CHAPTER VIII

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.