CHAPTER XVIII

ZOË

Helena unfolded the slip, pasted on its blue half-sheet, and began to read it, thoroughly engrossed. She seemed forgetful of Geoffrey Alison, who in turn watched her with hardly less attention, more anxiety. He knew the thing by heart.

"_Confessions of an Author's Wife_ (Blatchley & Co.) is by its name confessed as of the Human Document category, and this sort of book is never without its attraction. The present volume, chastely bound in green appropriately virginal, recounts the growth of a young girl married to a more or less successful author. Zoë Baskerville, who on one page lets somebody call her Virginia (a lapse not making for conviction), tells in the first person her laudable efforts to develop an ego in the face of a husband who has enough of it for ten. His selfish absorption in his own moods and the conditions suitable to his own labours not unnaturally create in Zoë a feeling of thwarted ambition, which results in a watered, girlish, form of cynicism about Man and Woman. This, however, passes off in the last chapter, where for some reason not easy of access to the mere reader Zoë suddenly sloughs her despondency and bursts into an exultant Credo: 'I believe that Life, all in all, is the most splendid gift a kind God could give to his children. I believe that Man'--and so on for the last four pages.

"It will be seen that subtlety and cohesion are not the strongest points in these confessions, which we hope we have taken seriously enough. About their popularity there can be no doubt. The book possesses pathos, humour, freshness; a mixture beyond failing; and moreover, impinges on life, married life, at moments with a frankness more essentially French than English. This fact may induce those still in Zoë's earlier mood of cynicism to suspicion a male, Fleet Street, author: but for our part, remembering the naïveté of female Youth and that incriminating name Virginia, we are quite ready to accept the volume's authenticity, if we misdoubt somewhat The End's sincerity.

"Taken thus, as a real document, the book has a persuasive charm. Pathetic little Zoë is a figure as real as her selfish husband, who emerges in some way as less great than has been actually stated. (Perhaps we were wrong in denying the book any subtlety.) We can foresee a long and lucrative discussion as to the Author's identity. For our part, we make a gift of the discovered clue 'Virginia,' and shall wait patiently until the publisher, as a good man and true, duly announces the authorship before issuing a cheap edition. Till that day we shall hope to live our lives in much the same round as before."

Helena stared so long at the narrow slip, obviously deep in thought, that Geoffrey Alison found his anxiety turn to a nervous guilt.

Of course, he told himself, he knew the part that worried her in this, her first review. He would have kept it back if he had been quite sure that she would never see it. He rather wished now that he had. It was that stupid bit of course about more French than English. He only hoped they wouldn't all be like that--and none of them worse.

He recalled, as moment joined past moment, his own amusement at some of the passages. They had solved all his problems about Helena. No one but a really innocent girl could be so frank, because to the impure all truth is suspicious. It was only after reading these delicious passages two or three times that Geoffrey Alison, getting a tardy view of the whole book, realised how it might interest the world at large and seem worth while to that shrewd devil Blatchley.

Now, when still she sat impassive, looking at that notice with a slight frown on her forehead, he began to suspect that possibly he had been just a little of a cad. He ought perhaps to have warned her that some of it, though absolutely all right if everybody had pure minds,----

Yet after all, how could he have told her that? It would be jolly awkward, you know, and only putting ideas into her head. Besides, of course, with those bits cut out, Blatchley would probably have called it tame and struck.... His silence had been really for her good.

At last these alternate surges of guilt and self-justification grated on his nerves. He could endure her silence not a moment longer.

"That's only the first one," he said; "and it's not much of a paper." Now for the reproaches! Better to turn the tap on than to shiver, waiting.

But not for the first time he had misjudged her. It was not that part of the review which had struck home to her so different mind.

"Do you really think the husband stands out as such a brute as all that?" she surprised him by asking.

"No. I thought it exactly like Hubert," was his answer. He could not read her mind; he said the first thing that came into his.

He could not have said a worse. It strengthened all her doubts, fears, and regrets. She really had forgotten, almost, what was in the book. It had been written in such hot excitement and she had scarcely read it since. Ally would not let her see the proofs; he said it wasn't safe, with Hubert there.... She had imagined that the wife was far more silly than herself, the husband altogether different from Hubert. Now, reading that synopsis, she saw (for the first time), how truly that summed up their married life: she _had_ wished to "develop an ego," he _had_ thwarted her. He would read it too, that or another, and suspect. Then he would get the book--and know. And he would think she meant it all, meant all the wild complaints of Zoë, Zoë whom at first she used to think of as "sloppy" Virginia!

It was too horrible. She loathed the stupid book, she wished that she had never shown it. She loathed Geoffrey Alison. If poor old Hubert ever saw...!

"I suppose we can't possibly suppress the book?" she jerked out suddenly.

Her conversation was more startling than ever to the male brain, to-day. "Suppress it on the strength of the first notice? When it's been out two days? And when the notice says there can't be any doubt about its popularity? Suppress it, indeed! What about friend Blatchley?"

Helena gave a little sigh of absolute despair. It had been so exciting until now: the little green book, locked away upstairs, and libraries actually buying it before it was out, just in the weird way they did Hubert's and real people's!

Now she loathed the book and feared it.

There was terror indeed in her very tones. "But you don't think," she said, "they really can ever find out who the writer was? They seem to think it's only a question of time. Mr. Blatchley couldn't be so mean."

"My dear Zoë" (he felt bound to soothe her and it was so thrilling to say), "how can they possibly? There isn't any 'they' about it. I'm the only person in the world who knows and I suppose you can trust _me_?" He got up from the sofa whilst speaking and struck an attitude quite close to her, at the last words.

"Of course I do, Ally; you're a splendid pal and I know you will never breathe a word. It means a lot to me you see;" and she just pressed his hand.

It was not much perhaps, but it meant a great deal to him. _He_ did not loathe the book.