Mrs. Fetherel blushed brightly. “It isn’t their coming,” she owned—“it’s their coming now.”
“Now?”
“The Bishop’s in town.”
Mrs. Clinch leaned back and shaped her lips to a whistle which deflected in a laugh. “Well!” she said.
“You see!” Mrs. Fetherel triumphed.
“Well—weren’t you prepared for the Bishop?”
“Not now—at least, I hadn’t thought of his seeing the clippings.”
“And why should he see them?”
“Bella—_won’t_ you understand? It’s John.”
“John?”
“Who has taken the most unexpected tone—one might almost say out of perversity.”
“Oh, perversity—” Mrs. Clinch murmured, observing her cousin between lids wrinkled by amusement. “What tone has John taken?”
Mrs. Fetherel threw out her answer with the desperate gesture of a woman who lays bare the traces of a marital fist. “The tone of being proud of my book.”
The measure of Mrs. Clinch’s enjoyment overflowed in laughter.
“Oh, you may laugh,” Mrs. Fetherel insisted, “but it’s no joke to me. In the first place, John’s liking the book is so—so—such a false note—it puts me in such a ridiculous position; and then it has set him watching for the reviews—who would ever have suspected John of knowing that books were reviewed? Why, he’s actually found out about the Clipping Bureau, and whenever the postman rings I hear John rush out of the library to see if there are any yellow envelopes. Of course, when they do come he’ll bring them into the drawing-room and read them aloud to everybody who happens to be here—and the Bishop is sure to happen to be here!”
Mrs. Clinch repressed her amusement. “The picture you draw is a lurid one,” she conceded, “but your modesty strikes me as abnormal, especially in an author. The chances are that some of the clippings will be rather pleasant reading. The critics are not all union men.”
Mrs. Fetherel stared. “Union men?”
“Well, I mean they don’t all belong to the well-known Society-for-the-Persecution-of-Rising-Authors. Some of them have even been known to defy its regulations and say a good word for a new writer.”
“Oh, I dare say,” said Mrs. Fetherel, with the laugh her cousin’s epigram exacted. “But you don’t quite see my point. I’m not at all nervous about the success of my book—my publisher tells me I have no need to be—but I am afraid of its being a succes de scandale.”
“Mercy!” said Mrs. Clinch, sitting up.
The butler and footman at this moment appeared with the tea-tray, and when they had withdrawn, Mrs. Fetherel, bending her brightly rippled head above the kettle, continued in a murmur of avowal, “The title, even, is a kind of challenge.”
“‘Fast and Loose,’” Mrs. Clinch mused. “Yes, it ought to take.”
“I didn’t choose it for that reason!” the author protested. “I should have preferred something quieter—less pronounced; but I was determined not to shirk the responsibility of what I had written. I want people to know beforehand exactly what kind of book they are buying.”
“Well,” said Mrs. Clinch, “that’s a degree of conscientiousness that I’ve never met with before. So few books fulfil the promise of their titles that experienced readers never expect the fare to come up to the menu.”
“‘Fast and Loose’ will be no disappointment on that score,” her cousin significantly returned. “I’ve handled the subject without gloves. I’ve called a spade a spade.”
“You simply make my mouth water! And to think I haven’t been able to read it yet because every spare minute of my time has been given to correcting the proofs of ‘How the Birds Keep Christmas’! There’s an instance of the hardships of an author’s life!”
Mrs. Fetherel’s eye clouded. “Don’t joke, Bella, please. I suppose to experienced authors there’s always something absurd in the nervousness of a new writer, but in my case so much is at stake; I’ve put so much of myself into this book and I’m so afraid of being misunderstood…of being, as it were, in advance of my time… like poor Flaubert….I know you’ll think me ridiculous… and if only my own reputation were at stake, I should never give it a thought…but the idea of dragging John’s name through the mire…”
Mrs. Clinch, who had risen and gathered her cloak about her, stood surveying from her genial height her cousin’s agitated countenance.
“Why did you use John’s name, then?”
“That’s another of my difficulties! I had to. There would have been no merit in publishing such a book under an assumed name; it would have been an act of moral cowardice. ‘Fast and Loose’ is not an ordinary novel. A writer who dares to show up the hollowness of social conventions must have the courage of her convictions and be willing to accept the consequences of defying society. Can you imagine Ibsen or Tolstoy writing under a false name?” Mrs. Fetherel lifted a tragic eye to her cousin. “You don’t know, Bella, how often I’ve envied you since I began to write. I used to wonder sometimes—you won’t mind my saying so?—why, with all your cleverness, you hadn’t taken up some more exciting subject than natural history; but I see now how wise you were. Whatever happens, you will never be denounced by the press!”
“Is that what you’re afraid of?” asked Mrs. Clinch, as she grasped the bulging umbrella which rested against her chair. “My dear, if I had ever had the good luck to be denounced by the press, my brougham would be waiting at the door for me at this very moment, and I shouldn’t have to ruin this umbrella by using it in the rain. Why, you innocent, if I’d ever felt the slightest aptitude for showing up social conventions, do you suppose I should waste my time writing ‘Nests Ajar’ and ‘How to Smell the Flowers’? There’s a fairly steady demand for pseudo-science and colloquial ornithology, but it’s nothing, simply nothing, to the ravenous call for attacks on social institutions—especially by those inside the institutions!”
There was often, to her cousin, a lack of taste in Mrs. Clinch’s pleasantries, and on this occasion they seemed more than usually irrelevant.
“‘Fast and Loose’ was not written with the idea of a large sale.”
Mrs. Clinch was unperturbed. “Perhaps that’s just as well,” she returned, with a philosophic shrug. “The surprise will be all the pleasanter, I mean. For of course it’s going to sell tremendously; especially if you can get the press to denounce it.”
“Bella, how can you? I sometimes think you say such things expressly to tease me; and yet I should think you of all women would understand my purpose in writing such a book. It has always seemed to me that the message I had to deliver was not for myself alone, but for all the other women in the world who have felt the hollowness of our social shams, the ignominy of bowing down to the idols of the market, but have lacked either the courage or the power to proclaim their independence; and I have fancied, Bella dear, that, however severely society might punish me for revealing its weaknesses, I could count on the sympathy of those who, like you”—Mrs. Fetherel’s voice sank—“have passed through the deep waters.”
Mrs. Clinch gave herself a kind of canine shake, as though to free her ample shoulders from any drop of the element she was supposed to have traversed.
“Oh, call them muddy rather than deep,” she returned; “and you’ll find, my dear, that women who’ve had any wading to do are rather shy of stirring up mud. It sticks—especially on white clothes.”
Mrs. Fetherel lifted an undaunted brow. “I’m not afraid,” she proclaimed; and at the same instant she dropped her tea-spoon with a clatter and shrank back into her seat. “There’s the bell,” she exclaimed, “and I know it’s the Bishop!”