Best Seller

The sudden sob of Miss Postlethwaite, the barmaid at the Angler’s Rest, interrupts the silence of the pub. She has been moved to tears by the novel she is reading, explaining that a man has just gone to India and left his beloved alone outside a moonlit manor. Her anguish attracts the attention of Mr. Mulliner, a regular at the Angler’s Rest, who recognizes the novel and asks what Miss Postlethwaite thinks of it. She says it “lays the soul of Woman bare as with a scalpel.” In fact, she says, the book—which is a sequel of sorts—is even better than its predecessor.

Mr. Mulliner notes that he has a particular interest in the novel’s author, Evangeline Pembury, who is his niece by marriage. He offers to tell the story of how Evangeline came to be married to his nephew Egbert.

Mr. Mulliner’s narration begins with Egbert and Evangeline standing on a pier in the moonlight. A breathless Egbert is preparing to ask an important question that he has tried and failed to broach many times before. The night is still, and across the water the couple can hear a band nearby playing the Star of Eve song from the opera Tannhauser. One of the trombone players has gotten his sheet music confused, however, and is playing the “The Wedding of the Painted Doll.”

Egbert had recently come to this seaside village in order to recover from poor health brought on by the strains of his profession as an assistant editor—a well-recognized “Dangerous Trade.” Egbert frequently interviews female novelists, all of whom want to talk about “Art and their Ideals” and how much they love dogs and flowers.  This task would take “its toll on the physique of all but the very hardiest” and caused Egbert to have a nervous breakdown. A specialist prescribed rest in order to “augment the red corpuscles.” During his recovery, Egbert met Evangeline at a picnic. He fell in love with her the moment he saw her.

On the pier, Egbert does not immediately propose but instead asks with some trepidation whether Evangeline has ever written a novel; his “pet aversion” is a distinct dislike for female novelists. A surprised Evangeline assures him that she has not—nor, she says in response to his subsequent questions, has she written a short story or poems. A newly joyous Egbert professes his love and proposes, and she accepts.

Evangeline, inspired by her feelings for Egbert, writes a novel titled Parted Ways. The next time she and Egbert are together, she reveals what she has done, not realizing how he will react. He manages to hide his horror as she reads her work to him. The book is awful—he considers it “a horrid, indecent production.” Even worse, it’s autobiographical, and Egbert finds that his proposal has been included verbatim. As he hears her read it, he can’t believe that he ever uttered “such frightful horse-radish.” For a moment, Egbert consoles himself with the thought that Evangeline may not be able to find a publisher, but then she announces that she plans to pay the cost of publication herself.

Evangeline’s publisher is focusing its marketing efforts on a different book titled Offal. As part of this promotion, the publisher has arranged for a series of newspaper articles titled “The Growing Menace of the Sex Motive in Fiction.” However, these marketing efforts fall flat due to a sudden change in popular taste. Up until now, readers have wanted “scarlet tales of Men Who Did and Women Who Shouldn’t Have Done but Who Took a Pop at It.” But now it seems they want wholesome love rather than sexual passion. The fickleness of readers makes “powerful young novelists rush round to the wholesale grocery firms to ask if the berth of junior clerk is still open.” As a result of the public’s newfound interest in wholesome romances, Evangeline’s novel is a massive commercial success. There is speculation in the press about it being adapted into “a play, a musical comedy, and a talking picture.”

Egbert is distressed that Evangeline’s success seems to be changing her. She is unsure of herself at first, but she quickly grows to like talking to the press, and she says her writing is “rhythmical rather than architectural” and claims that she inclines “to the school of the surrealists.” She no longer wants to spend time with Egbert; instead, she writes letters to her fans and gives lectures.

To make matters worse, Evangeline now has a literary agent, Jno. Henderson Banks, who is handsome, snappily dressed, and excessively referential toward his female clients. Egbert is jealous of Banks and demands that Evangeline stop seeing him. She becomes angry and asks if Egbert thinks she is “a subservient creature.” He drops his imperious tone and pleads with her, but she feels insulted and breaks off their engagement with a bitter laugh.

Egbert is heartbroken. To cope with his grief, he throws himself into his work. His experiences have hardened him, and his health now can withstand interviews with female novelists. He impresses his boss by taking on particularly difficult tasks, such as visiting “the No Man’s Land of Bloomsbury” and interviewing a novelist who reduced one of Egbert’s colleagues to “walking round in circles and bumping his head against the railings of Regent’s Park.”

Egbert is assigned to interview none other than his ex-fiancée, Evangeline Pembury. Arriving in her sitting-room, he feels a pang of emotion, but he hides it. Egbert and Evangeline greet each another formally, as if they are strangers. Egbert notices that she seems “drawn” and “care-worn” but doesn’t mention it. He begins his interview with a series of standard questions: “Are you fond of dogs, Miss Pembury?” “You are happiest among your flowers, no doubt?” She provides the expected answers without seeming very interested, and she offers to “send out for a dog” so that Egbert can take her picture with it.

Evangeline’s answers continue to be perfunctory until Egbert asks how her novel’s sequel is progressing. In response, she breaks into tears and flings herself onto the sofa, where she chews a cushion “in an ecstasy of grief” and gulps “like a bull-pup swallowing a chunk of steak.” Egbert is deeply moved by this display and goes to comfort her.

Evangeline explains that Jno. Henderson Banks has arranged for her to publish serials and short stories in numerous magazines. She has been paid in advance, but she doesn’t think she will be able to meet her contractual obligations, because she has decided that she hates writing and doesn’t know what to write about. Egbert advises her to cash the checks and spend the money anyway. (In an aside, the narrator, Mr. Mulliner, wryly observes, “It is not the being paid money in advance that jars the sensitive artist: it is the having to work.”)

Egbert has a solution to Evangeline’s predicament: he tells her that she doesn’t have to write anymore, because he himself is a failed author who used to write the same kind of “stearine bilge.” He has three novels and twenty stories for which he never found a publisher, and after Egbert and Evangeline are married, she will be free to pass them off as her own. Egbert and Evangeline once again declare their love, sighing rapturously and saying one another’s names.