He said, “No, no, of course not. But I am afraid-”
“I didn’t mean anything about publishing what she sent you. Of course you can’t do that-she’s much too young. But if there is anything you could say-”
He laughed.
“Oh, there’s quite a lot! Of course at present she’s copying most of the time-picking the plums out of other people’s pies. But every now and then there’s an original turn. If she was to start observing for herself and putting it down in words of her own-” he sketched a gesture-“well, I don’t know, but she might get somewhere. This whole business of the infant phenomenon is as tricky as you please. I’ve seen quite extraordinary verse produced by a child of five or six-a couple of fragments, and never another line. It generally happens when they are emerging from the nursery and before the deadening influence of education gets going on them. Practically every child of that age can act, and quite a lot of them can produce some kind of highly original work, but the minute they get to school it’s all over. The herd instinct asserts itself, and from then on the most frightful thing in the world is not to be exactly like everyone else. Jenny is past the usual age, but she has been segregated from the herd, so if she really has any originality it may survive.”
She leaned towards him a little.
“Mr. Lester-what do you really think about her work?”
“I’ve been telling you. What do you really think yourself?”
“She doesn’t show it to me. I told you she was proud. She won’t risk criticism, and whatever I said, she would know what I was thinking.”
“If she is going to be a writer she will have to face criticism- and accept it.”
She said very directly,
“If she is going to be a writer-don’t you see, that is what I want to know. She hasn’t got anyone but me. I want to know how much I ought to encourage her. Anything she takes up is bound to be more important to her than it would be if she were able to join in all the things that other children do. Ought I to encourage her to think of it as a career or-”
He said, “Or?” and saw a flush come up into her face.
“No, there isn’t any or. I couldn’t discourage her. She hasn’t got enough for it to be possible to take anything away.”
He found himself sharing her mood, instead of being able to stand back from it and criticize. They were being ridiculously intense. All right. And so what? He supposed he had it in him to be intense as well as the next man. He said, speaking with deliberation,
“I can’t tell you what you want to know, because, as I have already said, these things fizzle out. But I don’t see why that should trouble you. There isn’t anything that could be published now. All that you’ve got to do is to let her have her head-let her go on writing. She will anyhow, until she finds out-we all find out-whether she can make a good job of it, or whether she can’t. Meanwhile see that she has the right things to read- don’t let her fritter away her taste on trash. I suppose there’s a library in a house like this?”
She gave him a rueful smile.
“Very old-fashioned.”
He laughed.
“Scott-Dickens-and the other Victorians!”
“She won’t read them.”
“Starve her till she does. Stop the rubbish. If she doesn’t get it she’ll be hungry enough to fall to on wholesome food. By the way, what does she read? No, you needn’t tell me-I know. ‘He pressed a long burning kiss upon her lips.’ ‘My love, my love!’ she cried’. All that sort of thing!”
The dark blue eyes widened.
“Oh! Did she write that?”
He grinned.
“And a lot more like it, only in one place she made it a bitter kiss. And there was something about ‘tears salt on the lips’. That mightn’t have been copied.”
“But-she oughtn’t to be writing about things like that. I mean, if it’s just copying, it doesn’t matter so much, but if she thought of that for herself-”
He had another of those unpredictable spurts of anger. Her look of distress had been poignant. What did she know about kisses washed in tears?
She said doubtfully,
“I suppose you had better see her.”
CHAPTER 3
They came out into the hall again and across it to a long dark passage. The light which Rosamond switched on was up in the ceiling and as faint as candle light. There was no sound anywhere, until quite suddenly an electric bell buzzed, and went on buzzing. The sound came from behind a door on the left. It was perfectly plain that somebody wanted something and would go on ringing until the want was supplied. Rosamond stood still and said in a low voice, “It’s my aunt. I must go. I won’t be any longer than I can help.” And upon that was gone. The infernal buzzing stopped. He heard a harshly-pitched voice, and a murmuring low one which presently ceased, while the other voice went on. He thought Rosamond Maxwell was being scolded, and that either from habit or discretion she took her scoldings in silence. He found himself disliking the owner of the scolding voice.
He walked away from it, and had almost reached the end of the passage, when the door which faced him was jerked open and a girl in a green dress looked out at him. She had one hand on the door, and with the other she leaned across and clutched the frame. A long faded shawl in a mixture of colours now practically extinct hung from her shoulders and trailed upon the floor. Above it there were features which would have been pretty had they been less pinched, eyes of a startling blue, and a shining auriole of hair. The face was a child’s, but the eyes were harder than a child’s eyes should be. He had never seen anything like the hair in his life. It was the colour of bright bronze. It stood away from her head in springing waves and curled into delicate tendrils about the temples and ears.
He said, “Miss Jenny Maxwell?” and she took her hand from the door to catch at her shawl and said,
“Yes, of course. But who are you?”
There was neither shyness nor discomposure. He said,
“Your sister was bringing me to see you.”
“Where is she?”
“A bell rang. She went into a room about half way along the passage.”
Jenny nodded.
“Aunt Lydia ’s bell. It rings all the time, and she can’t be kept waiting a minute. She is Miss Crewe, and this is her house. I suppose you know that.” She took a halting step backwards. “If you were coming to see me you had better come in.”
Everything in the room was shabby. Curtains frayed at the edges. A carpet with a disappearing pattern. Old sagging chairs. A Victorian sofa darned where the upholstery showed, but for the most part hidden by the rug which Jenny had thrown back and by a litter of books and papers. She sat down, pulled the rug over her, and pointed.
“You had better have that chair. The springs want mending, but I don’t suppose you’ll go through.”
“I hope not.”
The brilliant eyes watched him with interest. They were not soft and deep like Rosamond’s. They had the brightness and glitter of sea water under the sun. After surveying him at her leisure she said,
“I suppose you are a doctor. I have seen so many of them. At first they thought I was going to die. They didn’t say so, but of course I knew. Now they say I’m a Remarkable Case. It’s a bore being an invalid, but you meet some very interesting people, and it’s nice to be a Remarkable Case.”
“I shouldn’t think it would make up for not being able to run about. But you are going to be able to do that too, aren’t you?”
She pursed up her mouth.
“I expect so. You haven’t told me your name. Are you one of the famous ones? The last man who came to see me was. He came over from Paris on purpose, and I can’t remember his name, because I think it was Russian. It sounded like a sneeze, and the Russian ones do, don’t they?”