In the Mist of the Mountains Part 4

m.u.f.fie told of the appearance of Mrs. Gowan and the heroic conduct of Pauline in announcing their contagion.

Lynn paused in her agreeable occupation of slicing up her banana and adding strawberry jam and milk to it.

"From to-morrow," she said, "we have to keep in the orchard when we're at home, so the man won't hear us shouting."

"What man?" asked Miss Bibby.

"The one who writes books," said Lynn.

"What is the child talking about?" said Miss Bibby, looking at Pauline.

"At 'Tenby,'" said Pauline. "Well, he should have asked were there any children near when he took the cottage. Why should we give up swinging on the gate? He can take his old books and sit on the Orphan Rock to write them. No one will disturb him _there_."

"What _are_ you talking about, children?" said Miss Bibby. "Pauline, answer me properly. I didn't know 'Tenby' was let. Who has taken it?"

"I forget his name," said Pauline; "please pa.s.s the bananas. Oh, Lynn, you've taken all the jam. Will you ring for some more, Miss Bibby?"

Miss Bibby rang absent-mindedly, though she had made the observation that any one eating bananas and strawberry jam together was actually inviting an attack of acute indigestion.

"I suppose you have confused the account," she said, and sighed.

But a momentary agitation had shaken her.

She was a woman with one absorbing ambition--to publish a book. She carried a most pathetic tin trunk about with her--the sepulchre of the hopes of years. The MS. of at least seven novels lay inside, each neatly wrapped in paper, and with a faithful docket of its adventures pasted upon it.

It is enough to examine one of them:--_The Heirs of Tranby Chase._ It weighed four or five pounds. The publishers would never have had to grumble at its brevity, or have been compelled to use large type and wide margins to "bulk up." It was written in the thin, early Victorian handwriting not often met with in this generation of writers. It subscribed faithfully to the great canons of publication--for instance, it was written on "one side only of the paper"; it was pinned together at the "left-hand top corner"; no publisher had ever found it necessary to gnash his teeth because it reached him rolled instead of flat.

Yet behold the piteous history!

"_The Heirs of Tranby Chase_, by Katherine J. Howard Bibby, Author of _The Quest of Guy Warburton_, _Through Darkness to Light_, or _Lady Felicia's Peril_, etc., etc. Commenced Jan. 1, 1895. Finished March 6, 1896. Copied out (three times) December, 1896. Submitted to Messrs.

Kesteven, Sydney; but they say they are publishing very little at present, as times are depressed. To James & James, Melbourne; returned.

And unread, I am sure; the package had hardly been touched. To Brown & McMahon, Melbourne. A most polite note, but they do not care to publish so long a story. Shortened it, and copied again (July, 1898). Sent again to Brown & McMahon. A printed refusal: 'Regret cannot use.' December, 1899, posted to London to Messrs. Frogget & Leach. No reply. Wrote five times, but could not get packet back again, though I enclosed postal note for return in case of rejection. (Memo., never submit another MS.

to this firm.) Copied story again, and sent to Bailey & Thompson, Paternoster Row. An extremely kind and flattering reply; their reader evidently thinks highly of the story. Will be glad to publish it at my own expense. Consulted Thomas. He thinks this would be unwise, and will not allow me to withdraw my savings from the bank for the purpose until I have tried other firms. Sent to Mr. Lance Rankin, the great author's agent, together with the five-guinea fee which I found was necessary.

April, 1902. Returned by Mr. Rankin, who says he has submitted it to fourteen different firms, but that there is a great depression in the book market at present. Possibly my plot is weak--must try another story."

And so on, and so forth. The pluck of the woman! The marvellous patience and endurance! Did this extinguish her spirit? No; she refreshed herself with reading tales of other writers worsted in the fight--Gissing's _New Grub Street_ afforded her the maximum of melancholy satisfaction--and then she fell to work on a new book. And what the character of the new book was the latest popular success decided. Among the seven novels the trunk secreted was a historical romance, a religious novel, a detective tale, some "bush studies," and a book of political character.

Lynn disposed of a second saucerful of the banana compound that she called her ice cream. It seemed to quicken her memory.

"Hugh Rosskin is his name," she said deliberately, "and if Howie gets him it will be a great big shame, 'cause Larkin----"

But Miss Bibby was standing up, trembling from head to foot, and with a spot of scarlet colour in her cheeks.

"Hugh Kinross,--oh children, children--was that really the name? Oh, Pauline, my dear, my dear, try to think!"

"Yes," said Pauline, "Hugh Kinross--that was it."

"Hugh Kinross! Hugh Kinross! And at 'Tenby'!" Miss Bibby looked as excited as m.u.f.fie had done, when, going to feed her guinea-pig the day before, she found five little pinny gigs, as she tumultuously expressed it, had been unexpectedly added unto her stock.

Then she tried to pull herself swiftly together and to look--as Miss Bibby should look.

"If you have finished, children, you may go," she said. "Yes, Anna, you may clear the table."

She hurried away out of the room.

"It's my belief she's in love with 'im, and p'raps they've 'ad a quarrel," said Anna, who was aching in this quiet country place for a spice of adventure. Miss Bibby had not noticed that the girl had come into the room at Max's request with "more lawberry leserve."

The little girls looked at each other with sparkling eyes. They loved a mystery as much as Anna did.

"Oh," said Pauline, "won't it be lovely? Let's go and watch at the gate."

They flew off to stare at "Tenby"--"Tenby" with the local charwoman already there, throwing up the windows and sweeping away the dust of the winter.

CHAPTER IV

THE FAMOUS NOVELIST

It was very early morning, seven o'clock perhaps, and Hugh Kinross, the famous novelist, sat in a camp chair at "Tenby," his feet on the verandah rail, and marvelled at his fame.

It was not his custom to rise quite so early to do this, but circ.u.mstances over which he alone had any control, namely the mountain fly, had driven him out of bed. There are no mosquitoes on the mountains; consequently many householders will not go to the expense of mosquito nets.

But the mountain fly rises earlier than any other fly extant, and the stranger who is not provided with a guardian net, leaping desperately up with it, has the early-rising virtue forcibly thrust upon him.

Later in the day, his wrath forgotten, the novelist writes to his city friends and boasts of the light atmosphere of the mountains, as if he had had something to do with the manufacture of it.

"I actually find myself rising at six," he writes, "simply to get out into the delicious air." And not one mention does he make of the debt he owes to the fly.

Hugh Kinross had been routed out at six and, his first choler spent, was quite pleased with himself. He discovered a path leading to a gully, and in the gully a pool beneath a fall, and here he had a circ.u.mscribed but delightful swim. Then he climbed up the gully side again, and the Lomaxes' home caught his eye, and so pleased the artistic side of him that he leaned over one of its hedges to gaze at it.

And "Greenways" in the clear morning air, nestling in its setting of tender green, splashed everywhere with the light tints of flowers,--"Greenways," with its eyes turned to the mountain where the marvellous morning lay in the first fresh indescribable blueness that creeps there after the pinks and purples and yellows of the dawn,--"Greenways," with a chimney at the rear sending up the friendly line of its earliest smoke, begot in him a vague emotion that all the bricks and mortar in the city were incapable of doing. He told himself that he, too, wanted a home;--not the boarding-house life that had been his before fame swooped down on him, nor the more luxurious club life that had followed, nor a holiday-month like this present one, in a rented cottage with his favourite sister for companion; but a home--like "Greenways"--with a slender woman in white, like the one there moving about the paths. There was no question in his mind but that she must be slender, for he himself and his sister were both stout. How Miss Bibby's heart would have leapt could she have known whose eyes were watching her as she walked perseveringly up and down, practising the early deep-breathing exercises that she maintained were so essential to health!

And it must be a home with signs of children's occupancy about--he was quite sure of that. Max and m.u.f.fie would have been amazed to know that the little red tricycle on the verandah, and the doll's perambulator overturned on a path, were a.s.sisting a celebrated man to this vague emotion.

"Ridiculous!" he said. "I'm hungry; that's what it is; this mountain air is doing me good already."

He crossed the road and went back to "Tenby," where his sister's bedroom was yet darkened, and the very servant still slept serenely. He was good-hearted, and could not bring himself to hammer on the doors; but as he went to the pantry to find something for himself, he concluded that they had fortified themselves against the fly by drawing the sheets over their heads.

The pantry and kitchen left him rueful. Boxes of every size stood about in what seemed to him the same wild confusion that they had worn last night when they had been tossed out of the carrier's cart. He foraged everywhere and could find no bread; in none of the tins or jars in which he peered lurked there any b.u.t.ter. Yet he realized that he had no one to blame but himself for this confusion. Matters had been beautifully arranged. His married sister, Mrs. Gowan, had taken "Tenby" for him, and seen to it that it was spotlessly clean; his unmarried sister, Kate, with an efficient servant, was to come up a week ahead of himself to get everything in perfect order and comfort for him, since he was supposed to be overworked and in need of a change.

And then, what must he do but upset everything! He had told Kate he would come to the station and see her comfortably off; but, indeed, she had seen all the luggage into the van, and the servant into another carriage, and bought her own magazines and ensconced herself comfortably in an empty first-cla.s.s compartment before there was a sign of him. But then he came, and with a vengeance. She saw him, red-faced with hurrying, come striding along the platform, a Gladstone bag in his hand, plainly looking for her. She waved to him and he seized on a guard to unlock her door for him.

"You'll be carried on,--quick, quick, get out!" she gasped, for the bell was ringing.

But he had dropped comfortably on to the seat opposite to her, after putting his portmanteau on the rack.