PART III
HELENA BRETT'S CAREER
CHAPTER XVIII
ZOË
Helena unfolded the slip, pasted on its blue half-sheet, and began to read it, thoroughly engrossed. She seemed forgetful of Geoffrey Alison, who in turn watched her with hardly less attention, more anxiety. He knew the thing by heart.
"Confessions of an Author's Wife (Blatchley & Co.) is by its name confessed as of the Human Document category, and this sort of book is never without its attraction. The present volume, chastely bound in green appropriately virginal, recounts the growth of a young girl married to a more or less successful author. Zoë Baskerville, who on one page lets somebody call her Virginia (a lapse not making for conviction), tells in the first person her laudable efforts to develop an ego in the face of a husband who has enough of it for ten. His selfish absorption in his own moods and the conditions suitable to his own labours not unnaturally create in Zoë a feeling of thwarted ambition, which results in a watered, girlish, form of cynicism about Man and Woman. This, however, passes off in the last chapter, where for some reason not easy of access to the mere reader Zoë suddenly sloughs her despondency and bursts into an exultant Credo: 'I believe that Life, all in all, is the most splendid gift a kind God could give to his children. I believe that Man'—and so on for the last four pages.
"It will be seen that subtlety and cohesion are not the strongest points in these confessions, which we hope we have taken seriously enough. About their popularity there can be no doubt. The book possesses pathos, humour, freshness; a mixture beyond failing; and moreover, impinges on life, married life, at moments with a frankness more essentially French than English. This fact may induce those still in Zoë's earlier mood of cynicism to suspicion a male, Fleet Street, author: but for our part, remembering the naïveté of female Youth and that incriminating name Virginia, we are quite ready to accept the volume's authenticity, if we misdoubt somewhat The End's sincerity.
"Taken thus, as a real document, the book has a persuasive charm. Pathetic little Zoë is a figure as real as her selfish husband, who emerges in some way as less great than has been actually stated. (Perhaps we were wrong in denying the book any subtlety.) We can foresee a long and lucrative discussion as to the Author's identity. For our part, we make a gift of the discovered clue 'Virginia,' and shall wait patiently until the publisher, as a good man and true, duly announces the authorship before issuing a cheap edition. Till that day we shall hope to live our lives in much the same round as before."
Helena stared so long at the narrow slip, obviously deep in thought, that Geoffrey Alison found his anxiety turn to a nervous guilt.