CHAPTER XXI

EXPOSURE

"Both for you, sir!" said Lily with the air of an old friend, entering the drawing-room at nine o'clock two evenings later. She held out on a silver tray, the wedding gift of Kenneth Boyd, two letters. One was from Ruth and had been left, now, by the postman; the other, in the familiar green of the press-cutter, had lain in her pantry since the early post.

"Ah, a press cutting!" ejaculated Hubert.

"Splendid. How exciting!" Helena replied, as though delighted and surprised.

Lily went out. She did not even really want to smile by now. She had been in three places before this, and in each of them the husband had needed humouring in one way or another. She probably would never marry.

"It's very late," said Hubert expectantly. Two months had passed since the last straggling notice of _Was It Worth While?_ and after this gap he could open his green envelopes without a sense of irritation; yes, even with excitement.

"The last one is sometimes the best, isn't it?" Helena threw the hope out soothingly, but from the corner of her eyes she watched him with a little nervousness. Certainly the most restful times were those like the last weeks, when there were no reviews. They did seem to upset him so. She wished now that she had opened this--except that she would never dare to give it him if it chanced to be good.

She wished this wicked wish a thousand times more strongly, half a minute later. Never, in these three years, had she seen Hubert so affected by a notice. Great veins swelled out on his forehead, till she was really terrified. She could pretend no longer not to notice.

"What is it, Hubert?" she asked as he said nothing. "I hope not a bad one?"

"This is too scandalous," he cried, half choked and speaking like a pompous old man in his anger. "Where will the newspapers ever stop?"

"What have they said now, dear?" He missed the tragic resignation in that one word "now."

"Read it," he said and thrust it almost roughly at her, as though blaming the whole world.

It did not seem, however, as though he could wait for her opinion. "Newer," "practically unknown," he fired out at intervals, and other adjectives.

But she heard none of them.

The paper swam before her eyes and every dim word filled her with a sick dread, a resentful wonder, an absolute despair, for this is what she saw:

"AUTHOR'S WIFE FIASCO

"OFFICIAL REVELATIONS

"Suburban tea-tables need buzz no more with questions as to the identity of that now famous Author's Wife whose recent confessions have raised such a pother. A representative of this paper found Mr. Blatchley, this morning, at last in an unbending mood.

"'The secret is out,' said the publisher, 'the author in question is Mr. Hubert Brett. The book, I may add, is naturally by his wife. There were reasons till now why her identity should not be divulged.'

"Those reasons will perhaps be guessed by all who remember the fierce controversy that raged recently and the big names that were thrown about, also the big sales. Whether these last will be helped by this official revelation will remain to be seen. The context had certainly prepared us for the wife-sacrificing author to be some one slightly better known. Mr. Hubert Brett is of the newer school of novelists, whose work is practically unknown to the bigger public. From _Who's Who_ we learn that he has written some fourteen novels since 1899, and of these _Wandering Stars_ is possibly the most familiar to library-readers.

"In this rather disappointing manner the Mystery of the Author's Wife leaves the select company of The Man in the Iron Mask, Jack the Ripper, Shakespeare, The Lady and the Tiger and other insolubles, to rank for ever with The Mango Tree, Fiona Macleod, The Englishwoman, and other mysteries which stupidly got solved."

Her eyes somehow deciphered the main points, and then she sat looking at the thin slip, seeing nothing.

"Practically unknown," suddenly came to her ears; "considering that _Wandering Stars_ sold close upon six thousand!"

Then she heard herself speaking. "It's only a rag, not one of the real evening papers." She dared not say what she had got to say. She dared not face the storm. Hate, now, that was what ruled in her chaotic brain, hate and loathing for that treacherous, mean, little Mr. Alison. She knew she always had despised him, now--but he had been so kind.... Why had she trusted a weak man like him? Why had she ever written--married--been born--anything? Oh, what would happen now?

Her husband got up suddenly. That broke her tortured reverie, broke her inaction.

"Well, I shall write at once," he stormed. "Let's have the filthy thing."

She rose weakly to her feet and held it out to him. "What will you say?" she asked, still feebly trying to gain time, like men faced by a rope that they cannot possibly avoid.

"Say?" he repeated scornfully. "Tell them what they are and contradict the whole thing as a lie."

She almost staggered and caught hold of his arm. "No," she said. "Listen. You--you mustn't."

"Mustn't?" He looked curiously at her.

She suddenly burst into tears, clinging to him there as if for pity. "Hubert," she sobbed out, "don't take it as real. You're the best husband there could ever be. I wrote like you do. It was only----"

"My God!" he cried, clutching her arms roughly. "You _didn't_ write it? You didn't----" He broke off and let go of her, holding her one moment at arm's length. She never could forget his eyes.

He stooped and picked up the cutting. He read it slowly through, as if that might help--or possibly to calm himself. Helena fell limply on the sofa. Minutes seemed to pass in silence.

Suddenly he crumpled up the little roll of paper and hurled it in the fireplace. Then he laughed and that alarmed her more than anything.

"Well," he said, trying to speak naturally, "that's that, then. It's no use having scenes, is it?" He stood very still, looking vacantly before him as though not realising what it meant.

"Hubert," she began again, as though in some way his name was a shield, and went to him, "let me explain----" but he waved her aside.

"What's the use?" he said gloomily. "It's all so obvious. The gutter Press has let itself go over me for weeks as the mysterious, self-centred Husband; the man who sacrificed his wife! I don't see why you should explain. It only makes things worse."

"But you don't see," she answered. "The husband wasn't you, any more than people in your novels. I wrote it--wrote it just for fun" (he snorted with an irony that even she observed), "never meaning the Press or any one--and then one day Mr. Alison----"

"Oh, _he_ was in it?" Hubert asked with a swift passion. The old antipathy revived. That young ass always _had_ been in it, somehow.

"He promised never to tell any one," said Helena. "You know, we wanted money so."

He laughed scornfully. "Oh yes, we wanted money. Money's everything. So long as we have money, what does it matter everybody knowing you think me a selfish brute or that----?" He broke off abruptly.

It was clear that he mastered himself only with an effort. "Have you _got_ the book?" he asked with an icy calmness, presently. "I suppose as your husband I've the right to read it?"

She could not answer. Somehow she got to the door, to her own room; unlocked her jewel-case and took from it the loathsome little book in its clean, innocent, green cover: then she went down and handed it without a word to him.

"So this is it?" he said with all Scorn in the words. He opened it at random. "'I am the background,'" he read in slow, cold tones as to a child; "'the background for _his_ work no less than the wall-paper of the one room where he can write; and I must be as quiet.'"

She stood there, thrown back fifteen years, a girl again before her governess: and he little suspected that with those words he was killing all her penitence and injuring her love.

"Anything sounds rubbish if you read it out," she suddenly blazed at him in quite another mood.

He shut the little book with a mild glance of surprise. "Don't let's have any scenes," he said once more. "This has just happened. It's pretty ghastly; don't let's make it worse. You'd better go to bed when you feel tired; I shall just sit and read--I want to know the worst. Don't wait up for me. It'd be rather a mockery to wish each other good-night!"

He moved towards the door. It was the time they always spent together, the best of her day.

She stood by the mantel-piece, leaning for support on it, wondering how any one could be so cruel--and feeling she deserved his cruelty.... It was so awful, put as he had put it: yet she had never meant----

His hand was on the door. She moved a few steps forward.

"Hugh," she cried, as though the name must surely explain everything: but he did not turn, even. He shut the door, quietly.

Helena threw herself face downwards on the sofa, but she could not cry.