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Updated: June 25, 2025
"Didn't Vyse's wife steal a pearl necklace or something of the sort? I seem to remember something about it though I did not connect it with this chap." "His wife who was one of the prettiest Irish girls I ever saw got a valuable necklace on approval and pawned it for money to pay her debts, yes. Poor fellow, it broke him up completely." "Really?" Owen was interested. "Where is she the wife now?
"It's not sympathy?" broke in Betton, the moisture drying out of his voice. He withdrew his hand from Vyse's shoulder. "What is it, then? The joy of uncovering my nakedness? An eye for an eye? Is it that?" Vyse rose from his seat, and with a mechanical gesture swept into a heap all the letters he had sorted. "I'm stone broke, and wanted to keep my job that's what it is," he said wearily ...
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?" As Betton spoke, he saw a tinge of red on Vyse's thin cheek, and his own reflected it in a richer glow of shame. "I mean I mean " he stammered helplessly.
But I wanted to ask you if there isn't something else I can do on the days when there's no writing." He turned his glance toward the book-lined walls. "Don't you want your library catalogued?" he asked insidiously. "Had it done last year, thanks." Betton glanced away from Vyse's face. It was piteous, how he needed the job! "I see. ... Of course this is just a temporary lull in the letters.
"Not even the worst twaddle about my book?" he suggested lightly, pushing the papers about. "Nothing. I understood you wanted to go over them all first." "Well, perhaps it's safer," Betton conceded, as if the idea were new to him. With an embarrassed hand he continued to turn over the letters at Vyse's elbow.
Freddy followed, nodding to the clergyman, whom he trusted not to be pulling one's leg, really. And before they had gone a dozen yards he jumped out, and came running back for Vyse's match-box, which had not been returned. As he took it, he said: "I'm so glad you only talked about books. Cecil's hard hit. Lucy won't marry him.
That's the reason why I said I wanted somebody er well used to writing. I don't want to have anything to do with them not a thing! You'll have to answer them as if they were written to you " Betton pulled himself up again, and rising in confusion jerked open one of the drawers of his writing-table. "Here this kind of rubbish," he said, tossing a packet of letters onto Vyse's knee.
Vyse's notorious lack of delicacy had never been more vividly present to Betton's imagination; and he made up his mind to answer the letters himself. He would keep Vyse on, of course: there were other communications that the secretary could attend to. And, if necessary, Betton would invent an occupation: he cursed his stupidity in having betrayed the fact that his books were already catalogued.
Betton studied the ironic "Unknown" for an appreciable space of time; then he broke into a laugh. He had suddenly recalled Vyse's similar experience with "Hester Macklin," and the light he was able to throw on that obscure episode was searching enough to penetrate all the dark corners of his own adventure.
"There are very few to-day," said Vyse, with his irritating evasiveness; and Betton rejoined squarely: "Oh, they'll stop soon. The book's a failure." A few mornings later he felt a rush of shame at his own tergiversations, and stalked into the library with Vyse's sentence on his tongue. Vyse started back with one of his anaemic blushes. "I was hoping you'd be in. I wanted to speak to you.
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