CHAPTER XV

DISCOVERIES

An Ethical Society might pass a winter's evening in this debate: Does it need more strength to endure failure or to bear success? The dangers upon either road stand out easily, for all but the actual wayfarer. By the one he may fall into the slough of Bitterness, whilst the other, far more pleasant as it draws him on, may lead to no more than the pitiable, luxurious cities of Arrogance and Meanness.

The problem certainly needs no elaboration in this place, since Hubert's path lay all too clearly towards failure. "I fear," wrote his publisher as an old friend, "it is no use concealing the fact that people do not want the book. There have as yet been no repeat orders from libraries or booksellers. We can only face the fact and hope to do better with the next. As you know, in my opinion the book was not up to your usual high level."

"Who wants his damned opinion?" growled Hubert out loud, though alone, and crumpled up the letter. Why, publishers weren't even critics!

As to these last, their unanimity for once was wonderful.

There are ingenious authors who amuse themselves by printing excerpts from reviews of their last novel, alternately conflicting, thuswise; "An able novel: _Tooting Sentinel_. Weak and formless: _Times_. An arresting piece of work, whoever by: _Stafford News_. An amateur affair: _Standard_;"--thinking in this manner to have blackened for evermore the ancient art of Criticism in any decent-minded person's eyes. They scarcely realise, poor injured souls, that the thing is an Art. Were it but a machine, it doubtless would attain the same result from each book, whether put before it by a Fleet Street expert or a Stafford tyro. Because it is an Art, however, and all Art is merely the expression of an individual emotion, it follows that each book must react on every critic in a different way. These notices, so pompous with _The Times_ or _Stafford News_ above them, are not worked out with prayer by the whole paper's staff; they stand for one opinion, no less--and no more--than the opinion of a woman-reader over the tea-tray. Opinions, moreover, vary; praise to God! How fresh and hopeful, what a message, seems this story to the un-read Staffordian; how stale and hopeless, what an ancient dish, it appears to him of Printing House Square, who has read more than he can hope ever to forget!

And yet beneath it all there is a principle. Bad Of Its Sort is bad, whatever sort one likes; which is all Plato's Ideas in a convenient nutshell.

And every one agreed that _Was it Worth While?_ was bad of its sort. It tried to be something it was not, and what can be more shocking?

Hubert, then, had an admirable chance of showing what effect a failure, after some years of moderate success, had on his character; and took it to the full. As the reviews came in, he grew more and more violent. It was not many days before he countermanded all the extra papers, but his faithful Press-Cutters sent in the notices religiously and he could not help reading them. Helena would come down first (she always did) at breakfast time and hide the small green envelopes, which then arrived by the last post and were brought in at 9 p.m. by the complaisant Lily.

Then what a flow of words! Poor critics, publishers, and readers; what a set they were, how blind, how asinine, how spiteful! Sometimes he would at once go to his study and write a reply, which Helena did not in every case succeed in rescuing before it got into the pillar-box, though certainly her score was bigger.

It was a trying month and he did not spare even her. When there were no reviews to tear verbally--and sometimes other ways--in fragments, he would moan plaintively that this meant he would never get another sou out of the book beyond the small advance already paid, and nobody would want to read the next one either, and Heaven knew how they would pay the house-bills.

"I don't suppose any one will even publish it," he would say, almost gloating, like a schoolboy probing his cut finger.

"Oh, Hugh!" she cried, believing him, "it does seem awful. And to think you were so successful till you married me and had to write this terrible pot-boiler. Oh, how I wish you'd never done it!"

"What, married you?" he asked, suddenly laughing. "Bother shop! Come along out and see if we can't find a good stick to throw for the hound;" and as he passed, he kissed her on the hair and drew her up on to her feet.

His moods were so abrupt, just now, that sometimes she grew frightened.

It was lucky, then, that she had got her consolation; the great secret. Geoffrey Alison was far less frequent in the house these days, not having totally forgotten yet that grip upon his throat, and she would have been very desolate when Hubert was locked in with his work if she could not have flown excitedly to hers. Absorbed entirely in the opinion and career of the increasingly contemptible Virginia, she found herself free for a while from all the worries of real life, returning to them with a mind refreshed as by the most luxurious of sleep; the reason why there will be always writers, even when cinemas and cheap editions have made it not a paid, but an extravagant, profession.

So utterly absorbed was she, indeed, about six weeks after the fatal day of publication, that the drawing-room door was open before she had noticed any warning noise outside. Helena realised that it was far too late by now to hide the sheets of manuscript and substitute a letter, as she always did. Any attempt like that would only make detection certain--and far worse.

To her relief it was not Hubert, only Mr. Alison, with Lily holding the door open. She would not so much mind his knowing--he was so encouraging--supposing that he noticed.

And this of course he promptly did.

"Hullo!" was in fact his very first remark. "Are you too among the authors?" He waved his hand towards the little pile of manuscript that should have been inside a drawer.

"Yes," she said, hoping that she was not blushing. "But not too loud as it's an awful secret. Hubert doesn't know."

He tip-toed at it with exaggerated caution. "Oh-ho!" he whispered. "Then I guess: it's all about him! It is a safety-valve."

This was a little joke: they were devoted, he knew, though he could never understand what she saw in the great, conceited, selfish brute: but Helena felt sure now that the blush was there.

"No," she was bound to answer, and when he asked, "Fiction?" in surprise, it must be "Yes." And so it was, by now, she argued. A safety-valve at first perhaps, because Hugh seemed to loathe her having even the most usual ideas, but fiction certainly by now, for the ideas of Virginia were not her own ideas; the silly, sloppy thing!

"I'm going to read it please," he said and began collecting the loose pages (the book had long ago been cast aside).

"Certainly not," she answered, very dignified, and trying to forget that they were the words of a comic song she had heard on the gramophone.

"Oh, but yes," he answered.

"Give it to me," she said, turning now to melodrama for her catch-phrase.

He held the prize by sitting on it. "Listen," he began, as staidly argumentative as though he had been drunk: and then he paused. "If you let me read it," he said presently, "I'll tell you what I think of it and I bet it's original. If you don't let me read it, I shall tell--your husband!"

"You wouldn't be such a cad," she answered. She never knew when he was serious, because he often looked most funny then.

"I'm not so sure," he said. "Anyhow let me? I'll begin to-night."

"You won't do that," she retorted laughingly, "because the first bit's in a volume, locked away upstairs."

He whistled. "What! An opus? Tut! Now don't be selfish. When you first wanted to know about Art, I told you all I could, and now you're doing things, I think it's only fair that I should be the first to see."

He looked so funny, leaning forward eagerly yet taking care to keep his weight still on the manuscript, that she laughed heartily. He surely wasn't serious now?

He looked extremely hurt. "Very well," he said, getting up. "If you think it's so funny, that's all right. I suppose, now, you've done with me: you've got all out of me you needed: so now you don't even tell me that you're trying to create." He got up from the bureau with much dignity and moved towards the door. One sheet of the manuscript stuck to his clothes until he reached the centre-table. She was just wondering what to do about this, when it fluttered downward. That broke her inaction.

"Oh, no," she said, "don't be stuffy. I never meant it. I thought you were being ironical about my 'art' and I can't ever see it. Please don't be offended, Ally." In spite of her announced resolve she hardly ever called him that, and now she said it with a slight burr, dwelling on it till the name became a thing of beauty, almost a caress.

He wavered at the door; but he was shrewd in business by heredity. "Well, will you let me read it?" he said firmly.

"Yes, if you really want to," she replied. "I'll fetch the other half." Secretly she longed for an opinion, and she would never dare to ask for Hubert's. "Promise not to look at this bit," she said, coy as a young singer. "I couldn't bear you to see it till you are right away."

He promised and she left him to his thoughts, which were of an expectant nature. She was a girl that he had never really understood (in actual practice he had very small experience of girls), and he knew well enough that first books, even when all fiction, are half true. He was amused inwardly at her simplicity in lending him the manuscript.

She came back with something like a baby scrap-book in her hand. "I got bored with writing in this," she said. "It was so uncomfortable, the edges cut my hand." Then, as though half repenting; "You must promise not to look at it till you get home and never to tell Hubert."

"Is that likely?" he asked, referring to the last condition. It made the business far more thrilling.

He had the common sense, however, to see that she was already doubtful of her wisdom: so that as soon as volume and loose sheets were in his hand, he changed the subject tactfully.

"Well," he asked, "and how is the new book going?"

"Oh, isn't it awful?" Helena replied. "I don't know if I ought to tell you, but it's not sold at all: not, I mean, except those sold before publication and I never understand quite how that happens."

"Then I expect it's good," said Geoffrey Alison a trifle cheaply.

Helena replied with emphasis, as though rebutting a grave charge. "_No_, not at all. That's just it: it's much worse than his other ones. He's in an awful way. I don't believe he's sold a thousand copies!"

"My dear Mrs. Brett," he said (he always hated calling her that, but he dared not embark on "Helena"), "comfort yourself with the idea that a thousand copies is a very good sale for any decent novel. Each copy, after all, is read by twenty people in these days of libraries, so that means twenty thousand readers. Of course if Hubert wrote for shop-girls, he might find a million: but do you think that any really serious study of real life--the sort of book that simply gets at character and doesn't fuss with plot: the real, artistic novel--is going to find more than twenty thousand people in dull old England who can understand it? And that's your thousand-copy sale! I don't mind betting no really 'artistic' novel--it's a beastly word--ever sells more than that."

His one idea in all this had been to console her, for he guessed a little what it meant when Hubert Brett was "in an awful way"; but now she seemed if anything more troubled. She sat in dazed silence, looking like a small child who has seen something which it absolutely cannot understand at all.

"But _Wandering Stars_," she said presently, "I've often heard, sold quite five thousand."

"Oh yes, I dare say," came the unthinking answer. Had she forgotten about her MS.?

"Well, wasn't that artistic?" There was a note of battle in her voice.

He saw now where he had drifted. "Oh yes," he began. "But not quite in the way I meant. That was a good story, very, and was popular. I meant, really, quite a different sort of book." He floundered in excuses.

"What sort?" she asked pitilessly. "Better ones?"

"Oh no," he said, more and more embarrassed. "Not that exactly. You can't say that. You can't compare different kinds in Art. You've got to judge a man by his success in what he has attempted. A good caricature is much better than a bad Madonna," and firmly upon Art with the feeling of a mariner safe in port after a storm, he drew her mind away--or so he thought, this man who knew so little about women--and after a while, sooner than usual, made his excuses and departed.

Outside he got as near to saying "Whew!" as any live man ever has. He had jolly nearly put his foot in it! He wouldn't for millions let that little girl suspect that really artistic people--his own set--did not think so much of Brett's work as Brett did himself. What a lumbering idiot he had been! The fact was, he had thought she meant to get that writing of hers back and he had wanted to distract her mind. In that, anyhow, he had succeeded.

On the way back, he could not resist dipping into the book as he walked.

He skimmed a page and chuckled Fiction? He recognised himself already!