Poor Relations Part 34

"Have you decided to introduce those wolves in the first act, because I think I ought to begin making inquiries about suitable dogs?"

When Miss Hamilton rushed away from the personal like this, John used to regret that he had changed their relationship from one of friendship to one of business. Although he admired practicalness, he realized that it was possible to be too practical, and he sighed sometimes for the tone that his unknown admirers took when they wrote to him about his work.

Only that morning he had received a letter from one of these, which he had tossed across the table for his secretary's perusal before he dictated a graceful reply.

HILLCREST,

Highfield Road,

Hornsey, N.,

_Dec. 14, 1910_.

DEAR SIR:--I have never written to an author before, but I cannot help writing to ask you _when_ you are going to give us another play. I cannot tell you how much I enjoy your plays--they take me into another world. Please do not imagine that I am an enthusiastic schoolgirl. I am the mother of four dear little children, and my husband and I both act in a dramatic club at Hornsey. We are very anxious to perform one of your plays, but the committee is afraid of the expense. I suppose it would be asking too much of you to lend us some of the costumes of _The Fall of Babylon_. I think it is your greatest work up till now, and I simply live in all those wonderful old cities now and read everything I can find about them. I was brought up very strictly when I was young and grew to hate the Bible--please do not be shocked at this--but since I saw _The Fall of Babylon_ I have taken to reading it again. I went nine times--twice in the gallery, three times in the pit, twice in the upper circle and twice in the dress circle, once in the fifth row at the side and once right in the middle of the front row! I cut out the enclosed photo of you from _The Tatler_, and, would it be asking too much to sign your name? Hoping for the pleasure of a reply, I remain,

Your sincere admirer,

(MRS.) ENID FOSTER.

"What extraordinary lunatics there are in this world," Miss Hamilton had commented. "Have you noticed the one constant factor in these letters?

All the women begin by saying that it is the first time they have ever written to an author; of course, they would say the same thing to a man who kissed them. The men, however, try to convey that they're in the habit of writing to authors. I think there's a moral to be extracted from that observation."

Now, John had not yet attained--and perhaps it was improbable that he ever would attain--those cold summits of art out of reach alike of the still, sad music and the hurdy-gurdies of humanity, so that these letters from unknown men and women, were they never so foolish, t.i.tillated his vanity, which he called "appealing to his imagination."

"One must try to put oneself in the writer's place," he had urged, reproachfully.

"Um--yes, but I can't help thinking of Mrs. Enid Foster living in those wonderful old cities. Her household will crash like Babylon if she isn't careful, and her family will be reduced to eating gra.s.s like Nebuchadnezzar, if the green-grocer's book is neglected any longer."

"You won't allow the suburbs to be touched by poetry?"

John had tried to convey in his tone that Miss Hamilton in criticizing the enthusiasm of Mrs. Foster was depreciating his own work. But she had seemed quite unconscious of having rather offended him and had taken down his answer without excusing herself. Now when in a spirit that was truly forgiving he had actually compared her to his beloved heroine, she had scoffed at him as if he was a kind of Mrs. Foster himself.

"You're very matter-of-fact," he muttered.

"Isn't that a rather desirable quality in a secretary?"

"Yes, but I think you might have waited to hear why you reminded me of Joan of Arc before you began talking about those confounded wolves, which, by the way, I have decided to cut out."

"Don't cut out a good effect just because you're annoyed with me," she advised.

"Oh no, there are other reasons," said John, loftily. "It is possible that in an opening tableau the audience may not appreciate that they are wolves, and if they think they're only a lot of stray dogs, the effect will go for nothing. It was merely a pa.s.sing idea, and I have discarded it."

Miss Hamilton left him to go and type out the morning's correspondence, and John settled down to a speech by the Maid on the subject of perpetual celibacy: he wrote a very good one.

"She may laugh at me," said the author to himself, "but she _is_ like Joan--extraordinarily like. Why, I can hear her making this very speech."

Miss Hamilton might sometimes profane John's poetic sanctuaries and sometimes pull his leg when he was on tiptoe for a flight like Mr.

Keats' sweetpeas, but she made existence much more pleasant for him, and he had already reached the stage of wondering how he had ever managed to get along without her. He even went so far in his pa.s.sion for historical parallels as to compare his situation before she came to the realm of France before Joan of Arc took it in hand. He knew in his heart that these weeks before Christmas were unnaturally calm; he had no hope of prolonging this halcyon time much further; but while it lasted he would enjoy it to the full. Any one who had overheard John announcing to his reflection in the gla.s.s an unbridled hedonism for the immediate future might have been pardoned for supposing that he was about to amuse himself in a very desperate fashion. As a matter of fact, the averred intention was due to nothing more exciting than the prospect of a long walk over the Heath with Miss Hamilton to discuss an outline of the fourth act, which John knew would gradually be filled in with his plans for writing other plays and finally be colored by a conversation, or, anyhow, a monologue about himself as a human being without reference to himself as an author.

"What is so delightful about Miss Hamilton," he a.s.sured that credulous and complaisant reflection, "is the way one can talk to her without there being the least danger of her supposing that one has any ulterior object in view. Notwithstanding all the rich externals of the past, I'm bound to confess that the relations between men and women are far more natural nowadays. I suppose it was the bicycle that began female emanc.i.p.ation; had bicycles been invented in the time of Joan of Arc she would scarcely have had to face so much ecclesiastical criticism of her behavior."

The walk was a success; amongst other things, John discovered that if he had had a sister like Miss Hamilton, most of his family troubles would never have arisen. He shook his head sadly at the thought that once upon a time he had tried to imagine a Miss Hamilton in Edith, and in a burst of self-revelation, like the brief appearance of two or three acres of definitely blue sky overhead, he a.s.sured his secretary that her coming had made a difference to his whole life.

"Well, of course you get through much more in the day now," she agreed.

John would have liked a less practical response, but he made the best of it.

"I've got so much wrapped up in the play," he said, "that I'm wondering now if I shall be able to tear myself away from London for Christmas. I dread the idea of a complete break--especially with the most interesting portion just coming along. I think I must ask you to take your holiday later in the year, if you don't mind."

He had got it out, and if he could have patted himself on the back without appearing ridiculous in a public thoroughfare he would have done so. His manner might have sounded brusque, but John was sure that the least suggestion of any other att.i.tude except that of an employer compelled against his will to seem inconsiderate would have been fatal.

"That would mean leaving my mother alone," said Miss Hamilton, doubtfully.

John looked sympathetic, but firm, when he agreed with her.

"She would understand that literary work takes no account of the church calendar," he pointed out. "After all, what is Christmas?"

"Unfortunately, my mother is already very much offended with me for working with you at all. Oh, well, bother relations!" she exclaimed, vehemently. "I'm going to be selfish in future. All right, if you insist, I must obey--or lose my job, eh?"

"I might have to engage a loc.u.m tenens. You see, now that I've got into the habit of dictating my letters and relying upon somebody else to keep my references in order and--"

"Yes, yes," she interrupted. "I quite see that it would put you to great inconvenience if I cried off. All the same, I can't help being worried by the notion of leaving mother alone on Christmas Day itself. Why shouldn't I join you on the day after?"

"The very thing," John decided. "I will leave London on Christmas Eve, and you shall come down on Boxing Day. But I should travel in the morning, if I were you. It's apt to be unpleasant, traveling in the evening on a Bank Holiday. Hullo, here we are! This walk has given me a tremendous appet.i.te, and I do feel that we've made a splendid start with the fourth act, don't you?"

"The fourth act?" repeated his secretary. "It seems to me that most of the time you were talking about the position of women in modern life."

John laughed gayly.

"Ah, I see you haven't even yet absolutely grasped my method of work. I was thinking all the while of Joan's speech to her accusers. I can a.s.sure you that all my remarks were entirely relevant to what I had in my head. That's the way I get my atmosphere. I told you that you reminded me of her, but you wouldn't believe me. In doublet and hose you would be Joan."

"Should I? I think I should look more like d.i.c.k Whittington in a touring pantomime. My legs are too thin for tights."

"By the way, I wonder if Janet Bond has good legs?" said John, pensively.

It was charming to be able to talk about women's legs like this without there being the slightest suggestion that they had any; yet, somehow the least promising topics were rehabilitated by the company of Miss Hamilton, and most of them, even the oldest, acquired a new and absorbing interest. John had registered a vow on the first day his secretary came that he would watch carefully for the least signs of rosifying her and he had renewed this vow every morning before his gla.s.s; but it was sometimes difficult not to attribute to her all sorts of mysterious fascinations, as on those occasions when he would have kept her working later than usual in the afternoon and when she would have been persuaded to stay for tea, for which she made a point of getting home to please her mother, who gave it a grand importance. John was convinced that even James would forgive him for thinking that in all England there was not a more competent, a more charming, a more--he used to pull himself up guiltily at about the third comparative and stifle his fancies in the particularly delicious cake that Mrs. Worfolk always seemed to provide on the days when his secretary stayed to tea.

It was on one of these rosified afternoons, full of candlelight and firelight and the warmed scent of hyacinths that Miss Hamilton rallied John about his exaggerated dread of his relations.

"For I've been working with you now for nearly three weeks, and you've not been bothered by them once," she declared.

"My name! My name!" he cried. "Touchwood?"

"I begin to think it's nothing but an affectation," she persisted.

"_You're_ not pestered by charitable uncles who want to boast of what they've done for their poor brother's only daughter. _You're_ not made to feel that you've wrecked your mother's old age by earning your own living."