Love in a cottage is admittedly no failure, quite delightful; but those who have tried it usually end by owning that love in comfort would be no less charming.

So it was with Hubert.

Nobody, he told himself, could be a better little housekeeper than Helena, no little home more fresh and dainty than their own: but though she never worried him, cleverly adapting their ways to a variable income, he was always faced by the uncomfortable thought: “If this book fails ” or “unless I write some short stories ” and after a while these things begin to tell. Within two years from marriage they had told upon Hubert Brett.

And so had come into being that pot-boiler, confessed to Helena with such solemnity on the wide, prudent, spaces of the Heath.

At first he had thought that it would be a hardship to exchange his own realistic method, his studies of character, for those banalities of plot and action independent of all motive, which wearied him even when read, boiled down, in a magazine. But slowly his mood of cynical disdain changed to a real enjoyment, for any task is splendid so soon as a man gets at firm grips with it. He began to see that when once you had got rid of the idea that action must proceed from character, there was a certain joy in letting wild event pile up on wild event and then be rapidly forgotten under even wilder. When once you had abandoned all reserve, there was a fierce delight in splashing pages with unfettered sentiment; making frank puppets think, love, and renounce as they had thought, loved, and renounced since the old fruity days of the three-volume novel. Of course it was all footle, balderdash, but still (he told himself with pride) it was good footle, splendid balderdash. He had bought some of the most “popular” of recent novels in six-penny editions, novels that had brought fortunes to their authors, and by comparison with his, they did the same thing in a bungling manner. No able novelist, he cynically told his wife, had ever tried till now to write a really good bad novel!

Helena loathed the whole enterprise, not only because she vaguely felt that it was marriage with her which had made it needful, but because she thought it so unworthy. And not least unworthy, not least loathsome, did she find his way of talking. It had been so splendid to hear him speak about his work in the old days: and now it was so horrible.

“I’ve found a title at last,” he said, emerging at lunch-time one day when the book was in its revision-stage, and coming to her in the drawing-room as usual.

“Hooray!” she cried, genuinely pleased because he had been worried as to that and this would mean a cheery walk. “What is it? Is it good?”

“Couldn’t be better,” he replied, and as usual she missed the irony. He paused and then; “Was It Worth While?”

“Oh, Hugh,” she could not help exclaiming. “That isn’t the title?”

“Don’t you like it?” he enquired sardonically and let himself down cheerily upon the sofa.

Helena of late had begun to express quite elaborate opinions even to Hubert, who somehow always terrified her, rather, when it came to intellect. He was so much cleverer, she knew, and never seemed to take her views as anything except a joke. She always spoke a little timidly. He would have been surprised to hear how cleverly she talked to Alison and others. But that is true of many married couples.

“No,” she began slowly. “It’s so I don’t know, but well, so cheap. All your others were so dignified and simple; I think Wandering Stars was simply excellent; but this it sort of reminds me of those plays with names like Did She Do It? You know what I mean!”

Hubert smiled grimly. “You seem to think I’m trying to be dignified. Not a bit of it: we’re out for money! Money, my dear Helena: no more worry about bills, and our own motor-car!” She could not bring herself to be amused and he went on more moodily: “Do you imagine any woman wants novels with titles that are dignified? and men aren’t fools enough to read them. Of course you picked out my best seller for your argument; but look at The Bread of Idleness. That was dignified enough and splendidly reviewed and sold two thousand copies; just about a hundred pounds for me for one year’s work! No thanks, I’ve done with dignity, pro tem. There may be just about two thousand women with a taste in dignity, but I want all the shop-girls this time: I’m out for my hundred thousand! I want them when they go to the seaside library and pay their twopences to notice Was It Worth While? in big letters on a purple ground. That’ll make them think! No more dignity for me: you want to make them think, to make them wonder “Why?” I’d call the book Why Smith Left Home, if only it was new.”

She did not answer for a few moments: then she said very gently but with a new firmness; “Hugh dear, is it really necessary to do all this? Can’t we just go on as we have been doing? I dare say I could manage better, really, and I’ve often told you I simply don’t know what to do with my allowance: it’s eating its head off in the bank! Surely we’re not so hard up as all that? I hate the whole idea.”

“What whole idea?” he asked coldly. One did look for encouragement from one’s own wife. He got up to leave her.

“This pot-boiler, as you call it; the title; the way you talk about it; everything. It’s all so different, and I’ve been so proud of the others.” She gathered courage and went on: “Look here, Hugh, why not give it up; start on a really good one that’ll help your name; and we’ll live meanwhile on all that from my allowance in the bank?” She rose and took him by the arm persuasively.

“My dear child,” he said with condescension, “you seem to think it’s all just money. Tear the whole book up? Don’t worry your little head with such things, but just go and see if Lily can’t give us some early lunch and then we’ll go to Kew for tea!”

Helena, released with a kiss, went out feeling oddly rebellious in spite of the Kew treat; and as for him, he was annoyed. Give it up, indeed! She talked as though “all this” (for she had called it that) were something criminal, instead of merely a book that was bound to sell! He certainly had no idea of sacrificing all his work for her absurd dislikes....

Even the best artists do not so much object to popularity, when they reach thirty-eight.

Hubert Brett, indeed, was more excited over this novel’s birth than over that of any other. Almost every day he had to go up to see agent, publisher, or editor. He told Helena, as his excuse for leaving her so much, that it was most important this book, as a “popular” one, should be widely advertised and publishers were such eternal fools about that sort of thing. They always spent all their money upon other people’s trash and then said they could not afford to help on your own books!

As the day for publishing drew nearer, this theory bulked almost into an obsession. Helena came to dread the paper boy’s arrival. Hubert would tear the dailies open, dash by instinct to the literary page, and then give a discordant laugh of scorn or anger.

“Of course not,” he would say. “They won’t tell any one till it’s been out a week! They mean to keep it dark, trust them!”

“I dare say they’re saving up for later on, dear,” was her soothing reply. It was not always she, by now, who was the child.

But he would not be soothed.

Helena was glad when the day arrived, although it was a nervous time. He had been full, the night before, of how amusing it would be to hear the critics slang him for a change, instead of finding all those dull superlatives that put the public off: but remembering his past fury with those few reviews which found some blemish in his work, she had her misgivings.

“Only I expect,” she said, “it may seem rather curious at first having bad notices, I mean.” She looked across at him covertly and anxiously. She had begun, by now, to knit waistcoats for him and felt as though they had been married for eternity.

Hubert, lounging idly in the other armchair, merely laughed. “Curious? Well, amusing.... It’ll certainly be something new to be slated by the critics and rushed after by the libraries. It’s usually been the other way about!” He knew, himself, that he would feel the blame from critics who had liked his work, but then After all, if the readers liked it and were thousands where they had been hundreds! And there was the money....

Next morning the paper boy delivered a specially large roll of papers and Hubert flung himself upon them with unusual vigour. Helena, her eyes fixed on a letter where the words all flickered, was anxious to what might seem an unjustified extent. She could just see him with one corner of her eye.

Paper after paper was torn open; his gaze ran greedily along the columns; but he never paused to read.

At length he flung the last one down with a fierce gesture.

“It’s a boycott,” he cried petulantly. “I’ve always had at least two notices, for years, upon the day. We sent them out early on purpose. It’s nothing but a boycott.”

He seemed to find some consolation in that word with its historical immensity.

“How too bad, dearest,” murmured Helena, in duty and with a sinking heart. She saw no cause for any boycott. And she knew that his other novels had better deserved any privilege.

On four dreary mornings the same tragic farce took place, and also with the evening papers. Then on the fifth day Hubert’s fast-travelling eyes stopped abruptly, he said “Ha!” and then read out with a naïve joy “Was It Worth While?”

“Good,” exclaimed Helena, still doubtful.

Suddenly he gave a wild laugh. “I like that,” he said. “That is rich.” He put the paper down very gently on the table. Then he raised the cover from the buttered eggs.

“What is it, dear?” she compelled herself to ask.

“They say,” announced Hubert in extremely level tones, “this habit of publishing a well-known author’s early works as new is one that has grown far too common.”

Then, letting himself go; “Early works? I’ll show them! It is libellous. I can prove my case to the hilt.”

“I shouldn’t worry with them,” she said, feeling inadequate. “Perhaps it will just make the book sell? We expected them to be all nasty, didn’t we?” She tried to speak brightly. Then an inspiration came to her. “Perhaps there are some better ones?” she said. The great thing would be to divert his mind. A law-case would be terrible. Nobody got anything, ever, except the barristers.

He passed the heap of unopened papers scornfully across to her. “You look at them,” he said. “I don’t know why I do or why one cares. They’re just a pack of failures. I always despise myself for looking at their stuff at all.” He opened a letter with unneeded violence.

With slow unpractised fingers Helena began to search for reviews. “No, no,” she said at each, until she thought (he was so quiet), that this might be annoying him and went on with her task in silence.

Then her hands suddenly clutched the paper tightly, symbolic of her effort to say nothing, for her eyes had caught the heading, Was It Worth While? The notice ran to half a column and this was an important paper. She blessed her cleverness in having looked.

One moment later, she was blessing her forethought in not saying anything. For this was the review:

“Was It Worth While?

“For some time now it has been an interesting question, with those who can find any interest at all in the popular novels of to-day, as to what exactly may be the peculiar touchstone of popularity. We can most of us recall the names of two or three books which have run into their quarter of a million copies, according to advertisements: and in reading them hungrily for a solution of the problem, we have been more than a little astounded by the crudeness of the fare submitted. We have been unwilling, as good optimists of human nature, to believe that mere literary vices can account for any library demand.

“Mr. Hubert Brett, perhaps unconsciously, has done us a good service. We do not, let it be premised at once, refer to our gratitude for his latest novel. Some of Mr. Brett’s work, notably Splendid Misery and The Bread of Idleness, has been praised in these columns for the sincere attempt which the author made in it to get at grips with the problems of real life, forgetting (as few authors can) the fictionists who went before him. In Was It Worth While? he seems to have thought, for a change, of almost nothing else. The book is a weird salad of remembered scenes, an olla podrida of episodes we wish we could forget. It would be wasting time and space indeed to attempt synopsis of Mr. Brett’s astounding tale for it is not a novel, however one define that vaguest of all literary products. By lumping together the worst and cheapest portion of all the bad and clap-trap tales which have seen light since printing was unhappily invented, one may arrive at a far better notion of this book than can be gained by wading through its crowded pages. The process, let us add, is also less fatiguing.

“But this is where Mr. Brett has done us, we repeat, a service. Was It Worth While? (the name alone is symptomatic) has all the qualities of its successful predecessors: the well-worn types, that call for no brain-effort after work; the utterly untrammelled sentiment; the shapeless slices of religion: he has put into his salad all the right ingredients, except one, which he, less lucky than the other cooks, did not possess. And that ingredient, we now believe, is no less than sincerity. The other writers have done this sort of thing well, because they could do no better; and whilst the large public applauded, we have pitied. Mr. Brett has done this sort of thing, although he can do better; and whilst the public will see through him, we despise his effort. Into his motives it would be impertinent to enquire. Perhaps, after all, the book is a mere literary squib. Mr. Brett, it well may be, has no desire to gull the public into a belief in his weak sentiment and crude religion: he wishes to deride those qualities in others. If so, we congratulate and thank him once again: we understand at last the essential quality (and it is, we confess, a fine one) in the Library big-seller. On any other ground, however, it certainly was not Worth While.”

Helena did not dare to read all down the column. She read the last words and she bit her lips to keep back tears of which she was ashamed. She knew that it was true and she hated, loathed the man or woman who had written it. She would give anything, all she possessed, all that poor Hubert had thought he would make from the horrid book, to spare him this review: to shield him from the pain that she knew it was bound to give him.

“Found one?” he asked. Her hands almost dropped the paper.

“No,” she said. “There don’t seem any more, unless I’ve managed to miss one. Now I’m seeing what has happened!” And she contrived to laugh.

He appeared to feel relief rather than disappointment.

“You don’t often do that,” he said cheerily enough. “I thought you despised politics and everything like that?”

“I don’t often get the chance to read them,” she said and hurriedly turned on to the next page, “considering you always cling firmly to the D.T. till I’ve got to begin my housework!” This last was her name for what he, in a Yankee spirit, nicknamed “chores.”

So for the moment that danger was averted, but Helena knew it was really no more than postponed, and long before the day was over, wished that she had faced it instantly.

When he came in to her just before dinner she knew that he had seen before he spoke a word. He drew the notice, neatly cut out, from his pocket, and she made a pretence of reading it.

“It’s merely spite,” was all he said. “How dare they call me insincere? They know it’s a good seller and that’s just what they can’t stand. I’ve written to the editor and I hope I get that swine the boot.”

“Is that very kind, dear?” she asked. “It’s his job, you know, and you said bad reviews would sell the book.”

He gave an angry snort. “Yes, I dare say, but not this kind. No plot, nothing except that its fatiguing and may be a burlesque. English people hate being puzzled even more than they hate being bored.”

This saying had the effect, she thought, of cheering him a little, for he gave a sardonic laugh and said:

“Well, no matter, let them do their worst. Trust the public later on to find out that the novel’s bad! ... When’s dinner?”