In the Mist of the Mountains Part 23

"After all, Bee," she said more brightly, "he is really _very_ nice. And except when you're behind him you don't notice he's going bald. Perhaps he's a man you'd get to like a good deal after you were married to him."

"That's what I feel," said Bee, and added in an extremely virtuous tone, "if I didn't I should not think of him for one minute. How girls can marry really old men or horrid men, I simply don't know. I think it's just disgraceful. But with Hugh Kinross it is _very_ different and people think a lot of you if your husband's an author and you get asked _everywhere_."

She returned energetically to her chiffon and twisted it in a most artistic fas.h.i.+on upon a charming hat.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "She returned energetically to her chiffon, and twisted it in a most artistic fas.h.i.+on."]

Dora jumped down also from the bed and began to collect her own belongings. Then she stopped short one second; pretty as she was she had a latent sense of humour.

"It would be rather funny, Bee, after all this talk if he'd never given either of us a serious thought," she said. "What makes you so sure?"

"Oh, lots of things," said Miss Bee. "Look at the chocolates and things he brings us--and didn't he make Mrs. Gowan ask us to join his party for the Caves? And look at the things he says actually to us--that quotation, for instance, when we were on the seat in the summer-house,--"

"'How happy could I be with either, Were t'other dear charmer away!'"

murmured Dora softly.

"Yes, and lots of things like that. A man of his age doesn't say them as Charlie or Graham might. Love is a much more serious thing with a real man than with a boy."

"Yes, I suppose so," sighed Dora.

"And don't you remember what Effie Gowan told us she had heard her mother laughing and telling her father? That when he asks after us he always says, 'Well, how are the ducky little girls?' Or else, 'When are you going to bring the little pets down?'"

"Y-yes," said Dora, "yes, I suppose he must be serious then--as he's not a boy."

"And Mrs. Gowan told me privately that she really did hope Hugh would marry and that she thought a bright young wife would do him a world of good and get him out of all his old-fas.h.i.+oned ways. Said it meaningly, too."

"Oh, well," said Dora, "I had better go. It must be nearly time to dress for dinner. What are you going to wear, Bee?"

And Hugh was promptly shelved to permit of this more important point being properly discussed.

CHAPTER XVI

WOOING THE MUSE

"Five thousand words," muttered Hugh, and then tilted back in the steady chair he had abstracted from the kitchen for the very purpose. Yes, this was going to be one of his good days--he willed it so. The mood was not there certainly, but then, now the finis.h.i.+ng of the book had become a pressing necessity, the mood never was there; it was like a tantalizing b.u.t.terfly that flitted a second in his face and then led him a desperate chase through a tangle of undergrowth that never ended.

Five thousand words! Yes, he could if he would. Let him brace up his sinews, summon up his blood! The mere act of battling for it hard and earnestly would probably bring the mood back--it had done so many a time ere this.

Let him read over the last chapter or so to get in touch again with his characters.

Great heavens, what balderdash it all was! He crashed his chair on to its four legs again and reached out blindly for his pen. And now he scored pages and pages across with heavy black lines; he seemed to take a vicious pleasure after a little time in destroying what he had written and went along with his lips tight and a hard look in his eye, weighing every sentence in the balance and adjusting that balance to such nicety that he found nearly every sentence wanting. Out they came: occasionally a fierce black zig-zag on the page he considered sufficient for future deliberations, but more frequently it needed greater physical activity to relieve his state of mind and he ripped the page fiercely off the block, crumpled it in his hand and sent it flying across the room.

If Miss Bibby had happened in that morning she would have come to the conclusion that the eccentricity of genius led it to divert itself at times with the game of paper s...o...b..a.l.l.s.

The heavy slaughtering brought a degree of relief; he looked over his shoulder at the paper-strewn floor and felt a twinge of self-satisfaction: there were authors who would have pa.s.sed the work quite complacently or at most have considered a little polis.h.i.+ng was all it needed. For him it was satisfaction or s...o...b..a.l.l.s--no medium course.

But then he groaned, for his eye of a sudden fell on a calendar. Fell on _the_ calendar, to be exact. Many of his lady friends and admirers invariably presented him with calendars at Christmas time ("Such a suitable present for an author, my dear!"); exquisite works of art some of them were, whose dainty strips of ribbon, adroitly pulled, brought into more or less perfect view the day of the month nestling in the heart of a flower. Or you would turn a gilded handle perhaps and a day of the week would appear on the silver sail of a s.h.i.+p, while another turn would bring the date to the figure head and the pressing of a spring send the name of the month fluttering as a flag on the top of the mast. Hugh had a sincere admiration for this ingenious trifle, and frequently when a hero was behaving untowardly idly amused himself with spinning up the signs.

But of course, if one really wanted to know the date one looked at the plainest one had: this year it happened to be a gratis one, presented with the advertis.e.m.e.nt pamphlets of some patent medicine, and it had stood Hugh in good stead from January to now, when November's cloud of heat clung closely to the mountains.

But the sight of it caused him to groan and to realize that the just pa.s.sed Berserk mood had cost him perhaps seven thousand words; and the seven thousand words represented all the work he had done up here at "Tenby"--"Tenby" that he had taken expressly for the performance of doughty deeds of literature.

He looked ruefully at his s...o...b..a.l.l.s;--perhaps after all he had been hypercritical, perhaps one or two of those pages might be rescued and smoothed out and made to answer. After all, who else would be the better or the worse for it? All the public wanted of him was a piquant flavour for its jaded appet.i.te and the details on which he bestowed such a fever of care would probably escape its attention altogether. Yes, after all, what was he? Just the paid provider of certain species of mental refreshment,--a sort of fas.h.i.+onable drink that the hurrying public, coming along and seeing others drinking, took a gulp at and went on with its much more important work nor better nor worse for the quaff. Why, an orange boy, selling his honest juicy fruit to a thirsty crowd was a better public benefactor than himself! Pah! he had been over-estimating himself of late; he was not of the authors who might legitimately claim to refresh and stimulate the race to higher things. He was just a maker of "bitters," and the public, in its charmingly inscrutable fas.h.i.+on, declaring for it as its favourite beverage for the moment, he had become "popular." Why worry himself ill over the concoction of the bitters; sharp and strong that was all it asked? Yes, yes, those s...o...b..a.l.l.s on the floor were quite good enough, let him pick them up and uncrumple them and pin them back in their places ready for the typewriter.

But Kate came in,--Kate in one of her fresh-looking pin-spot print frocks. She seemed to exhale something clean, wholesome, stimulating, though she spoke no word and only laid the morning letters down beside him and, when he looked round at her, gave him her cheery smile.

He clutched at her plump, print-covered arm.

"For the love of heaven, K," he said, "pick all that paper up off the floor and take it away."

Kate gave him the soothing hand-stroke that nurses keep for feverish patients.

"Of course," she said, "certainly, straight away, old boy." She groped about beneath his knees for the wastepaper basket that would be needed as vehicle.

Then he heard her breathing a little hard as she stooped here, there and everywhere for the s...o...b..a.l.l.s.

He did not turn round, but talked during her labours.

"It's not etiquette I know, girl," he said, "I wouldn't dare to present a hero to the public who let a woman pick up her own handkerchief. But I always was a cowardly chap, wasn't I? You remember the time I took Jack's licking at school because I knew if I turned round and let him see it was the wrong fellow, the master would notice my cheek was puffed out with toothache and send me straight off to the dentist's."

"Yes, I remember," said Kate, puffing and panting cheerfully about the room.

"Hurry up, old girl," he said. "In a second I shan't be able to restrain myself from clutching some of that stuff back."

"And it's genuinely bad?" said Kate, working hard: you might have imagined her engaged in gathering mushrooms at so much a minute.

"The sc.u.m of literary abomination," groaned Hugh.

"And you're certain you're not deceiving yourself."

"Oh, perhaps I am," he said swinging round, "y-y-yes, I'm pretty sure it's good enough. Seven thousand words, K, seven thousand p-p-precious words--human nature won't stand it, will it? Let me have another look at it."

But now Kate was adamant.

"Good enough is not good enough for Hugh Kinross," she said sternly and made straight off to the kitchen fire with the overflowing basket clasped firmly in her arms.

And now Hugh heaved a sigh of relief and settled down in better heart to his work. He took out a fresh writing-block and firmly and with inspiring a.s.surance inscribed upon it the number of his chapter.

But after regarding this effort with an uplifted look for a second or two his eye fell upon the letters beside him that Kate had laid down.

Now there is something insidiously insistent about the morning post when one is away from all the other corrupting effects of the civilization of cities.

Hugh knew perfectly well that he was trembling on the verge of his precipice when he let his eye linger upon the envelopes; he knew perfectly well that the act of opening one would send his already nearly maddened Muse clean out of the window for the rest of the morning. But yet he dallied.

It was more than possible that there was a highly important letter there, and two or three hours' delay in opening would mean a serious loss. His last story, for instance, that his London agent was serializing in several countries--yes, it was quite possible some instant information was wanted about it. Or that tale he had offered to an American magazine--probably there was news about it here; it was a decent story too, he would like to find out if it had been appreciated.