Death of an Author, page 2
For the next few minutes they discussed “high finance,”—royalties, serial rights, cheap editions and the like,—subjects dear to the hearts of both, and at last Ashe got up to go. His final remark was, “See what you can do about Lestrange. I’m really keen to meet him.”
When he had gone, a little smile of amusement flickered across Marriott’s face, and he drew his telephone towards him, and plugged in the connection which put him through to the office of his colleague,—Robert Bailley. The latter was responsible for the publicity and sales departments, whereas Marriott dealt with authors’ contracts, readers and so forth.
“Hullo. Ashe gone yet?” enquired Bailley, when he heard Andrew Marriott’s deep voice.
“Yes. He’s just left. What do you think he’s got into his head now? He wants to meet Vivian Lestrange.”
“Well, I’m…” exclaimed Bailley. “What the deuce put that into his head?… And what the dickens did you tell him?…”
“I told him I’d pass his message on to Lestrange, and left it at that. You know I’ve been thinking for sometime past that this secrecy business is a bit tiresome. People are making the most absurd suggestions. Ashe had actually got a bee in his bonnet that Vivian Lestrange is an ex-convict,—besides the Press isn’t pleased about it.”
“It’s all a bit difficult, I grant you,” said Bailley thoughtfully, “but we can’t blow the gaff without permission.”
“No, no! of course not! I wasn’t even contemplating such a step,” protested Marriott, “but I do think I’ll write and put in a suggestion about a little dinner just for the four of us. Ashe is a quite trustworthy fellow, and he’ll give nothing away, but if he were in a position to say that he’d actually met Lestrange,—drop a word to the P.E.N. for instance, it would be an excellent thing. Besides, Ashe is a very attractive personality, and he’s much in the public eye these days. At any rate, there’d be no harm in seeing how the suggestion is taken.”
“Well, I leave it to you,” replied Bailley. “But I don’t think the party will materialise.”
“We shall see,” said Marriott, and rang off. Leaning back in his chair, Marriott gave himself up to amused reminiscence. When Langston’s had published The Charterhouse Case,—and it had been the biggest success of the publishing year,—Marriott had invited the author to come and dine with him. Lestrange had replied in a courteous little letter, declining the invitation on the grounds that he was a semi-invalid who seldom went beyond his own garden. He had also written that personal publicity of any kind was very distasteful to him, that the public need only know an author through the medium of his work. The situation had remained the same for nearly three years, during which Lestrange’s reputation had steadily increased, though the public learned nothing of the author. Then, some six months ago, a situation developed which called for a personal interview. A certain passage in Lestrange’s new novel—then at the printer’s—had caused Marriott to wrinkle his brows in consternation. Of course, as the reader pointed out, it was a matter of interpretation, but one never knew with the public, and reviewers were an incalculable lot. Langston’s wouldn’t like to have any mud thrown—and then there were the libraries…
Marriott had nodded his wise head, and had written to Vivian Lestrange a very tactful letter, explaining the difficulty and begging that he might be allowed to come and talk the matter over. Lestrange, in reply, said he would call on Marriott, and discuss the difficulty on condition that the publishers would give an undertaking to respect his anonymity and give no hint of his real personality to anybody.
Much intrigued, Marriott had given the undertaking asked for, and had looked forward with a lively interest to meeting the writer whose fame was known in three continents.
On the morning of the appointment, Marriott’s clerk brought him a letter marked “Urgent and personal.” Opening it he found a visiting card:
VIVIAN LESTRANGE
Temple Grove,
Hampstead.
“Ask the gentleman to come in,” said Marriot to the messenger who had brought the letter. The young man goggled at him.
“Please, sir,” he began, but was cut short.
“At once,” said Marriott firmly.
Expecting he knew not what,—from the Prime Minister to the Prince of Wales, Marriott watched the door with the keenest curiosity he had ever felt,—and then he had the surprise of his life when a tall, slim young woman entered the room, and held out her hand, a smile in her eyes as she looked at him.
“I’m afraid this is a shock for you, Mr. Marriott,” she said calmly, “but it’s your fault really. I never said I was a man. I merely refrained from contradicting your original assumption.”
Marriott began to laugh,—he really couldn’t help it, and Vivian Lestrange laughed too, and their laughter melted away any strangeness from their first meeting.
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the publisher. “To think I have been flattering myself for years that I could tell a man’s writing from a woman’s…”
“Well, it’s jolly good for you to know you can’t,” she replied laughingly. “I get so sick of that theory. The minute a reviewer learns from some gossip that so and so is a woman, he promptly writes ‘there is a touch of femininity about the writings of X.Y.Z. Her descriptions are above criticism, but her dialogue betrays her sex.’ It’s all my eye and Betty Martin!”
Once again Marriott laughed. “My dear young lady, you are the exception to prove the rule.”
“That is merely an admission of defeat,” retorted Vivian Lestrange. “You have met your Waterloo, and incidentally I’m not very young, and far from ladylike in some respects, as you may have observed from my books. Now let’s get down to it. I agree with you that this passage could do with some remodelling. I wasn’t hinting at perversion when I wrote it. That is a subject which isn’t in my line at all.”
Sitting opposite to the publisher, she produced a sheet of notes from her bag, and began to suggest alternative versions for the offending passage. As she talked, Marriott was more and more impressed by her shrewdness, and the clear-mindedness which characterised everything she said. She was a very personable young woman, this Vivian Lestrange, tall and slim, yet broad-shouldered, in build somewhat boyish. Her fair hair which gleamed smoothly under the small blue hat, was close cropped, leaving her ears uncovered. Her skin was admirable, fresh and healthy, with only a slight suggestion of make up, and the grey-blue eyes which studied Marriott so steadily looked straight into his own with an impersonal deliberation. She was dressed in a well cut navy-blue suit, with a light blue shirt and dark tie. Studying her more closely, Marriott assessed her age at something over thirty,—the slim figure and fresh skin had given a first impression of youthfulness, but as she talked, she gave evidence of a mature and thoughtful mind.
Having dealt with the difficulty which had been the cause of her visit, she went on to sketch the outlines of the novel on which she was now engaged. Sitting sideways to Marriott, her chair pushed back from the table, her feet crossed and her eyes studying the etchings on the further wall, she talked in a low clear voice, singularly deliberate in diction. Marriott, studying her regular profile, decided that the voice and the face were well matched, both admirable, but queerly lacking in feeling,—as dispassionate as the mind of a mathematician. When he expressed enthusiasm over the ideas she was sketching out for his benefit, Vivian Lestrange smiled at him very pleasantly, but yet conveyed the impression that it was her own judgment that mattered, nothing else.
“Upon my soul, the coolest creature I ever met in my life!” exclaimed Andrew Marriott, when describing the interview to Bailley. “Good brains, good looks, good breeding, and yet as remote as a stone carving. One couldn’t get to grips with her, every time I put in a friendly word, she just smiled through me!”
Remembering his first interview with Vivian Lestrange after Ashe had left him, Marriott chuckled to himself. What would Ashe make of her, he asked himself?—Ashe who was adored by every woman he met, and who took adoration as his due? Reaching out for a sheet of note-paper, Marriott began to write a letter,—a very rare occurrence for one to whom dictation was second nature.
“My dear Miss Lestrange,” he wrote. “I have just been having a talk with Michael Ashe. Some time ago you expressed admiration of his work, and this morning he was telling me how greatly he admired yours. (A feather in your cap, for he is a carping critic.) He continued by saying he wanted to meet Lestrange, and asked me to tell him so.
“It is hardly necessary for me to add that Ashe gained no notions of your identity from me, but I said that I would pass on his suggestion for a meeting to you.
“I think,—in fact I am certain—that you would find Ashe an interesting personality. He is also one of those who can keep a secret, and you need have no fear that he would endanger yours. If I were not positive about this I would not suggest the meeting, but I have had a large experience of human nature, and experience is a wise guide.
“If the idea commends itself to you, will you do me the honour of dining with me and my colleague, Mr. Bailley, to meet Mr. Ashe? It would give us all very great pleasure, and as you know, we will ensure that our party shall not endanger your secret.
“With kindest regards,
“Believe me, sincerely yours,
“Andrew Marriott.”
Bailley smiled sceptically when Marriott told him of his letter.
“You’re an optimist,” he said to his colleague. “You want to persuade Vivian Lestrange to come out of her shell, and you’re dangling Michael Ashe as a bait. It won’t work, my lad, it won’t work.”
Marriott did not believe that it would work himself, but he had just a vague hope at the back of his mind. Vivian Lestrange had once shown a very definite interest when she had spoken of Michael Ashe,—something more personal than the cool detachment which characterised her attitude towards most subjects. As Marriott knew, there are hardly any writers in the world who do not enjoy appreciation of their work from someone whom they themselves admire.
He had not long to wait. The next morning came a letter answering his own.
“Dear Mr. Marriott,
“Many thanks for your letter. It will give me much pleasure to dine with you and Mr. Bailley, and to meet Mr. Ashe. Any evening next week would suit me.
“Of course I accept your assurances that Mr. Ashe will respect my secret as you have done.
“Sincerely yours,
“Vivian Lestrange.”
Marriott showed the letter to Bailley with a chuckle.
“Human after all,” he observed. “I really feel quite consoled. All my theories about women were being destroyed,—frozen out by the icy detachment of that remarkable young woman. Now I must get hold of Ashe and tell him he can have his wish if he will pledge himself to respect a fellow author’s fancies.”
Chapter II
On the evening arranged for his dinner party, Andrew Marriott fussed around his beautiful Bloomsbury flat until his housekeeper, Mrs. Edge, got positively annoyed.
“Anybody’d think he’d got the King and the Queen and the Prince of Wales all coming together,” she confided to her husband. Mrs. Edge was a very good cook and a very capable manager, and her husband filled the roles of valet, butler and houseman as admirably as his wife did the cooking. “Queer ideas on parties some folks has,” she went on. “Now a gentlemen’s party’s one thing, but if you’re going to have mixed company, I do like to see it even. Sounds odd to me, that it do.”
Michael Ashe arrived in good time for once, and gave a sardonic glance around the drawing-room. (Marriott was a bachelor, but he had a very pretty drawing-room.) Nodding to the two publishers, Ashe enquired,
“Well, which of you is it?” and Bailley laughed, with a twitch of his arched eyebrows.
“Not guilty, my boy, not guilty,” he replied. “Try one of Marriott’s cocktails. It’ll help to steady your nerves for the coming fray…”
Vivian Lestrange was punctual too; just as Ashe had taken the glass proffered to him, the butler opened the door and announced “Miss Strange.” Hastening across the room with outstretched hand, smiles wreathing his face, Marriott exclaimed:
“My dear Miss Lestrange! This is an honour for us all, and a long-hoped-for pleasure. May I introduce a fellow writer to you, Mr. Michael Ashe—Miss Vivian Lestrange.”
There was a moment of utter silence; Ashe was so completely taken aback that he stood, his glass still in his hand, his lips parted, as tongue-tied as a schoolboy. Staring at the self-possessed woman in front of him, meeting her smiling, slightly mocking glance, he stammered incredulously,
“It’s… it’s impossible.”
Turning to Marriott with a little shrug and a lift of her fair arched eyebrows, Vivian Lestrange murmured,
“Not Michael Ashe!… not the Michael Ashe! It’s… it’s impossible!”
The light mocking tone of her voice and the whole aplomb of her manner were so excellently calculated, that Marriott and Bailley laughed wholeheartedly, and Ashe, his face flushing, suddenly realised his boorishness.
“Miss Lestrange, I apologise wholeheartedly—I grovel. That was inexcusable of me, it was simply execrable!”
“It was,” she replied coolly, her eyes mocking him. “Both inexcusable and execrable! And why, pray, that word impossible? Am I then so impossible? I live and learn.”
Marriott could almost have applauded. Her voice was so delicious, her whole appearance, from her fair boyish head to the tips of her silver slippers, so completely admirable, that she had the man before her at such disadvantage as he might never have experienced before.
“You humiliate me!” protested Ashe, and his voice told of recovered poise. “Like the psalmist I am become a worm, and no man… but the worm turns when cornered! I said ‘impossible,’ and in that one word, under stress of feeling, gave voice to the conviction within me,—that no woman could have written The Charterhouse Case.”
“‘Murdering impossibility, to make what cannot be, slight work,’” she quoted in retort, taking the chair which Bailley was holding for her, and declining the cocktail which Marriott proffered, with an airy wave of her hand. “There is a proverb concerning a woman scorned,” she went on, addressing her remark to the ceiling, with uptilted chin and smiling lips. “There might well be another about a man mistaken. ‘Lay not thy hand upon the exclusiveness of man’s conceit,’ runneth the unwritten book of our modern Job, ‘lest his integrity fail him in his rancour.’”
“No, not conceit,” protested Ashe, leaning forward with a smile on his thin, handsome face, and Marriott and Bailley stood by, as it were, to watch the battle of words between Langston’s two most famous lions. Vivian Lestrange believed in driving her advantage home, and she pounced before Ashe could formulate another word.
“Like the devil on another occasion, you quoted Holy Writ,” she went on, “and I follow your example. ‘I will demand of thee and answer thou me!’ What but male conceit formulated that judgment of yours that no woman could have written a book which you admired? Is your estimate of all women the same? Were your mother, your sisters, your aunts, all congenital defectives? Were your female cousins half wits, and was your grandmother a moron?”
Laughter overcame the three men. Despite the energy of her words, the charm and gaiety of her voice saved them from any hint of acerbity, and Ashe raised his hands in token of defeat.
“Armistice, Kamerad, armistice!” he cried. “I will answer thee—out of the whirlwind! My mother, my non-existent sisters, my aunts and female cousins were of invulnerable intelligence,—‘of unmatched wit and judgment’—but none of them, oh most redoubtable debater, could have written ten consecutive pages without betraying their sex, in their choice of words, in their delineation of character, in their ethical judgments. Women have certain admirable qualities which men lack, but their qualities are characteristic of themselves.”
“I often wonder what is at the root of that strange conviction which differentiates a woman’s mind from a man’s,” replied Vivian Lestrange. “If I create a character in a novel, I consider the dual influences of environment and heredity. All my characters are derived from two parents,—a father and a mother, and their make up is influenced by both. For myself, I know that I resemble a father,—whom I cannot even remember,—in looks, in likes and dislikes, in my manner of thinking. This being so, how can it be reasonable to suppose that I should write in a style purely feminine, showing a mind solely derived from my mother,—whom I resemble hardly at all? I take it for granted,” she added sweetly, “that you admit the validity of my original premise,—that each human being is derived from two parents, and that their mental equipment may resemble that of either father or mother?”
Ashe laughed again. “That is indubitable,” he replied, “but your minds are not only influenced by heredity. Environment counts a lot. A woman sees only a limited amount of a man’s point of view, and she can—as a rule—interpret only a limited portion of a man’s mind.”
“Surely your outlook is pure Victorianism,” protested Vivian smilingly, “what you need is a course in biology. You envisage women still as the sheltered, emotional playthings of men. The woman of today is beginning to see through the fraud; in short, we are realising ourselves, developing our dual heritage from father and mother alike, and adumbrating the time when artistic creativeness,—genius even—may be expected from women and men alike. We are still handicapped by the habit of thought of centuries, still too prone to acknowledge the unique splendour of the gifted male,—but your ‘weaker vessel’ theory,—I deride it! I challenge it! In short, I deny it utterly and without reserve!”
That evening stood out in Marriott’s mind for years as one of the most entertaining he had ever spent. Vivian Lestrange had too much savoir faire,—and too much inherent courtesy—to monopolise the conversation for long. Having expounded her original theme, she drew Marriott and Bailley into the conversational give and take, and she had the gift of making other people talk well. She tossed the ball hither and thither with a quickness of wit which was in itself delightful, and which displayed the epigrammatic qualities of a lively and cultivated mind. Only to Ashe, did she express the challenging mockery which had shown so well in the conversation before dinner, and more than once she had him floundering in a discussion, pouncing upon a too-sweeping generalisation, or an inexactitude in his facts.
When he had gone, a little smile of amusement flickered across Marriott’s face, and he drew his telephone towards him, and plugged in the connection which put him through to the office of his colleague,—Robert Bailley. The latter was responsible for the publicity and sales departments, whereas Marriott dealt with authors’ contracts, readers and so forth.
“Hullo. Ashe gone yet?” enquired Bailley, when he heard Andrew Marriott’s deep voice.
“Yes. He’s just left. What do you think he’s got into his head now? He wants to meet Vivian Lestrange.”
“Well, I’m…” exclaimed Bailley. “What the deuce put that into his head?… And what the dickens did you tell him?…”
“I told him I’d pass his message on to Lestrange, and left it at that. You know I’ve been thinking for sometime past that this secrecy business is a bit tiresome. People are making the most absurd suggestions. Ashe had actually got a bee in his bonnet that Vivian Lestrange is an ex-convict,—besides the Press isn’t pleased about it.”
“It’s all a bit difficult, I grant you,” said Bailley thoughtfully, “but we can’t blow the gaff without permission.”
“No, no! of course not! I wasn’t even contemplating such a step,” protested Marriott, “but I do think I’ll write and put in a suggestion about a little dinner just for the four of us. Ashe is a quite trustworthy fellow, and he’ll give nothing away, but if he were in a position to say that he’d actually met Lestrange,—drop a word to the P.E.N. for instance, it would be an excellent thing. Besides, Ashe is a very attractive personality, and he’s much in the public eye these days. At any rate, there’d be no harm in seeing how the suggestion is taken.”
“Well, I leave it to you,” replied Bailley. “But I don’t think the party will materialise.”
“We shall see,” said Marriott, and rang off. Leaning back in his chair, Marriott gave himself up to amused reminiscence. When Langston’s had published The Charterhouse Case,—and it had been the biggest success of the publishing year,—Marriott had invited the author to come and dine with him. Lestrange had replied in a courteous little letter, declining the invitation on the grounds that he was a semi-invalid who seldom went beyond his own garden. He had also written that personal publicity of any kind was very distasteful to him, that the public need only know an author through the medium of his work. The situation had remained the same for nearly three years, during which Lestrange’s reputation had steadily increased, though the public learned nothing of the author. Then, some six months ago, a situation developed which called for a personal interview. A certain passage in Lestrange’s new novel—then at the printer’s—had caused Marriott to wrinkle his brows in consternation. Of course, as the reader pointed out, it was a matter of interpretation, but one never knew with the public, and reviewers were an incalculable lot. Langston’s wouldn’t like to have any mud thrown—and then there were the libraries…
Marriott had nodded his wise head, and had written to Vivian Lestrange a very tactful letter, explaining the difficulty and begging that he might be allowed to come and talk the matter over. Lestrange, in reply, said he would call on Marriott, and discuss the difficulty on condition that the publishers would give an undertaking to respect his anonymity and give no hint of his real personality to anybody.
Much intrigued, Marriott had given the undertaking asked for, and had looked forward with a lively interest to meeting the writer whose fame was known in three continents.
On the morning of the appointment, Marriott’s clerk brought him a letter marked “Urgent and personal.” Opening it he found a visiting card:
VIVIAN LESTRANGE
Temple Grove,
Hampstead.
“Ask the gentleman to come in,” said Marriot to the messenger who had brought the letter. The young man goggled at him.
“Please, sir,” he began, but was cut short.
“At once,” said Marriott firmly.
Expecting he knew not what,—from the Prime Minister to the Prince of Wales, Marriott watched the door with the keenest curiosity he had ever felt,—and then he had the surprise of his life when a tall, slim young woman entered the room, and held out her hand, a smile in her eyes as she looked at him.
“I’m afraid this is a shock for you, Mr. Marriott,” she said calmly, “but it’s your fault really. I never said I was a man. I merely refrained from contradicting your original assumption.”
Marriott began to laugh,—he really couldn’t help it, and Vivian Lestrange laughed too, and their laughter melted away any strangeness from their first meeting.
“God bless my soul!” exclaimed the publisher. “To think I have been flattering myself for years that I could tell a man’s writing from a woman’s…”
“Well, it’s jolly good for you to know you can’t,” she replied laughingly. “I get so sick of that theory. The minute a reviewer learns from some gossip that so and so is a woman, he promptly writes ‘there is a touch of femininity about the writings of X.Y.Z. Her descriptions are above criticism, but her dialogue betrays her sex.’ It’s all my eye and Betty Martin!”
Once again Marriott laughed. “My dear young lady, you are the exception to prove the rule.”
“That is merely an admission of defeat,” retorted Vivian Lestrange. “You have met your Waterloo, and incidentally I’m not very young, and far from ladylike in some respects, as you may have observed from my books. Now let’s get down to it. I agree with you that this passage could do with some remodelling. I wasn’t hinting at perversion when I wrote it. That is a subject which isn’t in my line at all.”
Sitting opposite to the publisher, she produced a sheet of notes from her bag, and began to suggest alternative versions for the offending passage. As she talked, Marriott was more and more impressed by her shrewdness, and the clear-mindedness which characterised everything she said. She was a very personable young woman, this Vivian Lestrange, tall and slim, yet broad-shouldered, in build somewhat boyish. Her fair hair which gleamed smoothly under the small blue hat, was close cropped, leaving her ears uncovered. Her skin was admirable, fresh and healthy, with only a slight suggestion of make up, and the grey-blue eyes which studied Marriott so steadily looked straight into his own with an impersonal deliberation. She was dressed in a well cut navy-blue suit, with a light blue shirt and dark tie. Studying her more closely, Marriott assessed her age at something over thirty,—the slim figure and fresh skin had given a first impression of youthfulness, but as she talked, she gave evidence of a mature and thoughtful mind.
Having dealt with the difficulty which had been the cause of her visit, she went on to sketch the outlines of the novel on which she was now engaged. Sitting sideways to Marriott, her chair pushed back from the table, her feet crossed and her eyes studying the etchings on the further wall, she talked in a low clear voice, singularly deliberate in diction. Marriott, studying her regular profile, decided that the voice and the face were well matched, both admirable, but queerly lacking in feeling,—as dispassionate as the mind of a mathematician. When he expressed enthusiasm over the ideas she was sketching out for his benefit, Vivian Lestrange smiled at him very pleasantly, but yet conveyed the impression that it was her own judgment that mattered, nothing else.
“Upon my soul, the coolest creature I ever met in my life!” exclaimed Andrew Marriott, when describing the interview to Bailley. “Good brains, good looks, good breeding, and yet as remote as a stone carving. One couldn’t get to grips with her, every time I put in a friendly word, she just smiled through me!”
Remembering his first interview with Vivian Lestrange after Ashe had left him, Marriott chuckled to himself. What would Ashe make of her, he asked himself?—Ashe who was adored by every woman he met, and who took adoration as his due? Reaching out for a sheet of note-paper, Marriott began to write a letter,—a very rare occurrence for one to whom dictation was second nature.
“My dear Miss Lestrange,” he wrote. “I have just been having a talk with Michael Ashe. Some time ago you expressed admiration of his work, and this morning he was telling me how greatly he admired yours. (A feather in your cap, for he is a carping critic.) He continued by saying he wanted to meet Lestrange, and asked me to tell him so.
“It is hardly necessary for me to add that Ashe gained no notions of your identity from me, but I said that I would pass on his suggestion for a meeting to you.
“I think,—in fact I am certain—that you would find Ashe an interesting personality. He is also one of those who can keep a secret, and you need have no fear that he would endanger yours. If I were not positive about this I would not suggest the meeting, but I have had a large experience of human nature, and experience is a wise guide.
“If the idea commends itself to you, will you do me the honour of dining with me and my colleague, Mr. Bailley, to meet Mr. Ashe? It would give us all very great pleasure, and as you know, we will ensure that our party shall not endanger your secret.
“With kindest regards,
“Believe me, sincerely yours,
“Andrew Marriott.”
Bailley smiled sceptically when Marriott told him of his letter.
“You’re an optimist,” he said to his colleague. “You want to persuade Vivian Lestrange to come out of her shell, and you’re dangling Michael Ashe as a bait. It won’t work, my lad, it won’t work.”
Marriott did not believe that it would work himself, but he had just a vague hope at the back of his mind. Vivian Lestrange had once shown a very definite interest when she had spoken of Michael Ashe,—something more personal than the cool detachment which characterised her attitude towards most subjects. As Marriott knew, there are hardly any writers in the world who do not enjoy appreciation of their work from someone whom they themselves admire.
He had not long to wait. The next morning came a letter answering his own.
“Dear Mr. Marriott,
“Many thanks for your letter. It will give me much pleasure to dine with you and Mr. Bailley, and to meet Mr. Ashe. Any evening next week would suit me.
“Of course I accept your assurances that Mr. Ashe will respect my secret as you have done.
“Sincerely yours,
“Vivian Lestrange.”
Marriott showed the letter to Bailley with a chuckle.
“Human after all,” he observed. “I really feel quite consoled. All my theories about women were being destroyed,—frozen out by the icy detachment of that remarkable young woman. Now I must get hold of Ashe and tell him he can have his wish if he will pledge himself to respect a fellow author’s fancies.”
Chapter II
On the evening arranged for his dinner party, Andrew Marriott fussed around his beautiful Bloomsbury flat until his housekeeper, Mrs. Edge, got positively annoyed.
“Anybody’d think he’d got the King and the Queen and the Prince of Wales all coming together,” she confided to her husband. Mrs. Edge was a very good cook and a very capable manager, and her husband filled the roles of valet, butler and houseman as admirably as his wife did the cooking. “Queer ideas on parties some folks has,” she went on. “Now a gentlemen’s party’s one thing, but if you’re going to have mixed company, I do like to see it even. Sounds odd to me, that it do.”
Michael Ashe arrived in good time for once, and gave a sardonic glance around the drawing-room. (Marriott was a bachelor, but he had a very pretty drawing-room.) Nodding to the two publishers, Ashe enquired,
“Well, which of you is it?” and Bailley laughed, with a twitch of his arched eyebrows.
“Not guilty, my boy, not guilty,” he replied. “Try one of Marriott’s cocktails. It’ll help to steady your nerves for the coming fray…”
Vivian Lestrange was punctual too; just as Ashe had taken the glass proffered to him, the butler opened the door and announced “Miss Strange.” Hastening across the room with outstretched hand, smiles wreathing his face, Marriott exclaimed:
“My dear Miss Lestrange! This is an honour for us all, and a long-hoped-for pleasure. May I introduce a fellow writer to you, Mr. Michael Ashe—Miss Vivian Lestrange.”
There was a moment of utter silence; Ashe was so completely taken aback that he stood, his glass still in his hand, his lips parted, as tongue-tied as a schoolboy. Staring at the self-possessed woman in front of him, meeting her smiling, slightly mocking glance, he stammered incredulously,
“It’s… it’s impossible.”
Turning to Marriott with a little shrug and a lift of her fair arched eyebrows, Vivian Lestrange murmured,
“Not Michael Ashe!… not the Michael Ashe! It’s… it’s impossible!”
The light mocking tone of her voice and the whole aplomb of her manner were so excellently calculated, that Marriott and Bailley laughed wholeheartedly, and Ashe, his face flushing, suddenly realised his boorishness.
“Miss Lestrange, I apologise wholeheartedly—I grovel. That was inexcusable of me, it was simply execrable!”
“It was,” she replied coolly, her eyes mocking him. “Both inexcusable and execrable! And why, pray, that word impossible? Am I then so impossible? I live and learn.”
Marriott could almost have applauded. Her voice was so delicious, her whole appearance, from her fair boyish head to the tips of her silver slippers, so completely admirable, that she had the man before her at such disadvantage as he might never have experienced before.
“You humiliate me!” protested Ashe, and his voice told of recovered poise. “Like the psalmist I am become a worm, and no man… but the worm turns when cornered! I said ‘impossible,’ and in that one word, under stress of feeling, gave voice to the conviction within me,—that no woman could have written The Charterhouse Case.”
“‘Murdering impossibility, to make what cannot be, slight work,’” she quoted in retort, taking the chair which Bailley was holding for her, and declining the cocktail which Marriott proffered, with an airy wave of her hand. “There is a proverb concerning a woman scorned,” she went on, addressing her remark to the ceiling, with uptilted chin and smiling lips. “There might well be another about a man mistaken. ‘Lay not thy hand upon the exclusiveness of man’s conceit,’ runneth the unwritten book of our modern Job, ‘lest his integrity fail him in his rancour.’”
“No, not conceit,” protested Ashe, leaning forward with a smile on his thin, handsome face, and Marriott and Bailley stood by, as it were, to watch the battle of words between Langston’s two most famous lions. Vivian Lestrange believed in driving her advantage home, and she pounced before Ashe could formulate another word.
“Like the devil on another occasion, you quoted Holy Writ,” she went on, “and I follow your example. ‘I will demand of thee and answer thou me!’ What but male conceit formulated that judgment of yours that no woman could have written a book which you admired? Is your estimate of all women the same? Were your mother, your sisters, your aunts, all congenital defectives? Were your female cousins half wits, and was your grandmother a moron?”
Laughter overcame the three men. Despite the energy of her words, the charm and gaiety of her voice saved them from any hint of acerbity, and Ashe raised his hands in token of defeat.
“Armistice, Kamerad, armistice!” he cried. “I will answer thee—out of the whirlwind! My mother, my non-existent sisters, my aunts and female cousins were of invulnerable intelligence,—‘of unmatched wit and judgment’—but none of them, oh most redoubtable debater, could have written ten consecutive pages without betraying their sex, in their choice of words, in their delineation of character, in their ethical judgments. Women have certain admirable qualities which men lack, but their qualities are characteristic of themselves.”
“I often wonder what is at the root of that strange conviction which differentiates a woman’s mind from a man’s,” replied Vivian Lestrange. “If I create a character in a novel, I consider the dual influences of environment and heredity. All my characters are derived from two parents,—a father and a mother, and their make up is influenced by both. For myself, I know that I resemble a father,—whom I cannot even remember,—in looks, in likes and dislikes, in my manner of thinking. This being so, how can it be reasonable to suppose that I should write in a style purely feminine, showing a mind solely derived from my mother,—whom I resemble hardly at all? I take it for granted,” she added sweetly, “that you admit the validity of my original premise,—that each human being is derived from two parents, and that their mental equipment may resemble that of either father or mother?”
Ashe laughed again. “That is indubitable,” he replied, “but your minds are not only influenced by heredity. Environment counts a lot. A woman sees only a limited amount of a man’s point of view, and she can—as a rule—interpret only a limited portion of a man’s mind.”
“Surely your outlook is pure Victorianism,” protested Vivian smilingly, “what you need is a course in biology. You envisage women still as the sheltered, emotional playthings of men. The woman of today is beginning to see through the fraud; in short, we are realising ourselves, developing our dual heritage from father and mother alike, and adumbrating the time when artistic creativeness,—genius even—may be expected from women and men alike. We are still handicapped by the habit of thought of centuries, still too prone to acknowledge the unique splendour of the gifted male,—but your ‘weaker vessel’ theory,—I deride it! I challenge it! In short, I deny it utterly and without reserve!”
That evening stood out in Marriott’s mind for years as one of the most entertaining he had ever spent. Vivian Lestrange had too much savoir faire,—and too much inherent courtesy—to monopolise the conversation for long. Having expounded her original theme, she drew Marriott and Bailley into the conversational give and take, and she had the gift of making other people talk well. She tossed the ball hither and thither with a quickness of wit which was in itself delightful, and which displayed the epigrammatic qualities of a lively and cultivated mind. Only to Ashe, did she express the challenging mockery which had shown so well in the conversation before dinner, and more than once she had him floundering in a discussion, pouncing upon a too-sweeping generalisation, or an inexactitude in his facts.
