“Not an atom more than the book deserves!” responded Anne warmly. “And the reviews on it—I saw two or three—were excellent.”
“Indeed!” said General Carden politely. The old hypocrite had no mind to mention that every review ever penned on it was now lying safely locked in his desk, that he knew them all nearly verbatim, that he had gloated over them, exulted over them though with many a little stab of pain in the region called the heart.
“Of course,” pursued Anne thoughtfully, “it isn’t merely a surface book, full of adventure, movement, and incident; and what incident there is might be termed improbable by those who don’t realize that nothing is improbable, nothing impossible. It’s in its style, its finish, its—its texture that the charm and beauty of it lie.”
“It has certainly some well-turned phrases,” [Pg 140]conceded General Carden magnanimously. He liked her to talk about the book; he longed for her to continue, though for the life of him he could not give her a lead. Yet his grudging admiration—all a pretence though it was, though Anne could not know that—fired her to further defence of the writing, stimulated her to fresh praise.
“There are delightful phrases!” she said emphatically. “It is a modern book, yet with all the delicacy, the refinement, the porcelain-air of the old school. For all that the scenes are laid mainly in the open, and are, as I said, quite modern; it breathes an old-world grace, a kind of powder-and-patches charm, which makes one feel that the writer must have imbibed the finish, the courtesy of the old school from his cradle, as if it must have come to him as a birthright, an inheritance.”
General Carden drew himself up. His blue eyes were shining. “Your praise of the book,” he said, “is delightful. The author”—his eyes grew suddenly sad—“would, I am sure, be honoured if he knew your opinion.”
Anne flushed. Did he not know? Had she [Pg 141]not told him? Though perhaps not in those very words.
“It does surprise me,” she, allowed, after a second’s pause, “that you are not more enthusiastic about it. I should have fancied somehow—slightly as I know you—that it would have entirely appealed to you.”
General Carden gave a little cough. “It does appeal to me,” he said. “It appeals to me greatly—so much, in fact, that I assumed a certain disparagement in order that I might have the pleasure of hearing you refute me.” He had forgotten Mrs. Cresswell, but the words had not escaped her, absorbed though she appeared to be in conversation, and there was the tiniest—the very tiniest—expression of triumph in her eyes.
“Oh!” said Anne, at once puzzled and debating. And then she said, “I am longing to read his next book.”