiatingly; "we couldn't stay there for good ourselves--oh no! And, of course, if you found we stopped too long to suit you, Nurse, why, you could leave us when you liked, couldn't you? Though Mr. Kent and I would both be very sorry to lose you, I'm sure!" They looked at her pleadingly while she meditated.

"What Baby will do, _Hi_ don't know, madam," she said; "changing his cow, poor little dear!"

"Will it hurt him?" demanded the mother and father, in a breath.

"If you have the doctor's consent, madam, you may _chance_ it. It isn't a thing that _Hi_ would ever advise."

"Well, well, look here," said Kent; "we'll see Dr. Roberts about it to-day, and if he says there's no risk, that'll settle it. You will get ready to start Thursday morning, Nurse."

"I will _endeavour_ to do so, sir," she said with dignity.

They felt that on the whole she had been gracious. And Kent, having obtained Dr. Roberts' sanction to change the cow, commissioned a house-agent to try to let No. 64 furnished at four guineas a week.