CHAPTER IX

As, chapter by chapter, the novel grew under his hand, Kent saw, from the little back-window, the snow disappear and the bare trees grow green, until at last a fire was no longer necessary in the room, and the waving fields that he overlooked were yellow with buttercups.

He rose at six now, and did about three hours' work before Cynthia went down. Then they breakfasted, and, with an effort to throw some interest into her voice, she would inquire how he had been getting on. He probably felt that he had not been "getting on" at all, and his response was not encouraging. After breakfast he would make an attempt to read the newspaper, with his thoughts wandering back to his manuscript, and Cynthia would have an interview with Ann. This interview, ostensibly concluded before he went back to his desk, was generally reopened as soon as he took his seat, and for some unexplained reason the sequel usually occurred on the stairs. "Oh, what from the grocer's, ma'am?" "So and so, and so forth."

"Yes, ma'am." "Oh, and--Ann!" "What do you say, ma'am?" More instructions, interrupted by a prolonged banging at the tradesman's door, and the girl's rush to open it. "What is it, Ann?" "The fishmonger, ma'am." "Nothing this morning." "Nothing this morning," echoed by Ann; the boy's departing whistle, "Ann!" "Yes, ma'am?" "Ask him how much a pound the salmon is to-day." "Hi! how much a pound's the salmon?" Meanwhile, Kent beat his fists on the desk, and swore. Once he had pitched his pen at the wall in a frenzy, and dashed on to the landing to remonstrate; but he had felt such a brute when Cynthia cried and declared that he had insulted her before the servant, and it had wasted so much of his morning kissing her into serenity again, that he decided it would hinder him less on the whole to bear the nuisance without complaint.

The ink-splashes on the wall-paper testified to his having raged in private on more than the one occasion, however, and the superior Ann's feet appeared to him to grow heavier every week. The domestic machinery was in his ears from morning till nightfall--from the time that she began to bang about the house for cleaning purposes to the hour that he heard her rattle the last of the dinner things in the scullery and go to bed. It seemed to him often that it could not take much longer to wash the plates and dishes of a Lord Mayor's banquet than Ann took to wash those of his and Cynthia's simple meals, and when, like the report of a cannon, the oven-door slammed, he yearned for his late lodging in Soho as for a lost paradise.

And this wasn't all. His wife was less companionable to him daily. Fifty times he had registered a mental oath that he would abandon his hope of cultivating her and resign himself to her remaining what she was; but he had too much affection for her to succeed in doing it yet, and with every fresh endeavour and failure that he made his dissatisfaction was intensified. He burned to talk about his work, about other men's work, to speak of his ambitions, to laugh with someone over a witty article; instead, their conversation was of Cæsar, whose debut had been postponed till the autumn; of the engagement of Dolly Brown, whom he did not know, to young Styles, of Norwood, whom he had not met; of the laundress, who had formerly charged four-pence for a blouse, and who now asked fivepence. When he pretended to be entertained, she spoke of such things with animation. When he dropped the mask, her manner was as dull as her topics, for she was as sensitive as she was uninteresting.

Her wistful question, whether she had proved a disappointment, recurred to him frequently, and to avoid wounding her he affected good spirits more often than he yawned. But the strain was awful; and when he escaped from it at last and sank into a chair alone, it was with the sense of exhaustion that one feels after having been saddled for an afternoon with a too talkative child. The oases in his desert were Turquand's visits; but Turquand never came without a definite invitation. Streatham was a long distance from Soho, and there was always the risk of finding that they had gone to the Walfords'. Besides, it was necessary to book to Streatham Hill, from the West End, and the service was appalling, with the delays at the stations and the stoppages between them, especially on the return journey, when the train staggered to a standstill at almost every hundred yards.

One evening when he dined with them, Humphrey gave him some sheets of his manuscript to read. He did not expect eulogies from Turquand, but he would rather have had to listen to intelligent disapproval than refrain from discussing the book any longer, and when the other praised the work he was delighted.

"You really think it good?" he asked. "Better than the last? You don't think they'll say I haven't fulfilled its promise? Honest Injun, you know?"

"Seems very strong," said Turquand, sucking his pipe. "No, I don't think you need tremble, if these pages aren't the top strawberries. Rather Meredithian, that line about her eyes in the pause, isn't it? You remember the one I mean, of course?"

Kent laughed gaily.

"It came like that," he said. "Fact! Does it look like a deliberate imitation? Would you alter it? Oh, I say, talking of lines, I'm ill with envy. 'Occasionally a girl, kissed from behind as she stretched to reach a honeysuckle, rent with a scream the sickly-coloured, airless evening.' The 'sickly-coloured, airless evening.' Isn't it great? What do you think of that for atmosphere? And he's got it with the two adjectives. But the 'honeysuckle'--the 'honeysuckle' with that 'sickly-coloured, airless'--you can smell it!" "Whose?"

"Moore's. I opened the book the other day, and it was the first thing I saw. I had been hammering at a lane and summer evening paragraph myself, and when I read that, I knew there wasn't an impression in all my two hundred words."

"You shouldn't let him read, Mrs. Kent, while he has work on the stocks," said the journalist. "I know this phase in him of old."

"Yes, and you used to be very rude," put in Kent perfunctorily. "My wife isn't! I can be depressed now without being abused."

Cynthia laughed. She was very pretty where she lay back in the rocker by the window. Her face was a trifle drawn now, but she looked girlish and graceful still. She looked a wife of whom any man might be proud.

"You didn't mention it," she said; "I didn't know. But I don't see anything wonderful in what you quoted, I must say! Do you, Mr. Turquand? I'm sure 'sickly-coloured, airless, doesn't mean anything at all."

"It means a good deal to me," said Kent. "I'd give a fiver to have found that line."

"Cousins wouldn't give you any more for your book if you had," said Turquand. "Put money in thy purse! I suppose you'll stick to Cousins?"

"Why not? Life's too short to find a publisher who'll pay you what you think you're worth; and Cousins are affable. Affability covers a multitude of sins, and there's a lot of compensation in a compliment. Cousins senior told me I had a 'great gift.'"

"Perhaps he was referring to his hundred pounds."

"He was referring to my talent, though I says it as shouldn't. That was your turn, Cynthia!"

"Yes," said Turquand; "a wife's very valuable at those moments, isn't she, Mrs. Kent?"

"How do you mean?" said Cynthia, who found the conversational pace inconveniently rapid.

"I shall send it to Cousins," went on Humphrey hastily; "and I want two hundred and fifty this time."

"They won't give it you."

"Why not?"

"Partly because you'll accept less. And you haven't gone into a second edition, remember." "Look at the reviews!"

"Cousins's will look at the sale. The thing will have to be precious good for you to get as much as that!"

"It _will_ be precious good," said Kent seriously. "I'm doing all I know! You shall wade right through it when it's finished, if you will, and tell me your honest opinion. I won't say it's going to 'live' or any rot like that; but it's the best work it is in me to do, and it will be an advance on the other, that I'll swear."

"Mrs. St. Julian's last goes into a fourth edition next week," observed Turquand grimly, "if that's any encouragement to you."

"Good Lord," said Kent, "it only came out in January! Is that a fact?"

"One of 'Life's Little Ironies'! Hers is the kind of stuff to sell, my boy! The largest public don't want nature and style; they want an improbable story and virtue rewarded. The poor 'companion' rambles in the moonlight and a becoming dress, and has love passages in the grounds at midnight--which wouldn't be respectable, only she's so innocent. The heiress sighs for a title and an establishment in Park Lane; I and the poor 'companion' says, 'Give me a cottage, with the man I love,' making eyes at the biggest catch in the room, no doubt, though the writer doesn't tell you that--and hooks him. Blessed is the 'companion' whose situation is in a story by Mrs. St. Julian, for she shall be called the wife of the lord. Sonny, the first mission of a novel is to be a pecuniary success--you are an ass! Excuse me, Mrs. Kent."

"You may give him all the good advice you can. I've said before that I like Mrs. St. Julian's stories, but Humphrey has made up his mind not to. That's firmness, I suppose, as he is a man!" She laughed.

"Turk didn't imply that he liked them either. Isn't it painful, though, to think of the following a woman like that can command? What a world to write for--it breaks one's heart!"

"It's an over-rated place," said Turquand; "it's a fat-headed, misguided, beast of a world!"

"It isn't the world," said Cynthia brightly; "it's the people in it!"

A ghastly silence followed her comment, a pause in which the journalist stared at the stove ornament, affecting not to have heard her, and Kent felt the sickness of death in his soul. Shame that his wife should say such a stupid thing in Turquand's presence paralysed his tongue; and Turquand, pitying his embarrassment, turned to the girl with an inquiry about her relatives. Humphrey had taken him to The Hawthorns, as requested, and Turquand, with characteristic perversity, had professed to discover a congenial spirit in Miss Wix. It was about Miss Wix that he asked now.

Cynthia laughed again.

"Yes, your favourite is quite well," she answered--"as cheerful as ever."

"Fate hasn't been kind to Miss Wix," said Turquand; "she's been chastened and chidden too much. In other circumstances----"

"Skittles!" said Humphrey.

"In other circumstances, she might have been sweeter, and less amusing. Personally, I am grateful that there were not other circumstances. I like Miss Wix as she is; she refreshes me."

"I wish she had that effect on _me_," said Kent, as the guest rose to go and he reflected gloomily that he would hear nothing refreshing until the next time they met. He begged him to remain a little longer. And, when Turquand withstood his persuasions, he insisted on accompanying him to the station, and parted from him on the platform with almost sentimental regret.

Only his interest in his book sustained him. He was deep enough in it for it to have a fascination for him now, and, though there were still days when he did not produce more than a single page, there were others on which composition was spontaneous and delightful, and happy sentences seemed to fall off his pen of their own accord. He wrote under difficulties when the summer came, for Cynthia required more and more attention; but while he often devoted a whole morning or afternoon to her, he made up for it by working on the novel half the night. More than once he worked on it all night, and after a bath and a shave he joined her at breakfast on very good terms with himself. To support the sprightliness, however, he needed to breakfast with someone to whom he could report his progress, and cry, "I've come to such a point," or, "That difficulty that we foresaw, you know, is overcome--a grand idea!" His exhilaration speedily evaporated at breakfast, and, if he returned to his room an hour later, he did so feeling far less fresh than when he had left it.

Yes, Cynthia demanded many attentions through the summer months; she was petulant, capricious, and dissolved into tears at the smallest provocation. There was much for Kent to consider besides the novel. Also there were anticipations in which they momentarily united and he felt her to be as close to him as she was dear. But these moments could not make a life; and despite the fact that the time when they expected their baby to be born was rapidly approaching, he was living more and more within himself. Cynthia had no complaint to make against him; if marriage was not altogether the elysium that she had imagined it would prove, she did not hold that to be Humphrey's fault. She found him, if eccentric, tender and considerate. But he was bored and weary. His feeling for her was the affection of a man for a child, tinged more or less consciously by compassion, since he knew that she would sob her heart out if she suspected how tedious she appeared to him. Though she would have been a happier woman with a different man, the cost of the mistake that they had made was far more heavy to him than to her. He realised what a mistake it had been, while she was ignorant of it. And of this, at least, he was glad.