"Well, I suppose so," answered Thomas Blatchley with resignation. "Ah, here's the chucker-out!" He pointed facetiously towards the splendid person now close on them. "We must go."

"A very pleasant evening, Blatchley old boy," his guest murmured without rancour, as he got up with excessive dignity and walked, grimly intent, towards the door. He was not drunk. Just genial....

As he undressed that night, he laughed suddenly, aloud. That swine Blatchley had thought he was going to pump him and in the end he had done nothing except pay the bill! Betray Helena, dear little girl?

Not he!

He fell asleep, chuckling and with one sock on. People said artists were dam fools, but he had scored off a business man and got the better of a publisher....

As to Thomas Blatchley, he was far more calm. Success had long ago become a habit. He merely felt a little scorn for Geoffrey Alison.

This was by no means his first good stroke of business over two gla.s.ses--one full and one empty--of champagne. He was not a believer in mere whisky: stale, and not making towards confidence. No, a good dinner and then, at the end, quite conversational; "You know, your books don't get one half the booming they deserve. You made a mistake in not coming to _me_! I'd make an offer now; I would have long ago, if it was only cricket. And even now, old man, if ever...."

Of course it ran one into money. To-night, no doubt, had run him generously into double figures: but what might that sum not produce in interest? Business was bound to be expensive. You either went about or else you sat in a huge office. He merely spent on drinks what other publishers spent on gla.s.s-doors.

He wished, as he got comfortable for a well-earned night's rest, it had been some one better known than Hubert Brett.

CHAPTER XXI

EXPOSURE

"Both for you, sir!" said Lily with the air of an old friend, entering the drawing-room at nine o'clock two evenings later. She held out on a silver tray, the wedding gift of Kenneth Boyd, two letters. One was from Ruth and had been left, now, by the postman; the other, in the familiar green of the press-cutter, had lain in her pantry since the early post.

"Ah, a press cutting!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Hubert.

"Splendid. How exciting!" Helena replied, as though delighted and surprised.

Lily went out. She did not even really want to smile by now. She had been in three places before this, and in each of them the husband had needed humouring in one way or another. She probably would never marry.

"It's very late," said Hubert expectantly. Two months had pa.s.sed since the last straggling notice of _Was It Worth While?_ and after this gap he could open his green envelopes without a sense of irritation; yes, even with excitement.

"The last one is sometimes the best, isn't it?" Helena threw the hope out soothingly, but from the corner of her eyes she watched him with a little nervousness. Certainly the most restful times were those like the last weeks, when there were no reviews. They did seem to upset him so. She wished now that she had opened this--except that she would never dare to give it him if it chanced to be good.

She wished this wicked wish a thousand times more strongly, half a minute later. Never, in these three years, had she seen Hubert so affected by a notice. Great veins swelled out on his forehead, till she was really terrified. She could pretend no longer not to notice.

"What is it, Hubert?" she asked as he said nothing. "I hope not a bad one?"

"This is too scandalous," he cried, half choked and speaking like a pompous old man in his anger. "Where will the newspapers ever stop?"

"What have they said now, dear?" He missed the tragic resignation in that one word "now."

"Read it," he said and thrust it almost roughly at her, as though blaming the whole world.

It did not seem, however, as though he could wait for her opinion.

"Newer," "practically unknown," he fired out at intervals, and other adjectives.

But she heard none of them.

The paper swam before her eyes and every dim word filled her with a sick dread, a resentful wonder, an absolute despair, for this is what she saw:

"AUTHOR'S WIFE FIASCO

"OFFICIAL REVELATIONS

"Suburban tea-tables need buzz no more with questions as to the ident.i.ty of that now famous Author's Wife whose recent confessions have raised such a pother. A representative of this paper found Mr.

Blatchley, this morning, at last in an unbending mood.

"'The secret is out,' said the publisher, 'the author in question is Mr. Hubert Brett. The book, I may add, is naturally by his wife.

There were reasons till now why her ident.i.ty should not be divulged.'

"Those reasons will perhaps be guessed by all who remember the fierce controversy that raged recently and the big names that were thrown about, also the big sales. Whether these last will be helped by this official revelation will remain to be seen. The context had certainly prepared us for the wife-sacrificing author to be some one slightly better known. Mr. Hubert Brett is of the newer school of novelists, whose work is practically unknown to the bigger public. From _Who's Who_ we learn that he has written some fourteen novels since 1899, and of these _Wandering Stars_ is possibly the most familiar to library-readers.

"In this rather disappointing manner the Mystery of the Author's Wife leaves the select company of The Man in the Iron Mask, Jack the Ripper, Shakespeare, The Lady and the Tiger and other insolubles, to rank for ever with The Mango Tree, Fiona Macleod, The Englishwoman, and other mysteries which stupidly got solved."

Her eyes somehow deciphered the main points, and then she sat looking at the thin slip, seeing nothing.

"Practically unknown," suddenly came to her ears; "considering that _Wandering Stars_ sold close upon six thousand!"

Then she heard herself speaking. "It's only a rag, not one of the real evening papers." She dared not say what she had got to say. She dared not face the storm. Hate, now, that was what ruled in her chaotic brain, hate and loathing for that treacherous, mean, little Mr. Alison.

She knew she always had despised him, now--but he had been so kind....

Why had she trusted a weak man like him? Why had she ever written--married--been born--anything? Oh, what would happen now?

Her husband got up suddenly. That broke her tortured reverie, broke her inaction.

"Well, I shall write at once," he stormed. "Let's have the filthy thing."

She rose weakly to her feet and held it out to him. "What will you say?" she asked, still feebly trying to gain time, like men faced by a rope that they cannot possibly avoid.

"Say?" he repeated scornfully. "Tell them what they are and contradict the whole thing as a lie."

She almost staggered and caught hold of his arm. "No," she said.

"Listen. You--you mustn't."

"Mustn't?" He looked curiously at her.

She suddenly burst into tears, clinging to him there as if for pity.

"Hubert," she sobbed out, "don't take it as real. You're the best husband there could ever be. I wrote like you do. It was only----"

"My G.o.d!" he cried, clutching her arms roughly. "You _didn't_ write it? You didn't----" He broke off and let go of her, holding her one moment at arm's length. She never could forget his eyes.

He stooped and picked up the cutting. He read it slowly through, as if that might help--or possibly to calm himself. Helena fell limply on the sofa. Minutes seemed to pa.s.s in silence.

Suddenly he crumpled up the little roll of paper and hurled it in the fireplace. Then he laughed and that alarmed her more than anything.

"Well," he said, trying to speak naturally, "that's that, then. It's no use having scenes, is it?" He stood very still, looking vacantly before him as though not realising what it meant.