“I, my dear? For a most excellent reason.”
“What reason?” demanded Miriam in a shaking voice. Her heart was beating; she felt that a personal decision was going to be affected by Jan’s reason, if she could be got to express it. Jan did not reply instantly and she found herself hoping that nothing more would be said about writing, that she might be free to go on cherishing the idea, alone and unbiassed.
“I do not write” said Jan slowly, “because I am perfectly convinced that anything I might write would be mediocre.”
Miriam’s heart sank. If Jan, with all her German knowledge and her wit and experience of two countries felt this, it was probably much truer of herself. To think about it, to dwell upon the things Mr. Wilson had said was simply vanity. He had said anyone could learn to write. But he was clever and ready to believe her clever in the same way, and ready to take ideas from him. It was true she had material, “stuff” as he called it, but she would not have known it, if she had not been told. She could see it now, as he saw it, but if she wrote at his suggestion, a borrowed suggestion, there would be something false in it, clever and false.
“Yes—I think Jan’s right,” said Mag cheerfully. “That is an excellent reason and the true one.”
It was true. But how could they speak so lightly and cheerfully about writing ... the thing one had always wanted to do, that everyone probably secretly wanted to do, and the girls could give up the idea without a sigh. They were right. It would be wrong to write mediocre stuff. Why was she feeling so miserable? Of course because neither of them had suggested that she should write. They knew her better than Mr. Wilson and it never occurred to them that she should write. That settled it. But something moved despairingly in the void.
“Do you think it would be wrong to write mediocre stuff?” she asked huskily.
“It would be worse than wrong child—it would be foolish; it wouldn’t sell.”