"To-morrow is out of the question. You don't realise how slowly I write, and I haven't the motives."
"Say the next day—say by Thursday. But it must be by then. The man goes out of town on Saturday, and I want him to read them before he goes. If I can have the manuscripts on Thursday, you can have ten guineas Saturday night."
"It's a very good offer," said Kent. "You must get a royal rate."
"Well, I couldn't always offer you so much, but, then, I don't often want them quite so long. Two, of three thousand words, and to end happily, for choice. Not too strong. If they will illustrate well, all the better, but you needn't give yourself any trouble on that score—it's the artist's affair."
"I'll do them," said Humphrey. "I suppose I must make an attempt to imitate your style?"
"It isn't necessary. I generally begin with a very short sentence, like 'It was noon,' or 'It rained'; you might do that; but I really don't know that it matters.... Mr. Kent——"
"Yes?" he said.
"This is a confidential matter; I rely on your honour not to mention it to a living soul, of course! I don't know how much married you are, but I depend on you not to tell your wife. It would ruin me if it came out."
He assured her that she might trust him, and having pledged himself to the lighter task, he resolved on his way home that he would undertake the heavier, too. She did not want a year of his best work—he doubted if he could contemplate that, even if refusal meant Strawberry Hill for Cynthia and the baby, and the workhouse for himself—she asked only a few weeks of his worst. Money was indispensable; he must make it in whatever way he could. A ghost, eh? He was rising finely in the career of literature. His first novel had received what was almost the highest possible cachet; his second was "declined with thanks"; and now no mode of livelihood was left him but to be a ghost. His throat was tight with shame; there were tears in it.
That passed. He reflected that with two hundred pounds in his pocket he would be able to sit down to another novel on his own account; he might be luckier with that than with The Eye of the Beholder. What were a few weeks compared with two hundred pounds? Mrs. Deane-Pitt must have thought him a fool to hesitate. Practical herself, indeed! But—well, for all that, it was rather fascinating to feel that so intimate a confidence was going to subsist between them! She had been a trifle nervous, too, as she took that cigarette; he hoped he hadn't been a prig. She was very nice; it distressed him to think that she had been afraid of him even for a second. Two hundred pounds? He wondered what share it was—half, or more than half, or less. With a woman, however, he could not go into that. His admission that five guineas seemed a lot to him for a three-thousand-word story had probably been injudicious—and it must have made him sound very ignorant besides. Well, that couldn't be helped. And he would be glad if the partnership paid her well; whatever terms she obtained, she must be perfectly aware that her offer was a liberal one to a man in his position, and he was grateful to her. He felt it again—she had been "nice." He began to revolve a plot for the first of the stories, and by the time he reached home he had vaguely thought of one. When Turquand came in, it had shaped. Saying that he had work to do, Kent left him, and went upstairs. He drew a chair to the table, and sat down and wrote—slowly, painfully. The man was an artist, and he could not help the care he took. He sneered at himself for it. Mrs. Deane-Pitt had impressed on him that anything would do, and here he was meditating and revising as if it were a story to submit to the most exclusive of the magazines in his own name. He dashed his pen in the ink, and threw a paragraph on the paper. But he could not go on. His consciousness of that slip-shod paragraph higher up clogged his invention, so that he had to go back to it and put it right. Presently a touch of cheerfulness crept into his mood. That was well said. Yes, she would praise that! The pride of authorship possessed him; he wrote with pleasure; and at two o'clock, when a third of the tale was achieved, he went to bed feeling exhilarated.