Thrusting his hands into his trousers pockets, he began to stride about the room.
"Yes, I know that is so, and I won't be sanguine. But, somehow, I feel quite certain that, this time, I have the thing—however, I'll say nothing. But don't you tell me not to be sanguine, or you'll put me clean off—you know how funny I am, that way. You keep the children quiet, and don't let me hear a sound, and you'll see—well, you'll see what you will see." He laughed, and she laughed too. "Don't you laugh at me! If I don't get the first prize, it'll be hard lines if I don't get one of the three—even a hundred pounds is not to be despised."
"But, Geoffrey, what will become of your other work during those six weeks? And you know, when you have finished a long story, you never feel inclined to start again at once."
"Don't talk to me like that, or you'll drive me off my head. Philippa, I've set my heart upon doing this thing—do let me do it. You don't want me to be a penny-a-liner all my life, sweetheart, do you? By the way, I saw The Leviathan at the library. There's a first-rate story in it, by a new man—Philip Ayre. I know good work when I see it, and that is good work. And, do you know, it might almost be a story about us—you should read it. It is called 'Two in One.'" Wandering hither and thither about the room, he did not notice that his wife's face had suddenly been bent low over her mending, and that her cheeks had paled. "Another thing, I met old Briggs." Mr. Briggs was their landlord. "I assure you, when I saw him coming, I was half inclined, Dick Swiveller fashion, to dodge down some side street. I made sure he was going to dun, and that I should have to shuffle. But, to my surprise, he was quite friendly. He asked how you were, and how the children were, and never said a word about the rent. So, of course, I said nothing either. I'm just going for a stroll, and a smoke, and a think. Mind, when you go to the library, that you don't forget to read that thing in The Leviathan."
When he had gone, spreading out the paper which he had brought in front of her she began attentively to study the announcement of the North British Telegraph prize story competition. Putting down the figures—150,000—upon a scrap of paper, she began to divide and to sub-divide them, as if she were trying to find out exactly what they meant. When she had finished her calculations, she continued to sit in a brown study, quite oblivious of the heap of mending which still lay unfinished on her knee.
"If I could only help him to win it—if I only could! Poor Geoff! The day on which he gave me five hundred pounds, as the product of his own work, would be the happiest day that he had ever known. My own, own Geoff!
"I wonder if he will win it? Oh, if he only would! But supposing that he does not win it, it would be just as well that—that someone else should win it—someone in—in his own home. Oh, what a wicked wretch I am! What's that? It's baby! I do hope she won't wake up. There's all this mending, and I've only milk enough for one more bottle. There! She is waking up! You naughty, naughty, darling child!"
"UPSTAIRS THE WIFE SAT WITH THE CHILDREN."
The next day Geoffrey Ford began his story. He began to pour it out upon the paper, white-hot from the furnace of his brain. Seldom had he seen his way so clearly. It had come, as he said, in an instant. It possessed him, as it were, body and soul and mind, as his work was wont to possess him when, as he thought, he saw his way. His ideas would come to him with the force of a mighty rushing river. He could not dam them back. He felt that he was obliged to give them instant utterance or they would overflow the banks, and so be lost. He worked best, or he thought that he worked best, at high pressure. He believed in striking the iron when the force of the fire had almost made it liquid. Not for him was the journeyman labour of hammering out tediously, and with infinite care, cold iron.