[CHAPTER XV]
Griselda, during several days, was hardly at home at all. The Fords were still in town; she had lunched one day in Queen Anne Street, the next at Campden Hill, and nearly every night the Fords fetched her to take her to a play or a party.
Mrs. Walbridge could, of course, have forced the girl into a confidential talk, but she was not of the kind who do force people to talk against their will, and it was very plain to her that her daughter was avoiding her, although the girl was oddly enough at the same time full of little sudden bursts of affection and unusually generous in the matter of little passing hugs and kisses for her mother.
Mrs. Walbridge was less troubled than she otherwise would have been by this preoccupation of her daughter, owing to the fact that she herself was very much taken up with the new book she was writing. She had made several attempts, for she felt weighed down with gratitude to her publisher in sending her the cheque before the book was written, and she had rather lost sight of the fact that this, kind though it was, was in reality a douceur to sweeten the hard fact of her dismissal from their list of authors. She had begun and destroyed several novels before she got really started, and now this new one was filling her mind day and night, although she felt grave doubts as to whether it was going to be good. It was dreadful to her to reflect that the book might turn out as much of a failure as "Lord Effingham" had been, and thus cause pecuniary loss to Mr. Lubbock and Mr. Payne. So she worked day and night, her pen flying over the paper in a way that roused Paul's grave doubts as to the results of her labour.
"You can't possibly write a book that way, mother," the young man said one day when he had come up to her study to have her mend a glove that he had split. "You ought to see the way Collier writes. Works for hours over one bit, and weighs every word."
Mrs. Walbridge said nothing, for it would not have been any good, she thought. She did not express her conviction that the result of Mr. Bruce Collier's word-weighing was hardly worth while, but, as she stitched at the glove, the young man, who was in a good mood, went on, not unkindly, to encourage her, as he expressed it, to take more pains with her work. He did not know that her contract with Lubbock & Payne had come to an end, with no prospect of renewal. She had not again referred the matter to her husband, and he had not mentioned the subject to her. She was living in the curious isolation of a writer engaged in congenial work. She was deliberately allowing her mind to rest from pecuniary cares for a few days, in order that her novel might progress satisfactorily.
"You ought to work regularly," Paul explained. It was Sunday morning, and he looked very smart, turned out as he was for a luncheon party after church parade. "Collier does. And I met Miss Potter, who writes about mediæval Constantinople—her books sell enormously—and she told me that she writes as regularly as she eats her meals—two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon. That's what keeps her brain so fresh."