 | Expiation |  |
3. III.
It was several weeks later that Mrs. Clinch once more brought the plebeian aroma of heated tram-cars and muddy street-crossings into the violet-scented atmosphere of her cousin's drawing-room.
"Well," she said, tossing a damp bundle of proof into the corner of a silk-cushioned bergère, "I've read it at last and I'm not so awfully shocked!"
Mrs. Fetherel, who sat near the fire with her head propped on a languid hand, looked up without speaking.
"Mercy, Paula," said her visitor, "you're ill."
Mrs. Fetherel shook her head. "I was never better," she said,mournfully.
"Then may I help myself to tea? Thanks."
Mrs. Clinch carefully removed her mended glove before taking a buttered tea-cake; then she glanced again at her cousin.
"It's not what I said just now—?" she ventured.
"Just now?"
"About 'Fast and Loose'? I came to talk it over."
Mrs. Fetherel sprang to her feet. "I never," she cried dramatically, "want to hear it mentioned again!"
"Paula!" exclaimed Mrs. Clinch, setting down her cup.
Mrs. Fetherel slowly turned on her an eye brimming with the incommunicable; then, dropping into her seat again, she added, with a tragic laugh, "There's nothing left to say."
"Nothing—?" faltered Mrs. Clinch, longing for another tea-cake, but feeling the inappropriateness of the impulse in an atmosphere so charged with the portentous. "Do you mean that everything has been said?" She looked tentatively at her cousin. "Haven't they been nice?"
"They've been odious—odious—" Mrs. Fetherel burst out, with an ineffectual clutch at her handkerchief. "It's been perfectly intolerable!"
Mrs. Clinch, philosophically resigning herself to the propriety of taking no more tea, crossed over to her cousin and laid a sympathizing hand on that lady's agitated shoulder.
"It is a bore at first," she conceded; "but you'll be surprised to see how soon one gets used to it."
"I shall—never—get—used to it—" Mrs. Fetherel brokenly declared.
"Have they been so very nasty—all of them?"
"Every one of them!" the novelist sobbed.
"I'm so sorry, dear; it does hurt, I know—but hadn't you rather expected it?"
"Expected it?" cried Mrs. Fetherel, sitting up.
Mrs. Clinch felt her way warily. "I only mean, dear, that I fancied from what you said before the book came out—that you rather expected—that you'd rather discounted—"
"Their recommending it to everybody as a perfectly harmless story?"
"Good gracious! Is that what they've done?"
Mrs. Fetherel speechlessly nodded.
"Every one of them?"
"Every one—"
"Whew!" said Mrs. Clinch, with an incipient whistle.
"Why, you've just said it yourself!" her cousin suddenly reproached her.
"Said what?"
"That you weren't so awfully shocked—"
"I? Oh, well—you see, you'd keyed me up to such a pitch that it wasn't quite as bad as I expected—"
Mrs. Fetherel lifted a smile steeled for the worst. "Why not say at once," she suggested, "that it's a distinctly pretty story?"
"They haven't said that?"
"They've all said it."
"My poor Paula!"
"Even the Bishop—"
"The Bishop called it a pretty story?"
"He wrote me—I've his letter somewhere. The title rather scared him—he wanted me to change it; but when he'd read the book he wrote that it was all right and that he'd sent several copies to his friends."
"The old hypocrite!" cried Mrs. Clinch. "That was nothing but professional jealousy."
"Do you think so?" cried her cousin, brightening.
"Sure of it, my dear. His own books don't sell, and he knew the quickest way to kill yours was to distribute it through the diocese with his blessing."
"Then you don't really think it's a pretty story?"
"Dear me, no! Not nearly as bad as that—"
"You're so good, Bella—but the reviewers?"
"Oh, the reviewers," Mrs. Clinch jeered. She gazed meditatively at the cold remains of her tea-cake. "Let me see,"she said, suddenly; "do you happen to remember if the first review came out in an important paper?"
"Yes—the 'Radiator.'"
"That's it! I thought so. Then the others simply followed suit: they often do if a big paper sets the pace. Saves a lot of trouble. Now if you could only have got the 'Radiator' to denounce you—"
"That's what the Bishop said!" cried Mrs. Fetherel.
"He did?"
"He said his only chance of selling 'Through a Glass Brightly' was to have it denounced on the ground of immorality."
"H'm," said Mrs. Clinch. "I thought he knew a trick or two." She turned an illuminated eye on her cousin. "You ought to get him to denounce 'Fast and Loose'!" she cried.
Mrs. Fetherel looked at her suspiciously. "I suppose every book must stand or fall on its own merits," she said in an unconvinced tone.
"Bosh! That view is as extinct as the post-chaise and the packet-ship—it belongs to the time when people read books. Nobody does that now; the reviewer was the first to set the example, and the public were only too thankful to follow it. At first they read the reviews; now they read only the publishers' extracts from them. Even these are rapidly being replaced by paragraphs borrowed from the vocabulary of commerce. I often have to look twice before I am sure if I am reading a department-store advertisement or the announcement of a new batch of literature. The publishers will soon be having their 'fall and spring openings' and their 'special importations for Horse-Show Week.' But the Bishop is right, of course—nothing helps a book like a rousing attack on its morals;and as the publishers can't exactly proclaim the impropriety of their own wares, the task has to be left to the press or the pulpit."
"The pulpit—?" Mrs. Fetherel mused.
"Why, yes—look at those two novels in England last year—"
Mrs. Fetherel shook her head hopelessly. "There is so much more interest in literature in England than here."
"Well, we've got to make the supply
"But if he can't make his own sell—?"
"My dear, a man can't very well preach against his own writings!"
Mrs. Clinch rose and picked up her proofs.
"I'm awfully sorry for you, Paula dear," she concluded, "but I can't help being thankful that there's no demand for pessimism in the field of natural history. Fancy having to write 'The Fall of a Sparrow,' or 'How the Plants Misbehave!'"
| Expiation | |