"Will that be worth your while, Mr. Samphire?"
Mark frankly explained his position. He thought he was qualified to translate either French or Italian books. McIntyre said he would make a note of it, and did so, entering Mark's address in a small pocket-book.
"Finish your novel," said he at parting. "And give it undivided attention."
Accordingly, Mark remained at Weybridge. He realised that if this novel failed, he must become, as Betty said, a drudge; and he was certain that hack-writing meant the sacrifice of higher literary ambitions. McIntyre was right. He must make the effort of his life to grasp something substantial. If he failed, let him clutch at straws!
Necessity lent edge to the enterprise. Each morning he woke with an appetite for work which seemed to increase rather than diminish. He became so absorbed in his task that everything and everybody became subservient to it. Archibald had taken Betty abroad; Pynsent was in Paris; Jim Corrance had been summoned to New York; David Ross still held aloof. So, for six weeks or more, he was undisturbed by the claims of friendship: the only claims at that time which he would have considered.
But to such a temperament as Mark's, speech is vital. Having no one else, he talked with Mary. He told himself that Mary was a remarkable girl, endowed with a fund of practical common sense upon which he was entitled to draw. Mary walked every other Sunday, if it was fine, with the young fellow of whom mention has been made. The rest of her time was spent with her mother and in the prosecution of duties which lay within the apple-green palings of her home. Mrs. Dew kept one servant, a cook; Mary worked in the house and in the garden.
The Dews, mother and daughter, knew that Mark was a writer. Mrs. Dew, however, considered literary work not quite "genteel." When Mark said to her: "You know, Mrs. Dew, that I'm an author," she sniffed and replied: "I didn't think you liked it mentioned."
It is curious and instructive to trace any friendship to its source. Mark had a character in his book not unlike Mary. The reviewers of his first novel agreed that Mark drew men with a firm touch; his women, on the other hand, were unconvincing, artificial, idealised. It was the most natural thing that he should say to Mary in his pleasant, friendly voice: "I s-s-say, Honeydew, if you found yourself in such-and-such a quandary, what would you do?"
Mary answered this first question so simply and convincingly that it led to many others. Mark ignored her sex, talking to her as he talked to Pynsent and Corrance.
"Such a lot depends upon the success of this book," he told her. "Journalism means bread-and-scrape, at best cakes and ale, but I'm hungering for the nectar and ambrosia of Literature. I feel my power with the men, but with the women—I grope. What I don't know about your delightful sex, Mary, would fill an encyclopædia."