"I--well--some of them; a few of the funniest only."
Vyse slipped off the band and began to open the letters. While he was glancing over them Betton again caught his own reflection in the gla.s.s, and asked himself what impression he had made on his visitor.
It occurred to him for the first time that his high-coloured well-fed person presented the image of commercial rather than of intellectual achievement. He did not look like his own idea of the author of "Diadems and f.a.ggots"--and he wondered why.
Vyse laid the letters aside. "I think I can do it--if you"ll give me a notion of the tone I"m to take."
"The tone?"
"Yes--that is, if I"m to sign your name."
"Oh, of course: I expect you to sign for me. As for the tone, say just what you"d--well, say all you can without encouraging them to answer."
Vyse rose from his seat. "I could submit a few specimens," he suggested.
"Oh, as to that--you always wrote better than I do," said Betton handsomely.
"I"ve never had this kind of thing to write. When do you wish me to begin?" Vyse enquired, ignoring the tribute.
"The book"s out on Monday. The deluge will begin about three days after.
Will you turn up on Thursday at this hour?" Betton held his hand out with real heartiness. "It was great luck for me, your striking that advertis.e.m.e.nt. Don"t be too harsh with my correspondents--I owe them something for having brought us together."
II
THE deluge began punctually on the Thursday, and Vyse, arriving as punctually, had an impressive pile of letters to attack. Betton, on his way to the Park for a ride, came into the library, smoking the cigarette of indolence, to look over his secretary"s shoulder.
"How many of "em? Twenty? Good Lord! It"s going to be worse than "Diadems." I"ve just had my first quiet breakfast in two years--time to read the papers and loaf. How I used to dread the sight of my letter-box! Now I sha"n"t know I have one."
He leaned over Vyse"s chair, and the secretary handed him a letter.
"Here"s rather an exceptional one--lady, evidently. I thought you might want to answer it yourself--"
"Exceptional?" Betton ran over the mauve pages and tossed them down.
"Why, my dear man, I get hundreds like that. You"ll have to be pretty short with her, or she"ll send her photograph."
He clapped Vyse on the shoulder and turned away, humming a tune. "Stay to luncheon," he called back gaily from the threshold.
After luncheon Vyse insisted on showing a few of his answers to the first batch of letters. "If I"ve struck the note I won"t bother you again," he urged; and Betton groaningly consented.
"My dear fellow, they"re beautiful--too beautiful. I"ll be let in for a correspondence with every one of these people."
Vyse, at this, meditated for a while above a blank sheet. "All right--how"s this?" he said, after another interval of rapid writing.
Betton glanced over the page. "By George--by George! Won"t she _see_ it?" he exulted, between fear and rapture.
"It"s wonderful how little people see," said Vyse rea.s.suringly.
The letters continued to pour in for several weeks after the appearance of "Abundance." For five or six blissful days Betton did not even have his mail brought to him, trusting to Vyse to single out his personal correspondence, and to deal with the rest according to their agreement.
During those days he luxuriated in a sense of wild and lawless freedom; then, gradually, he began to feel the need of fresh restraints to break, and learned that the zest of liberty lies in the escape from specific obligations. At first he was conscious only of a vague hunger, but in time the craving resolved into a shame-faced desire to see his letters.
"After all, I hated them only because I had to answer them"; and he told Vyse carelessly that he wished all his letters submitted to him before the secretary answered them.
At first he pushed aside those beginning: "I have just laid down "Abundance" after a third reading," or: "Every day for the last month I have been telephoning my bookseller to know when your novel would be out." But little by little the freshness of his interest revived, and even this stereotyped homage began to arrest his eye. At last a day came when he read all the letters, from the first word to the last, as he had done when "Diadems and f.a.ggots" appeared. It was really a pleasure to read them, now that he was relieved of the burden of replying: his new relation to his correspondents had the glow of a love-affair unchilled by the contingency of marriage.
One day it struck him that the letters were coming in more slowly and in smaller numbers. Certainly there had been more of a rush when "Diadems and f.a.ggots" came out. Betton began to wonder if Vyse were exercising an unauthorized discrimination, and keeping back the communications he deemed least important. This sudden conjecture carried the novelist straight to his library, where he found Vyse bending over the writing-table with his usual inscrutable pale smile. But once there, Betton hardly knew how to frame his question, and blundered into an enquiry for a missing invitation.
"There"s a note--a personal note--I ought to have had this morning. Sure you haven"t kept it back by mistake among the others?"
Vyse laid down his pen. "The others? But I never keep back any."
Betton had foreseen the answer. "Not even the worst twaddle about my book?" he suggested lightly, pushing the papers about.
"Nothing. I understood you wanted to go over them all first."
"Well, perhaps it"s safer," Betton conceded, as if the idea were new to him. With an embarra.s.sed hand he continued to turn over the letters at Vyse"s elbow.
"Those are yesterday"s," said the secretary; "here are to-day"s," he added, pointing to a meagre trio.
"H"m--only these?" Betton took them and looked them over lingeringly.
"I don"t see what the deuce that chap means about the first part of "Abundance" "certainly justifying the t.i.tle"--do you?"
Vyse was silent, and the novelist continued irritably: "d.a.m.ned cheek, his writing, if he doesn"t like the book. Who cares what he thinks about it, anyhow?"
And his morning ride was embittered by the discovery that it was unexpectedly disagreeable to have Vyse read any letters which did not express unqualified praise of his books. He began to fancy there was a latent rancour, a kind of baffled sneer, under Vyse"s manner; and he decided to return to the practice of having his mail brought straight to his room. In that way he could edit the letters before his secretary saw them.
Vyse made no comment on the change, and Betton was reduced to wondering whether his imperturbable composure were the mask of complete indifference or of a watchful jealousy. The latter view being more agreeable to his employer"s self-esteem, the next step was to conclude that Vyse had not forgotten the episode of "The Lifted Lamp," and would naturally take a vindictive joy in any unfavourable judgments pa.s.sed on his rival"s work. This did not simplify the situation, for there was no denying that unfavourable criticisms preponderated in Betton"s correspondence. "Abundance" was neither meeting with the unrestricted welcome of "Diadems and f.a.ggots," nor enjoying the alternative of an animated controversy: it was simply found dull, and its readers said so in language not too tactfully tempered by regretful comparisons with its predecessor. To withhold unfavourable comments from Vyse was, therefore, to make it appear that correspondence about the book had died out; and its author, mindful of his unguarded predictions, found this even more embarra.s.sing. The simplest solution would be to get rid of Vyse; and to this end Betton began to address his energies.
One evening, finding himself unexpectedly disengaged, he asked Vyse to dine; it had occurred to him that, in the course of an after-dinner chat, he might delicately hint his feeling that the work he had offered his friend was unworthy so accomplished a hand.
Vyse surprised him by a momentary hesitation. "I may not have time to dress."
Betton stared. "What"s the odds? We"ll dine here--and as late as you like."
Vyse thanked him, and appeared, punctually at eight, in all the shabbiness of his daily wear. He looked paler and more shyly truculent than usual, and Betton, from the height of his florid stature, said to himself, with the sudden professional instinct for "type": "He might be an agent of something--a chap who carries deadly secrets."
Vyse, it was to appear, did carry a deadly secret; but one less perilous to society than to himself. He was simply poor--inexcusably, irremediably poor. Everything failed him, had always failed him: whatever he put his hand to went to bits.
This was the confession that, reluctantly, yet with a kind of white-lipped bravado, he flung at Betton in answer to the latter"s tentative suggestion that, really, the letter-answering job wasn"t worth bothering him with--a thing that any type-writer could do.
"If you mean you"re paying me more than it"s worth, I"ll take less,"
Vyse rushed out after a pause.
"Oh, my dear fellow--" Betton protested, flushing.
"What _do_ you mean, then? Don"t I answer the letters as you want them answered?"