CHAPTER VII

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.