Chapter XIII

Yes, David's success had come. It had not been won so easily as was imagined by the readers who had never heard of him till now, for he had written for many papers--verse and articles too--before _A Celibate's Love Songs_ appeared. It had not come so soon that success intoxicated him; but it had come a decade earlier than it comes as a rule even to the fortunate.

It was the pity of it, that the recognition he had wooed so ardently found his embrace at last a little passionless. "A humbug" his friends, if he had had any, would have called him when he hinted as much, but some of Fame's fairness had faded in the courtship, or the wooer had lost some of his capacity for rapture.

The "interviews" and the introductions that might have been his were not forthcoming because nobody had met him yet, but he was conscious of no sacrifice in waiving them; on the contrary, he shrank distressed from the thought of thrusting his negro face? between the public and their appreciation of his verse. Mr. Norton, his publisher, might have intimated suavely that his personality had a distinct commercial value, but David had even excused himself from calling on his publisher.

Few things are more circumscribed than "widespread literary fame"; and David's was only spreading. Though _A Celibate's Love Songs_ was in brisk demand, and a second edition, the author's mother in her boarding-house at Regent's Park had not heard of it yet; Vivian was travelling, as business-manager of a dramatic company; and at present the poet's parentage had not transpired. At Panzetta's somebody might have given the kick-off to a ball of personal gossip, remembering the whisper of the ex-clerk's tendencies, but before a volume of poems penetrated to Panzetta's it would have to see, not two, but twenty editions.

In solitude as complete as when he saw his first sonnet printed, or when--as an unattached journalist--he bade the clerkship good-bye, David lived to-day. The residence of the "new poet whom Mr. Norton had discovered"--there are always paragraphists who talk naively of the publisher or manager "discovering" a writer who has been pealing at the bell for years--was a philistine and even shabby first-floor in an undesirable street shadowed by Gray's Inn Road. On his notepaper he ignored Gray's Inn Road, and flaunted Mecklenburgh Square. When he worked, his eyes rested now on an oleograph of Romeo and Juliet in a gilt frame, instead of on a washhand-stand, and his meals were laid by a domestic who removed her curling-pins by noon, and was clean by tea-time. One does not attain distinction as a poet without acquiring certain luxuries.

He was not writing this morning; he seldom did much good until the gas was lighted--until the bawl of hawkers, and the riot of children, and the clatter and crash of milk-cans had ceased. In the evening there were only piano-organs to prevent his earning a living, and by ten or eleven o'clock even these finished. He was not writing; when the second post was delivered, he had his overcoat spread on the table, and was trying to expunge a grease-spot with a rag soaked in turpentine. There was a letter for him. Though the servant was slow in coming upstairs, the grease spot was still slower in yielding to his treatment, and when she thudded across the room, he was still rubbing vigorously.

His publisher's name was on the envelope, so he put the rag down, wondering if there was any important news. At the sight of an enclosure, and a printed slip conveying Mr. Norton's compliments, he said "damn," for enclosures usually proved to be circulars from Press-cutting agencies. He opened Bee's letter with little interest, and fingers that smelt of turpentine.

The feeling roused in him by the first lines was a very commonplace one--the gratified flutter of a young artist who is praised--but after a few seconds the letter affected him more subtly. It was not merely that "Miss H. Sorrenford," who desired a reply, admired his work; so did more authoritative critics. Nor was it simply that he was thankful to her for owning it; he had been thankful to them too. It wasn't only that her appreciation was intelligent; a few of the criticisms had been more than that. The arresting fact was that he was stirred by curiosity about her. For once a woman permitted him a glimpse of her soul, and the loneliness of his life made the strange event more fascinating. He wondered who she was, and how she looked, and was humiliated to reflect how disenchanted she would be if she could see him. He read the letter twice before he put it in his pocket, and smiled again at the diffidence of her beginning. What was the picture in her mind--the seclusion of a study, a secretary sorting the poet's morning mail? He regarded his surroundings ruefully.

He thought he would reply to her on the morrow, but the curiosity she had wakened in him did not subside; on the contrary, her letter kept recurring to him during the day, and he pondered what he should say. He was young enough to quake lest his response should dethrone him. Because the matter was engrossing he sat down to answer her the same afternoon, and he found himself writing at much greater length than he had intended.

As he took the second sheet of paper, the doubt arose whether such prolixity would not cheapen him in her view. Unaccustomed to a crown, he was of course afraid of its slipping off. He left the table, and revolved a polite and colourless note that seemed more consistent with the position to which she elevated him; but he wasn't satisfied with it. To assist his meditations he re-read her letter, and now he realised that at the back of his mind lay the desire to hear from her again. The note would frustrate it. He returned to the table, and went on with the fifth page. By dint of squeezing his wisdom a good deal he contrived to avoid encroaching on page six.

Late on the next day but one, he received a few lines of acknowledgment from her. They were grateful, but they provided no reason for his addressing her any more. He was chagrined, and it would have astonished Bee much to know how often David Lee's thoughts turned to her.

At the end of a week she was sufficiently astonished; she recognised the writing on the envelope and the package a shade incredulously. He begged her acceptance of his first book, which he hoped she would like as well as his second. He even hinted that he awaited her opinion of it with considerable eagerness. She thanked him by return of post, and when another week had gone by, her opinion was expressed. She had written with a faltering pen this time, because she did not like his first book so well as his second, and was perturbed by the necessity for saying so.

David put down the letter discomfited. He had been looking for it every day, and the knowledge that he had been impatient made him angrier still. He was incensed with himself for having provoked the disappointment. Why had he sent her the book? The tepidity of her praise! Never a superlative. Besides, in parts she failed to see his meaning. After all, she was less spiritual than he had thought her!

If her earliest letter had stirred his imagination less deeply, the correspondence which he had rescued once would now have been allowed to die; as it was, he wrote to her not long afterwards, defending himself from her criticism, and explaining a passage which he said she misunderstood. It was manifest that he was wounded. She replied--evidently abased by his displeasure--that she had not presumed to "criticise." So does humility juggle with words. The poet was appeased; and then mortified to feel that he had been a churl. He scribbled a line of deprecation. Also, angling for further favours, he tied an inquiry to the end of it.

Thus the correspondence entered upon its second stage. In its second stage they exchanged letters at longer intervals, but he ceased to invent pretexts for asking her to reply, and she signed herself, "Sincerely yours, H. Sorrenford," instead of "Yours very truly." When the spring came, he complained: "It is nearly a month since I heard from you--the bareness of the breakfast-table affronts me every morning," and Bee, who had been the prey of scruples, put them from her, and wrote again.

They were wholly natural, the letters that had begun to mean so much; they would have seemed unnatural only if they had been published, with an editor's "Foreword" proclaiming that the writers were strangers to each other. David wrote on impulse in the hours when he was loneliest; Bee responded gladly when the temptation to confess herself was too strong to be denied. There was no news in the letters; hers especially were poor in facts--her thoughts about a book he had recommended to her, the impression of a ramble through the fields, seldom more. He was surprised sometimes to reflect how little he knew about the woman whom at other times he seemed to know so well. It surprised the woman that she could unveil her soul with such audacity to a man she had not met.

Only in moments she realised that she was able to write without constraint because they had not met. He didn't know her, and unknown, she was unembarrassed; the disparity between her body and her mind ceased to oppress her until the envelope was sealed. She would not even tell him she was an artist, lest he should make inquiries, and discover that she was deformed. In their sensitiveness to their exteriors, as well as in their hunger for love, these two were akin. Often when the man wrote to her, he shivered in imagining her aversion if she could see her correspondent's face. Often when the woman posted her answers, she was ashamed, conjecturing his fancy-portrait of her and cowering before her crooked shadow on the road.

And his fancy sketched a score of portraits of her. She had youth--he was sure of that--yet she was not so young that her outlook was a girl's. She had beauty--manlike, he clung to that, although he had so good a cause to know that lovely thoughts may inhabit unlovely homes. But after it was said, how little had been told! He craved the definite. Was she fair, or was she dark? Were her eyes brown or blue? What colour was her hair? Was she small, or queenly? At once he longed to see her, and trembled at the thought of revealing himself to her astounded gaze. Frequently he was harassed by the thought that an opportunity for their meeting would occur, and he wondered what excuse he could offer for avoiding it. Her letters were friendly, frank; one day he might open one to learn that she was coming to town. How could he dare to greet her? "I am David Lee." He foresaw her start, the colour falling from her face, the effort with which she put out her hand after the shock. And then? Yes, they would talk together for a little while unhappily; she would be painstakingly polite and struggle to conceal the dismay that he read in her every tone and gesture. And afterwards there would be a difference in her letters; and by degrees they would grow shorter, and presently they would cease--and the woman who had given him a new interest in life would be lost. While he could retain this sweet and strange companionship he swore he would retain it. The shock must come to her some time, he supposed, from a newspaper paragraph; for the present----But cowardice could not quiet his curiosity, and again and again he wished that he could see her once; always he wondered how she looked.

Bee's dread of his suggesting a visit to her was deepened by the fact that if she seemed reluctant to receive him, her correspondence would assume a clandestine air. Into the woman's life as well had come a new and eager fascination; she, too, desired and feared together. She wanted to hear him talk; she did not ask herself if he was handsome, but she wanted to hear him talk. What joy to have a presence that he would approve! To be able to tear open his welcome letters with no misgiving; one day to read that he was coming, and go down to the drawing-room, a graceful figure in a becoming frock, without the terror of reading consternation in his gaze. She pictured her entrance as it must be: his blank astonishment as she appeared on the threshold; their perfunctory conversation, with a lump in her throat; his pitiful pretence that he was pleased that he had come. How her letters would shrivel in his remembrance! She bowed her head.

Each was fast falling in love with an individuality; each was frightened at the thought of meeting the other's eyes. The man said bitterly, "She would shrink from a mulatto!" The woman sighed, "No doubt he thinks me beautiful!"