Chapter XI: Literary Attempts

"JOAN, will you entertain Major Armitage? Our smoke and chat have been interrupted, for John Veale has come up to have a talk about the bell-ringers."

The rector ushered the Major into the drawing-room as he spoke. Joan was sitting by the fire, a big work-basket by her side; she was mending house linen with a skilful hand, but her thoughts were far-away. She was in a thin blue-grey gown, which became her fairness and intensified the deep blue of her eyes. Her thoughtful, abstracted air vanished, her smile and dimple appeared, as she rose to greet the guest.

"I did not know you were here," she said. "I have heard voices in the study, and concluded it was John Veale, who was expected. I am so glad you have been having a chat with Father; he does so enjoy it. But he and I generally separate after dinner for an hour. He very often has a nap."

"I hope I am not an interruption to you."

"Indeed you are not." Joan sat down and took up her mending again. "I can work as well as talk."

"I don't doubt that, but it was interruption of thoughts which I meant."

Joan looked up at him and smiled.

"They were unprofitable," she said. "The fact is, I was worrying over things, and I am glad to be interrupted."

"And that was what brought me out and down to your organ," said the Major; "and after I had quieted myself, I turned in here. The rector has good, sound, wholesome views of life. He did me good in five minutes."

Joan did not answer for a moment.

The Major looked across at the piano, a semi-grand, belonging to Mrs. Adair. "May I play to you what I played in church just now?" he asked simply.

"Oh, please. I shall like to hear it."

He sat down and played Sullivan's "God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes."

His liquid and exquisite touch, the expression and tone which he got from the instrument, and the sweet melody itself, brought tears of delight to Joan's eyes. She was emotional and impressionable where music was concerned, and when the last notes died away, she sat with misty eyes gazing into the blazing fire. Then she roused herself.

"Don't stop," she said. "It is heavenly!"

Major Armitage ran his fingers over the keys and began to improvise. From discord to harmony, from unrest to peace—that seemed the burden of his theme. He stopped rather abruptly at last, and came and re-seated himself by the fire.

"Feel better?" he inquired cheerily.

"Ever so much," said Joan. "How well I can understand Saul being soothed by music. It lifts one right outside oneself and up into infinity. How I wish I had your gift!"

He shook his head in disapproval.

"I don't think it has brought me any good. It makes one unfit to mix with one's fellow-creatures, and fosters unsociability and the habits of a recluse. And I am not the musician I ought to be. I give so much time to composing that I leave little time for practising."

"You have published a good deal, have you not?"

"Chiefly songs. I want to instil a love for melody into the present generation. It is despised nowadays—our grandfathers and grandmothers loved it—and it touches the emotions and heart like nothing else."

"Yes," said Joan, thoughtfully; "I know what you mean. One hears so much brilliant and hard playing, such good technique, and such weird harmonies that music does anything but soothe; it needs all one's brain to understand and follow it. And, somehow or other, people are afraid of playing anything else. There is so little music in the average home now. Girls are not able to attain to the standard put before them, and so they refuse to play at all. Even Mozart, Beethoven, and Mendelssohn are out of fashion, though they will never lose their charm."

Then she added in an impulsive tone: "That is what I was wishing when you came into the room, that I could originate—compose—not music, but books. My mother says it pays so well. I am half inclined to try."

"There are a good many in the field," said Major Armitage, doubtfully. "Don't turn yourself into a writer, Miss Adair; so many want you in your capacity of general adviser and comforter. You will become like me, self-absorbed and isolated, and indifferent to your fellow-creatures."

"Oh, why should I?"

"I don't know. I suppose the creatures of one's brain are dearer to one than those of flesh and blood. One lives in imagination, and not in fact."

"I don't think I could write stories," said Joan; "but I was always good at essay writing, and I thought of trying a few articles on country life and Nature. I want money badly, Major Armitage, though perhaps I should not say so to you. I feel I must try and earn something, and it is difficult when one is tied to a country village like this."

"Have you tried your hand at poetry?"

"No," said Joan, slowly; "at least, I suppose I am not an exception to most girls. When we are very young, we all try to be poets! But it is not my line."

"I wish it were mine," said the Major, with a little sigh. "I get ideas at the piano for which I want words. I make a few bungling attempts, but I am not cut out for it."

Joan thought of the sweet little poem she had returned, but said not a word.

"Try your hand at writing, Miss Adair, if you want to do so. I have a great friend. He is editor of 'English Thoughts,' and he is very fond of country articles and Nature studies. If you would allow me to submit one of your ventures to him, he would say at once whether he could use it or not."

"I am afraid it would be a quick refusal, but you inspire me to try, and I should be most grateful for the introduction." Then she added: "Of course, I need not say that I want my efforts to be unknown."

"I will respect your confidence, but—" and here a little smile came to his lips—"I am not a talker, so I shall not be dangerous in that way." Then he said: "I have an invitation to Ireland, and I do not know that I ought not to accept it; but I can't leave home for another month, for I have work that must be finished. I have a widowed sister, with one child, living in the country near Donegal."

"Of course, you will go?"

"Yes; I am the only one who can. I have no responsibilities. My other brothers are all married men."

They were interrupted in their talk by the rector's entrance, and soon afterwards Major Armitage went. But Joan found her thoughts straying after him. She was becoming very interested in his affairs, and mused upon the strange mixture that was in his composition—the dual nature of a dreamy and imaginative musician and a keen soldier.

The very next day she started her first attempt at literature. Her father was so increasingly anxious about ways and means that she felt desperate. But she found it extremely difficult to get quiet time for writing. It was an impossibility throughout the day as she had incessant interruptions. But after dinner, in the evening, when her father retired to his study for a nap, she seized her pen and paper, and, sitting by the drawing-room fire, tried to produce some of the thoughts and impressions of her brain. It was difficult work at first. She wrote, and destroyed, revised, and destroyed again; and when, eventually, she accomplished a short article, which she entitled, "An Autumn Afternoon on our Heath," she was strangely dissatisfied with it. She was shy of mentioning it to her father, and the more she read it, the less she liked it. At last, plucking up her courage, she sent it over to Major Armitage, with the following note:

"DEAR MAJOR ARMITAGE,—I send you my first attempt. If it is too crude, too uninteresting and amateurish, do not send it to your friend. I will wait till I can do better. Is it troubling you too much to ask you to read it, and act according to your judgment?—Yours sincerely,—

"JOAN ADAIR."

She received an answer in two hours' time:

"DEAR MISS ADAIR,—Pluck up heart! It is first-rate, and I have dispatched it by this evening's post. May it prosper in the hands of the editor.—Your sincere friend,—

"R. ARMITAGE."

Joan resigned herself to patient waiting. Meanwhile fortune favoured her, for one morning Mrs. Blount, the doctor's wife, arrived to ask her advice about a governess for her two little boys. Joan promptly proposed herself as teacher, and Mrs. Blount was delighted. She agreed to send the children to the rectory every morning from nine to twelve. Mr. Adair made no objections, and Joan took the children into the dining-room, where they were busy all the morning. It was not liberal pay, for the doctor was not a wealthy man, but two pounds per month was well worth to Joan the few hours of her time, and she did not grudge the extra work thrown upon her shoulders in the afternoon. The boys were already devoted to her, and they proved docile and intelligent pupils.

One morning Wilmot Gascoigne appeared, and was very much annoyed when Sophia told him that Joan was engaged and could not see him. He came round again about tea-time, and reproached Joan with having treated him so.

She explained, but the frown did not leave his brow.

"What waste of good material! How can you bring yourself to do it?"

"I love it. They are dears. Besides, I want the money."

"Oh, what a curse the—the want of money is! I should be in America now if it were not for that reason. And poverty is a shameful incentive to talent or genius. It is so degrading—the matter of pounds, shillings and pence!"

"I don't know," said Joan, impulsively. "Poverty is an incentive to me—to attempt! I am trying my hand at writing."

Wilmot smiled and held out his hand.

"Shake hands. I always thought you would be a success in that line. May I see the attempt?"

"Major Armitage has it—or, rather, a friend of his has it by this time, I hope."

The disgust, as well as astonishment, depicted on Wilmot's face made Joan laugh.

"That music crank! Well, I did think, considering our friendship and intercourse, that you would have come to me first for advice about a literary effort."

"You have been away," faltered Joan.

"Then could you not have written? Is it a case of being out of sight out of mind?"

Joan hardly knew what to say.

"The fact is I have too many friends," she said lightly, "and I am perfectly certain that this poor attempt of mine is doomed to failure. It is just as well that you have had nothing to do with it, Mr. Gascoigne."

"Have you any of your writing which you could show me?" Wilmot asked eagerly.

"I am such a beginner. I am simply doing it to get money, not from love of producing. I don't even know if there is anything inside me that is worth producing."

"If there is, and I believe there is," said Wilmot, looking at her thoughtfully, "you and I will produce something together. I'll stay down here on purpose. It will be worth it."

"I couldn't think of working with anyone else," said Joan, quickly. "Why, all my ideas would run dry at once!"

"You never know what you can do till you try. You must have a copy of what you have sent up. Do prove yourself a friend and show it to me."

Very reluctantly, Joan left the room to get her much corrected and very untidy MS. Wilmot frowned impatiently when she had left the room.

"It's always my luck to be too late on the field. Plague take that dotty Major! Why on earth does he poach on my preserves! And what a Hebe she is! I haven't seen a woman in town who can hold a candle to her! She's utterly wasted in this hole. If she is to be a literary success—and she has no average woman's intellect—I'm determined that mine shall be the hand to lead her to fame, and no other!"

Fate was against Wilmot at present, for Joan entered the room again much more hurriedly than she left it.

"Oh, I am so sorry, but they have sent for me; I shall have to fly. Little Johnnie Craddings has scalded himself, and his mother is out for the day. Do you care to come down the village with me, or would you like a chat with my father?"

"I will come with you, if you are not going to adopt motor speed."

"Poor little Johnnie!" gasped Joan.

She was literally running down the drive, and Wilmot Gascoigne, with a face as black as night, was trying to keep pace with her.

He endeavoured to turn the current of her thoughts to literature again, but it was hopeless. Johnnie's accident engrossed Joan's mind to the exclusion of every other subject.

He accompanied her to the door of the cottage, then took a surly farewell of her, and returned to the Hall, feeling furious with Major Armitage and with poor Johnnie.

Joan did not see him till a fortnight later, and, meantime, she had the joy of hearing that her article was accepted and that others of a similar character could be taken.

With her two small pupils and literary work in addition to her usual household and village duties, Joan was now more than busy, but she enjoyed it all; and when she handed the cheque for her first article to her father to help pay some of the numerous bills which were so distressing him, it was the happiest hour in her life.

He was at first reluctant to take it. "It is yours, my dear child. Why should I rob you of your first earnings?"

"Ah! But I am earning to help you; and, after all, Dad, dear, the bills are as much mine as yours. We cannot separate ourselves from our joint expenses."

"They are mostly your mother's debts—and—and Cecil's."

"Yes—well, that is what I mean. You and I are going to try to pay them off. They belong to our family."

It was a day or two after this that Joan was invited with her father to dine at the Hall. It was not a dinner party; only themselves, another neighbouring rector (who was a bachelor), and a General and Mrs. Thane. There was a sister of Lady Gascoigne's staying in the house. Wilmot took Joan in to dinner, and talked hard about literature as a profession the whole time.

"It is the most satisfying life on earth," he said enthusiastically. "Singers lose their voices, actresses their charm, when age creeps on; but the brain only mellows and ripens, and gains in experience with every added year. You are great on influence, Miss Adair. Think of the wide-reaching influence of the pen! No other profession can touch it in its infinity of power and scope."

Joan felt her heart throb as she caught some of his enthusiasm. She, who had longed to impart knowledge and mould character, now had a vision of a wide and never-ending stream of influence flowing from her pen.

Then he came to more personal details.

"I read your little article, and see much promise in it. You have the faculty of seeing with your own eyes, and describing with quaint freshness your own impressions; and they are original. We do not want platitudes or mediocre writing in these days. There is a lack of style and finish which can soon be remedied. If you would allow me to look at your next attempt, I could show you in a moment what I mean."

Joan murmured her thanks. She was grateful for the interest which Wilmot showed in her first effort and for the encouragement which he was giving her.

When dinner was over, and the ladies were in the drawing-room, Banty came brusquely up to her.

"Now, look here, don't you get too thick with Motty, for he has a way of preying on likely subjects who minister to his self-love and become his willing and devoted slaves. He took up a poor cousin of mine who thought she could write poetry. I believe she could have done so if he had left her alone, but he altered and clipped her work to suit his own ideas, and subjugated her mind to his, till it became a mass of confused pulp, and then, when her writing turned to insipid rot, he shrugged his shoulders and cast her from him in contempt."

Joan looked at Banty in surprise. She had never heard her talk on any subject but hunting, and was for a moment silent.

Banty gave a nervous laugh.

"Yes, I can see through Motty, though he considers me on a level with the lower animals. 'A good old cow,' I have heard him call me. But cows perhaps notice more than we give them credit for. You're too good a sort to be crushed by him. He is mostly gas, you know! And all his big talk won't make me believe in him. Now, let us put him out of our thoughts. I want another tea amongst the pines with you."

"The weather is too wet at present, isn't it?"

"Oh, I don't know. I think under the trees we shan't feel it. But I expect you're not quite so weather-proof as I am. I'll come round to you. Will you be in the day after to-morrow? I'm not hunting, so I'll look in about four."

"All right. I shall expect you then."

"And now you must talk to Aunt Hetty. Ask her to play. She rather fancies herself as a musician. Motty says it's like a cat scrambling over the keys; but she attends every concert going in town, and is up in all the musical jargon of the day."

Joan was then introduced to Miss Parracombe, who was a tall and angular lady, with a very large nose and a small chin.

"I hear you play the organ in church?" she began at once. "I hope it is from choice, and not from duty, that you do it. It's a sad pity this is such an unmusical house. I feel like a fish out of water. I was hoping to meet a Major Armitage. Do you know him? They tell me he shuts himself up in the country. But I know friends of his in town, and, as a composer of a certain style, he is well-known. I asked my sister to have him to dinner. She says he always refuses to dine out. But I can quite understand that he finds no kindred soul in this house, and does not want to spend the precious hours of his time in uncongenial society. I find it a trial myself. This perpetual talk of hunting and sport bores me to death. Will you play to us, Miss Adair? I am sure you are musical."

Joan shook her head, but asked Miss Parracombe if she would play herself, and she went to the piano with much alacrity. She began a fugue of Bach's, which she certainly played correctly, though without an atom of expression. Joan listened with interest. She had expected the old lady to play some of the old-fashioned "fireworks" of her young days.

Banty yawned, and Lady Gascoigne exchanged whispered remarks with Mrs. Thane. It was a relief to all when the gentlemen came into the room, and very soon afterwards Mr. Adair and Joan took their departure. Wilmot accompanied them into the hall.

"Will you be in on Friday afternoon?" he asked Joan.

"Yes. Banty is coming to tea. Do come with her."

"Dash her!" he muttered. "The next day, then?"

"I am afraid I am engaged. Father and I are going over to a neighbouring rectory to tea."

"When will you be disengaged?"

His voice was coldly quiet.

Joan looked up at him and laughed. "I'm a very busy person!"

"So I gather. I'll drop in on Saturday evening, after dinner. I shall be in town to-morrow for a night. I must see you soon. I want a talk with you."

"Very well. I shall be at home."

Joan and her father drove home in their little jingle. They could not afford the village fly, for Joan was economising in every direction. She was silent for some minutes; then she said:

"Do you like Mr. Gascoigne, Dad? Do you think him a reliable man? I always think you're a judge of character."

"He does not appeal to me," said Mr. Adair, promptly. "He is a man who can only talk shop, and if anyone is not interested in his tastes, he will not trouble to make himself pleasant to them. Naturally, I prefer Major Armitage's society, for I know nothing of literature, especially of the literature that Wilmot Gascoigne likes to talk about. With Armitage I am at home. He doesn't discuss music, but village topics and politics—anything which he knows interests me."

"Yes," said Joan, slowly. "I suppose Mr. Gascoigne is one-sided; but it is difficult to suppress the fullness of one's heart. He is so enthusiastic! Perhaps he may be selfish and intolerant; Banty thinks he is. But he carries me away when once he begins to talk."

She wondered, as she lay awake that night reviewing the evening that was past, whether he would, as Banty said, seek to subjugate her mind to his, and fetter and clip her originality.