George Peregrine finished his Times and being a considerate fellow rang the bell and told the butler to take it to Evie. Then he looked at his watch. It was half past ten and at eleven he had an appointment with one of his tenants. He had half an hour to spare.
'I'd better have a look at Evie's book,' he said to himself.
He took it up with a smile. Evie had a lot of highbrow books in her sitting-room, not the sort of books that interested him, but if they amused her he had no objection to her reading them. He noticed that the volume he now held in his hand contained no more than ninety pages. That was all to the good. He shared Edgar Allan Poe's opinion that poems should be short. But as he turned the pages he noticed that several of Evie's had long lines of irregular length and didn't rhyme. He didn't like that. At his first school, when he was a little boy, he remembered learning a poem that began: The boy stood on the burning deck, and later, at Eton, one that started: Ruin seize thee, ruthless king; and then there was Henry V; they'd had to take that, one half. He stared at Evie's pages with consternation.
'That's not what I call poetry,' he said.
Fortunately it wasn't all like that. Interspersed with the pieces that looked so odd, lines of three or four words and then a line of ten or fifteen, there were little poems, quite short, that rhymed, thank God, with the lines all the same length. Several of the pages were just headed with the word Sonnet, and out of curiosity he counted the lines; there were fourteen of them. He read them. They seemed all right, but he didn't quite know what they were all about. He repeated to himself: Ruin seize thee, ruthless king.
'Poor Evie,' he sighed.
At that moment the farmer he was expecting was ushered into the study, and putting the book down he made him welcome. They embarked on their business.
'I read your book, Evie,' he said as they sat down to lunch.'Jolly good. Did it cost you a packet to have it printed?'
'No, I was lucky. I sent it to a publisher and he took it.'
'Not much money in poetry, my dear,' he said in his good-natured, hearty way.
'No, I don't suppose there is. What did Bannock want to see you about this morning?'.
Bannock was the tenant who had interrupted his reading of Evie's poems.
'He's asked me to advance the money for a pedigree bull he wants to buy. He's a good man and I've half a mind to do it.'
George Peregrine saw that Evie didn't want to talk about her book and he was not sorry to change the subject. He was glad she had used her maiden name on the title page; he didn't suppose anyone would ever hear about the book, but he was proud of his own unusual name and he wouldn't have liked it if some damned penny-a-liner had made fun of Evie's effort in one of the papers.
During the few weeks that followed he thought it tactful not to ask Evie any questions about her venture into verse, and she never referred to it. It might have been a discreditable incident that they had silently agreed not to mention. But then a strange thing happened. He had to go to London on business and he took Daphne out to dinner. That was the name of the girl with whom he was in the habit of passing a few agreeable hours whenever he went to town.
'Oh, George,' she said, 'is that your wife who's written a book they're all talking about?'
'What on earth d'you mean?'
'Well, there's a fellow I know who's a critic. He took me out to dinner the other night and he had a book with him. "Got anything for me to read?" I said. "What's that?" "Oh, I don't think that's your cup of tea," he said. "It's poetry. I've just been reviewing it." "No poetry for me," I said. "It's about the hottest stuff I ever read," he said. "Selling like hot cakes. And it's damned good.'"
'Who's the book by?' asked George.
'A woman called Hamilton. My friend told me that wasn't her real name. He said her real name was Peregrine. "Funny," I said, "I know a fellow called Peregrine." "Colonel in the army," he said. "Lives near Sheffield.'"
'I'd just as soon you didn't talk about me to your friends,' said George with a frown of vexation.
'Keep your shirt on, dearie. Who d'you take me for? I just said: "It's not the same one.'" Daphne giggled. 'My friend said: "They say he's a regular Colonel Blimp.'"
George had a keen sense of humour.
'You could tell them better than that,' he laughed. 'If my wife had written a book I'd be the first to know about it, wouldn't I?
'I suppose you would.'
Anyhow the matter didn't interest her and when the colonel began to talk of other things she forgot about it. He put it out of his mind too. There was nothing to it, he decided, and that silly fool of a critic had just been pulling Daphne's leg. He was amused at the thought of her tackling that book because she had been told it was hot stuff and then finding it just a lot of bosh cut up into unequal lines.
He was a member of several clubs and next day he thought he'd lunch at one in St James's Street. He was catching a train back to Sheffield early in the afternoon. He was sitting in a comfortable armchair having a glass of sherry before going into the dining-room when an old friend came up to him.
'Well, old boy, how's life?' he said. 'How d'you like being the husband of a celebrity?'
George Peregrine looked at his friend. He thought he saw an amused twinkle in his eyes.
'I don't know what you're talking about,' he answered.
'Come off it, George. Everyone knows E.K. Hamilton is your wife. Not often a book of verse has a success like that. Look here, Henry Dashwood is lunching with me. He'd like to meet you.'
'Who the devil is Henry Dashwood and why should he want to meet me?'
'Oh, my dear fellow, what do you do with yourself all the time in the country? Henry's about the best critic we've got. He wrote a wonderful review of Evie's book. D'you mean to say she didn't show it you?'
Before George could answer his friend had called a man over. A tall, thin man, with a high forehead, a beard, a long nose, and a stoop, just the sort of man whom George was prepared to dislike at first sight. Introductions were effected. Henry Dashwood sat down.
'Is Mrs Peregrine in London by any chance? I should very much like to meet her,' he said.
'No, my wife doesn't like London. She prefers the country,' said George stiffly.