The Bishop looked at her inquiringly.
“That one’s books may not be read at all! How dreadful!” she exclaimed.
He smiled faintly. “I had not forgotten that I was addressing an authoress,” he said. “Indeed, I should not have dared to inflict my troubles on any one not of the craft.”
Mrs. Fetherel was quivering with the consciousness of her involuntary self-betrayal. “Oh, uncle!” she murmured.
“In fact,” the Bishop continued, with a gesture which seemed to brush away her scruples, “I came here partly to speak to you about your novel. Fast and Loose, I think you call it?”
Mrs. Fetherel blushed assentingly.
“And is it out yet?” the Bishop continued.
“It came out about a week ago. But you haven’t touched your tea and it must be quite cold. Let me give you another cup.”
“My reason for asking,” the Bishop went on, with the bland inexorableness with which, in his younger days, he had been known to continue a sermon after the senior warden had looked four times at his watch—“my reason for asking is, that I hoped I might not be too late to induce you to change the title.”
Mrs. Fetherel set down the cup she had filled. “The title?” she faltered.
The Bishop raised a reassuring hand. “Don’t misunderstand me, dear child; don’t for a moment imagine that I take it to be in any way indicative of the contents of the book. I know you too well for that. My first idea was that it had probably been forced on you by an unscrupulous publisher—I know too well to what ignoble compromises one may be driven in such cases!...” He paused, as though to give her the opportunity of confirming this conjecture, but she preserved an apprehensive silence, and he went on, as though taking up the second point in his sermon—“Or, again, the name may have taken your fancy without your realizing all that it implies to minds more alive than yours to offensive innuendoes. It is—ahem—excessively suggestive, and I hope I am not too late to warn you of the false impression it is likely to produce on the very readers whose approbation you would most value. My friend Mrs. Gollinger, for instance—”
Mrs. Fetherel, as the publication of her novel testified, was in theory a woman of independent views; and if in practice she sometimes failed to live up to her standard, it was rather from an irresistible tendency to adapt herself to her environment than from any conscious lack of moral courage. The Bishop’s exordium had excited in her that sense of opposition which such admonitions are apt to provoke; but as he went on she felt herself gradually enclosed in an atmosphere in which her theories vainly gasped for breath. The Bishop had the immense dialectical advantage of invalidating any conclusions at variance with his own by always assuming that his premises were among the necessary laws of thought. This method, combined with the habit of ignoring any classifications but his own, created an element in which the first condition of existence was the immediate adoption of his standpoint; so that his niece, as she listened, seemed to feel Mrs. Gollinger’s Mechlin cap spreading its conventual shadow over her rebellious brow and the Revue de Paris at her elbow turning into a copy of the Reredos. She had meant to assure her uncle that she was quite aware of the significance of the title she had chosen, that it had been deliberately selected as indicating the subject of her novel, and that the book itself had been written in direct defiance of the class of readers for whose susceptibilities he was alarmed. The words were almost on her lips when the irresistible suggestion conveyed by the Bishop’s tone and language deflected them into the apologetic murmur, “Oh, uncle, you mustn’t think—I never meant—” How much farther this current of reaction might have carried her the historian is unable to compute, for at this point the door opened and her husband entered the room.
“The first review of your book!” he cried, flourishing a yellow envelope. “My dear Bishop, how lucky you’re here!”
Though the trials of married life have been classified and catalogued with exhaustive accuracy, there is one form of conjugal misery which has perhaps received inadequate attention; and that is the suffering of the versatile woman whose husband is not equally adapted to all her moods. Every woman feels for the sister who is compelled to wear a bonnet which does not “go” with her gown; but how much sympathy is given to her whose husband refuses to harmonize with the pose of the moment? Scant justice has, for instance, been done to the misunderstood wife whose husband persists in understanding her; to the submissive helpmate whose task-master shuns every opportunity of browbeating her, and to the generous and impulsive being whose bills are paid with philosophic calm. Mrs. Fetherel, as wives go, had been fairly exempt from trials of this nature, for her husband, if undistinguished by pronounced brutality or indifference, had at least the negative merit of being her intellectual inferior. Landscape-gardeners, who are aware of the usefulness of a valley in emphasizing the height of a hill, can form an idea of the account to which an accomplished woman may turn such deficiencies; and it need scarcely be said that Mrs. Fetherel had made the most of her opportunities. It was agreeably obvious to every one, Fetherel included, that he was not the man to appreciate such a woman; but there are no limits to man’s perversity, and he did his best to invalidate this advantage by admiring her without pretending to understand her. What she most suffered from was this fatuous approval: the maddening sense that, however she conducted herself, he would always admire her. Had he belonged to the class whose conversational supplies are drawn from the domestic circle, his wife’s name would never have been off his lips; and to Mrs. Fetherel’s sensitive perceptions his frequent silences were indicative of the fact that she was his one topic.
It was, in part, the attempt to escape this persistent approbation that had driven Mrs. Fetherel to authorship. She had fancied that even the most infatuated husband might be counted on to resent, at least negatively, an attack on the sanctity of the hearth; and her anticipations were heightened by a sense of the unpardonableness of her act. Mrs. Fetherel’s relations with her husband were in fact complicated by an irrepressible tendency to be fond of him; and there was a certain pleasure in the prospect of a situation that justified the most explicit expiation.
These hopes Fetherel’s attitude had already defeated. He read the book with enthusiasm, he pressed it on his friends, he sent a copy to his mother; and his very soul now hung on the verdict of the reviewers. It was perhaps this proof of his general inaptitude that made his wife doubly alive to his special defects; so that his inopportune entrance was aggravated by the very sound of his voice and the hopeless aberration of his smile. Nothing, to the observant, is more indicative of a man’s character and circumstances than his way of entering a room. The Bishop of Ossining, for instance, brought with him not only an atmosphere of episcopal authority, but an implied opinion on the verbal inspiration of the Scriptures and on the attitude of the Church toward divorce; while the appearance of Mrs. Fetherel’s husband produced an immediate impression of domestic felicity. His mere aspect implied that there was a well-filled nursery up stairs; that his wife, if she did not sew on his buttons, at least superintended the performance of that task; that they both went to church regularly, and that they dined with his mother every Sunday evening punctually at seven o’clock.
All this and more was expressed in the affectionate gesture with which he now raised the yellow envelope above Mrs. Fetherel’s clutch; and knowing the uselessness of begging him not to be silly, she said, with a dry despair, “You’re boring the Bishop horribly.”
Fetherel turned a radiant eye on that dignitary. “She bores us all horribly, doesn’t she, sir?” he exulted.
“Have you read it?” said his wife, uncontrollably.
“Read it? Of course not—it’s just this minute come. I say, Bishop, you’re not going—?”
“Not till I’ve heard this,” said the Bishop, settling himself in his chair with an indulgent smile.
His niece glanced at him despairingly. “Don’t let John’s nonsense detain you,” she entreated.
“Detain h
im? That’s good,” guffawed Fetherel. “It isn’t as long as one of his sermons—won’t take me five minutes to read. Here, listen to this, ladies and gentlemen: ‘In this age of festering pessimism and decadent depravity, it is no surprise to the nauseated reviewer to open one more volume saturated with the fetid emanations of the sewer—’”
Fetherel, who was not in the habit of reading aloud, paused with a gasp, and the Bishop glanced sharply at his niece, who kept her gaze fixed on the tea-cup she had not yet succeeded in transferring to his hand.
“‘Of the sewer,’” her husband resumed; “‘but his wonder is proportionately great when he lights on a novel as sweetly inoffensive as Paula Fetherel’s Fast and Loose. Mrs. Fetherel is, we believe, a new hand at fiction, and her work reveals frequent traces of inexperience; but these are more than atoned for by her pure fresh view of life and her altogether unfashionable regard for the reader’s moral susceptibilities. Let no one be induced by its distinctly misleading title to forego the enjoyment of this pleasant picture of domestic life, which, in spite of a total lack of force in character-drawing and of consecutiveness in incident, may be described as a distinctly pretty story.’”
III
It was several weeks later that Mrs. Clinch once more brought the plebeian aroma of heated tram-cars and muddy street-crossings into the violet-scented atmosphere of her cousin’s drawing-room.
“Well,” she said, tossing a damp bundle of proof into the corner of a silk-cushioned bergère, “I’ve read it at last and I’m not so awfully shocked!”
Mrs. Fetherel, who sat near the fire with her head propped on a languid hand, looked up without speaking.
“Mercy, Paula,” said her visitor, “you’re ill.”
Mrs. Fetherel shook her head. “I was never better,” she said, mournfully.
“Then may I help myself to tea? Thanks.”
Mrs. Clinch carefully removed her mended glove before taking a buttered tea-cake; then she glanced again at her cousin.
“It’s not what I said just now—?” she ventured.
“Just now?”
“About Fast and Loose? I came to talk it over.”
Mrs. Fetherel sprang to her feet. “I never,” she cried dramatically, “want to hear it mentioned again!”
“Paula!” exclaimed Mrs. Clinch, setting down her cup.
Mrs. Fetherel slowly turned on her an eye brimming with the incommunicable; then, dropping into her seat again, she added, with a tragic laugh: “There’s nothing left to say.”
“Nothing—?” faltered Mrs. Clinch, longing for another tea-cake, but feeling the inappropriateness of the impulse in an atmosphere so charged with the portentous. “Do you mean that everything has been said?” She looked tentatively at her cousin. “Haven’t they been nice?”
“They’ve been odious—odious—” Mrs. Fetherel burst out, with an ineffectual clutch at her handkerchief. “It’s been perfectly intolerable!”
Mrs. Clinch, philosophically resigning herself to the propriety of taking no more tea, crossed over to her cousin and laid a sympathizing hand on that lady’s agitated shoulder.
“It is a bore at first,” she conceded; “but you’ll be surprised to see how soon one gets used to it.”
“I shall—never—get—used to it—” Mrs. Fetherel brokenly declared.
“Have they been so very nasty—all of them?”
“Every one of them!” the novelist sobbed.
“I’m so sorry, dear; it does hurt, I know—but hadn’t you rather expected it?”
“Expected it?” cried Mrs. Fetherel, sitting up.
Mrs. Clinch felt her way warily. “I only mean, dear, that I fancied from what you said before the book came out—that you rather expected—that you’d rather discounted—”
“Their recommending it to everybody as a perfectly harmless story?”
“Good gracious! Is that what they’ve done?”
Mrs. Fetherel speechlessly nodded.
“Every one of them?”
“Every one.”
“Whew!” said Mrs. Clinch, with an incipient whistle.
“Why, you’ve just said it yourself!” her cousin suddenly reproached her.
“Said what?”
“That you weren’t so awfully shocked—”
“I? Oh, well—you see, you’d keyed me up to such a pitch that it wasn’t quite as bad as I expected—”
Mrs. Fetherel lifted a smile steeled for the worst. “Why not say at once,” she suggested, “that it’s a distinctly pretty story?”
“They haven’t said that?”
“They’ve all said it.”
“My poor Paula!”
“Even the Bishop—”
“The Bishop called it a pretty story?”
“He wrote me—I’ve his letter somewhere. The title rather scared him—he wanted me to change it; but when he’d read the book he wrote that it was all right and that he’d sent several copies to his friends.”
“The old hypocrite!” cried Mrs. Clinch. “That was nothing but professional jealousy.”
“Do you think so?” cried her cousin, brightening.
“Sure of it, my dear. His own books don’t sell, and he knew the quickest way to kill yours was to distribute it through the diocese with his blessing.”
“Then you don’t really think it’s a pretty story?”
“Dear me, no! Not nearly as bad as that—”
“You’re so good, Bella—but the reviewers?”
“Oh, the reviewers,” Mrs. Clinch jeered. She gazed meditatively at the cold remains of her tea-cake. “Let me see,” she said, suddenly; “do you happen to remember if the first review came out in an important paper?”
“Yes—the Radiator.”
“That’s it! I thought so. Then the others simply followed suit: they often do if a big paper sets the pace. Saves a lot of trouble. Now if you could only have got the Radiator to denounce you—”
“That’s what the Bishop said!” cried Mrs. Fetherel.
“He did?”
“He said his only chance of selling Through a Glass Brightly was to have it denounced on the ground of immorality.”
“H’m,” said Mrs. Clinch, “I thought he knew a trick or two.” She turned an illuminated eye on her cousin. “You ought to get him to denounce Fast and Loose!” she cried.
Mrs. Fetherel looked at her suspiciously. “I suppose every book must stand or fall on its own merits,” she said in an unconvinced tone.
“Bosh! That view is as extinct as the post-chaise and the packet-ship—it belongs to the time when people read books. Nobody does that now; the reviewer was the first to set the example, and the public were only too thankful to follow it. At first they read the reviews; now they read only the publishers’ extracts from them. Even these are rapidly being replaced by paragraphs borrowed from the vocabulary of commerce. I often have to look twice before I am sure if I am reading a department-store advertisement or the announcement of a new batch of literature. The publishers will soon be having their ‘fall and spring openings’ and their ‘special importations for Horse-Show Week.’ But the Bishop is right, of course—nothing helps a book like a rousing attack on its morals; and as the publishers can’t exactly proclaim the impropriety of their own wares, the task has to be left to the press or the pulpit.”
“The pulpit—?” Mrs. Fetherel mused.
“Why, yes—look at those two novels in England last year—”
Mrs. Fetherel shook her head hopelessly. “There is so much more interest in literature in England than here.”
“Well, we’ve got to make the supply create the demand. The Bishop could run your novel up into the hundred thousands in no time.”
“But if he can’t make his own sell—”
“My dear, a man can’t very well preach against his own writings!”
Mrs. Clinch rose and picked up her proofs.
“I’m awfully sorry for you, Paula dear,” she concluded, “but I can’t help being thankfu
l that there’s no demand for pessimism in the field of natural history. Fancy having to write The Fall of a Sparrow, or How the Plants Misbehave!”
IV
Mrs. Fetherel, driving up to the Grand Central Station one morning about five months later, caught sight of the distinguished novelist, Archer Hynes, hurrying into the waiting-room ahead of her. Hynes, on his side, recognizing her brougham, turned back to greet her as the footman opened the carriage door.
“My dear colleague! Is it possible that we are traveling together?”
Mrs. Fetherel blushed with pleasure. Hynes had given her two columns of praise in the Sunday Meteor, and she had not yet learned to disguise her gratitude.
“I am going to Ossining,” she said smilingly.
“So am I. Why, this is almost as good as an elopement.”
“And it will end where elopements ought to—in church.”
“In church? You’re not going to Ossining to go to church?”
“Why not? There’s a special ceremony in the cathedral—the chantry window is to be unveiled.”
“The chantry window? How picturesque! What is a chantry? And why do you want to see it unveiled? Are you after copy—doing something in the Huysmans manner? La Cathédrale, eh?”
“Oh, no.” Mrs. Fetherel hesitated. “I’m going simply to please my uncle,” she said, at last.
“Your uncle?”
“The Bishop, you know.” She smiled.
“The Bishop—the Bishop of Ossining? Why, wasn’t he the chap who made that ridiculous attack on your book? Is that prehistoric ass your uncle? Upon my soul, I think you’re mighty forgiving to travel all the way to Ossining for one of his stained-glass sociables!”
Mrs. Fetherel’s smiles flowed into a gentle laugh. “Oh, I’ve never allowed that to interfere with our friendship. My uncle felt dreadfully about having to speak publicly against my book—it was a great deal harder for him than for me—but he thought it his duty to do so. He has the very highest sense of duty.”
“Well,” said Hynes, with a shrug, “I don’t know that he didn’t do you a good turn. Look at that!”
They were standing near the book-stall and he pointed to a placard surmounting the counter and emblazoned with the conspicuous announcement: “Fast and Loose. New Edition with Author’s Portrait. Hundred and Fiftieth Thousand.”
The New York Stories of Edith Wharton Page 24
