The Complete Short Stories of W. Somerset Maugham - II - The World Over (91 page)

“That’s not what I call poetry,” he said.

Fortunately it wasn’t all like that. Interspersed with the pieces that looked so odd, lines of three or four words and then a line of ten or fifteen, there were little poems, quite short, that rhymed, thank God, with the lines all the same length. Several of the pages were just headed with the word
Sonnet,
and out of curiosity he counted the lines; there were fourteen of them. He read them. They seemed all right, but he didn’t quite know what they were all about. He repeated to himself:
Ruin seize thee, ruthless king.

“Poor Evie,” he sighed.

At that moment the farmer he was expecting was ushered into the study, and putting the book down he made him welcome. They embarked on their business.

“I read your book, Evie,” he said as they sat down to lunch. “Jolly good. Did it cost you a packet to have it printed?”

“No, I was lucky. I sent it to a publisher and he took it.”

“Not much money in poetry, my dear,” he said in his good-natured, hearty way.

“No, I don’t suppose there is. What did Bannock want to see you about this morning?”

Bannock was the tenant who had interrupted his reading of Evie’s poems.

“He’s asked me to advance the money for a pedigree bull he wants to buy. He’s a good man and I’ve half a mind to do it.”

George Peregrine saw that Evie didn’t want to talk about her book and he was not sorry to change the subject. He was glad she had used her maiden name on the title-page; he didn’t suppose anyone would ever hear about the book, but he was proud of his own unusual name and he wouldn’t have liked it if some damned penny-a-liner had made fun of Evie’s effort in one of the papers.

During the few weeks that followed he thought it tactful not to ask Evie any questions about her venture into verse, and she never referred to it. It might have been a discreditable incident that they had silently agreed not to mention. But then a strange thing happened. He had to go to London on business and he took Daphne out to dinner. That was the name of the girl with whom he was in the habit of passing a few agreeable hours whenever he went to town.

“Oh, George,” she said, “is that your wife who’s written a book they’re all talking about?”

“What on earth d’you mean?”

“Well, there’s a fellow I know who’s a critic. He took me out to dinner the other night and he had a book with him. ‘Got anything for me to read?’ I said. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Oh, I don’t think that’s your cup of tea,’ he said. ‘It’s poetry. I’ve just been reviewing it.’ ‘No poetry for me,’ I said. ‘It’s about the hottest stuff I ever read,’ he said. ‘Selling like hot cakes. And it’s damned good.’”

“Who’s the book by?” asked George.

“A woman called Hamilton. My friend told me that wasn’t her real name. He said her real name was Peregrine. ‘Funny,’ I said, ‘I know a fellow called Peregrine.’ ‘Colonel in the army,’ he said. ‘Lives near Sheffield.’”

“I’d just as soon you didn’t talk about me to your friends,” said George with a frown of vexation.

“Keep your shirt on, dearie. Who d’you take me for? I just said: ‘It’s not the same one.’” Daphne giggled. “My friend said: ‘They say he’s a regular Colonel Blimp.’”

George had a keen sense of humour.

“You could tell them better than that,” he laughed. “If my wife had written a book I’d be the first to know about it, wouldn’t I?”

“I suppose you would.”

Anyhow the matter didn’t interest her and when the colonel began to talk of other things she forgot about it. He put it out of his mind too. There was nothing to it, he decided, and that silly fool of a critic had just been pulling Daphne’s leg. He was amused at the thought of her tackling that book because she had been told it was hot stuff and then finding it just a lot of bosh cut up into unequal lines.

He was a member of several clubs and next day he thought he’d lunch at one in St James’s Street. He was catching a train back to Sheffield early in the afternoon. He was sitting in a comfortable arm-chair having a glass of sherry before going into the dining-room when an old friend came up to him.

“Well, old boy, how’s life?” he said. “How d’you like being the husband of a celebrity?”

George Peregrine looked at his friend. He thought he saw an amused twinkle in his eyes.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he answered.

“Come off it, George. Everyone knows E. K. Hamilton is your wife. Not often a book of verse has a success like that. Look here, Henry Dashwood is lunching with me. He’d like to meet you.”

“Who the devil is Henry Dashwood and why should he want to meet me?”

“Oh, my dear fellow, what do you do with yourself all the time in the country? Henry’s about the best critic we’ve got. He wrote a wonderful review of Evie’s book. D’you mean to say she didn’t show it you?”

Before George could answer his friend had called a man over. A tall, thin man, with a high forehead, a beard, a long nose, and a stoop, just the sort of man whom George was prepared to dislike at first sight. Introductions were effected. Henry Dashwood sat down.

“Is Mrs Peregrine in London by any chance? I should very much like to meet her,” he said.

“No, my wife doesn’t like London. She prefers the country,” said George stiffly.

“She wrote me a very nice letter about my review. I was pleased. You know, we critics get more kicks than halfpence. I was simply bowled over by her book. It’s so fresh and original, very modern without being obscure. She seems to be as much at her ease in free verse as in the classical metres.” Then because he was a critic he thought he should criticize. “Sometimes her ear is a trifle at fault, but you can say the same of Emily Dickinson. There are several of those short lyrics of hers that might have been written by Landor.”

All this was gibberish to George Peregrine. The man was nothing but a disgusting highbrow. But the colonel had good manners and he answered with proper civility: Henry Dashwood went on as though he hadn’t spoken.

“But what makes the book so outstanding is the passion that throbs in every line. So many of these young poets are so anaemic, cold, bloodless, dully intellectual, but here you have real naked, earthy passion; of course deep, sincere emotion like that is tragic-ah, my dear Colonel, how right Heine was when he said that the poet makes little songs out of his great sorrows. You know, now and then, as I read and re-read those heart-rending pages I thought of Sappho.”

This was too much for George Peregrine and he got up.

“Well, it’s jolly nice of you to say such nice things about my wife’s little book. I’m sure she’ll be delighted. But I must bolt, I’ve got to catch a train and I want to get a bite of lunch.”

“Damned fool,” he said irritably to himself as he walked upstairs to the dining-room.

He got home in time for dinner and after Evie had gone to bed he went into his study and looked for her book. He thought he’d just glance through it again to see for himself what they were making such a fuss about, but he couldn’t find it. Evie must have taken it away.

“Silly,” he muttered.

He’d told her he thought it jolly good. What more could a fellow be expected to say? Well, it didn’t matter. He lit his pipe and read the
Field
till he felt sleepy. But a week or so later it happened that he had to go into Sheffield for the day. He lunched there at his club. He had nearly finished when the Duke of Haverel came in. This was the great local magnate and of course the colonel knew him, but only to say how d’you do to; and he was surprised when the Duke stopped at his table.

“We’re so sorry your wife couldn’t come to us for the week-end,” he said, with a sort of shy cordiality. “We’re expecting rather a nice lot of people.”

George was taken aback. He guessed that the Haverels had asked him and Evie over for the week-end and Evie, without saying a word to him about it, had refused. He had the presence of mind to say he was sorry too.

“Better luck next time,” said the Duke pleasantly and moved on.

Colonel Peregrine was very angry and when he got home he said to his wife:

“Look here, what’s this about our being asked over to Haverel? Why on earth did you say we couldn’t go? We’ve never been asked before and it’s the best shooting in the county.”

“I didn’t think of that. I thought it would only bore you.”

“Damn it all, you might at least have asked me if I wanted to go.”

“I’m sorry.”

He looked at her closely. There was something in her expression that he didn’t quite understand. He frowned.

“I suppose
I
was asked?” he barked.

Evie flushed a little.

“Well, in point of fact you weren’t.”

“I call it damned rude of them to ask you without asking me.”

“I suppose they thought it wasn’t your sort of party. The Duchess is rather fond of writers and people like that, you know. She’s having Henry Dashwood, the critic, and for some reason he wants to meet me.”

“It was damned nice of you to refuse, Evie.”

“It’s the least I could do,” she smiled. She hesitated a moment. “George, my publishers want to give a little dinner party for me one day towards the end of the month and of course they want you to come too.”

“Oh, I don’t think that’s quite my mark. I’ll come up to London with you if you like. I’ll find someone to dine with.”

Daphne.

“I expect it’ll be very dull, but they’re making rather a point of it. And the day after, the American publisher who’s taken my book is giving a cocktail party at Claridge’s. I’d like you to come to that if you wouldn’t mind.”

“Sounds like a crashing bore, but if you really want me to come I’ll come.”

“It would be sweet of you.”

George Peregrine was dazed by the cocktail party. There were a lot of people. Some of them didn’t look so bad, a few of the women were decently turned out, but the men seemed to him pretty awful. He was introduced to everyone as Colonel Peregrine, E. K. Hamilton’s husband, you know. The men didn’t seem to have anything to say to him, but the women gushed.

“You
must
be proud of your wife. Isn’t it
wonderful?
You know, I read it right through at a sitting, I simply couldn’t put it down, and when I’d finished I started again at the beginning and read it right through a second time. I was simply
thrilled
.”

The English publisher said to him:

“We’ve not had a success like this with a book of verse for twenty years. I’ve never seen such reviews.”

The American publisher said to him:

“It’s swell. It’ll be a smash hit in America. You wait and see.”

The American publisher had sent Evie a great spray of orchids. Damned ridiculous, thought George. As they came in, people were taken up to Evie, and it was evident that they said flattering things to her, which she took with a pleasant smile and a word or two of thanks. She was a trifle flushed with the excitement, but seemed quite at her ease. Though he thought the whole thing a lot of stuff and nonsense George noted with approval that his wife was carrying it off in just the right way.

“Well, there’s one thing,” he said to himself, “you can see she’s a lady and that’s a damned sight more than you can say of anyone else here.”

He drank a good many cocktails. But there was one thing that bothered him. He had a notion that some of the people he was introduced to looked at him in rather a funny sort of way, he couldn’t quite make out what it meant, and once when he strolled by two women who were sitting together on a sofa he had the impression that they were talking about him and after he passed he was almost certain they tittered. He was very glad when the party came to an end.

In the taxi on their way back to their hotel Evie said to him:

“You were wonderful, dear. You made quite a hit. The girls simply raved about you: they thought you so handsome.”

“Girls,” he said bitterly. “Old hags.”

“Were you bored, dear?”

“Stiff.”

She pressed his hand in a gesture of sympathy.

“I hope you won’t mind if we wait and go down by the afternoon train. I’ve got some things to do in the morning.”

“No, that’s all right. Shopping?”

“I do want to buy one or two things, but I’ve got to go and be photographed. I hate the idea, but they think I ought to be. For America, you know.”

He said nothing. But he thought. He thought it would be a shock to the American public when they saw the portrait of the homely, desiccated little women who was his wife. He’d always been under the impression that they liked glamour in America.

He went on thinking, and next morning when Evie had gone out he went to his club and up to the library. There he looked up recent numbers of
The Times Literary Supplement,
the
New Statesman,
and the
Spectator.
Presently he found reviews of Evie’s book. He didn’t read them very carefully, but enough to see that they were extremely favourable. Then he went to the bookseller’s in Piccadilly where he occasionally bought books. He’d made up his mind that he had to read this damned thing of Evie’s properly, but he didn’t want to ask her what she’d done with the copy she’d given him. He’d buy one for himself. Before going in he looked in the window and the first thing he saw was a display of
When Pyramids Decay.
Damned silly title! He went in. A young man came forward and asked if he could help him.