FullReads

Once he went so far as to telephone Apthorn, but the publisher was out. Then he finally and completely forgot.

One Sunday he went out of town, and on his return, rummaging among the papers on his desk, he missed “The Lifted Lamp,” which had been gathering dust there for half a year. What the deuce could have become of it? Betton spent a feverish hour in vainly increasing the disorder of his documents, and then bethought himself of calling the maid-servant, who first indignantly denied having touched anything (“I can see that’s true from the dust,” Betton scathingly interjected), and then mentioned with hauteur that a young lady had called in his absence and asked to be allowed to get a book.

“A lady? Did you let her come up?”

“She said somebody’d sent her.”

Vyse, of course–Vyse had sent her for his manuscript! He was always mixed up with some woman, and it was just like him to send the girl of the moment to Betton’s lodgings, with instructions to force the door in his absence. Vyse had never been remarkable for delicacy. Betton, furious, glanced over his table to see if any of his own effects were missing–one couldn’t tell, with the company Vyse kept!–and then dismissed the matter from his mind, with a vague sense of magnanimity in doing so. He felt himself exonerated by Vyse’s conduct.

The sense of magnanimity was still uppermost when the valet opened the door to announce “Mr. Vyse,” and Betton, a moment later, crossed the threshold of his pleasant library.

His first thought was that the man facing him from the hearth-rug was the very Duncan Vyse of old: small, starved, bleached-looking, with the same sidelong movements, the same queer air of anaemic truculence. Only he had grown shabbier, and bald.

Betton held out a hospitable hand.

“This is a good surprise! Glad you looked me up, my dear fellow.”

Vyse’s palm was damp and bony: he had always had a disagreeable hand.

“You got my note? You know what I’ve come for?” he said.

“About the secretaryship? (Sit down.) Is that really serious?”

Betton lowered himself luxuriously into one of his vast Maple arm-chairs. He had grown stouter in the last year, and the cushion behind him fitted comfortably into the crease of his nape. As he leaned back he caught sight of his image in the mirror between the windows, and reflected uneasily that Vyse would not find him unchanged.

“Serious?” Vyse rejoined. “Why not? Aren’t you?”

“Oh, perfectly.” Betton laughed apologetically. “Only–well, the fact is, you may not understand what rubbish a secretary of mine would have to deal with. In advertising for one I never imagined–I didn’t aspire to any one above the ordinary hack.”

“I’m the ordinary hack,” said Vyse drily.

Betton’s affable gesture protested. “My dear fellow–. You see it’s not business–what I’m in now,” he continued with a laugh.

Vyse’s thin lips seemed to form a noiseless “Isn’t it?” which they instantly transposed into the audibly reply: “I inferred from your advertisement that you want some one to relieve you in your literary work. Dictation, short-hand–that kind of thing?”

“Well, no: not that either. I type my own things. What I’m looking for is somebody who won’t be above tackling my correspondence.”

Vyse looked slightly surprised. “I should be glad of the job,” he then said.

Betton began to feel a vague embarrassment. He had supposed that such a proposal would be instantly rejected. “It would be only for an hour or two a day–if you’re doing any writing of your own?” he threw out interrogatively.

“No. I’ve given all that up. I’m in an office now–business. But it doesn’t take all my time, or pay enough to keep me alive.”

“In that case, my dear fellow–if you could come every morning; but it’s mostly awful bosh, you know,” Betton again broke off, with growing awkwardness.

Vyse glanced at him humorously. “What you want me to write?”

“Well, that depends–” Betton sketched the obligatory smile. “But I was thinking of the letters you’ll have to answer. Letters about my books, you know–I’ve another one appearing next week. And I want to be beforehand now–dam the flood before it swamps me. Have you any idea of the deluge of stuff that people write to a successful novelist?”