A NOVELIST’S ROMANCE

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 19774, 23 February 1927, Page 7

A NOVELIST’S ROMANCE

A COMPLETE STORY By Katherine Tynan. Gerald Villiers had advertised for a new typist. He had had a whole string of incompetents since he had lost Mrs Bates, who had always understood his meaning, ev» n when' his writing was more cramped than usual. He could not be sorry that the little woman’s brave struggle was ended and her dream of going to her son in South America, dear soul! He had sped her with a gift of money that had almostoverwhelmed her by its generosity; since she had gone he had been 1 * in the soup” as regarded his work. The last lady he had had. Miss Turner, had said ‘‘Right O! ” when he told her to do anything. Miss Turner had come daily with her machine from the nearest town. Before that he had had a meek little faded epmster who wept when he was irritable over her mistakes. Then there was Mrs Edc, who had a chronic cold, and a sniff which had maddened him. His advertisement had been characteristic of him. “Wonted by an author, typist who will type what she sees before her and not express an opinion on the merits or faults of the work.” He was examining now the pile of letters that had come in answer to his advertisement; sifting them with an .impatient irritability. He was irritable. 1{? acknowledged it. It was something that he had brought home from the M ar, to a world out of He had turned away from his fellows and stuck nt his desk—too long and too continuously. He had lost so many of his friends and contemporaries in the War that he had often wondered why he was left. His books had taken hold. They ere strong, clean, masculine love Tories, with a fierce unearthly passion. At first it was a literary success, but it had come to be more than that. Enough people to make a success of his hooks had turned away from the “Yellow Bonnets” and the “Spotted Hides, ” which were making u succes fou in the disenchanted day. He was making money. The savour had gone out of that since his mother had not waited to be repaid for all she had done for him; she hud died during the war. And his little sister. Mary, had married during the War a .nan who at the end of it could find nothing to do at home and had taken her to the Colonies, where they were happy and prospering. 15 he only could have kept Mary! He glanced through the open French window down the garden, where was a crazy path and a lily pond and a dial in his view, with the blue of forget-mc-nots. and the browns and townies of wallflowers and the thick clean white of clove-pinks and- the exquisite rosewhite of appleblossom. A delicious place, Four Corners; but what did a lonely man want with such beauty. If there had been a child now, or a girl to share it with him. or the little mother, or Mary! He went back impatiently to his sorting of the letters. He had almost made up his mind to get a male secretary who : would live with him—some poor devil ' broken in the War. Only—anyone I might worry him. He had Bruce; : Bruce never worried. They had come to understand each other so perfctly.

AaS he thought of it, the dog, a splendid orange and white collie, looked up at him with eyes of ardent affection.

It was a monastic establishment —a couple of ex-soldier servants did his housework and his garden. Dobbs, his old soldier servant, valeted him and cooked for him as he liked. Why should he have thought of a child running on that crazy pavement, of a girl hastening to catch the tiny thing lest he should fall?

.He was weeding out ruthlessly. Vcry few of the pile remaind. He picked up one of them and a scent came from it. The paper was white, with a dull surface. It had a crispness in his fingefs—like sun-dried linen, he thought. In the corner of the sheet was a very tiny silver monogram.

He tried to harden his heart against the appeal of the letter, and the smell of violets. He knew that sort, the gushing schoolgirl sort. He had had letters from them sometimes with a flower enclosed. Secretly these simple tributes had pleased him, though he had pretended to himself that he was bored by them.

The letter was unexpectedly straightforward, business-like, a lady’s letter, and a sensible one. The applicant had experience with difficult hand-writing; she had languages; she had a good knowledge of English and other literai ture, and she could do shorthand if necessary. She enclosed a specimen of ■ her typing. And she was his sincerely, I Gillian Aylmer. • He gllaneed at what she had typed. ilt was an unusual choice; a poem by I Alice Meynell. He read it through. > He had had experience of unsympathei tic typing. Mrs Bates only had put a j soul into it. It was possible to make

■ typing something other than ugly, and ! formal, and deforming.

The sense of the difficult poem came clearly to him. This woman knew her work. There was string that had a little thread of gold in it and something that came out of the letter with its delictte, clear handwriing, something appealing, wistful, the soul of the violet. He tried to harden his heart against it. It was amateurish; he could imagine circumstances in which the daintiness, the fragrance might lose the girl her employment. His eye fell on the address at the head of the letter —“34 Barnett Street, Camden Town.”

It gave him a shock. He had driven through Camden Town on his way to the station, and he had thought it a dreadful place. Poor girl! How did the letter get its scent of violets—in Camden Town? It seemed to cling to his fingers, to be all about him. It was as though a face glanced at him from the letter hnd was gone. He bundled up the rejections, flung them into a basket, and wrote to Gillian Aymler. Looking back at the letlet for the address which sounded so dreary to him he discovered a postcript which he had overlooked.

“I cannot take a resident secretaryship because of my mother.” That appealed to him. She was a good girl, like Mary, who had kept Francis Beaumont waiting while her mother lived. There was something fragrant, provocative of curiosity, in the contrast between the delicately perfumed letter from which personality seemed to speak, and the dreary address.

He sent her & few pages of hieroglyphics, his last chapter, written in a more than usually irritable mood, ! They came back to him beautifully

typed on better paper than his typists usually employed. It had been h, difficult bit of writing but she had deciphered every word correctly. He had had typists who, when they did not understand a word put something of their own instead, such typing as this of Gillian Aylmer’s, wteis a boom. It put a man in concert with his own work. How often he hfcid stared at a typed page, wondering where the strength and fineness he had thought to have achieved had disappeared to. He would eapturo them again in the printed proofs—but meanwhile he had hud a set-back. Gillian Aylmer suited him perfectly. What a name Gillian was, a garden name, fragrant like lavender, or southernwood. His blotted and blurred sheets went to her and came back bautifully rendered. He wondered if she had other work to do. She had given him one or two names by way of reference, reputable writers of reputable books. He felt he should have to intervene if it wtis Mr Sale of “The Yellow Bonnet,’’ or Miss Bakes of “The Spotted Hide.” She must work very hard if she did the other people’s work as quickly and carefully as she did his.

The days were exquisite. June had come and the roses. The little cups of the lilies finished on the lilied pond. Sitting in his cool workroom, with the blinds drawn to keep out the scintillating heat, his mind wandered. to Barnett Street, Camden Town. He remembered the dreary streets and crescents he had driven through on his way to Euston, in hot summer weather like this, the windows with their Hags of cheap machine-made curtains drawn back, wide-open as though the rooms behind them gasped for air. Wretched Interiors beyond, or he imagined them so. He asked himself how the delicacy, the fragrtmee that breathed from GilLlain. Aylmer’s communications with •him, could grow in Camden Town. It did not occur to him there might be something better than what he had

She had told him, as though he needed explanation or might need it, that the daintiness of her stationery was due to an old friend of her mother’s who had supplied her with the paper, the ribbons which tied the typescript together, the sealing-wax matching the colour of all the rest, the seal which she used, the string vari-col-oured. His typescript dame in gaily coloured wallets, scarlet and purple and green. He had to protest against some r of the daintiness, because he was a man tind his publishers lyould not take to it, or would think he had gone soft. 'After he had made his protest halfhumorously—it was so easy to be gay with Gillian—the ribbons disappeared and the smell of violets; but it clung to her letter-ptaper. He would have misfeed it if it had not been there. He had made a picture of her in his own mind, and he could not tit it in with Camden Town. She would be grey-eyed and brown-haired, softvoiced. She would wear clinging garments; not at all the modern type of girl, not shingled ’and short-skirted, not

i not slangy or militant. Perhaps ho was j going back to his mother for his ideals. Mary had not been the least bit in the I world like th&t. She had held very [decided views, and he loved her and | laughed at her; but, after the torture of the war, the other type of girl was more restful. He had taken to conjecturing his typ

ist. The work came back to him with! testonishing punctuality. She was a" perfect treasure of a typist. As he | opened the neat packets with the absurd string that had a little thread of gold in it and wtes sealed in coloured wax to match the string, with a little G on the seal, he imagined her eyes and her hair. She would have a white neck land slim hands, and she would wear soft and pretty things that enclosed her flower-like softness.

At this point he threw back his head and laughed; a great jolly-half-teshamed laugh. He was becoming a sentimentalist. His picture did not fit in with Barnett Street. Camden Town. Perhaps it would be a shock to him if he could see Ids typist. She might be a delicate little old spinster who had once been pretty. The prettiness of the typescript she sent him fitted in much more with that kind than with young girls as they were in these days. It was ten exquisite June. The nightingales were still singing in the hot nights; when the morning broke the fields were wet with dew, in which the grazing cattle showed through a luminous mist. Boses and honeysuckles were round his windows. The nights were drenched, with sweetness.

Lying awake in the moonlight, his thoughts would turn to his typist in Barnett Street, Camden Town. There would be little freshness and greenness there. He could picture her, the dainty delicate woman, in that dreary ami sordid place. The rooms where she lived must take on something of her dteintiness and delicacy, bat outside them would be the brawling of costers, the frowsy people going to and fro. There would be a pretty little mother, not too old, dainty and delicate like her daughter. They would have flowers if they cost them bread; and sometimes they would go to a grassy place—a little square or an old churchyard —and rest here and think it was country. He stopped to laugh at his own imaginings. What did he know about Gillian Aylmer after all, except that she had a sweet country-sounding name—it reminded him of gilly-flowers or cowslips—and she used pretty paper with a scent of violets. He hted been meaning to tell her that she was to use plain paper—his publishers would smile and surmise, but he had not had the heart—or perhaps the self-denial. He had learned to look for those dainty typescripts with their kind of feminity. It cteme to him one night, when the moonlight lay in a great white splash on the floor, and the corncrake was sawing against the nightingale’s song—why not offer them the cottage? The cottage wtes on the estate, as he ctelled jocosely the meadow and his little wood. It was an old Tudor cottage with thick walls, small windows, and a deep thatch, and it slat in a garden of its own. He had lent it to friends occasionally, people who wanted to be quiet—tired nurses, men sick in body or mind from the war, and such people.

He sat down and wrote in the morning. Would Miss Aylmer use his cottage for as long as she ctered to for herself and her mother? It must be hot in London, and he was getting on with his new book and would like to have a secretary close at hand. He put that in las a cover for his shyness in offering the cottage, perhaps her shyness in accepting? They would find all they needed for use at the cottage. He hoped they would come, and before the nightingales hted fled. AH was quite ready for them.

He waited a day or two for the answer. He wished he had suggested | a telegram. It unsettled him waiting. When the letter had come accepting he found himself absurdly relieved and joyful and he could feel the joy in every line of it. He had not felt like that for a long time. It was like the holidtey feeling he used to have going home to Stoulwater and his mother from the prep-school. “I have a little young Mamma,” wrote the girl. “She was brought up in a Warwickshire vicarage. Every summer in London she pines. I was hoping to get her awtey to a green field later on. You don’t know what you are doing for us?” He felt absurdly eager for their coming. He went whistling about the house, forgetting not to whistle lest the servants should be imagining things. He had added a woman servten.t to his establishment lately and he had taken Mrs Candy into something of his confidence, painting the sad lot of the two poor, ladies in London who could not Jafford a holiday. He explained that Miss Aylmer did his typing for him, without referring to the fact that he hao .never seen the ladies.

Mrj Candy looked up at him with mild eyes that could be very astute. “There’ll be a young lady, sir,” she said. “The packages thtet come with your typing do smell lovely.” He had stocked their larder, or Mrs Candy had stocked it; filled their minute coal-cellar; everything was swept and garnished for the evening of their arrivtel. He was sending the car to meet them, not going himself because he thought it would be easier for them to settle in without him. He wculd present himself later in the evening.

They were to arrive tebout three o’clock. Sometime during the morning he left a note on their table, beside the blue bowl of roses. The room was fresh and charming with its chintzes and old mahogany furniture. The note suggested that they should dine with him if they were not too tired. He would call about five o’clock for the answer.

The book did not get on very well thtet morning. He could not settle to it somehow, so he and Bruce went out for a walk, a long tramp over the Downs. He found himself, ridiculously, .playing games with Bruce—running races with him, hiding behind treetruncks and haystacks and waiting to be discovered. He wondered whtet people would think if they could see him, Gerald Villiers, the famous novelist as the papers called him, playing childish games with his dog. The wind sang on the Downs, a pure, fresh ■wind that tempered the heat of the day. It was good to be telive, to think of those poor things, escaped from Barnett Street, Camden Town, lying down to sleep, waking at the cottage. He was in a glow of happiness as he thought of it.

A sudden idea come to him. He had been giving Miss Aylmer a good deal of work to do; not enough to live upon though he paid liberally. Did she work for other writers? The thought was obnoxious to him. She might work for Sale or Frcke or some of those women who were worse than the men. Thinking of that he bit his nails—an old childish habit to which he sometimes reverted.when he was worried or vexed. Her mother would not permit it surely. She herself wpuld shrink from such corruption. He knew girls read strange things nowadays, not fit for them. He

must find out who she worked for and censor it—yes, censor it, if he had to ■ pay her as a whole time secretary? ! She and her mother could have the cottage as a permanency. They would give up Barrett Street, Camden Town. He did not think a girl like Gillian would think the country dull. She could have her jaunts to town whenever she liked. They were on the main line, and the country town not very far off. Gillian roust be a countrywoman with her name.

He tried to curbi his fancy. Perhaps the girl would not be at all as she was imagining her. She might prefer London. He had often imagined people and been disappointed when he met them. His perfect typist might bo very ordinary in the flesh. But while he said it he knew that he deceived himself. Personality had been in her letters, in her work, fresh as violets, and as fragrant. At last the hour came when he walked up- the paved path to the cottage poor, which stood wide open. A little rag of a Yorkshire terrier got up from the porch where he had been lying in the sun, and bristled at Bruce. Tea was set on the table for three, he noticed, while he stood, having lifted the little brass knocker.

A girl came from an inner room to meet him. She was quite unlike what he had imagined. The imagination fled away; the reality was good enough. She was younger than he had imagined, perhaps twenty-two. Her brown hair simulated bobbing, but was not bobbed. It was in two bunches by her ears, rolled away from a slender beautiful neck, on which the small head sat with a perfect dignity. She had a short delicious nose and a white chin, and her eyes were grey as water, with fine, over-arching brows. Her colour was brilliant. He was to know later that it was not always so brilliant. Just for a moment there was a happy moisture in her eyes. “It is Heaven!” she said with a little gasp. “How wonderful of you to think of it!”

Then Mrs Aylmer came forward and took his hand in hers, and laid her other hand over his while she thanked him. It was too wonderful; like a fairy tale. Nothing had be-f’. forgotten. She was only afraid they would wake up in the night and find it was a dream—that they were back again in Barnett Street.

It was the beginning of such a happy time as Gerald Villiers had not dreamt of. Oddly, all the world was changed for him by the arrival of his two dear women, as he came to call them. Mrs Aylmer was wonderfully young to be the mother of a big daughter. She was the type ho had imagined Gillian to be, gentle, delicate, needing tender care yet, as he camo to know it, strong and heroic under her gentleness. Gillian was more positive, outwterdly, at least—straight, candid, keen, something of a brave, bright boy about her delicious feminity.

He had the car out day after dtey, and carried them all over the country. He had been promising himself a holiday, and the book was not going very well. He did not try to make it go, he Acknowledged to himself; he had a rare fit of idleness, of the holiday spirit, upon him. June passed and July came, and Gillian spoke her mind. “You’ve been most awfully good to us,” she said, “but you know it can’t

go on for ever. lam here on false presences. My macchino tells me thtet I am a shirker and a slacker every time it meets my cyee. I came to bo your secretary for a month, and I haven’t secrctaried anything. ’ ’ “And so you wtant to go back to Barnett Street?” he said. She blushed suddenly. 1

“It has been Heaven here,” she -said, “but we must go back. You have been too good to us; but we can’t stay for ever, and we are hindering the book. That is a terrible thing to do seeing whtet your books mean to the world.” “Why can’t you stay for ever?” he asked, watching her lazily-happy, “at least for what we have of ever. If you go now I shan’t be able to finish the book.”

“Have I hindered you?” she tasked, not looking at him. “You have got into the book. You have come between roe and it; between pic and all I shall ever do. I f you are not going to set it straight I shall be Jost. Won’t you stay for the sake of the book? I shtell write no more books if you go. ” Suddenly he dropped the banter. “Stay for my sake,” he said. “I shall be a lost soul without you.”

“In this Paradise?” “Think of us treking back to that slum street!”

“As though I should let you go! And the little mother! Didn’t you know that I could never let you two go again? It htes been so different since you came. ’ ’

“For my mother’s sake then,” she said, and laughed in his arms.