by A. A. Milne
Mr. Pump would tell you that he didn’t go in for best sellers—possibly because they didn’t go in very much for him. He published as many books as he could get hold of, and looked to make a small profit on each. With the ‘customary agreement between author and publisher’ in his safe, the small profit was certain; with the ‘usual agreement’ it was at least a pleasant probability. For he specialized in novels with ‘a strong sex interest’; and though they only took you to the moment when the bedside lamp went out, they left you with a row of stars to light up your imagination, and a strong hope that some day * * * * But Mr. Pump was not taking that sort of risk. He preferred to keep you hoping.
The appearance of Bindweed, then, as the Book of the Week was to him astonishing. Editors and reviewers had, notoriously, a prejudice against him. The space they gave him in return for his advertisements was sinful. Even though Bindweed was not—well—‘that sort of book’—it was surprising that Ambrose Raglan—— Now which agreement had he made? Wellard . . . Wellard . . .
He went to his safe, found the agreement and brought it back to his desk.
H’m. Still, he had the next six books . . . and half all the rights . . . and accounts paid once yearly. . . . Not so bad. Yes, there was money in this. He must get to work . . .
Mr. Pump picked up his telephone and got to work.
Chapter Five
I
IF you had flipped through the pages of a dictionary in front of Reginald, the word ‘bindweed’ would now have leaped out at him; if you had fluttered a telephone directory before him, a Wellard, not himself, would have caught his eye. So it is to be an author and write your first book.
Sylvia and he and the three cats were breakfasting together; Sylvia on grape-fruit, the cats on milk out of her saucer, Reginald on scrambled eggs. There was, to Reginald, a sort of dewiness on Sylvia in the early morning, an untouched fragrance that he feared of dispelling by a touch, a breath, a word; an air almost of holiness about her; a look of virginal wonder in her eyes, as if she were trying to remember some beautiful and innocent dream. To have her sitting there opposite to him, smiling shyly, a secret smile between them, when she felt his look on her, to know that this was Westaways, and this was Sylvia, both his, to see the lawns and flowers of Westaways wandering through the open door to him, calling to him to come out to them, gave him a happiness which could not bear thought or expression, a happiness at which he dared not look lest it leave him. So he would read yesterday’s evening paper, which had come by post, and tell himself that, if he didn’t go into the matter too carefully, the absurd dream that he was married to Sylvia and they were living at Westaways together would go on.
At nineteen Reginald was dreaming about Cambridge. The death of his father, and of his father’s pension with him, ended the dream. His qualifications for life were sixth-form classics and moderate skill at games. There is only one profession in the world which wants these qualities, and wants them only to pass them on. Reginald grew a moustache as quickly as he could, and became an assistant-master at a second-rate grammar school. He existed there for four miserable years. Then, having added a little mathematics to his classics, he shaved his moustache and served an equal sentence in a bank. The war broke out, he grew his moustache and served another four years. The war ended. He shaved again. . . .
This was life as lived by men. Twelve years of ugliness.
Selby Grammar School. The ink-smudged form-room, the ink-smudged desks, the ink-smudged boys. The ink-smudged minds of the older boys, the dulled minds of the masters. The futile noise of the place. Noise and ugliness. The clatter of ugly boots in ugly passages, the clatter of ugly voices in ugly rooms. The sordidness, the futility of it all. For ever and for ever . . .
The bank. The clatter of London. The noisy, horrible lodgings. The city at luncheon-time. The struggle, the clatter, the unendurable smell of the underground tea-shops. The futility of the work; round and round and round. The conversation of his fellow-clerks; their sordid loves. The unloveliness of it all. For ever and for ever . . .
The army. The war. The uttermost depths of futility and noise and ugliness. Man’s final expression of his soul in one insane orgy of clatter and cruelty and filth. Now that we have found ourselves at last, now let us go on and on. For ever and for ever . . .
The war is over. Why? Why not go on? We have only noise and ugliness and futility to go back to. We have judged ourselves, found our standards, proclaimed our religion to God. Surely it is easier to go on. Why stop, and then have to begin all over again?
But the war was ended. Well, what is there to do? Shave one’s moustache again, and then what?
Then he met Sylvia. He was thirty-two; tall, lean, hard, resentful, futile himself now in his impotent anger with life, hopeless, possessionless. She was seventeen, remote and lovely, the supreme expression of all the beauty and the quietness which he had missed. Well, if he could just look at her sometimes, he would be content. . .
He was not content. The year which followed was a year of pain and turmoil and confusion beside which the years of war seemed now to have been peace. Heaven and Hell, Heaven and Hell, first one, then the other. She loved him, she loved him not—how could she? He had no money. What the Hell did money matter? But if he were poor, how in Heaven’s name could he take her? He was rich—absurd, how could he be rich?—somebody had died—who was it? Well, now he was rich. Now he could ask her. How could he ask her now, as if it were only his money which he was offering her? Oh, what the Hell did money matter? Of course it mattered. Or was it age that mattered? He was an old man, she was a child; no, it was she who had lived for ever, and he who knew nothing. Oh Sylvia, Sylvia, the unattainable, if I could just be near you, if I could just look at you for ever, I should be content!
He tried to imagine himself married to her. No good. It brought her down to earth. She was Mrs. Wellard in a flat; Mrs. Wellard at Biarritz; Mrs. Wellard at home in her drawing-room. Wherever he put her, it was wrong. Wherever he put her, he was taking something from the fragrant untouched Sylvia of his dream.
And then he found Westaways. Westaways—the complement of Sylvia. Sylvia and Westaways. Westaways and Sylvia. The two most lovely things in the world. That was her home. That was where she should be. It had been waiting for Sylvia. She had been waiting for Westaways. Now he would offer it to her, and, humbly, himself with it.
So Sylvia came to Westaways . . . as she would have come anywhere to Reginald, had he but known it.
II
So it was that Reginald sat opposite to Sylvia at Westaways, and read the evening paper in the intervals of breakfast. So it was that the name Wellard leapt out at him from an advertisement.
THE BOOK OF THE WEEK
BINDWEED by Reginald Wellard.
THE NOVEL OF THE YEAR
BINDWEED by Reginald Wellard.
THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE CENTURY
BINDWEED by Reginald Wellard.
‘Hallo!’ said Reginald, and went suddenly red at this indecent exposure of himself.
‘What is it, darling?’
‘Nothing.’
What had happened? Why had Pump burst out like this?
He turned over again his unopened letters. All ha’pennies. Nothing from Pump. Nothing from anybody. Bills, receipts, advertisements. The National Press-cutting Agency—that wasn’t his. One of the many others who wanted his custom. He opened it idly, and found a sample cutting inside.
THE BOOK OF THE WEEK
reviewed by ambrose raglan
BINDWEED, by Reginal Wellard
(Pumps Limited, 7s. 6d.)
Raglan!
He glanced across at Sylvia to make sure that he was alone. She was miles away, a cat on her lap, her eyes out of the window, her thoughts—where? He had Raglan to himself. He was alone with Raglan, listening to his praise. . . . He read, slowly . . .
Ah! He gave a lon
g sigh of relief. So his book was as good as that. After breakfast he would read Bindweed again—as Raglan must have read it.
A pity they had put that stupid photograph of him in the middle. ‘A recent study of Mr. Reginald Wellard, whose book is reviewed by Mr. Ambrose Raglan’—taken on leave, ten years ago! Where did they get it from? How did they get it? People in London talking about him, asking where they could get his photograph, ringing up photographers. ‘Willard—no, Wellard.’
He looked across at Sylvia, guiltily. Oh, Sylvia, darling, do say the right thing! Do understand how I feel! But how can you? Oh, well, I love you anyhow. I wouldn’t have you different. You’ll have to see it. Here goes.
‘Look here, Sylvia,’ he said with a little laugh. ‘Here’s fame!’ He passed the cutting across to her.
Sylvia took it, wrinkled her adorable nose at it, frowned.
‘But, darling, this isn’t you!’
‘What? Oh, the photograph.’ Of course she would notice that, think only of that. . . . Well, what wife wouldn’t? It was the natural thing for anybody to say who knew him. He kept the disappointment out of his voice.
‘Oh, that! I suppose I looked like that once.’
‘But you never had a moustache!’
‘Well, of course I had one in the Army. That was taken in 1917, when I was on leave.’
‘Oh, before I knew you,’ said Sylvia, dismissing the moustache, as she had always dismissed the ante-Sylvia Reginald. To her, life began for both of them on the day that they met. All that had gone to the making of him was nothing. He sprang, complete, into her arms.
‘Ambrose Raglan is supposed to be rather a fellow,’ said Reginald, as carelessly as he could manage.
‘Who?’ she asked, still looking from the photograph to the original. ‘Darling, you are much better-looking now. Ought they to use an old photograph like this without your permission?’
‘Well, I suppose they were in a hurry, and it was all they could get.’
‘But they could easily have waited a week and written to you. That one you had taken last year—with your chin in your hand—I loved that.’
Waited a week! Oh, Sylvia, Sylvia! I have been waiting all these weeks for some real notice of my book, and now, when at last it comes, you carelessly suggest waiting another week, just because of a silly photograph. Sweetheart, don’t you understand?
‘I hate to think of thousands of people seeing it, and thinking that you really look like that.’
‘Oh, what does it matter?’ he thinks.
Aloud he says, ‘What seems more important to me is that thousands of people should read it, and think that I really wrote a book like that.’ Had he made that sound unkind? No. But to take the unkindness, if there were any, away, he added with a laugh, ‘Nobody buys books because of an author’s face. They say that a notice like that, by Raglan, always sells thousands of copies.’
Now she is reading it. Noiselessly he helps himself to marmalade. Noiselessly he goes on with his breakfast. Not a sound. . . .
She looks up at him.
‘He likes it, doesn’t he?’ she says.
He begins to breathe naturally again.
‘Yes, he seems pretty keen.’ He gives a little deprecatory laugh. ‘Particularly about Chapter Five.’
‘I wonder why he liked that so particularly.’
Reginald knows. Raglan knows. It seems that Sylvia will never know.
‘I rather liked it myself,’ he says.
‘I loved it all,’ said Sylvia seriously. ‘But then, of course, I’m prejudiced.’
Funny darling Sylvia. But they are over the worst of it now, and can exchange banalities in a friendly way.
‘You see,’ said Reginald, ‘that’s what makes it so jolly getting a notice like this from a man like Raglan. You know that he isn’t prejudiced.’
She nods with interest and understanding.
‘And just because he isn’t prejudiced, people take his advice about books. They know it really is his opinion.’
‘Yes, I see,’ she says with her adorable little frown.
He goes on to explain what a great man Ambrose Raglan is. ‘I expect that notice’—he indicates it with a careless knife—‘will make thousands of people order the book at once.’
‘Fancy! Thousands! Darling, it is clever of you. I am proud.’
‘Are you?’ he asked, with a loving smile.
She nodded.
‘I like to think of them all talking about you, and knowing you’re mine.’ She looked at him for a long moment, and dropped her eyes.
He loved her. He held out his hand to her across the table. She misunderstood him, and passed the cutting back, her thoughts far away. But the photograph caught her eye again, and she said:
‘Do you know Mr. Raglan, I mean personally?’
Now it was his turn to misunderstand, and he said hastily, to reassure himself as much as her, that, though they had just met once, for five minutes, there was no reason whatever why Raglan should——
‘That’s all right,’ said Sylvia, nodding contentedly. ‘Then he does know what you look like.’
III
Reginald took Bindweed and Raglan into his office, meaning to have a good morning with them. Sylvia had disappeared kitchenwards. He opened Bindweed, and read this:
‘To Sylvia, who has entwined herself in my heart’
She was talking to Mrs. Hosken. Through his open window he could hear the murmur of voices coming across the court-yard.
He picked up a pencil and wrote idly on a piece of paper.
Things Sylvia can do better than me.
Remembering Raglan, and his own position now in the world of letters, he put a line through ‘me’ and wrote ‘I’.
1.She is supremely lovely. I am not. [Note.—If God gave her beauty and withheld it from me, He also gave me imagination, intelligence and all the other qualities on which I pride myself, and withheld them from Sylvia. If He did. And if I pride myself on having cultivated whatever qualities He gave me, has not Sylvia cultivated her beauty?]
2.She can drive a car, and play lawn-tennis and golf with a careless and beautiful efficiency. I do these things with a painstaking incompetence which she bears unflinchingly.
3.She does incredible things with a needle.
4.Animals adore her. [Note.—John Wesley likes me. Anyway there’s not much in this, because if it’s a question which of us is the more lovable, I retire altogether.]
5.She runs the house surpassingly well. I can’t run anything. Both Challinor and Edwards have me in their pocket, and know it.
He read this through, added ‘6. I am a cad’, put his pencil through the whole thing from north-east to south-west, and again from northwest to south-east, put a thick line across every line separately, tore the paper into sixty-four pieces, and dropped them into the waste-paper-basket. The murmur of voices still came through the open window.
How did she do it—run the house so well? It was an outrage that she should have to go into a hot kitchen just after breakfast, and talk about steak-and-kidney pudding. Did she? Perhaps she didn’t. Perhaps she just looked steak-and-kidney pudding, and Mrs. Hosken knew. Perhaps she just thought it, and the thought passed into Mrs. Hosken’s mind. Perhaps she didn’t even think it—for he didn’t like to think of her thinking anything so unbeautiful, particularly just after breakfast—perhaps she only thought ‘violets’, and Mrs. Hosken, admirable woman, decoded the thought into kidneys. Was it so that the house was run, beautifully, efficiently, quietly?
Reginald had a childish love for the competence of his house. He turned on a tap in the bathroom and hot water came out. He watched it, and, metaphorically, threw out a hand and said, ‘There you are!’ No doubt hot water came out of other hot-water taps in other houses, but, looking at the mistress of the house, you were not surprised. Lo
oking at Sylvia, you asked yourself how she did it? Coal, coke, anthracite, firewood, a stove to be lit, a stove to be lit by somebody at some definite time, a man to be called in if anything went wrong—all this was in Sylvia’s lovely hands. She thought ‘lavender’, and another half-ton of coke hurried into the shed.
He walked into the sitting-room, and there on a shelf were four pipes and an unopened tin of tobacco. There was always an unopened tin of tobacco there. He opened the tin, and filled his pouch. Now you watch. In half an hour there will be a new tin there. Sylvia? Of course. Where does the tobacco come from? They don’t sell this tobacco in the village. Where does the coke come from? Heaven knows.
He went upstairs for a handkerchief. He went through Sylvia’s room, with so much of Sylvia in it, into his dressing-room. Handkerchiefs. Yesterday he had been looking for that blue tie and had found it (after a five-minutes’ convulsion had passed over the chest of drawers) in his trouser pocket. Now all was peace again. He withdrew a handkerchief from its neat pile beneath a sprig of lavender, and went downstairs. On his way he opened the linen-cupboard. Clean clothes airing. Sylvia’s pretty things. More coke.
What on earth did he want from Sylvia which she didn’t give him? Intellectual companionship? Help!
Can any one give a man intellectual companionship? Can any other man take his thoughts down your road, hand in hand, his mind ready to diverge with yours, hither or thither, without warning, without question, two minds that think as one? Impossible, surely. Wasn’t the whole joy of thinking, and, as he had just discovered, of writing, that you were quite, quite alone? Wasn’t talk, intellectual talk as differing from chatter, really just a form of vanity? You wanted a listener, not a talker. Well, if you wrote a book, you had your listeners.
