Rest and Be Thankful by Helen MacInnes Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t that kind of book. In fact, I’m afraid it wouldn’t have enough sex interest for a smash hit today. What was daring in 1925 is schoolroom reading now.”
    “The truth was,” Mrs. Peel said sadly, “that all my particular friends considered the book to be tripe. They are very literary, you see.”
    “They disliked it simply because it sold,” Sarah said in swift defence. “They never really gave it a chance.” She won an admiring look from Jim Brent. He might not be able to understand why anyone should be ashamed of a book just because a lot of people bought it, but he did understand loyalty.
    “Prender Atherton Jones must have read it,” Mrs. Peel said, defending her friends in turn. “He reviewed it. Shatteringly. He was one of our group in Paris,” she explained to Brent. “He had considerable reputation as the reviewer for New Dimensions .” Mrs. Peel spoke the name with such awe that Jim Brent raised his eyebrows.
    “Four book reviews a year, and thought he was being slave-driven,” Sarah Bly said, and won another look from her host.
    “Now, Sarah, I have to admit it wasn’t the kind of book I wanted to write. But I was desperate for money. I had exactly two dollars and thirty-seven cents in my pocket when I received the advance on signature. That is,” (with a kindly look to a bewildered Brent) “the money advanced to me by my publisher as soon as I signed the contract on the completed manuscript.”
    “Well, that was all of twenty-three years ago,” Jim Brent said. “Why don’t you plan to write a novel this summer instead of taking up your time with a lot of other people?”
    Mrs. Peel looked embarrassed.
    Sarah said quietly, “You’ve been much too busy all these years. That’s the true answer.” But she knew, as Margaret knew, that being busy with people was one way of postponing the fearful day of having your pencils sharpened or your typewriter newly ribboned, of sitting down to stare at a white sheet of paper. She thought, too, of her own efforts at serious literature. Poetry. That was what she had been going to write when she arrived in Paris in 1930. She had been nineteen, the stuff that dreams are made on. And they had all gone sour. No one published her poems except Margaret. And to keep herself independent, so that later she might travel with Margaret with a free conscience, she had begun writing cook-books. They sold, and were still selling. And, even if she tried to tell Margaret that she was wrong to worry about what people like Prender Atherton Jones thought, she herself had published the cookery recipes under another name. And she had never mentioned them to Prender or any of the rest of their little group.
    Jim Brent looked at the two downcast faces. That was just like women, he thought, to have imaginary troubles if they couldn’t find real ones. He said, quite frankly, “I don’t understand it. Why hide what you’ve done, Mrs. Peel? If it is these literary friends you are afraid of, then what kind of friends are they?”
    His question certainly had results, for they stopped looking so gloomy, and they stared at each other for a moment. Miss Bly even laughed.
    Mrs. Peel said, “We told you all this, Mr. Brent, because you ought to know what we are and who we are. Of course, you will want references. Would my publisher be sufficient? There’s our lawyer too.”
    “Just a minute,” Jim Brent said, conscious that Mrs. Peel had passed mysteriously from the romantic mood to the realistic. “Just a minute, Mrs. Peel... We’re going ahead pretty fast.”
    “But we have to,” Miss Bly told him earnestly, and gave him one of her warmest smiles. “We shan’t see you tomorrow morning, and when we leave—well, we’ve gone for good, haven’t we? And this idea of ours would be lost forever. Which would be a pity for it might benefit us all.”
    “All of us?” he asked, his eyes smiling. “I’m thinking of you two,” he explained. “Do you know the writers