“I don’t care a tinker’s darn what you say! Now leave me in peace do, Puddle.”
It was Puddle who answered the telephone calls: “I’m afraid Miss Gordon will be busy working—what name did you say? Oh, The Literary Monthly! I see—well suppose you come on Wednesday.” And on Wednesday morning there was old Puddle waiting to waylay the anxious young man who had been commanded to dig up some copy about the new novelist, Stephen Gordon. Then Puddle had smiled at the anxious young man and had shepherded him into her own little sanctum, and had given him a comfortable chair, and had stirred the fire the better to warm him. And the young man had noticed her charming smile and had thought how kind was this ageing woman, and how damned hard it was to go tramping the streets in quest of erratic, unsociable authors.
Puddle had said, still smiling kindly: “I’d hate you to go back without your copy, but Miss Gordon’s been working overtime lately, I dare not disturb her, you don’t mind, do you? Now if you could possibly make shift with me—I really do know a great deal about her; as a matter of fact I’m her ex-governess, so I really do know quite a lot about her.”
Out had come notebook and copying pencil; it was easy to talk to this sympathetic woman: “Well, if you could give me some interesting details—say, her taste in books and her recreations, I’d be awfully grateful. She hunts, I believe?”
“Oh, not now!”
“I see—well then, she did hunt. And wasn’t her father Sir Philip Gordon who had a place down in Worcestershire and was killed by a falling tree or something? What kind of pupil did you find Miss Gordon? I’ll send her my notes when I’ve worked them up, but I really would like to see her, you know.” Then being a fairly sagacious young man: “I’ve just read The Furrow, it’s a wonderful book!”
Puddle talked glibly while the young man scribbled, and when at last he was just about going she let him out on to the balcony from which he could look into Stephen’s study.
“There she is at her desk! What more could you ask?” she said triumphantly, pointing to Stephen whose hair was literally standing on end, as is sometimes the way with youthful authors. She even managed occasionally, to make Stephen see the journalists herself.
IV
Stephen got up, stretched, and went to the window. The sun had retreated behind the clouds; a kind of brown twilight hung over the Embankment, for the wind had now dropped and a fog was threatening. The discouragement common to all fine writers was upon her, she was hating what she had written. Last night’s work seemed inadequate and unworthy; she decided to put a blue pencil through it and to rewrite the chapter from start to finish. She began to give way to a species of panic; her new book would be a ludicrous failure, she felt it, she would never again write a novel possessing the quality of The Furrow. The Furrow had been the result of shock to which she had, strangely enough, reacted by a kind of unnatural mental vigour. But now she could not react any more, her brain felt like overstretched elastic, it would not spring back, it was limp, unresponsive. And then there was something else that distracted, something she was longing to put into words yet that shamed her so that it held her tongue-tied. She lit a cigarette and when it was finished found another and kindled it at the stump.
“Stop embroidering that curtain, for God’s sake, Puddle. I simply can’t stand the sound of your needle; it makes a booming noise like a drum every time you prod that tightly stretched linen.”
Puddle looked up: “You’re smoking too much.”
“I dare say I am. I can’t write any more.”
“Since when?”
“Ever since I began this new book.”
“Don’t be such a fool!”
“But it’s God’s truth, I tell you—I feel flat, it’s a kind of spiritual dryness. This new book is going to be a failure, sometimes I think I’d better destroy it.” She began to pace up and down the room, dull-eyed yet tense as a tightly drawn bow string.
“This comes of working all night,” Puddle murmured.
“I must work when the spirit moves me,” snapped Stephen.
Puddle put aside her wool work embroidery. She was not much moved by this sudden depression, she had grown quite accustomed to these literary moods, yet she looked a little more closely at Stephen and something that she saw in her face disturbed her.
“You look tired to death; why not lie down and rest?”
“Rot! I want to work.”
“You’re not fit to work. You look all on edge, somehow. What’s the matter with you?” And then very gently: “Stephen, come here and sit down by me, please, I must know what’s the matter.”
Stephen obeyed as though once again they two were back in the old Morton schoolroom, then she suddenly buried her face in her hands: “I don’t want to tell you—why must I, Puddle?”
“Because,” said Puddle, “I’ve a right to know; your career’s very dear to me, Stephen.”
Then suddenly Stephen could not resist the blessed relief of confiding in Puddle once more, of taking this great new trouble to the faithful and wise little grey-haired woman whose hand had been stretched out to save in the past. Perhaps yet again that hand might find the strength that was needful to save her.
Not looking at Puddle, she began to talk quickly: “There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you, Puddle—it’s about my work, there’s something wrong with it. I mean that my work could be much more vital; I feel it, I know it, I’m holding it back in
