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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of A Great Man, by Arnold Bennett
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: A Great Man
+       A Frolic
+
+Author: Arnold Bennett
+
+Release Date: August 30, 2009 [EBook #29860]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A GREAT MAN ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Edwards, Martin Pettit and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This
+book was produced from scanned images of public domain
+material from the Google Print project.)
+
+
+
+
+
+
+A GREAT MAN
+
+A FROLIC
+
+
+BY
+
+ARNOLD BENNETT
+
+
+AUTHOR OF
+'THE GRAND BABYLON HOTEL,' 'ANNA OF THE FIVE TOWNS,'
+'LEONORA,' ETC.
+
+[Illustration]
+
+LONDON
+CHATTO & WINDUS
+
+1904
+
+
+TO
+
+MY DEAR FRIEND
+
+FREDERICK MARRIOTT
+
+AND TO
+
+THE IMPERISHABLE MEMORY
+
+OF
+
+OLD TIMES
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+CHAPTER                              PAGE
+
+     I. HIS BIRTH                       1
+
+    II. TOM                             8
+
+   III. HIS CHRISTENING                17
+
+    IV. AGED TWELVE                    26
+
+     V. MARRONS GLACÉS                 36
+
+    VI. A CALAMITY FOR THE SCHOOL      49
+
+   VII. CONTAGIOUS                     58
+
+  VIII. CREATIVE                       72
+
+    IX. SPRING ONIONS                  85
+
+     X. MARK SNYDER                    95
+
+    XI. SATIN                         105
+
+   XII. HIS FAME                      117
+
+  XIII. A LION IN HIS LAIR            135
+
+   XIV. HER NAME WAS GERALDINE        148
+
+    XV. HIS TERRIBLE QUANDARY         161
+
+   XVI. DURING THE TEA-MEETING        169
+
+  XVII. A NOVELIST IN A BOX           181
+
+ XVIII. HIS JACK-HORNERISM            195
+
+   XIX. HE JUSTIFIES HIS FATHER       201
+
+    XX. PRESS AND PUBLIC              215
+
+   XXI. PLAYING THE NEW GAME          226
+
+  XXII. HE LEARNS MORE ABOUT WOMEN    239
+
+ XXIII. SEPARATION                    249
+
+  XXIV. COSETTE                       256
+
+   XXV. THE RAKE'S PROGRESS           273
+
+  XXVI. THE NEW LIFE                  289
+
+ XXVII. HE IS NOT NERVOUS             308
+
+XXVIII. HE SHORTENS HIS NAME          325
+
+  XXIX. THE PRESIDENT                 337
+
+
+
+
+A GREAT MAN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+HIS BIRTH
+
+
+On an evening in 1866 (exactly eight hundred years after the Battle of
+Hastings) Mr. Henry Knight, a draper's manager, aged forty, dark,
+clean-shaven, short, but not stout, sat in his sitting-room on the
+second-floor over the shop which he managed in Oxford Street, London. He
+was proud of that sitting-room, which represented the achievement of an
+ideal, and he had a right to be proud of it. The rich green wall-paper
+covered with peonies in full bloom (poisoning by arsenical wall-paper
+had not yet been invented, or Mr. Knight's peonies would certainly have
+had to flourish over a different hue) matched the magenta table-cloth of
+the table at which Mr. Knight was writing, and the magenta table-cloth
+matched the yellow roses which grew to more than exhibition size on the
+Axminster carpet; and the fine elaborate effect thus produced was in no
+way impaired, but rather enhanced and invigorated, by the mahogany
+bookcase full of imperishable printed matter, the horsehair sofa netted
+in a system of antimacassars, the waxen flowers in their glassy domes on
+the marble mantelpiece, the Canterbury with its spiral columns, the
+rosewood harmonium, and the posse of chintz-protected chairs. Mr.
+Knight, who was a sincere and upright man, saw beauty in this apartment.
+It uplifted his soul, like soft music in the gloaming, or a woman's
+face.
+
+Mr. Knight was writing in a large book. He paused in the act of
+composition, and, putting the pen between his teeth, glanced through the
+pages of the volume. They were filled with the drafts of letters which
+he had addressed during the previous seven years to the editors of
+various newspapers, including the _Times_, and several other organs
+great then but now extinct. In a space underneath each letter had been
+neatly gummed the printed copy, but here and there a letter lacked this
+certificate of success, for Mr. Knight did not always contrive to reach
+his public. The letters were signed with pseudonyms, such as A British
+Citizen, Fiat Justitia, Audi Alteram Partem, Indignant, Disgusted, One
+Who Knows, One Who Would Like to Know, Ratepayer, Taxpayer, Puzzled, and
+Pro Bono Publico--especially Pro Bono Publico. Two letters, to a trade
+periodical, were signed A Draper's Manager of Ten Years' Standing, and
+one, to the _Clerkenwell News_, bore his own real name.
+
+The letter upon which he was now engaged was numbered seventy-five in
+the series, and made its appeal to the editor of the _Standard_. Having
+found inspiration, Mr. Knight proceeded, in a hand distinguished by many
+fine flourishes:
+
+
+     ' ... It is true that last year we only paid off some four
+     millions, but the year before we paid, I am thankful to say, more
+     than nine millions. Why, then, this outcry against the allocation
+     of somewhat less than nine millions out of our vast national
+     revenue towards the further extinction of the National Debt? _It is
+     not the duty of the State, as well as of the individual, to pay its
+     debts?_ In order to support the argument with which I began this
+     communication, perhaps you will permit me, sir, to briefly outline
+     the history of the National Debt, our national shame. In 1688 the
+     National Debt was little more than six hundred thousand pounds....'
+
+
+After briefly outlining the history of the National Debt, Mr. Knight
+began a new paragraph thus:
+
+
+     'In the immortal words of Shakspere, wh----'
+
+
+But at this point he was interrupted. A young and pleasant woman in a
+white apron pushed open the door.
+
+'Henry,' she called from the doorway.
+
+'Well?'
+
+'You'd better go now.'
+
+'Very well, Annie; I'll go instantly.'
+
+He dropped the pen, reduced the gas to a speck of blue, and in half a
+minute was hurrying along Oxford Street. The hour was ten o'clock, and
+the month was July; the evening favoured romance. He turned into Bury
+Street, and knocked like fate at a front-door with a brass tablet on it,
+No. 8 of the street.
+
+'No, sir. He isn't in at the moment, sir,' said the maid who answered
+Mr. Knight's imperious summons.
+
+'Not in!' exclaimed Mr. Knight.
+
+'No, sir. He was called away half an hour ago or hardly, and may be out
+till very late.'
+
+'Called away!' exclaimed Mr. Knight. He was astounded, shocked, pained.
+'But I warned him three months ago!'
+
+'Did you, sir? Is it anything very urgent, sir?'
+
+'It's----' Mr. Knight hesitated, blushing. The girl looked so young and
+innocent.
+
+'Because if it is, master left word that anyone was to go to Dr.
+Christopher's, 22, Argyll Street.'
+
+'You will be sure to tell your master that I came,' said Mr. Knight
+frigidly, departing.
+
+At 22, Argyll Street he was informed that Dr. Christopher had likewise
+been called away, and had left a recommendation that urgent cases, if
+any, should apply to Dr. Quain Short, 15, Bury Street. His anger was
+naturally increased by the absence of this second doctor, but it was far
+more increased by the fact that Dr. Quain Short happened to live in Bury
+Street. At that moment the enigma of the universe was wrapped up for him
+in the question, Why should he have been compelled to walk all the way
+from Bury Street to Argyll Street merely in order to walk all the way
+back again? And he became a trinity consisting of Disgusted, Indignant,
+and One Who Would Like to Know, the middle term predominating. When he
+discovered that No. 15, Bury Street, was exactly opposite No. 8, Bury
+Street, his feelings were such as break bell-wires.
+
+'Dr. Quain Short is at the Alhambra Theatre this evening with the
+family,' a middle-aged and formidable housekeeper announced in reply to
+Mr. Knight's query. 'In case of urgency he is to be fetched. His box is
+No. 3.'
+
+'The Alhambra Theatre! Where is that?' gasped Mr. Knight.
+
+It should be explained that he held the stage in abhorrence, and,
+further, that the Alhambra had then only been opened for a very brief
+period.
+
+'Two out, and the third at the theatre!' Mr. Knight mused grimly,
+hastening through Seven Dials. 'At the theatre, of all places!'
+
+A letter to the _Times_ about the medical profession was just shaping
+itself in his mind as he arrived at the Alhambra and saw that a piece
+entitled _King Carrot_ filled the bill.
+
+'_King Karrot!_' he muttered scornfully, emphasizing the dangerously
+explosive consonants in a manner which expressed with complete adequacy,
+not only his indignation against the entire medical profession, but his
+utter and profound contempt for the fatuities of the modern stage.
+
+The politeness of the officials and the prompt appearance of Dr. Quain
+Short did something to mollify the draper's manager of ten years'
+standing, though he was not pleased when the doctor insisted on going
+first to his surgery for certain requisites. It was half-past eleven
+when he returned home; Dr. Quain Short was supposed to be hard behind.
+
+'How long you've been!' said a voice on the second flight of stairs,
+'It's all over. A boy. And dear Susan is doing splendidly. Mrs.
+Puddiphatt says she never saw such a----'
+
+From the attic floor came the sound of a child crying shrilly and
+lustily:
+
+'Aunt Annie! Aunt Annie! Aunt _Annie_!'
+
+'Run up and quieten him!' Mr. Knight commanded. 'It's like him to begin
+making a noise just now. I'll take a look at Susan--and my firstborn.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+TOM
+
+
+In the attic a child of seven years was sitting up in a cot placed by
+the side of his dear Aunt Annie's bed. He had an extremely intelligent,
+inquisitorial, and agnostical face, and a fair, curled head of hair,
+which he scratched with one hand as Aunt Annie entered the room and held
+the candle on high in order to survey him.
+
+'Well?' inquired Aunt Annie firmly.
+
+'Well?' said Tom Knight, determined not to commit himself, and waiting
+wanly for a chance, like a duellist.
+
+'What's all this noise for? I told you I specially wanted you to go to
+sleep at once to-night.'
+
+'Yes,' said Tom, staring at the counterpane and picking imaginary bits
+off it. 'And you might have known I shouldn't go to sleep after _that_!'
+
+'And here it's nearly midnight!' Aunt Annie proceeded. 'What do you
+want?'
+
+'You--you've left the comb in my hair,' said Tom. He nearly cried.
+
+Every night Aunt Annie curled Tom's hair.
+
+'Is it such a tiny boy that it couldn't take it out itself?' Aunt Annie
+said kindly, going to the cot and extracting the comb. 'Now try to
+sleep.' She kissed him.
+
+'And I've heard burglars,' Tom continued, without moving.
+
+'Oh no, you've not,' Aunt Annie pronounced sharply. 'You can't hear
+burglars every night, you know.'
+
+'I heard running about, and doors shutting and things.'
+
+'That was Uncle Henry and me. Will you promise to be a good boy if I
+tell you a secret?'
+
+'I shan't _promise_,' Tom replied. 'But if it's a good secret I'll
+try--hard.'
+
+'Well, you've got a cousin, a little boy, ever so little! There! What do
+you think of that?'
+
+'I knew someone had got into the house!' was Tom's dispassionate remark.
+'What's his name?'
+
+'He hasn't any name yet, but he will have soon.'
+
+'Did he come up the stairs?' Tom asked.
+
+Aunt Annie laughed. 'No,' she said.
+
+'Then, he must have come through the window or down the chimney; and he
+wouldn't come down the chimney 'cause of the soot. So he came through
+the window. Whose little boy is he? Yours?'
+
+'No. Aunt Susan's.'
+
+'I suppose she knows he's come?'
+
+'Oh yes. She knows. And she's very glad. Now go to sleep. And I'll tell
+Aunt Susan you'll be a good boy.'
+
+'You'd better not,' Tom warned her. 'I don't feel sure. And I say,
+auntie, will there come any more little boys to-night?'
+
+'I don't think so, dear.' Aunt Annie smiled. She was half way through
+the door, and spoke into the passage.
+
+'But are you sure?' Tom persisted.
+
+'Yes, I'm sure. Go to sleep.'
+
+'Doesn't Aunt Susan want another one?'
+
+'No, she doesn't. Go to sleep, I say.'
+
+''Cause, when I came, another little boy came just afterwards, and he
+died, that little boy did. And mamma, too. Father told me.'
+
+'Yes, yes,' said Aunt Annie, closing the door. 'Bee-by.'
+
+'I didn't promise,' Tom murmured to his conscience. 'But it's a good
+secret,' he added brazenly. He climbed over the edge of the cot, and let
+himself down gently till his feet touched the floor. He found his
+clothes, which Aunt Annie invariably placed on a chair in a certain
+changeless order, and he put some of them on, somehow. Then he softly
+opened the door and crept down the stairs to the second-floor. He was an
+adventurous and incalculable child, and he desired to see the baby.
+
+Persons who called on Mr. Henry Knight in his private capacity rang at
+the side-door to the right of the shop, and were instructed by the
+shop-caretaker to mount two flights of stairs, having mounted which they
+would perceive in front of them a door, where they were to ring again.
+This door was usually closed, but to-night Tom found it ajar. He peeped
+out and downwards, and thought of the vast showroom below and the
+wonderful regions of the street. Then he drew in his head, and concealed
+himself behind the plush portière. From his hiding-place he could watch
+the door of Uncle Henry's and Aunt Susan's bedroom, and he could also,
+whenever he felt inclined, glance down the stairway.
+
+He waited, with the patience and the fatalism of infancy, for something
+to happen.
+
+After an interval of time not mathematically to be computed, Tom heard a
+step on the stairs, and looked forth. A tall gentleman wearing a high
+hat and carrying a black bag was ascending. In a flash Tom recollected a
+talk with his dead father, in which that glorious and gay parent had
+explained to him that he, Tom, had been brought to his mother's room by
+the doctor in a black bag.
+
+Tom pulled open the door at the head of the stairs, went outside, and
+drew the door to behind him.
+
+'Are you the doctor?' he demanded, staring intently at the bag to see
+whether anything wriggled within.
+
+'Yes, my man,' said the doctor. It was Quain Short, wrenched from the
+Alhambra.
+
+'Well, they don't want another one. They've got one,' Tom asserted,
+still observing the bag.
+
+'You're sure?'
+
+'Yes. Aunt Annie said particularly that they didn't want another one.'
+
+'Who is it that has come? Do you know his name? Christopher--is that
+it?'
+
+'I don't know his name. But he's come, and he's in the bedroom now, with
+Aunt Susan.'
+
+'How annoying!' said Dr. Quain Short under his breath, and he went.
+
+Tom re-entered, and took up his old position behind the portière.
+
+Presently he heard another step on the stair, and issued out again to
+reconnoitre. And, lo! another tall gentleman wearing another high hat
+and carrying another black bag was ascending.
+
+'This makes three,' Tom said.
+
+'What's that, my little man?' asked the gentleman, smiling. It was Dr.
+Christopher.
+
+'This makes three. And they only want one. The first one came ever such
+a long time ago. And I can tell you Aunt Susan was very glad when he did
+come.'
+
+'Dear, dear!' exclaimed Dr. Christopher. 'Then I'm too late, my little
+man. I was afraid I might be. Everything all right, eh?'
+
+Tom nodded, and Dr. Christopher departed.
+
+And then, after a further pause, up came another tall gentleman, high
+hat, and black bag.
+
+'This is four,' said Tom.
+
+'What's that, Tommy?' asked Mr. Henry Knight's regular physician and
+surgeon. 'What are you doing there?'
+
+'One came hours since,' Tom said. 'And they don't want any more.' Then
+he gazed at the bag, which was larger and glossier than its
+predecessors. 'Have you brought a _very_ nice one?' he inquired. 'They
+don't really want another, but perhaps if it's _very_----'
+
+It was this momentary uncertainty on Tom's part that possibly saved my
+hero's life. For the parents were quite inexperienced, and Mrs.
+Puddiphatt was an accoucheuse of the sixties, and the newborn child was
+near to dying in the bedroom without anybody being aware of the fact.
+
+'A very nice what?' the doctor questioned gruffly.
+
+'Baby. In that bag,' Tom stammered.
+
+'Out of the way, my bold buccaneer,' said the doctor, striding across
+the mat into the corridor.
+
+At two o'clock the next morning, Tom being asleep, and all going well
+with wife and child, Mr. Henry Knight returned at length to his
+sitting-room, and resumed the composition of the letter to the editor of
+the _Standard_. The work existed as an artistic whole in his head, and
+he could not persuade himself to seek rest until he had got it down in
+black-and-white; for, though he wrote letters instead of sonnets, he was
+nevertheless a sort of a poet by temperament. You behold him calm now,
+master once more of his emotions, and not that agitated, pompous, and
+slightly ridiculous person who lately stamped over Oxford Street and
+stormed the Alhambra Theatre. And in order to help the excellent father
+of my hero back into your esteem, let me point out that the imminence
+and the actuality of fatherhood constitute a somewhat disturbing
+experience, which does not occur to a man every day.
+
+Mr. Knight dipped pen in ink, and continued:
+
+
+     ' ... who I hold to be not only the greatest poet, but also the
+     greatest moral teacher that England has ever produced,
+
+
+          '"To thine own self be true,
+          And it must follow, as the night the day,
+          Thou canst not then be false to any man."
+
+
+     'In conclusion, sir, I ask, without fear of contradiction, are we
+     or are we not, in this matter of the National Debt, to be true to
+     our national selves?
+                        'Yours obediently,
+                                'A CONSCIENTIOUS TAXPAYER.'
+
+
+The signature troubled him. His pen hovered threateningly over it, and
+finally he struck it out and wrote instead: 'Paterfamilias.' He felt
+that this pseudonym was perhaps a little inapposite, but some impulse
+stronger than himself forced him to employ it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+HIS CHRISTENING
+
+
+'But haven't I told you that I was just writing the very name when Annie
+came in to warn me?'
+
+Mr. Knight addressed the question, kindly and mildly, yet with a hint of
+annoyance, to his young wife, who was nursing their son with all the
+experience of three months' practice. It was Sunday morning, and they
+had finished breakfast in the sitting-room. Within an hour or two the
+heir was to be taken to the Great Queen Street Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
+for the solemn rite of baptism.
+
+'Yes, lovey,' said Mrs. Knight. 'You've told me, time and again. But, oh
+Henry! Your name's just Henry Knight, and I want his to be just Henry
+Knight, too! I want him to be called after you.'
+
+And the mother, buxom, simple, and adoring, glanced appealingly with
+bright eyes at the man who for her epitomized the majesty and
+perfections of his sex.
+
+'He will be Henry Knight,' the father persisted, rather coldly.
+
+But Mrs. Knight shook her head.
+
+Then Aunt Annie came into the room, pushing Tom before her. Tom was
+magnificently uncomfortable in his best clothes.
+
+'What's the matter, Sue?' Aunt Annie demanded, as soon as she had
+noticed her sister's face.
+
+And in a moment, in the fraction of a second, and solely by reason of
+Aunt Annie's question, the situation became serious. It jumped up, as
+domestic situations sometimes do, suddenly to the temperature at which
+thunderstorms are probable. It grew close, heavy, and perilous.
+
+Mrs. Knight shook her head again. 'Nothing,' she managed to reply.
+
+'Susan wants----' Mr. Knight began suavely to explain.
+
+'He keeps on saying he would like him to be called----' Mrs. Knight
+burst out.
+
+'No I don't--no I don't!' Mr. Knight interrupted. 'Not if you don't
+wish it!'
+
+A silence followed. Mr. Knight drummed lightly and nervously on the
+table-cloth. Mrs. Knight sniffed, threw back her head so that the tears
+should not fall out of her eyes, and gently patted the baby's back with
+her right hand. Aunt Annie hesitated whether to speak or not to speak.
+
+Tom remarked in a loud voice:
+
+'If I were you, I should call him Tom, like me. Then, as soon as he can
+talk, I could say, "How do, Cousin Tom?" and he could say back, "How do,
+Cousin Tom?"'
+
+'But we should always be getting mixed up between you, you silly boy!'
+said Aunt Annie, smiling, and trying to be bright and sunny.
+
+'No, you wouldn't,' Tom replied. 'Because I should be Big Tom, and of
+course he'd only be Little Tom. And I don't think I'm a silly boy,
+either.'
+
+'Will you be silent, sir!' Mr. Knight ordered in a voice of wrath. And,
+by way of indicating that the cord of tension had at last snapped, he
+boxed Tom's left ear, which happened to be the nearest.
+
+Mrs. Knight lost control of her tears, and they escaped. She offered
+the baby to Aunt Annie.
+
+'Take him. He's asleep. Put him in the cradle,' she sobbed.
+
+'Yes, dear,' said Aunt Annie intimately, in a tone to show how well she
+knew that poor women must always cling together in seasons of stress and
+times of oppression.
+
+Mrs. Knight hurried out of the room. Mr. Knight cherished an injury. He
+felt aggrieved because Susan could not see that, though six months ago
+she had been entitled to her whims and fancies, she was so no longer. He
+felt, in fact, that Susan was taking an unfair advantage of him. The
+logic of the thing was spread out plainly and irrefutably in his mind.
+And then, quite swiftly, the logic of the thing vanished, and Mr. Knight
+rose and hastened after his wife.
+
+'You deserved it, you know,' said Aunt Annie to Tom.
+
+'Did I?' The child seemed to speculate.
+
+They both stared at the baby, who lay peacefully in his cradle, for
+several minutes.
+
+'Annie, come here a moment.' Mr. Knight was calling from another room.
+
+'Yes, Henry. Now, Tom, don't touch the cradle. And if baby begins to
+cry, run and tell me.'
+
+'Yes, auntie.'
+
+And Aunt Annie went. She neglected to close the door behind her; Tom
+closed it, noiselessly.
+
+Never before had he been left alone with the baby. He examined with
+minute care such parts of the living organism as were visible, and then,
+after courageously fighting temptation, and suffering defeat, he touched
+the baby's broad, flat nose. He scarcely touched it, yet the baby
+stirred and mewed faintly. Tom began to rock the cradle, at first
+gently, then with nervous violence. The faint mew became a regular and
+sustained cry.
+
+He glanced at the door, and decided that he would make a further effort
+to lull the ridiculous agitation of this strange and mysterious being.
+Bending down, he seized the baby in both hands, and tried to nurse it as
+his two aunts nursed it. The infant's weight was considerable; it
+exceeded Tom's estimate, with the result that, in the desperate process
+of extracting the baby from the cradle, the cradle had been overset, and
+now lay on its beam-ends.
+
+'Hsh--hsh!' Tom entreated, shooing and balancing as best he could.
+
+Then, without warning, Tom's spirit leapt into anger.
+
+'Will you be silent, sir!' he demanded fiercely from the baby, imitating
+Uncle Henry's tone. 'Will you be silent, sir!' He shook the infant, who
+was astounded into a momentary silence.
+
+The next thing was the sound of footsteps approaching rapidly along the
+passage. Tom had no leisure to right the cradle; he merely dropped the
+baby on the floor by the side of it, and sprang to the window.
+
+'You naughty, naughty boy!' Aunt Annie shrieked. 'You've taken baby out
+of his cradle! Oh, my pet! my poor darling! my mumsy! Did they, then?'
+
+'I didn't! I didn't!' Tom asserted passionately. 'I've never stirred
+from here all the time you were out. It fell out itself!'
+
+'Oh!' screamed Aunt Annie. 'There's a black place on his poor little
+forehead!'
+
+In an instant the baby's parents were to the rescue, and Tom was
+declaring his innocence to the united family.
+
+'It fell out itself!' he repeated; and soon he began to think of
+interesting details. 'I saw it. It put its hand on the edge of the
+cradle and pulled up, and then it leaned to one side, and then the
+cradle toppled over.'
+
+Of course the preposterous lie was credited by nobody.
+
+'There's one thing!' said Mrs. Knight, weeping for the second time that
+morning. 'I won't have him christened with a black forehead, that I
+won't!'
+
+At this point, Aunt Annie, who had scurried to the kitchen for some
+butter, flew back and anointed the bruise.
+
+'It fell out itself!' Tom said again.
+
+'Whatever would the minister think?' Mrs. Knight wondered.
+
+'It fell out itself!' said Tom.
+
+Mr. Knight whipped Tom, and his Aunt Annie put him to bed for the rest
+of the day. In the settled opinion of Mrs. Knight, Tom was punished for
+attempting to murder her baby. But Mr. Knight insisted that the
+punishment was for lying. As for the baptism, it had necessarily to be
+postponed for four weeks, since the ceremony was performed at the Great
+Queen Street Chapel only on the first Sunday in the month.
+
+'I never touched it!' Tom asseverated solemnly the next day. 'It fell
+out itself!'
+
+And he clung to the statement, day after day, with such obstinacy that
+at length the three adults, despite the protests of reason, began to
+think that conceivably, just conceivably, the impossible was
+possible--in regard to one particular baby. Mrs. Knight had often
+commented on the perfectly marvellous muscular power of her baby's hand
+when it clutched hers, and signs were not wanting to convince the
+parents and the aunt that the infant was no ordinary infant, but indeed
+extraordinary and wonderful to the last degree.
+
+On the fourth day, when Tom had asserted for about the hundredth time,
+'It fell out itself,' his Aunt Susan kissed him and gave him a
+sweetmeat. Tom threw it away, but in the end, after much coaxing, he
+consented to enjoy it. Aunt Susan detected the finger of Providence in
+recent events, and one night she whispered to her husband: 'Lovey, I
+want you to call him what you said.'
+
+And so it occurred, at the christening, that when the minister leaned
+over the Communion-rail to take the wonder-child from its mother's
+arms, its father whispered into the minister's ear a double name.
+
+'Henry Shakspere----' began the minister with lifted hand.
+
+And the baby smiled confidently upwards.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+AGED TWELVE
+
+
+'Quick! He's coming!'
+
+It was Aunt Annie who uttered the dramatic whisper, and as she did so
+she popped a penknife on to an empty plate in front of an empty chair at
+the breakfast-table. Mr. Knight placed a silver watch and also,
+separately, a silver chain by the side of the weapon; and, lastly, Mrs.
+Knight had the happy inspiration of covering these articles with the
+empty slop-basin.
+
+The plotters sat back in their chairs and tried to keep their guilty
+eyes off the overturned basin. 'Two slices, Annie?' said Mr. Knight in a
+loud tone, elaborately casual. 'Yes, please,' said Aunt Annie. Mrs.
+Knight began to pour out coffee. They all three looked at each other,
+joyous, naughty, strategic; and the thing of which they were least
+conscious, in that moment of expectancy, was precisely the thing that
+the lustrous trifles hidden beneath the basin were meant to signalize:
+namely, the passage of years and the approach of age. Mr. Knight's hair
+was grey; Mrs. Knight, once a slim bride of twenty-seven, was now a
+stout matron of thirty-nine, with a tendency to pant after the most
+modest feats of stair-climbing; and Aunt Annie, only the other day a
+pretty girl with a head full of what is wrongly called nonsense, was a
+spinster--a spinster. Fortunately, they were blind to these obvious
+facts. Even Mr. Knight, accustomed as he was to survey fundamental
+truths with the detachment of a philosopher, would have been shocked to
+learn that his hair was grey. Before the glass, of a morning, he
+sometimes remarked, in the tone of a man whose passion for candour
+permits him to conceal nothing: 'It's _getting_ grey.'
+
+Then young Henry burst into the room.
+
+It was exactly twelve years since he had been born, a tiny, shapeless,
+senseless, helpless, toothless, speechless, useless, feeble, deaf,
+myopic creature; and now he was a school-boy, strong, healthy, big, and
+clever, who could define a dodecahedron and rattle off the rivers of
+Europe like a house on fire. The change amounted to a miracle, and it
+was esteemed as such by those who had spent twelve years chiefly in
+watching it. One evening, in the very earliest stages, while his mother
+was nursing him, his father had come into the darkened chamber, and,
+after bending over the infant, had struck a match to ignite a cigar; and
+the eyes of the infant had blinked in the sudden light. '_See how he
+takes notice!_ the mother had cried in ecstatic wonderment. And from
+that moment she, and the other two, had never ceased to marvel, and to
+fear. It seemed impossible that this extraordinary fragment of humanity,
+which at first could not be safely ignored for a single instant night or
+day, should survive the multitudinous perils that surrounded it. But it
+did survive, and it became an intelligence. At eighteen months the
+intelligence could walk, sit up, and say 'Mum.' These performances were
+astounding. And the fact that fifty thousand other babies of eighteen
+months in London were similarly walking, sitting up, and saying 'Mum,'
+did not render these performances any the less astounding. And when,
+half a year later, the child could point to a letter and identify it
+plainly and unmistakably--'O'--the parents' cup was full. The mother
+admitted frankly that she had not expected this final proof of
+understanding. Aunt Annie and father pretended not to be surprised, but
+it was a pretence merely. Why, it seemed scarcely a month since the
+miraculous child had not even sense enough to take milk out of a spoon!
+And here he was identifying 'O' every time he tried, with the absolute
+assurance of a philologist! True, he had once or twice shrieked 'O'
+while putting a finger on 'Q,' but that was the fault of the printers,
+who had printed the tail too small.
+
+After that the miracles had followed one another so rapidly, each more
+amazing than the last, that the watchers had unaffectedly abandoned
+themselves to an attitude of permanent delighted astonishment. They
+lived in a world of magic. And their entire existence was based on the
+tacit assumption--tacit because the truth of it was so manifest--that
+their boy was the most prodigious boy that ever was. He went into
+knickerbockers. He learnt hymns. He went to school--and came back alive
+at the end of the first day and said he had enjoyed it! Certainly, other
+boys went to school. Yes, but there was something special, something
+indefinable, something incredible, about Henry's going to school that
+separated his case from all the other cases, and made it precious in its
+wonder. And he began to study arithmetic, geometry, geography, history,
+chemistry, drawing, Latin, French, mensuration, composition, physics,
+Scripture, and fencing. His singular brain could grapple simultaneously
+with these multifarious subjects. And all the time he was growing,
+growing, growing. More than anything else it was his growth that
+stupefied and confounded and enchanted his mother. His limbs were
+enormous to her, and the breadth of his shoulders and the altitude of
+his head. It puzzled her to imagine where the flesh came from. Already
+he was as tail as she, and up to Aunt Annie's lips, and up to his
+father's shoulder. She simply adored his colossal bigness. But somehow
+the fact that a giant was attending the Bloomsbury Middle School never
+leaked out.
+
+'What's this?' Henry demanded, mystified, as he sat down to breakfast.
+There was a silence.
+
+'What's what?' said his father gruffly. 'Get your breakfast.'
+
+'Oh my!' Henry had lifted the basin.
+
+'Had you forgotten it was your birthday?' Mrs. Knight asked, beaming.
+
+'Well, I'm blest!' He had in truth forgotten that it was his birthday.
+
+'You've been so wrapped up in this Speech Day business, haven't you?'
+said Aunt Annie, as if wishful to excuse him to himself for the
+extraordinary lapse.
+
+They all luxuriated in his surprise, his exclamations, his blushes of
+delight, as he fingered the presents. For several days, as Henry had
+made no reference to his approaching anniversary, they had guessed that
+he had overlooked it in the exciting preparations for Speech Day, and
+they had been anticipating this moment with the dreadful joy of
+conspirators. And now they were content. No hitch, no anticlimax had
+occurred.
+
+'I know,' said Henry. 'The watch is from father, and you've given me the
+chain, mother, and the knife is from Aunt Annie. Is there a thing in it
+for pulling stones out of horses' hoofs, auntie?' (Happily, there was.)
+
+'You must make a good breakfast, dear; you've got a big day before you,'
+enjoined his mother, when he had thanked them politely, and assumed the
+watch and chain, and opened all the blades and other pleasant devices of
+the penknife.
+
+'Yes, mother,' he answered obediently.
+
+He always obeyed injunctions to eat well. But it would be unfair to
+Henry not to add that he was really a most obedient boy--in short, a
+good boy, a nice boy. The strangest thing of all in Henry's case was
+that, despite their united and unceasing efforts, his three relatives
+had quite failed to spoil him. He was too self-possessed for his years,
+too prone to add the fanciful charm of his ideas to no matter what
+conversation might be proceeding in his presence; but spoiled he was
+not.
+
+The Speech Day which had just dawned marked a memorable point in his
+career. According to his mother's private notion, it would be a
+demonstration, and a triumphant demonstration, that, though the mills of
+God grind slowly, they grind exceeding small. For until that term, of
+which the Speech Day was the glittering conclusion, the surpassing
+merits and talents of her son had escaped recognition at the Bloomsbury
+Middle School. He had never reached the top of a form; he had never
+received a prize; he had never earned pedagogic praise more generous
+than 'Conduct fair--progress fair.' But now, out of the whole school, he
+had won the prize for Good Conduct. And, as if this was not sufficiently
+dazzling, he had also taken to himself, for an essay on 'Streets,' the
+prize for English Composition. And, thirdly, he had been chosen to
+recite a Shaksperean piece at the ceremony of prize-giving. It was the
+success in Composition which tickled his father's pride, for was not
+this a proof of heredity? Aunt Annie flattered herself on the Good
+Conduct prize. Mrs. Knight exulted in everything, but principally in the
+prospective sight of her son at large on the platform delivering
+Shakspere to a hushed, attentive audience of other boys' parents. It was
+to be the apotheosis of Henry, was that night!
+
+'Will you hear me, father?' Henry requested meekly, when he had finished
+the first preparations for his big day, and looked at the time, and cut
+a piece of skin from the palm of his hand, to the horror of his mother
+and aunt. 'Will you hear me, father?'
+
+(No! I assure you he was not a detestable little prig. He had been
+brought up like that.)
+
+And Mr. Knight took Staunton's Shakspere from the bookcase and opened it
+at _Othello_, Act I., scene iii., and Henry arose and began to explain
+to the signiors of Venice in what manner Desdemona had fallen in love
+with him and he with Desdemona; how he told Desdemona that even from his
+boyish days he had experienced moving accidents by flood and field, and
+had been sold into slavery, and all about the cannibals and the--but he
+came to utter grief at the word Anthropophagi.'
+
+'An-thro-poph-a-gi,' said his father.
+
+'It's a very difficult word, I'm sure,' said his mother.
+
+Difficult or not, Henry mastered it, and went on to the distressful
+strokes his youth had suffered, and then to Desdemona's coy hint:
+
+
+           'Upon this hint I spoke--spake, I mean;
+     She loved me for the dangers I had passed,
+     And I loved her that she did pity them.
+     This only is the witchcraft I have used.
+     Here comes the lady; let her witness it.'
+
+
+'Have a bit of toast, my pet,' Mrs. Knight suggested.
+
+The door opened at the same moment.
+
+'Enter Desdemona,' said a voice. 'Now do go light on the buttered toast,
+Othello. You know you'll be ill.'
+
+It was Cousin Tom. He was always very late for breakfast.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+MARRONS GLACÉS
+
+
+And Tom was always being inconvenient, always producing intellectual
+discomfort. On this occasion there can be no doubt that if Tom had not
+come in just then Henry would have accepted and eaten the buttered
+toast, and would have enjoyed it; and his father, mother, and aunt would
+have enjoyed the spectacle of his bliss; and all four of them would have
+successfully pretended to their gullible consciences that an
+indiscretion had not been committed. Here it must be said that the
+Achilles' heel of Henry Shakspere Knight lay in his stomach. Despite his
+rosy cheeks and pervading robustness, despite the fact that his infancy
+had been almost immune from the common ailments--even measles--he
+certainly suffered from a form of chronic dyspepsia. Authorities
+differed upon the cause of the ailment. Some, such as Tom, diagnosed
+the case in a single word. Mr. Knight, less abrupt, ascribed the evil to
+Mrs. Knight's natural but too solicitous endeavours towards keeping up
+the strength of her crescent son. Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie regarded it
+as a misfortune simply, inexplicable, unjust, and cruel. But even Mrs.
+Knight and Aunt Annie had perceived that there was at least an apparent
+connection between hot buttered toast and the recurrence of the malady.
+Hence, though the two women would not admit that this connection was
+more than a series of unfortunate coincidences, Henry had been advised
+to deprive himself of hot buttered toast. And here came Tom, with his
+characteristic inconvenience, to catch them in the very midst of their
+folly, and to make even Mr. Knight, that mask of stern rectitude, a
+guilty accessory before the fact.
+
+'It's only this once!' Mrs. Knight protested.
+
+'You're quite right,'said Tom. 'It's only this once.'
+
+Henry took the piece of toast, and then, summoning for one supreme
+effort all the spiritual courage which he had doubtless inherited from
+a long line of Puritan ancestors, he nobly relinquished it.
+
+Mr. Knight's eyes indicated to Tom that a young man who was constantly
+half an hour late for breakfast had no moral right to preach abstinence
+to a growing boy, especially on his birthday. But the worst thing about
+Tom was that he was never under any circumstances abashed.
+
+'As nothing is worse than hot toast cold,' Tom imperturbably remarked,
+'I'll eat it at once.' And he ate the piece of toast.
+
+No one could possibly blame Tom. Nevertheless, every soul round the
+table did the impossible and blamed him. The atmosphere lost some of its
+festive quality.
+
+Tom Knight was nineteen, thin, pale, and decidedly tall; and his fair
+hair still curled slightly on the top of his head. In twelve years his
+development, too, had amounted to a miracle, or would have amounted to a
+miracle had there been anyone present sufficiently interested to observe
+and believe in it. Miracles, however, do not begin to exist until at
+least one person believes, and the available credence in the household
+had been monopolized by Tom's young cousin. The great difference
+between Tom and Henry was that Tom had faults, whereas Henry had
+none--yet Tom was the elder by seven years and ought to have known
+better! Mr. Knight had always seen Tom's faults, but it was only since
+the advent of Henry that Mrs. Knight, and particularly Aunt Annie, had
+begun to see them. Before Henry arrived, Tom had been Aunt Annie's
+darling. The excellent spinster took pains never to show that Henry had
+supplanted him; nevertheless, she showed it all the time. Tom's faults
+flourished and multiplied. There can be no question that he was idle,
+untruthful, and unreliable. In earliest youth he had been a merry prank;
+he was still a prank, but not often merry. His spirit seemed to be
+overcast; and the terrible fact came out gradually that he was not
+'nicely disposed.' His relatives failed to understand him, and they gave
+him up like a puzzle. He was self-contradictory. For instance, though a
+shocking liar, he was lavish of truth whenever truth happened to be
+disconcerting and inopportune. He it was who told the forewoman of his
+uncle's millinery department, in front of a customer, that she had a
+moustache. His uncle threshed him. 'She _has_ a moustache, anyhow!'
+said this Galileo when his uncle had finished. Mr. Knight wished Tom to
+go into the drapery, but Tom would not. Tom wanted to be an artist; he
+was always drawing. Mr. Knight had only heard of artists; he had never
+seen one. He thought Tom's desire for art was mere wayward naughtiness.
+However, after Tom had threatened to burn the house down if he was not
+allowed to go to an art-school, and had carried out his threat so far as
+to set fire to a bale of cotton-goods in the cellar, Mr. Knight yielded
+to the whim for the sake of peace and a low temperature. He expansively
+predicted ultimate disaster for Tom. But at the age of eighteen and a
+half, Tom, with his habit of inconvenience, simply fell into a post as
+designer to a firm of wholesale stationers. His task was to design
+covers for coloured boxes of fancy notepaper, and his pay was two
+guineas a week. The richness of the salary brought Mr. Knight to his
+senses; it staggered, sobered, and silenced him. Two guineas a week at
+eighteen and a half! It was beyond the verge of the horizons of the
+drapery trade. Mr. Knight had a shop-walker, aged probably thirty-eight
+and a half, who was receiving precisely two guineas a week, and working
+thirty hours a week longer than Tom.
+
+On the strength of this amazing two guineas, Tom, had he chosen, might
+easily have regained the long-lost esteem of his relatives. But he did
+not choose. He became more than ever a mystery to them, and a troubling
+mystery, not a mystery that one could look squarely in the face and then
+pass by. His ideals, if they could be called ideals, were always in
+collision with those of the rest of the house. Neither his aunts nor his
+uncle could ever be quite sure that he was not enjoying some joke which
+they were not enjoying. Once he had painted Aunt Annie's portrait.
+'Never let me see that thing again!' she exclaimed when she beheld it
+complete. She deemed it an insult, and she was not alone in her opinion.
+'Do you call this art?' said Mr. Knight. 'If this is art, then all I can
+say is I'm glad I wasn't brought up to understand art, as you call it.'
+Nevertheless, somehow the painting was exhibited at South Kensington in
+the national competition of students works, and won a medal. 'Portrait
+of my Aunt,' Tom had described it in the catalogue, and Aunt Annie was
+furious a second time. 'However,' she said, 'no one'll recognise me,
+that's one comfort!' Still, the medal weighed heavily; it was a gold
+medal. Difficult to ignore its presence in the house!
+
+Tom's crowning sin was that he was such a bad example to Henry. Henry
+worshipped him, and the more Tom was contemned the more Henry
+worshipped.
+
+'You'll surely be very late, Tom,' Mrs. Knight ventured to remark at
+half-past nine.
+
+Mr. Knight had descended into the shop, and Aunt Annie also.
+
+'Oh no,' said Tom--'not more than is necessary.' And then he glanced at
+Henry. 'Look here, my bold buccaneer, you've got nothing to do just now,
+have you? You can stroll along with me a bit, and we'll see if we can
+buy you a twopenny toy for a birthday present.'
+
+Tom always called Henry his 'bold buccaneer.' He had picked up the term
+of endearment from the doctor with the black bag twelve years ago. Henry
+had his cap on in two seconds, and Mrs. Knight beamed at this unusual
+proof of kindly thought on Tom's part.
+
+In the street Tom turned westwards instead of to the City, where his
+daily work lay.
+
+'Aren't you going to work to-day?' Henry asked in surprise.
+
+'No,' said Tom. 'I told my benevolent employers last night that it was
+your birthday to-day, and I asked whether I could have a holiday. What
+do you think they answered?'
+
+'You didn't ask them,' said Henry.
+
+'They answered that I could have forty holidays. And they requested me
+to wish you, on behalf of the firm, many happy returns of the day.'
+
+'Don't rot,' said Henry.
+
+It was a beautiful morning, sunny, calm, inspiriting, and presently Tom
+began to hum. After a time Henry perceived that Tom was humming the same
+phrase again and again: 'Some streets are longer than others. Some
+streets are longer than others.'
+
+'_Don't rot_, Tom,' Henry pleaded.
+
+The truth was that Tom was intoning a sentence from Henry's prize essay
+on streets. Tom had read the essay and pronounced it excellent, and till
+this very moment on the pavement of Oxford Street Henry had imagined
+Tom's verdict to be serious. He now knew that it was not serious.
+
+Tom continued to chant, with pauses: 'Some streets are longer than
+others.... Very few streets are straight.... But we read in the Bible of
+the street which is called Straight.... Oxford Street is nearly
+straight.... A street is what you go along.... It has a road and two
+footpaths.'
+
+Henry would have given his penknife not to have written that essay. The
+worst of Tom was that he could make anything look silly without saying
+that it was silly--a trick that Henry envied.
+
+Tom sang further: 'In the times before the French Revolution the streets
+of Paris had no pavements ... _e.g._, they were all road.... It was no
+infrequent occurrence for people to be maimed for life, or even
+seriously injured, against walls by passing carriages of haughty
+nobles.'
+
+'I didn't put "haughty,"' Henry cried passionately.
+
+'Didn't you?' Tom said with innocence. 'But you put "or even seriously
+injured."'
+
+'Well?' said Henry dubiously.
+
+'And you put "It was no infrequent occurrence." Where did you steal that
+from, my bold buccaneer?'
+
+'I didn't steal it,' Henry asserted. 'I made it up.'
+
+'Then you will be a great writer,' Tom said. 'If I were you, I should
+send a telegram to Tennyson, and tell him to look out for himself.
+Here's a telegraph-office. Come on.'
+
+And Tom actually did enter a doorway. But it proved to be the entrance
+to a large and magnificent confectioner's shop. Henry followed him
+timidly.
+
+'A pound of marrons glacés,' Tom demanded.
+
+'What are they?' Henry whispered up at Tom's ear.
+
+'Taste,' said Tom, boldly taking a sample from the scales while the
+pound was being weighed out.
+
+'It's like chestnuts,' Harry mumbled through the delicious brown frosted
+morsel. 'But nicer.'
+
+'They are rather like chestnuts, aren't they?' said Tom.
+
+The marrons glacés were arranged neatly in a beautiful box; the box was
+wrapped in paper of one colour, and then further wrapped in paper of
+another colour, and finally bound in pink ribbon.
+
+'Golly!' murmured Henry in amaze, for Tom had put down a large silver
+coin in payment, and received no change.
+
+They came out, Henry carrying the parcel.
+
+'But will they do me any harm?' the boy asked apprehensively.
+
+The two cousins had reached Hyde Park, and were lying on the grass, and
+Tom had invited Henry to begin the enterprise of eating his birthday
+present.
+
+'Harm! I should think not. They are the best things out for the
+constitution. Not like sweets at all. Doctors often give them to
+patients when they are getting better. And they're very good for
+sea-sickness too.'
+
+So Henry opened the box and feasted. One half of the contents had
+disappeared within twenty minutes, and Tom had certainly not eaten more
+than two marrons.
+
+'They're none so dusty!' said Henry, perhaps enigmatically. 'I could go
+on eating these all day.'
+
+A pretty girl of eighteen or so wandered past them.
+
+'Nice little bit of stuff, that!' Tom remarked reflectively.
+
+'What say?'
+
+'That little thing there!' Tom explained, pointing with his elbow to the
+girl.
+
+'Oh!' Henry grunted. 'I thought you said a nice little bit of stuff.'
+
+And he bent to his chestnuts again. By slow and still slower degrees
+they were reduced to one.
+
+'Have this,' he invited Tom.
+
+'No,' said Tom. 'Don't want it. You finish up.'
+
+'I think I can't eat any more,' Henry sighed.
+
+'Oh yes, you can,' Tom encouraged him. 'You've shifted about fifty.
+Surely you can manage fifty-one.'
+
+Henry put the survivor to his lips, but withdrew it.
+
+'No,' he said. 'I tell you what I'll do: I'll put it in the box and save
+it.'
+
+'But you can't cart that box about for the sake of one chestnut, my bold
+buccaneer.'
+
+'Well, I'll put it in my pocket.'
+
+And he laid it gently by the side of the watch in his waistcoat pocket.
+
+'You can find your way home, can't you?' said Tom. 'It's just occurred
+to me that I've got some business to attend to.'
+
+A hundred yards off the pretty girl was reading on a seat. His business
+led him in that direction.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+A CALAMITY FOR THE SCHOOL
+
+
+It was a most fortunate thing that there was cold mutton for dinner. The
+economic principle governing the arrangement of the menu was that the
+simplicity of the mutton atoned for the extravagance of the birthday
+pudding, while the extravagance of the birthday pudding excused the
+simplicity of the mutton. Had the first course been anything richer than
+cold mutton, Henry could not have pretended even to begin the repast. As
+it was, he ate a little of the lean, leaving a wasteful margin of lean
+round the fat, which he was not supposed to eat; he also nibbled at the
+potatoes, and compressed the large remnant of them into the smallest
+possible space on the plate; then he unobtrusively laid down his knife
+and fork.
+
+'Come, Henry,' said Aunt Annie, 'don't leave a saucy plate.'
+
+Henry had already pondered upon a plausible explanation of his
+condition.
+
+'I'm too excited to eat,' he promptly answered.
+
+'You aren't feeling ill, are you?' his mother asked sharply.
+
+'No,' he said. 'But can I have my birthday pudding for supper, after
+it's all over, instead of now?'
+
+Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie looked at one another. 'That might be safer,'
+said Aunt Annie, and she added: 'You can have some cold rice pudding
+now, Henry.'
+
+'No, thank you, auntie; I don't want any.'
+
+'The boy's ill,' Mrs. Knight exclaimed. 'Annie, where's the Mother
+Seigel?'
+
+'The boy's no such thing,' said Mr. Knight, pouring calmness and
+presence of mind over the table like oil. 'Give him some Seigel by all
+means, if you think fit; but don't go and alarm yourself about nothing.
+The boy's as well as I am.'
+
+'I think I _should_ like some Seigel,' said the boy.
+
+Tom was never present at the mid-day meal; only Mrs. Knight knew that
+Henry had been out with him; and Mrs. Knight was far too simple a soul
+to suspect the horrid connection between the morning ramble and this
+passing malaise of Henry's. As for Henry, he volunteered nothing.
+
+'It will pass off soon,' said Aunt Annie two hours later. The time was
+then half-past three; the great annual ceremony of Speech Day began at
+half-past seven. Henry reclined on the sofa, under an antimacassar, and
+Mrs. Knight was bathing his excited temples with eau de Cologne.
+
+'Oh yes,' Mr. Knight agreed confidently; he had looked in from the shop
+for a moment. 'Oh yes! It will pass off. Give him a cup of strong tea in
+a quarter of an hour, and he'll be as right as a trivet.'
+
+'Of course you will, won't you, my dear?' Mrs. Knight demanded fondly of
+her son.
+
+Henry nodded weakly.
+
+The interesting and singular fact about the situation is that these
+three adults, upright, sincere, strictly moral, were all lying, and
+consciously lying. They knew that Henry's symptoms differed in no
+particular from those of his usual attacks, and that his usual attacks
+had a minimum duration of twelve hours. They knew that he was decidedly
+worse at half-past three than he had been at half-past two, and they
+could have prophesied with assurance that he would be still worse at
+half-past four than he was then. They knew that time would betray them.
+Yet they persisted in falsehood, because they were incapable of
+imagining the Speech Day ceremony without Henry in the midst. If any
+impartial friend had approached at that moment and told them that Henry
+would spend the evening in bed, and that they might just as well resign
+themselves first as last, they would have cried him down, and called him
+unfriendly and unfeeling, and, perhaps, in the secrecy of their hearts
+thrown rotten eggs at him.
+
+It proved to be the worst dyspeptic visitation that Henry had ever had.
+It was not a mere 'attack'--it was a revolution, beginning with slight
+insurrections, but culminating in universal upheaval, the overthrowing
+of dynasties, the establishment of committees of public safety, and a
+reign of terror. As a series of phenomena it was immense, variegated,
+and splendid, and was remembered for months afterwards.
+
+'Surely he'll be better _now_!' said Mrs. Knight, agonized.
+
+But no! And so they carried Henry to bed.
+
+At six the martyr uneasily dozed.
+
+'He may sleep a couple of hours,' Aunt Annie whispered.
+
+Not one of the three had honestly and openly withdrawn from the position
+that Henry would be able to go to the prize-giving. They seemed to have
+silently agreed to bury the futile mendacity of the earlier afternoon in
+everlasting forgetfulness.
+
+'Poor little thing!' observed Mrs. Knight.
+
+His sufferings had reduced him, in her vision, to about half his
+ordinary size.
+
+At seven Mr. Knight put on his hat.
+
+'Are you going out, father?' his wife asked, shocked.
+
+'It is only fair,' said Mr. Knight, 'to warn the school people that
+Henry will not be able to be present to-night. They will have to alter
+their programme. Of course I shan't stay.'
+
+In pitying the misfortune of the school, thus suddenly and at so
+critical a moment deprived of Henry's presence and help, Mrs. Knight
+felt less keenly the pang of her own misfortune and that of her son.
+Nevertheless, it was a night sufficiently tragic in Oxford Street.
+
+Mr. Knight returned with Henry's two prizes--_Self-Help_ and _The
+Voyage of the 'Fox' in the Arctic Seas_.
+
+The boy had wakened once, but dozed again.
+
+'Put them on the chair where he can see them in the morning,' Aunt Annie
+suggested.
+
+'Yes,' said the father, brightening. 'And I'll wind up his watch for
+him.... Bless us! what's he been doing to the watch? What _is_ it,
+Annie?
+
+
+'Why did you do it?' Mr. Knight asked Tom. 'That's what I can't
+understand. Why did you do it?'
+
+They were alone together the next morning in the sitting-room. ('I will
+speak to that young man privately,' Mr. Knight had said to the two women
+in a formidable tone.) Henry was still in bed, but awake and reading
+Smiles with precocious gusto.
+
+'Did the kid tell you all about it, then?'
+
+'The kid,' said Mr. Knight, marking by a peculiar emphasis his
+dissatisfaction with Tom's choice of nouns, 'was very loyal. I had to
+drag the story out of him bit by bit. I repeat: why did you do it? Was
+this your idea of a joke? If so, I can only say----'
+
+'You should have seen how he enjoyed them! It was tremendous,' Tom broke
+in. 'Tremendous! I've no doubt the afternoon was terrible, but the
+morning was worth it. Ask Henry himself. I wanted to give him a treat,
+and it seems I gave you all one.'
+
+'And then the headmaster!' Mr. Knight complained. 'He was very upset. He
+told me he didn't know what they should do without Henry last night.'
+
+'Oh yes. I know old Pingles. Pingles is a great wit. But seriously,
+uncle,' said Tom--he gazed at the carpet; 'seriously----' He paused. 'If
+I had thought of the dreadful calamity to the school, I would only have
+bought half a pound.'
+
+'Pah!' Mr. Knight whiffed out.
+
+'It's a mercy we're all still alive,' murmured Tom.
+
+'And may I ask, sir----' Mr. Knight began afresh, in a new vein,
+sarcastic and bitter. 'Of course you're an independent member of
+society, and your own master; but may I venture to ask what you were
+doing in Hyde Park yesterday at eleven o'clock?'
+
+'You may,' Tom replied. 'The truth is, Bollingtons Limited and me, just
+me, have had a row. I didn't like their style, nor their manners. So the
+day before yesterday I told them to go to the devil----'
+
+'You told them to go to the----!'
+
+'And I haven't seen anything of Bollingtons since, and I don't want to.'
+
+'That is where you are going to yourself, sir,' thundered Mr. Knight.
+'Mark my words. That is where you are going to yourself. Two guineas a
+week, at your age, and you tell them----! I suppose you think you can
+get a place like that any day.'
+
+'Look here, uncle. Listen. Mark my words. I have two to say to you, and
+two only. Good-morning.'
+
+Tom hastened from the room, and went down into the shop by the
+shop-stairs. The cashier of the establishment was opening the safe.
+
+'Mr. Perkins,' said Tom lightly, 'uncle wants change for a ten-pound
+note, in gold.'
+
+'Certainly, Mr. Tom. With pleasure.'
+
+'Oh!' Tom explained, as though the notion had just struck him, taking
+the sovereigns, 'the note! I'll bring it down in a jiffy.'
+
+'That's all right, Mr. Tom,' said the cashier, smiling with suave
+confidence.
+
+Tom ran up to his room, passing his uncle on the way. He snatched his
+hat and stick, and descended rapidly into the street by the
+house-stairs. He chose this effective and picturesque method of
+departing for ever from the hearth and home of Mr. Knight.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+CONTAGIOUS
+
+
+'There's only the one slipper here,' said Aunt Annie, feeling in the
+embroidered slipper-bag which depended from a glittering brass nail in
+the recess to the right of the fireplace. And this fireplace was on the
+ground-floor, and not in Oxford Street.
+
+'I was mending the other this morning,' said Mrs. Knight, springing up
+with all her excessive stoutness from the easy-chair. 'I left it in my
+work-basket, I do believe.'
+
+'I'll get it,' said Aunt Annie.
+
+'No, I'll get it,' said Mrs. Knight.
+
+So it occurred that Aunt Annie laid the left slipper (sole upwards) in
+front of the brisk red fire, while Mrs. Knight laid the right one.
+
+Then the servant entered the dining-room--a little simple fat thing of
+sixteen or so, proud of her cap and apron and her black afternoon dress.
+She was breathing quickly.
+
+'Please'm, Dr. Dancer says he'll come at nine o'clock, or as soon after
+as makes no matter.'
+
+In delivering the message the servant gave a shrewd, comprehending,
+sympathetic smile, as if to say: 'I am just as excited about your plot
+as you are.'
+
+'Thank you, Sarah. That will do.' Aunt Annie dismissed her frigidly.
+
+'Yes'm.'
+
+Sarah's departing face fell to humility, and it said now: 'I'm sorry I
+presumed to be as excited about your plot as you are.'
+
+The two sisters looked at each other interrogatively, disturbed,
+alarmed, shocked.
+
+'Can she have been listening at doors?' Aunt Annie inquired in a
+whisper.
+
+Wherever the sisters happened to be, they never discussed Sarah save in
+a whisper. If they had been in Alaska and Sarah in Timbuctoo, they would
+have mentioned her name in a whisper, lest she might overhear. And, by
+the way, Sarah's name was not Sarah, but Susan. It had been altered in
+deference to a general opinion that it was not nice for a servant to
+bear the same name as her mistress, and, further, that such an anomaly
+had a tendency to subvert the social order.
+
+'I don't know,' said Mrs. Knight 'I put her straight about those lumps
+of sugar.'
+
+'Did you tell her to see to the hot-water bottle?'
+
+'Bless us, no!'
+
+Aunt Annie rang the bell.
+
+'Sarah, put a hot-water bottle in your master's bed. And be sure the
+stopper is quite tight.'
+
+'Yes'm. Master's just coming down the street now, mum.'
+
+Sarah spoke true. The master was in fact coming down the wintry gaslit
+street. And the street was Dawes Road, Fulham, in the day of its
+newness. The master stopped at the gate of a house of two storeys with a
+cellar-kitchen. He pushed open the creaking iron device and entered the
+garden, sixteen foot by four, which was the symbol of the park in which
+the house would have stood if it had been a mansion. In a stride he
+walked from one end to the other of the path, which would have been a
+tree-lined, winding carriage-drive had the garden been a park. As he
+fumbled for his latchkey, he could see the beaming face of the
+representative of the respectful lower classes in the cellar-kitchen.
+The door yielded before him as before its rightful lord, and he passed
+into his sacred domestic privacy with an air which plainly asserted:
+'Here I am king, absolute, beneficent, worshipped.'
+
+'Come to the fire, quick, Henry,' said Aunt Annie, fussing round him
+actively.
+
+It would be idle to attempt to conceal, even for a moment, that this was
+not Henry the elder, but Henry Shakspere, aged twenty-three, with a face
+made grave, perhaps prematurely, by the double responsibilities of a
+householder and a man of affairs. Henry had lost some of his boyish
+plumpness, and he had that night a short, dry cough.
+
+'I'm coming,' he replied curtly, taking off his blue Melton. 'Don't
+worry.'
+
+And in a fraction of a second, not only Aunt Annie, but his mother in
+the dining-room and his helot in the cellar-kitchen, knew that the
+master was in a humour that needed humouring.
+
+Henry the younger had been the master for six years, since the death of
+his father. The sudden decease of its head generally means financial
+calamity for a family like the Knights. But somehow the Knights were
+different from the average. In the first place Henry Knight was insured
+for a couple of thousand pounds. In the second place Aunt Annie had a
+little private income of thirty pounds a year. And in the third place
+there was Henry Shakspere. The youth had just left school; he left it
+without special distinction (the brilliant successes of the marred
+Speech Day were never repeated), but the state of his education may be
+inferred from the established fact that the headmaster had said that if
+he had stayed three months longer he would have gone into logarithms.
+Instead of going into logarithms, Henry went into shorthand. And
+shorthand, at that date, was a key to open all doors, a cure for every
+ill, and the finest thing in the world. Henry had a talent for
+shorthand; he took to it; he revelled in it; he dreamt it; he lived for
+it alone. He won a speed medal, the gold of which was as pure as the
+gold of the medal won by his wicked cousin Tom for mere painting.
+Henry's mother was at length justified before all men in her rosy
+predictions.
+
+Among the most regular attendants at the Great Queen Street Wesleyan
+Chapel was Mr. George Powell, who himself alone constituted and
+comprised the eminent legal firm known throughout Lincoln's Inn Fields,
+New Court, the Temple, Broad Street, and Great George Street, as
+'Powells.' It is not easy, whatever may be said to the contrary, to
+reconcile the exigencies of the modern solicitor's profession with the
+exigencies of active Wesleyan Methodism; but Mr. George Powell succeeded
+in the difficult attempt, and his fame was, perhaps, due mainly to this
+success. All Wesleyan solicitors in large practice achieve renown,
+whether they desire it or not; Wesleyans cannot help talking about them,
+as one talks about an apparent defiance of natural laws. Most of them
+are forced into Parliament, and compelled against their wills to accept
+the honour of knighthood. Mr. George Powell, however, had so far escaped
+both Parliament and the prefix--a fact which served only to increase his
+fame. In fine, Mr. George Powell, within the frontiers of Wesleyan
+Methodism, was a lion of immense magnitude, and even beyond the
+frontiers, in the vast unregenerate earth, he was no mean figure. Now,
+when Mr. Powell heard of the death of Henry Knight, whom he said he had
+always respected as an upright tradesman and a sincere Christian, and of
+the shorthand speed medal of Henry Shakspere Knight, he benevolently
+offered the young Henry a situation in his office at twenty-five
+shillings a week, rising to thirty.
+
+Young Henry's fortune was made. He was in Powells, and under the
+protecting ægis of the principal. He shared in the lustre of Powells.
+When people mentioned him, they also mentioned Powells, as if that
+settled the matter--whatever the matter was. Mr. Powell invested Mrs.
+Knight's two thousand pounds on mortgage or freehold security at five
+per cent., and upon this interest, with Henry's salary and Aunt Annie's
+income, the three lived in comfort at Dawes Road. Nay, they saved, and
+Henry travelled second-class between Walham Green and the Temple. The
+youth was serious, industrious, and trustworthy, and in shorthand
+incomparable. No one acquainted with the facts was surprised when, after
+three years, Mr. Powell raised him to the position of his confidential
+clerk, and his salary to fifty-two shillings and sixpence.
+
+And then Mr. Powell, who had fought for so long against meaningless
+honours, capitulated and accepted a knighthood. The effect upon Dawes
+Road was curious and yet very natural. It was almost as though Henry
+himself had accepted a knighthood. Both Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie
+seemed to assume that Henry had at least contributed to the knighthood
+and that the knighthood was in some subtle way the reward of Henry's
+talent, rectitude, and strenuousness. 'Sir George'--those two syllables
+which slipped smoothly off the tongue with no effort to the
+speaker--entered largely into all conversations in the house at Dawes
+Road; and the whole street, beginning with the milkman, knew that Henry
+was Sir George's--no, not Sir George's confidential clerk, no such
+thing!--private secretary.
+
+His salary was three guineas a week. He had a banking account at Smith,
+Payne and Smiths, and a pew at the Munster Park Wesleyan Chapel. He was
+a power at the Regent Street Polytechnic. He bought books, including
+encyclopædias and dictionaries. He wrote essays which were read and
+debated upon at the sessions of the Debating Society. (One of the essays
+was entitled: 'The Tendencies of Modern Fiction'; he was honestly irate
+against the Stream of Trashy Novels Constantly Poured Forth by the
+Press.) He took out a life insurance policy for two hundred and fifty
+pounds, and an accident policy which provided enormous sums for all
+sorts of queer emergencies. Indeed, Henry was armed at every point. He
+could surely snap his fingers at Chance.
+
+If any young man in London had the right to be bumptious and didactic,
+Henry had. And yet he remained simple, unaffected, and fundamentally
+kind. But he was very serious. His mother and aunt strained every nerve,
+in their idolatrous treatment of him, to turn him into a conceited and
+unbearable jackanapes--and their failure to do so was complete. They
+only made him more serious. His temper was, and always had been, what is
+called even.
+
+And yet, on this particular evening when Sarah had been instructed to
+put a hot-water bottle in his bed, Henry's tone, in greeting his aunt,
+had been curt, fretful, peevish, nearly cantankerous. 'Don't worry me!'
+he had irascibly protested, well knowing that his good aunt was
+guiltless of the slightest intention to worry him. Here was a problem,
+an apparent contradiction, in Henry's personality.
+
+His aunt, in the passage, and his mother, who had overheard in the
+dining-room, instantly and correctly solved the problem by saying to
+themselves that Henry's tone was a Symptom. They had both been
+collecting symptoms for four days. His mother had first discovered that
+he had a cold; Aunt Annie went further and found that it was a feverish
+cold. Aunt Annie saw that his eyes were running; his mother wormed out
+of him that his throat tickled and his mouth was sore. When Aunt Annie
+asked him if his eyes ached as well as ran, he could not deny it. On the
+third day, at breakfast, he shivered, and the two ladies perceived
+simultaneously the existence of a peculiar rash behind Henry's ears. On
+the morning of the fourth day Aunt Annie, up early, scored one over her
+sister by noticing the same rash at the roots of his still curly hair.
+It was the second rash, together with Henry's emphatic and positive
+statement that he was perfectly well, which had finally urged his
+relatives to a desperate step--a step involving intrigue and
+prevarication. And to justify this step had come the crowning symptom
+of peevishness--peevishness in Henry! It wanted only that!
+
+'I've asked Dr. Dancer to call in to-night,' said Aunt Annie casually,
+while Henry was assuming his toasted crimson carpet slippers. Mrs.
+Knight was brewing tea in the kitchen.
+
+'What for?' Henry demanded quickly, and as if defensively. Then he
+added: 'Is mother wrong again?'
+
+Mrs. Knight had a recurrent 'complaint.'
+
+'Well,' said Aunt Annie darkly, 'I thought it would be as well to be on
+the safe side....'
+
+'Certainly,' said Henry.
+
+This was Aunt Annie's neat contribution to the necessary prevarication.
+
+They had tea and ham-and-eggs, the latter specially chosen because it
+was a dish that Henry doted upon. However, he ate but little.
+
+'You're overtired, dear,' his mother ventured.
+
+'Overtired or not, mater,' said Henry with a touch of irony, 'I must do
+some work to-night. Sir George has asked me to----'
+
+'My dear love,' Mrs. Knight cried out, moved, 'you've no right----'
+
+But Aunt Annie quelled the impulsive creature with a glance full of
+meaning. 'Sir George what?' she asked, politely interested.
+
+'The governor has asked me to look through his Christmas appeal for the
+Clerks' Society, and to suggest any alterations that occur to me.'
+
+It became apparent to the ladies, for the thousand and first time, that
+Sir George would be helpless without Henry, utterly helpless.
+
+After tea the table was cleared, and Henry opened his bag and rustled
+papers, and the ladies knitted and sewed with extraordinary precautions
+to maintain the silence which was the necessary environment of Henry's
+labours. And in the calm and sane domestic interior, under the mild ray
+of the evening lamp, the sole sounds were Henry's dry, hacking cough and
+the cornet-like blasts of his nose into his cambric handkerchief.
+
+'I think I'll do no more to-night,' he said at length, yawning.
+
+'That's right, dear,' his mother ejaculated.
+
+Then the doctor entered, and, for all the world as if by preconcerted
+action, the ladies disappeared. Dr. Dancer was on friendly terms with
+the household, and, his age being thirty, he was neither too old nor too
+young to address Henry as Old Man.
+
+'Hallo, old man,' he began, after staring hard at Henry. 'What's the
+matter with your forehead?'
+
+'Forehead?' Henry repeated questioningly.
+
+'Yes. Let's have a look.'
+
+The examination was thorough, and it ended with the thrusting of a
+thermometer into Henry's unwilling mouth.
+
+'One hundred and two,' said the doctor, and, smiling faintly, he
+whispered something to Henry.
+
+'You're joking,' Henry replied, aghast.
+
+'No, I'm not. Of course it's not serious. But it means bed for a
+fortnight or so, and you must go immediately.'
+
+The ladies, who had obviously and shamelessly been doing that which they
+so strongly deprecated in Sarah, came back into the room.
+
+In half an hour Henry was in bed, and a kettle containing eucalyptus was
+steaming over a bright fire in the bedroom; and his mother was bent upon
+black-currant tea in the kitchen; and Aunt Annie was taking down from
+dictation, in her angular Italian hand, a letter which began: 'Dear Sir
+George,--I much regret to say'; and little Sarah was standing hooded and
+girt up, ready to fly upon errands of the highest importance at a
+second's notice.
+
+'Sarah,' said Mrs. Knight solemnly, when Sarah had returned from the
+post and the doctor's, 'I am going to trust you. Your master has got the
+measles, but, of course, we don't want anyone to know, so you mustn't
+breathe a word.'
+
+'No'm,' said Sarah.
+
+'He never had them as a boy,' Mrs. Knight added proudly.
+
+'Didn't he, mum?' said Sarah.
+
+The doctor, whose gift for seriousness was not marked, showed a tendency
+to see humour in the situation of Sir George's private secretary being
+down with measles. But he was soon compelled to perceive his mistake. By
+a united and tremendous effort Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie made measles
+august. As for Sarah, she let slip the truth to the milkman. It came out
+by itself, as the spout of a teapot had once come off by itself in her
+hand.
+
+The accident policy appeared to provide for every emergency except
+measles.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+CREATIVE
+
+
+The sick-room--all due solemnity and importance must be imported into
+the significance of that word--the sick-room became a shrine, served by
+two ageing priestesses and a naïve acolyte. Everything was done to make
+Henry an invalid in the grand manner. His bed of agony became the pivot
+on which the household life flutteringly and soothingly revolved. No
+detail of delicate attention which the most ingenious assiduity could
+devise was omitted from the course of treatment. And if the chamber had
+been at the front instead of at the back, the Fulham Vestry would
+certainly have received an application for permission to lay down straw
+in the street.
+
+The sole flaw in the melancholy beauty of the episode was that Henry was
+never once within ten miles of being seriously ill. He was incapable of
+being seriously ill. He happened to be one of those individuals who,
+when they 'take' a disease, seem to touch it only with the tips of their
+fingers: such was his constitution. He had the measles, admittedly. His
+temperature rose one night to a hundred and three, and for a few brief
+moments his mother and Aunt Annie enjoyed visions of fighting the grim
+spectre of Death. The tiny round pink spots covered his face and then
+ran together into a general vermilion. He coughed exquisitely. His beard
+grew. He supported life on black-currant tea and an atmosphere
+impregnated with eucalyptus. He underwent the examination of the doctor
+every day at eleven. But he was not personally and genuinely ill. He did
+not feel ill, and he said so. His most disquieting symptom was boredom.
+This energetic organism chafed under the bed-clothes and the
+black-currant tea and the hushed eucalyptic calm of the chamber. He
+fervently desired to be up and active and stressful. His mother and aunt
+cogitated in vain to hit on some method of allaying the itch for work.
+And then one day--it was the day before Christmas--his mother chanced to
+say:
+
+'You might try to write out that story you told us about--when you are
+a little stronger. It would be something for you to do.'
+
+Henry shook his head sheepishly.
+
+'Oh no!' he said; 'I was only joking.'
+
+'I'm sure you could write it quite nicely,' his mother insisted.
+
+And Henry shook his head again, and coughed. 'No,' he said. 'I hope I
+shall have something better to do than write stories.'
+
+'But just to pass the time!' pleaded Aunt Annie.
+
+The fact was that, several weeks before, while his thoughts had been
+engaged in analyzing the detrimental qualities of the Stream of Trashy
+Novels Constantly Poured Forth by the Press, Henry had himself been
+visited by a notion for a story. He had scornfully ejected it as an
+inopportune intruder; but it had returned, and at length, to get rid for
+ever of this troublesome guest, he had instinctively related the outline
+of the tale over the tea-table. And the outline had been pronounced
+wonderful. 'It might be called _Love in Babylon_--Babylon being London,
+you know,' he had said. And Aunt Annie had exclaimed: 'What a pretty
+title!' Whereupon Henry had remarked contemptuously and dismissingly:
+'Oh, it was just an idea I had, that's all!' And the secret thought of
+both ladies had been, 'That busy brain is never still.'
+
+As the shades of Christmas Eve began to fall, Aunt Annie was seated by
+the sick-bed, engaged in making entries in the household washing-book
+with a lead pencil. Henry lay with his eyes closed. Mrs. Knight was out
+shopping. Presently there was a gentle _ting_ of the front-door bell;
+then a protracted silence; then another gentle _ting_.
+
+'Bless the girl! Why doesn't she answer the door?' Aunt Annie whispered
+to herself, listening hard.
+
+A third time the bell rang, and Aunt Annie, anathematizing the whole
+race of servants, got up, put the washing-book on the dressing-table,
+lighted the gas and turned it low, and descended to answer the door in
+person and to behead Sarah.
+
+More than an hour elapsed before either sister re-entered Henry's
+room--events on the ground-floor had been rather exciting--and then they
+appeared together, bearing a bird, and some mince-tarts on a plate, and
+a card. Henry was wide awake.
+
+'This _is_ a surprise, dear,' began Mrs. Knight. 'Just listen: "With Sir
+George Powell's hearty greetings and best wishes for a speedy recovery!"
+A turkey and six mince-tarts. Isn't it thoughtful of him?'
+
+'It's just like the governor,' said Henry, smiling, and feeling the
+tenderness of the turkey.
+
+'He is a true gentleman,' said Aunt Annie.
+
+'And we've sent round to the doctor to ask, and he says there's no harm
+in your having half a mince-tart; so we've warmed it. And you are to
+have a slice off the breast of the turkey to-morrow.'
+
+'Good!' was Henry's comment. He loved a savoury mouthful, and these
+dainties were an unexpected bliss, for the ladies had not dreamt of
+Christmas fare in the sad crisis, even for themselves.
+
+Aunt Annie, as if struck by a sudden blow, glanced aside at the gas.
+
+'I could have been certain I left the gas turned down,' she remarked.
+
+'I turned it up,' said Henry.
+
+'You got out of bed! Oh, Henry! And your temperature was a hundred and
+two only the day before yesterday!'
+
+'I thought I'd begin that thing--just for a lark, you know,' he
+explained.
+
+He drew from under the bed-clothes the household washing-book. And
+there, nearly at the top of a page, were Aunt Annie's last interrupted
+strokes:
+
+
+     '2 Ch----'
+
+
+and underneath:
+
+
+     'LOVE IN BABYLON'
+
+
+and the commencement of the tale. The marvellous man had covered nine
+pages of the washing-book.
+
+
+Within twenty-four hours, not only Henry, but his mother and aunt, had
+become entirely absorbed in Henry's tale. The ladies wondered how he
+thought of it all, and Henry himself wondered a little, too. It seemed
+to 'come,' without trouble and almost without invitation. It cost no
+effort. The process was as though Henry acted merely as the amanuensis
+of a great creative power concealed somewhere in the recesses of his
+vital parts. Fortified by two halves of a mince-tart and several slices
+of Sir George's turkey, he filled the washing-book full up before dusk
+on Christmas Day; and on Boxing Day, despite the faint admiring protests
+of his nurses, he made a considerable hole in a quire of the best ruled
+essay-paper. Instead of showing signs of fatigue, Henry appeared to grow
+stronger every hour, and to revel more and more in the sweet labour of
+composition; while the curiosity of the nurses about the exact nature of
+what Henry termed the dénouement increased steadily and constantly. The
+desires of those friends who had wished a Happy Christmas to the
+household were generously gratified.
+
+It was a love tale, of course. And it began thus, the first line
+consisting of a single word, and the second of three words:
+
+'_Babylon!_
+
+'_And in winter!_
+
+'_The ladies' waiting-room on the arrival platform of one of our vast
+termini was unoccupied save for the solitary figure of a young and
+beautiful girl, who, clad in a thin but still graceful costume, crouched
+shivering over the morsel of fire which the greed of a great company
+alone permitted to its passengers. Outside resounded the roar and shriek
+of trains, the ceaseless ebb and flow of the human tide which beats for
+ever on the shores of modern Babylon. Enid Anstruther gazed sadly into
+the embers. She had come to the end of her resources. Suddenly the door
+opened, and Enid looked up, naturally expecting to see one of her own
+sex. But it was a man's voice, fresh and strong, which exclaimed: "Oh, I
+beg pardon!" The two glanced at each other, and then Enid sank
+backwards._'
+
+Such were the opening sentences of _Love in Babylon_.
+
+Enid was an orphan, and had come to London in order to obtain a
+situation in a draper's shop. Unfortunately, she had lost her purse on
+the way. Her reason for sinking back in the waiting-room was that she
+had fainted from cold, hunger, and fatigue. Thus she and the man, Adrian
+Tempest, became acquainted, and Adrian's first gift to her was seven
+drops of brandy, which he forced between her teeth. His second was his
+heart. Enid obtained a situation, and Adrian took her to the Crystal
+Palace one Saturday afternoon. It was a pity that he had not already
+proposed to her, for they got separated in the tremendous Babylonian
+crowd, and Enid, unused to the intricacies of locomotion in Babylon,
+arrived home at the emporium at an ungodly hour on Sunday morning. She
+was dismissed by a proprietor with a face of brass. Adrian sought her in
+vain. She sought Adrian in vain--she did not know his address.
+Thenceforward the tale split itself into two parts: the one describing
+the life of Adrian, a successful barrister, on the heights of Babylon,
+and the other the life of Enid, reduced to desperate straits, in the
+depths thereof. The contrasts were vivid and terrific.
+
+Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie could not imagine how Henry would bring the
+two lovers, each burning secretly the light torch of love in Babylon,
+together again. But Henry did not hesitate over the problem for more
+than about fifty seconds. Royal Academy. Private View. Adrian present
+thereat as a celebrity. Picture of the year, 'The Enchantress.' He
+recognises her portrait. She had, then, been forced to sell her beauty
+for eighteenpence an hour as an artist's model. To discover the artist
+and Enid's address was for Adrian the work of a few minutes.
+
+This might have finished the tale, but Henry opined that the tale was a
+trifle short. As a fact, it was. He accordingly invented a further and a
+still more dramatic situation. When Adrian proposed to Enid, she
+conscientiously told him, told him quietly but firmly, that she could
+not marry him for the reason that her father, though innocent of a crime
+imputed to him, had died in worldly disgrace. She could not consent to
+sully Adrian's reputation. Now, Adrian happened to be the real criminal.
+But he did not know that Enid's father had suffered for him, and he had
+honestly lived down that distant past. 'If there is a man in this world
+who has the right to marry you,' cried Adrian, 'I am that man. And if
+there is a man in this world whom you have the right to spurn, I am that
+man also.' The extreme subtlety of the thing must be obvious to every
+reader. Enid forgave and accepted Adrian. They were married in a snowy
+January at St. Paul's, Knightsbridge, and the story ended thus:
+
+'_Babylon in winter_.
+
+'_Babylon!_'
+
+Henry achieved the entire work in seven days, and, having achieved it,
+he surveyed it with equal pride and astonishment. It was a matter of
+surprise to him that the writing of interesting and wholesome fiction
+was so easy. Some parts of the book he read over and over again, for the
+sheer joy of reading.
+
+'Of course it isn't good enough to print,' he said one day, while
+sitting up in the arm-chair.
+
+'I should think any publisher would be glad to print it,' said his
+mother. 'I'm not a bit prejudiced, I'm sure, and I think it's one of the
+best tales I ever read in all my life.'
+
+'Do you really?' Henry smiled, his natural modesty fighting against a
+sure conviction that his mother was right.
+
+Aunt Annie said little, but she had copied out _Love in Babylon_ in her
+fine, fair Italian hand, keeping pace day by day with Henry's
+extraordinary speed, and now she accomplished the transcription of the
+last pages.
+
+
+The time arrived for Henry to be restored to a waiting world. He was
+cured, well, hearty, vigorous, radiant. But he was still infected,
+isolate, one might almost say _taboo_; and everything in his room, and
+everything that everyone had worn while in the room, was in the same
+condition. Therefore the solemn process, rite, and ceremony of
+purification had to be performed. It began upon the last day of the old
+year at dusk.
+
+Aunt Annie made a quantity of paste in a basin; Mrs. Knight bought a
+penny brush; and Henry cut up a copy of the _Telegraph_ into long strips
+about two inches wide. The sides and sash of the window were then
+hermetically sealed; the register of the fireplace was closed, and
+sealed also. Clothes were spread out in open order, the bed stripped,
+rugs hung over chairs.
+
+'Henry's book?' Mrs. Knight demanded.
+
+'Of course it must be disinfected with the other things,' said Aunt
+Annie.
+
+'Yes, of course,' Henry agreed.
+
+'And it will be safer to lay the sheets separately on the floor,' Aunt
+Annie continued.
+
+There were fifty-nine sheets of Aunt Annie's fine, finicking caligraphy,
+and the scribe and her nephew went down on their knees, and laid them in
+numerical sequence on the floor. The initiatory '_Babylon_' found itself
+in the corner between the window and the fireplace beneath the
+dressing-table, and the final '_Babylon_' was hidden in gloomy retreats
+under the bed.
+
+Then Sarah entered, bearing sulphur in a shallow pan, and a box of
+matches. The paste and the paste-brush and the remnants of the
+_Telegraph_ were carried out into the passage. Henry carefully ignited
+the sulphur, and, captain of the ship, was the last to leave. As they
+closed the door the odour of burning, microbe-destroying sulphur
+impinged on their nostrils. Henry sealed the door on the outside with
+'London Day by Day,' 'Sales by Auction,' and a leading article or so.
+
+'There!' said Henry.
+
+All was over.
+
+At intervals throughout the night he thought of the sanative and benign
+sulphur smouldering, smouldering always with ghostly yellow flamelets in
+the midst of his work of art, while the old year died and the new was
+born.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+SPRING ONIONS
+
+
+The return to the world and to Powells, while partaking of the nature of
+a triumph, was at the same time something of a cold, fume-dispersing,
+commonsense-bestowing bath for Henry. He had meant to tell Sir George
+casually that he had taken advantage of his enforced leisure to write a
+book. 'Taken advantage of his enforced leisure' was the precise phrase
+which Henry had in mind to use. But, when he found himself in the
+strenuous, stern, staid, sapient and rational atmosphere of Powells, he
+felt with a shock of perception that in rattling off _Love in Babylon_
+he had been guilty of one of those charming weaknesses to which great
+and serious men are sometimes tempted, but of which great and serious
+men never boast. And he therefore confined his personal gossip with Sir
+George to the turkey, the mince-tarts, and the question of contagion. He
+plunged into his work with a feeling akin to dignified remorse, and Sir
+George was vehemently and openly delighted by the proofs which he gave
+of undiminished loyalty and devotion.
+
+Nevertheless Henry continued to believe in the excellence of his book,
+and he determined that, in duty to himself, his mother and aunt, and the
+cause of wholesome fiction, he must try to get it published. From that
+moment he began to be worried, for he had scarcely a notion how
+sagaciously to set about the business. He felt like a bachelor of
+pronounced views who has been given a baby to hold. He knew no one in
+the realms of literature, and no one who knew anyone. Sir George, warily
+sounded, appeared to be unaware that such a thing as fiction existed.
+Not a soul at the Polytechnic enjoyed the acquaintance of either an
+author or a publisher, though various souls had theories about these
+classes of persons. Then one day a new edition of the works of Carlyle
+burst on the world, and Henry bought the first volume, _Sartor
+Resartus_, a book which he much admired, and which he had learnt from
+his father to call simply and familiarly--_Sartor_. The edition, though
+inexpensive, had a great air of dignity. It met, in short, with Henry's
+approval, and he suddenly decided to give the publishers of it the
+opportunity of publishing _Love in Babylon_. The deed was done in a
+moment. He wrote a letter explaining the motives which had led him to
+write _Love in Babylon_, and remarked that, if the publishers cared for
+the story, mutually satisfactory terms might be arranged later; and Aunt
+Annie did _Love in Babylon_ up in a neat parcel. Henry was in the very
+act of taking the parcel to the post, on his way to town, when Aunt
+Annie exclaimed:
+
+'Of course you'll register it?'
+
+He had not thought of doing so, but the advisability of such a step at
+once appealed to him.
+
+'Perhaps I'd better,' he said.
+
+'But that only means two pounds if it's lost, doesn't it?' Mrs. Knight
+inquired.
+
+Henry nodded and pondered.
+
+'Perhaps I'd better insure it,' he suggested.
+
+'If I were you, I should insure it for a hundred pounds,' said Aunt
+Annie positively.
+
+'But that will cost one and a penny,' said Henry, who had all such
+details by heart. 'I could insure it for twenty pounds for fivepence.'
+
+'Well, say twenty pounds then,' Aunt Annie agreed, relenting.
+
+So he insured _Love in Babylon_ for twenty pounds and despatched it. In
+three weeks it returned like the dove to the ark (but soiled), with a
+note to say that, though the publishers' reader regarded it as
+promising, the publishers could not give themselves the pleasure of
+making an offer for it. Thenceforward Henry and the manuscript suffered
+all the usual experiences, and the post-office reaped all the usual
+profits. One firm said the story was good, but too short. ('A pitiful
+excuse,' thought Henry. 'As if length could affect merit.') Another said
+nothing. Another offered to publish it if Henry would pay a hundred
+pounds down. (At this point Henry ceased to insure the parcel.) Another
+sent it back minus the last leaf, the matter of which Henry had to
+reinvent and Aunt Annie to recopy. Another returned it insufficiently
+stamped, and there was fourpence to pay. Another kept it four months,
+and disgorged it only under threat of a writ; the threat was launched
+forth on Powells' formidable notepaper. At length there arrived a day
+when even Henry's pertinacity was fatigued, and he forgot, merely
+forgot, to send out the parcel again. It was put in a drawer, after a
+year of ceaseless adventures, and Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie discreetly
+forbore to mention it. During that year Henry's opinion on his work had
+fluctuated. There had been moments, days perhaps, of discouragement,
+when he regarded it as drivel, and himself as a fool--in so far, that
+is, as he had trafficked with literature. On the other hand, his
+original view of it reasserted itself with frequency. And in the end he
+gloomily and proudly decided, once and for all, that the Stream of
+Trashy Novels Constantly Poured Forth by the Press had killed all demand
+for wholesome fiction; he came reluctantly to the conclusion that modern
+English literature was in a very poor way. He breathed a sigh, and
+dismissed the episode utterly from his mind.
+
+And _Love in Babylon_ languished in the drawer for three months.
+
+Then, upon an April morning, the following telegram was received at
+Dawes Road, Fulham: '_Please bring manuscript me immediately top left
+take cab Henry_.'
+
+Mrs. Knight was alone in the house with Sarah when the imperious summons
+of the telegraph-boy and the apparition of the orange envelope threw the
+domestic atmosphere into a state of cyclonic confusion. Before tearing
+the envelope she had guessed that Aunt Annie had met with an accident,
+that Henry was dead, and that her own Aunt Eliza in Glossop had died
+without making a will; and these imaginings had done nothing to increase
+the efficiency of her intellectual powers. She could not read sense into
+the message, not even with the aid of spectacles and Sarah.
+
+Happily Aunt Annie returned, with her masculine grasp of affairs.
+
+'He means _Love in Babylon_,' said Aunt Annie. 'It's in the top
+left-hand drawer of his desk. That's what he means. Perhaps I'd better
+take it. I'm ready dressed.'
+
+'Oh yes, sister,' Mrs. Knight replied hastily. 'You had better take it.'
+
+Aunt Annie rang the bell with quick decision.
+
+'Sarah,' she said, 'run out and get me a cab, a four-wheeler. You
+understand, a four-wheeler.'
+
+'Yes'm. Shall I put my jacket on, mum?' Sarah asked, glancing through
+the window.
+
+'No. Go instantly!'
+
+'Yes'm.'
+
+'I wonder what he wants it for,' Aunt Annie remarked, after she had
+found the manuscript and put it under her arm. 'Perhaps he has mentioned
+it to Sir George, and Sir George is going to do something.'
+
+'I thought he had forgotten all about it,' said Mrs. Knight. 'But he
+never gives a thing up, Henry doesn't.'
+
+Sarah drove dashingly up to the door in a hansom.
+
+'Take that back again,' commanded Aunt Annie, cautiously putting her
+nose outside the front-door. It was a snowy and sleety April morning,
+and she had already had experience of its rigour. 'I said a
+four-wheeler.'
+
+'Please'm, there wasn't one,' Sarah defended herself.
+
+'None on the stand, lady,' said the cabman brightly. 'You'll never get a
+four-wheeler on a day like this.'
+
+Aunt Annie raised her veil and looked at her sister. Like many
+strong-minded and vigorous women, she had a dislike of hansoms which
+amounted to dread. She feared a hansom as though it had been a
+revolver--something that might go off unexpectedly at any moment and
+destroy her.
+
+'I daren't go in that,' she admitted frankly. She was torn between her
+allegiance to the darling Henry and her fear of the terrible machine.
+
+'Suppose I go with you?' Mrs. Knight suggested.
+
+'Very well,' said Aunt Annie, clenching her teeth for the sacrifice.
+
+Sarah flew for Mrs. Knight's bonnet, fur mantle, gloves, and muff; and
+with remarkably little delay the sisters and the manuscript started.
+First they had the window down because of the snow and the sleet; then
+they had it up because of the impure air; and lastly Aunt Annie wedged a
+corner of the manuscript between the door and the window, leaving a slit
+of an inch or so for ventilation. The main body of the manuscript she
+supported by means of her muff.
+
+Alas! her morbid fear of hansoms was about to be justified--at any
+rate, justified in her own eyes. As the machine was passing along Walham
+Green, it began to overtake a huge market-cart laden, fraught, and piled
+up with an immense cargo of spring onions from Isleworth; and just as
+the head of the horse of the hansom drew level with the tail of the
+market-cart, the off hind wheel of the cart succumbed, and a ton or more
+of spring onions wavered and slanted in the snowy air. The driver of the
+hansom did his best, but he could not prevent his horse from premature
+burial amid spring onions. The animal nobly resisted several
+hundredweight of them, and then tottered and fell and was lost to view
+under spring onions. The ladies screamed in concert, and discovered
+themselves miraculously in the roadway, unhurt, but white and
+breathless. A constable and a knife-grinder picked them up.
+
+The accident was more amusing than tragic, though neither Mrs. Knight
+nor Aunt Annie was capable of perceiving this fact. The horse emerged
+gallantly, unharmed, and the window of the hansom was not even cracked.
+The constable congratulated everyone and took down the names of the two
+drivers, the two ladies, and the knife-grinder. The condition of the
+weather fortunately, militated against the formation of a large crowd.
+
+Quite two minutes elapsed before Aunt Annie made the horrible discovery
+that _Love in Babylon_ had disappeared. _Love in Babylon_ was smothered
+up in spring onions.
+
+'Keep your nerve, madam,' said the constable, seeing signs of an
+emotional crisis, 'and go and stand in that barber's doorway--both of
+you.'
+
+The ladies obeyed.
+
+In due course _Love in Babylon_ was excavated, chapter by chapter, and
+Aunt Annie held it safely once more, rumpled but complete.
+
+By the luckiest chance an empty four-wheeler approached.
+
+The sisters got into it, and Aunt Annie gave the address.
+
+'As quick as you can,' she said to the driver, 'but do drive slowly.'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MARK SNYDER
+
+
+Three-quarters of an hour later Henry might have been seen--in fact, was
+seen by a number of disinterested wayfarers--to enter a magnificent new
+block of offices and flats in Charing Cross Road. _Love in Babylon_ was
+firmly gripped under his right arm. Partly this strange burden and
+partly the brilliant aspect of the building made him feel self-conscious
+and humble and rather unlike his usual calm self. For, although Henry
+was accustomed to offices, he was not accustomed to magnificent offices.
+There are offices in Lincoln's Inn Fields, offices of extreme wealth,
+which, were they common lodging-houses, would be instantly condemned by
+the County Council. Powells was such a one--and Sir George had a reputed
+income of twenty thousand a year. At Powells the old Dickensian
+tradition was kept vigorously alive by every possible means. Dirt and
+gloom were omnipresent. Cleanliness and ample daylight would have been
+deemed unbusinesslike, as revolutionary and dangerous as a typewriter.
+One day, in winter, Sir George had taken cold, and he had attributed his
+misfortune, in language which he immediately regretted, to the fact that
+'that d----d woman had cleaned the windows'--probably with a damp cloth.
+'That d----d woman' was the caretaker, a grey-haired person usually
+dressed in sackcloth, who washed herself, incidentally, while washing
+the stairs. At Powells, nothing but the stairs was ever put to the
+indignity of a bath.
+
+That Henry should be somewhat diffident about invading Kenilworth
+Mansions was therefore not surprising. He climbed three granite steps,
+passed through a pair of swinging doors, traversed eight feet of
+tesselated pavement, climbed three more granite steps, passed through
+another pair of swinging doors, and discovered himself in a spacious
+marble hall, with a lift-cabinet resembling a confessional, and broad
+stairs behind curving up to Paradise. On either side of him, in place
+of priceless works by old masters, were great tablets inscribed with
+many names in gold characters. He scanned these tablets timidly, and at
+length found what he wanted, 'Mark Snyder, Literary Agent,' under the
+heading 'Third Floor.' At the same moment a flunkey in chocolate and
+cream approached him.
+
+'Mr. Snyder?' asked Henry.
+
+'Third-floor, left,' pronounced the flunkey, thus giving the tablets the
+force of his authority.
+
+As Henry was wafted aloft in the elevator, with the beautiful and
+innocuous flunkey as travelling companion, he could not help contrasting
+that official with the terrible Powellian caretaker who haunted the
+Powellian stairs.
+
+On the third-floor, which seemed to be quite a world by itself, an arrow
+with the legend 'Mark Snyder, Literary Agent,' directed his mazed feet
+along a corridor to a corner where another arrow with the legend 'Mark
+Snyder, Literary Agent,' pointed along another corridor. And as he
+progressed, the merry din of typewriters grew louder and louder. At
+length he stood in front of a glassy door, and on the face of the door,
+in a graceful curve, was painted the legend, 'Mark Snyder, Literary
+Agent.' Shadows of vague moving forms could be discerned on the
+opalescent glass, and the chatter of typewriters was almost
+disconcerting.
+
+Henry paused.
+
+That morning Mr. Mark Snyder had been to Powells on the business of one
+of his clients, a historian of the Middle Ages, and in the absence of
+Sir George had had a little talk with Henry. And Henry had learnt for
+the first time what a literary agent was, and, struck by the man's
+astuteness and geniality, had mentioned the matter of _Love in Babylon_.
+Mr. Snyder had kindly promised to look into the matter of _Love in
+Babylon_ himself if Henry could call on him instantly with the
+manuscript. The reason for haste was that on the morrow Mr. Snyder was
+leaving England for New York on a professional tour of the leading
+literary centres of the United States. Hence Henry's telegram to Dawes
+Road.
+
+Standing there in front of Mr. Snyder's door, Henry wondered whether,
+after all, he was not making a fool of himself. But he entered.
+
+Two smart women in tight and elegant bodices, with fluffy bows at the
+backs of their necks, looked up from two typewriters, and the one with
+golden hair rose smiling and suave.
+
+'Well, you seem a fairly nice sort of boy--I shall be kind to you,' her
+eyes appeared to say. Her voice, however, said nothing except, 'Will you
+take a seat a moment?' and not even that until Henry had asked if Mr.
+Snyder was in.
+
+The prospective client examined the room. It had a carpet, and lovely
+almanacs on the walls, and in one corner, on a Japanese table, was a
+tea-service in blue and white. Tables more massive bore enormous piles
+of all shapes and sizes of manuscripts, scores and hundreds or unprinted
+literary works, and they all carried labels, 'Mark Snyder, Literary
+Agent.' _Love in Babylon_ shrank so small that Henry could scarcely
+detect its presence under his arm.
+
+Then Goldenhair, who had vanished, came back, and, with the most
+enchanting smile that Henry had ever seen on the face of a pretty woman,
+lured him by delicious gestures into Mr. Mark Snyder's private office.
+
+'Well,' exclaimed Mr. Snyder, full of good-humour, 'here we are again.'
+He was a fair, handsome man of about forty, and he sat at a broad table
+playing with a revolver. 'What do you think of that, Mr. Knight?' he
+asked sharply, holding out the revolver for inspection.
+
+'It seems all right,' said Henry lamely.
+
+Mr. Snyder laughed heartily. 'I'm going to America to-morrow. I told
+you, didn't I? Never been there before. So I thought I'd get a revolver.
+Never know, you know. Eh?' He laughed again.
+
+Then he suddenly ceased laughing, and sniffed the air.
+
+'Is this a business office?' Henry asked himself. 'Or is it a club?'
+
+His feet were on a Turkey carpet. He was seated in a Chippendale chair.
+A glorious fire blazed behind a brass fender, and the receptacle for
+coal was of burnished copper. Photogravures in rich oaken frames adorned
+the roseate walls. The ceiling was an expanse of ornament, with an
+electric chandelier for centre.
+
+'Have a cigarette?' said Mr. Snyder, pushing across towards Henry a tin
+of Egyptians.
+
+'Thanks,' said Henry, who did not usually smoke, and he put _Love in
+Babylon_ on the table.
+
+Mr. Snyder sniffed the air again.
+
+'Now, what can I do for you?' said he abruptly.
+
+Henry explained the genesis, exodus, and vicissitudes of _Love in
+Babylon_, and Mr. Snyder stretched out an arm and idly turned over a few
+leaves of the manuscript as it lay before its author.
+
+'Who's your amanuensis?' he demanded, smiling.
+
+'My aunt,' said Henry.
+
+'Ah yes!' said Mr. Snyder, smiling still, 'It's too short, you know,' he
+added, grave. 'Too short. What length is it?'
+
+'Nearly three hundred folios.'
+
+'None of your legal jargon here,' Mr. Snyder laughed again. 'What's a
+folio?'
+
+'Seventy-two words.'
+
+'About twenty thousand words then, eh? Too short!'
+
+'Does that matter?' Henry demanded. 'I should have thought----'
+
+'Of course it matters,' Mr. Snyder snapped. 'If you went to a concert,
+and it began at eight and finished at half-past, would you go out
+satisfied with the performers' assurance that quality and not quantity
+was the thing? Ha, ha!'
+
+Mr. Snyder sniffed the air yet again, and looked at the fire
+inquisitively, still sniffing.
+
+'There's only one price for novels, six-shillings,' Mr. Snyder
+proceeded. 'The public likes six shillings' worth of quality. But it
+absolutely insists on six shillings' worth of quantity, and doesn't
+object to more. What can I do with this?' he went on, picking up _Love
+in Babylon_ and weighing it as in a balance. 'What _can_ I do with a
+thing like this?'
+
+'If Carlyle came to Kenilworth Mansions!' Henry speculated. At the same
+time Mr. Snyder's epigrammatic remarks impressed him. He saw the art of
+Richardson and Balzac in an entirely new aspect. It was as though he had
+walked round the house of literature, and peeped in at the backdoor.
+
+Mr. Snyder suddenly put _Love in Babylon_ to his nose.
+
+'Oh, it's _that_!' he murmured, enlightened.
+
+Henry had to narrate the disaster of the onion-cart, at which Mr. Snyder
+was immensely amused.
+
+'Good!' he ejaculated. 'Good! By the way, might send it to Onions
+Winter. Know Onions Winter? No? He's always called Spring Onions in the
+trade. Pushing man. What a joke it would be!' Mr. Snyder roared with
+laughter. 'But seriously, Winter might----'
+
+Just then Goldenhair entered the room with a slip of paper, and Mr.
+Snyder begged to be excused a moment. During his absence Henry reflected
+upon the singularly unbusinesslike nature of the conversation, and
+decided that it would be well to import a little business into it.
+
+'I'm called away,' said Mr. Snyder, re-entering.
+
+'I must go, too,' said Henry. 'May I ask, Mr. Snyder, what are your
+terms for arranging publication?'
+
+'Ten per cent.,' said Mr. Snyder succinctly. 'On gross receipts.
+Generally, to unknown men, I charge a preliminary fee, but, of course,
+with you----'
+
+'Ten per cent.?' Henry inquired.
+
+'Ten per cent.,' repeated Mr. Snyder.
+
+'Does that mean--ten per cent.?' Henry demanded, dazed.
+
+Mr. Snyder nodded.
+
+'But do you mean to say,' said the author of _Love in Babylon_
+impressively, 'that if a book of mine makes a profit of ten thousand
+pounds, you'll take a thousand pounds just for getting it published?'
+
+'It comes to that,' Mr. Snyder admitted.
+
+'Oh!' cried Henry, aghast, astounded. 'A thousand pounds!'
+
+And he kept saying: 'A thousand pounds! A thousand pounds!'
+
+He saw now where the Turkey carpets and the photogravures and the
+Teofani cigarettes came from.
+
+'A thousand pounds!'
+
+Mr. Snyder stuck the revolver into a drawer.
+
+'I'll think it over,' said Henry discreetly. 'How long shall you be in
+America?'
+
+'Oh, about a couple of months!' And Mr. Snyder smiled brightly. Henry
+could not find a satisfactory explanation of the man's eternal jollity.
+
+'Well, I'll think it over,' he said once more, very courteously. 'And
+I'm much obliged to you for giving me an interview.' And he took up
+_Love in Babylon_ and departed.
+
+It appeared to have been a futile and ludicrous encounter.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SATIN
+
+
+Yes, there had been something wrong with the interview. It had entirely
+failed to tally with his expectations of it. The fact was that he,
+Henry, had counted for very little in it. He had sat still and listened,
+and, after answering Mr. Mark Snyder's questions, he had made no
+original remark except 'A thousand pounds!' And if he was disappointed
+with Mr. Snyder, and puzzled by him, too, he was also disappointed with
+himself. He felt that he had displayed none of those business qualities
+which he knew he possessed. He was a man of affairs, with a sure belief
+in his own capacity to handle any matter requiring tact and discretion;
+and yet he had lolled like a simpleton in the Chippendale chair of Mr.
+Snyder, and contributed naught to the interview save 'A thousand
+pounds!'
+
+Nevertheless, he sincerely thought Mr. Snyder's terms exorbitant. He
+was not of the race of literary aspirants who are eager to be published
+at any price. Literature had no fatal fascination for him. His wholly
+sensible idea now was that, having written a book, he might as well get
+it printed and make an honest penny out of it, if possible. However, the
+effect of the visit to Kenilworth Mansions was to persuade him to
+resolve to abandon the enterprise; Mr. Mark Snyder had indeed
+discouraged him. And in the evening, when he reached Dawes Road, he gave
+his mother and aunt a truthful account of the episode, and stated,
+pleasantly but plainly, that he should burn _Love in Babylon_. And his
+mother and aunt, perceiving that he was in earnest, refrained from
+comment.
+
+And after they had gone to bed he took _Love in Babylon_ out of the
+brown paper in which he had wrapped it, and folded the brown paper and
+tied up the string; and he was in the very act of putting _Love in
+Babylon_ bodily on the fire, when he paused.
+
+'Suppose I give it one more chance?' he reflected.
+
+He had suddenly thought of the name of Mr. Onions Winter, and of Mr.
+Snyder's interrupted observations upon that publisher. He decided to
+send _Love in Babylon_ to Mr. Winter. He untied the string, unfolded the
+brown paper, indited a brief letter, and made the parcel anew.
+
+A week later, only a week, Mr. Onions Winter wrote asking Henry to call
+upon him without delay, and Henry called. The establishment of Mr.
+Onions Winter was in Leicester Square, between the Ottoman Music Hall
+and a milliner's shop. Architecturally it presented rather a peculiar
+appearance. The leading feature of the ground-floor was a vast arch,
+extending across the entire frontage in something more than a
+semicircle. Projecting from the keystone of the arch was a wrought-iron
+sign bearing a portrait in copper, and under the portrait the words 'Ye
+Shakspere Head.' Away beneath the arch was concealed the shop-window, an
+affair of small square panes, and in the middle of every small pane was
+stuck a small card, 'The Satin Library--Onions Winter.' This mystic
+phrase was repeated a hundred and sixty-five times. To the right of the
+window was a low green door with a copper handle in the shape of a
+sow's tail, and the legend 'Ye Office of Onions Winter.'
+
+'Is Mr. Winter in?' Henry demanded of a young man in a very high collar,
+after he had mastered the mechanism of the sow's tail.
+
+'Yes, he's _in_,' said the young man rudely, as Henry thought. (How
+different from Goldenhair was this high collar!)
+
+'Do you want to see him?' asked the young man, when he had hummed an air
+and stared out of the window.
+
+'No,' said Henry placidly. 'But he wants to see me. My name is Knight.'
+
+Henry had these flashes of brilliance from time to time. They came of
+themselves, as _Love in Babylon_ came. He felt that he was beginning
+better with Mr. Onions Winter than he had begun with Mr. Mark Snyder.
+
+In another moment he was seated opposite Mr. Winter in a charming but
+littered apartment on the first-floor. He came to the conclusion that
+all literary offices must be drawing-rooms.
+
+'And so you are the author of _Love in Babylon_?' began Mr. Winter. He
+was a tall man, with burning eyes, grey hair, a grey beard which stuck
+out like the sun's rays, but no moustache. The naked grey upper lip was
+very deep, and somehow gave him a formidable appearance. He wore a silk
+hat at the back of his head, and a Melton overcoat rather like Henry's
+own, but much longer.
+
+'You like it?' said Henry boldly.
+
+'I think---- The fact is, I will be frank with you, Mr. Knight.' Here
+Mr. Onions Winter picked up _Love in Babylon_, which lay before him, and
+sniffed at it exactly as Mr. Snyder had done. 'The fact is, I shouldn't
+have thought twice about it if it hadn't been for this peculiar
+odour----'
+
+Here Henry explained the odour.
+
+'Ah yes. Very interesting!' observed Mr. Winter without a smile. 'Very
+curious! We might make a par out of that. Onions--onions. The public
+likes these coincidences. Well, as I tell you, I shouldn't have thought
+twice about it if it hadn't been for this----' (Sniff, sniff.) 'Then I
+happened to glance at the title, and the title attracted me. I must
+admit that the title attracted me. You have hit on a very pretty title,
+Mr. Knight, a very pretty title indeed. I took your book home and read
+it myself, Mr. Knight. I didn't send it to any of my readers. Not a soul
+in this office has read it except me. I'm a bit superstitious, you know.
+We all are--everyone is, when it comes to the point. And that
+Onions--onions! And then the pretty title! I like your book, Mr. Knight.
+I tell you candidly, I like it. It's graceful and touching, and
+original. It's got atmosphere. It's got that indefinable something--_je
+ne sais quoi_--that we publishers are always searching for. Of course
+it's crude--very crude in places. It might be improved. What do you want
+for it, Mr. Knight? What are you asking?'
+
+Mr. Onions Winter rose and walked to the window in order, apparently, to
+drink his fill of the statue of Shakspere in the middle of the square.
+
+'I don't know,' said Henry, overjoyed but none the less perplexed. 'I
+have not considered the question of price.'
+
+'Will you take twenty-five pounds cash down for it--lock, stock, and
+barrel? You know it's very short. In fact, I'm just about the only
+publisher in London who would be likely to deal with it.'
+
+Henry kept silence.
+
+'Eh?' demanded Mr. Onions Winter, still perusing the Shaksperean
+forehead. 'Cash down. Will you take it?'
+
+'No, I won't, thank you,' said Henry.
+
+'Then what will you take?'
+
+'I'll take a hundred.'
+
+'My dear young man!' Mr. Onions Winter turned suddenly to reason blandly
+with Henry. 'Are you aware that that means five pounds a thousand words?
+Many authors of established reputation would be glad to receive as much.
+No, I should like to publish your book, but I am neither a
+philanthropist nor a millionaire.'
+
+'What I should really prefer,' said Henry, 'would be so much on every
+copy sold.'
+
+'Ah! A royalty?'
+
+'Yes. A royalty. I think that is fairer to both parties,' said Henry
+judicially.
+
+'So you'd prefer a royalty,' Mr. Onions Winter addressed Shakspere
+again. 'Well. Let me begin by telling you that first books by new
+authors never pay expenses. Never! Never! I always lose money on them.
+But you believe in your book? You believe in it, don't you?' He faced
+Henry once more.
+
+'Yes,' said Henry.
+
+'Then, you must have the courage of your convictions. I will give you a
+royalty of three halfpence in the shilling on every copy after the first
+five thousand. Thus, if it succeeds, you will share in the profit. If it
+fails, my loss will be the less. That's fair, isn't it?'
+
+It seemed fair to Henry. But he was not Sir George's private secretary
+for nothing.
+
+'You must make it twopence in the shilling,' he said in an urbane but
+ultimatory tone.
+
+'Very well,' Mr. Onions Winter surrendered at once. 'We'll say twopence,
+and end it.'
+
+'And what will the price of the book be?' Henry inquired.
+
+'Two shillings, naturally. I intend it for the Satin Library. You know
+about the Satin Library? You don't know about the Satin Library? My dear
+sir, I hope it's going to be _the_ hit of the day. Here's a dummy copy.'
+Mr. Winter picked up an orange-tinted object from a side-table. 'Feel
+that cover! Look at it! Doesn't it feel like satin? Doesn't it look like
+satin? But it isn't satin. It's paper--a new invention, the latest
+thing. You notice the book-marker _is_ of satin--real satin. Now
+observe the shape--isn't that original? And yet quite simple--it's
+exactly square! And that faint design of sunflowers! These books will be
+perfect bibelots; that's what they'll be--bibelots. Of course, between
+you and me, there isn't going to be very much for the money--a hundred
+and fifty quite small pages. But that's between you and me. And the
+satin will carry it off. You'll see these charming bijou volumes in
+every West End drawing-room, Mr. Knight, in a few weeks. Take my word
+for it. By the way, will you sign our form of agreement now?'
+
+So Henry perpended legally on the form of agreement, and, finding
+nothing in it seriously to offend the legal sense, signed it with due
+ceremony.
+
+'Can you correct the proofs instantly, if I send them?' Mr. Winter asked
+at parting.
+
+'Yes,' said Henry, who had never corrected a proof in his life. 'Are you
+in a hurry?'
+
+'Well,' Mr. Winter replied, 'I had meant to inaugurate the Satin Library
+with another book. In fact, I have already bought five books for it. But
+I have a fancy to begin it with yours. I have a fancy, and when I have
+a fancy, I--I generally act on it. I like the title. It's a very pretty
+title. I'm taking the book on the title. And, really, in these days a
+pretty, attractive title is half the battle.'
+
+
+Within two months, _Love in Babylon_, by Henry S. Knight, was published
+as the first volume of Mr. Onions Winter's Satin Library, and Henry saw
+his name in the papers under the heading 'Books Received.' The sight
+gave him a passing thrill, but it was impossible for him not to observe
+that in all essential respects he remained the same person as before.
+The presence of six author's copies of _Love in Babylon_ at Dawes Road
+alone indicated the great step in his development. One of these copies
+he inscribed to his mother, another to his aunt, and another to Sir
+George. Sir George accepted the book with a preoccupied air, and made no
+remark on it for a week or more. Then one morning he said: 'By the way,
+Knight, I ran through that little thing of yours last night. Capital!
+Capital! I congratulate you. Take down this letter.'
+
+Henry deemed that Sir George's perspective was somewhat awry, but he
+said nothing. Worse was in store for him. On the evening of that same
+day he bought the _Whitehall Gazette_ as usual to read in the train, and
+he encountered the following sentences:
+
+
+                           'TWADDLE IN SATIN.
+
+     'Mr. Onions Winter's new venture, the Satin Library, is a pretty
+     enough thing in its satinesque way. The _format_ is pleasant, the
+     book-marker voluptuous, the binding Arty-and-Crafty. We cannot,
+     however, congratulate Mr. Winter on the literary quality of the
+     first volume. Mr. Henry S. Knight, the author of _Love in Babylon_
+     (2s.), is evidently a beginner, but he is a beginner from whom
+     nothing is to be expected. That he has a certain gross facility in
+     the management of sentimental narrative we will not deny. It is
+     possible that he is destined to be the delight of "the great
+     public." It is possible--but improbable. He has no knowledge of
+     life, no feeling for style, no real sense of the dramatic.
+     Throughout, from the first line to the last, his story moves on the
+     plane of tawdriness, theatricality, and ballad pathos. There are
+     some authors of whom it may be said that they will never better
+     themselves. They are born with a certain rhapsodic gift of
+     commonness, a gift which neither improves nor deteriorates. Richly
+     dowered with crass mediocrity, they proceed from the cradle to the
+     grave at one low dead level. We suspect that Mr. Knight is of
+     these. In saying that it is a pity that he ever took up a pen, we
+     have no desire to seem severe. He is doubtless a quite excellent
+     and harmless person. But he has mistaken his vocation, and that is
+     always a pity. We do not care so see the admirable grocery trade
+     robbed by the literary trade of a talent which was clearly intended
+     by Providence to adorn it. As for the Satin Library, we hope
+     superior things from the second volume.'
+
+
+Henry had the fortitude to read this pronouncement aloud to his mother
+and Aunt Annie at the tea-table.
+
+'The cowards!' exclaimed Mrs. Knight.
+
+Aunt Annie flushed. 'Let me look,' she whispered; she could scarcely
+control her voice. Having looked, she cast the paper with a magnificent
+gesture to the ground. It lay on the hearth-rug, open at a page to which
+Henry had not previously turned. From his arm-chair he could read in the
+large displayed type of one of Mr. Onions Winter's advertisements:
+'Onions Winter. The Satin Library. The success of the year. _Love in
+Babylon._ By Henry S. Knight. Two shillings. Eighteenth
+thousand.--Onions Winter. The Satin Library. The success of the year.
+_Love in Babylon._ By Henry S. Knight. Two shillings. Eighteenth
+thousand.'
+
+And so it went on, repeated and repeated, down the whole length of the
+twenty inches which constitute a column of the _Whitehall Gazette_.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+HIS FAME
+
+
+Henry's sleep was feverish, and shot with the iridescence of strange
+dreams. And during the whole of the next day one thought burned in his
+brain, the thought of the immense success of _Love in Babylon_. It
+burned so fiercely and so brightly, it so completely preoccupied Henry,
+that he would not have been surprised to overhear men whisper to each
+other in the street as he passed: 'See that extraordinary thought
+blazing away there in that fellow's brain?' It was, in fact, curious to
+him that people did not stop and gaze at his cranium, so much the thing
+felt like a hollowed turnip illuminated by this candle of an idea. But
+nobody with whom he came into contact appeared to be aware of the
+immense success of _Love in Babylon_. In the office of Powells were
+seven full-fledged solicitors and seventeen other clerks, without
+counting Henry, and not a man or youth of the educated lot of them made
+the slightest reference to _Love in Babylon_ during all that day. (It
+was an ordinary, plain, common, unromantic, dismal Tuesday in Lincoln's
+Inn Fields.) Eighteen thousand persons had already bought _Love in
+Babylon_; possibly several hundreds of copies had been sold since nine
+o'clock that morning; doubtless someone was every minute inquiring for
+it and demanding it in bookshop or library, just as someone is born
+every minute. And yet here was the author, the author himself, the
+veritable and only genuine author, going about his daily business
+unhonoured, unsung, uncongratulated, even unnoticed! It was incredible,
+and, besides being incredible, it was exasperating. Henry was modest,
+but there are limits to modesty, and more than once in the course of
+that amazing and endless Tuesday Henry had a narrow escape of dragging
+_Love in Babylon_ bodily into the miscellaneous conversation of the
+office. However, with the aid of his natural diffidence he refrained
+from doing so.
+
+At five-fifty Sir George departed, as usual, to catch the six-five for
+Wimbledon, where he had a large residence, which outwardly resembled at
+once a Bloomsbury boarding-house, a golf-club, and a Riviera hotel.
+Henry, after Sir George's exit, lapsed into his principal's chair and
+into meditation. The busy life of the establishment died down until only
+the office-boys and Henry were left. And still Henry sat, in the
+leathern chair at the big table in Sir George's big room, thinking,
+thinking, thinking, in a vague but golden and roseate manner, about the
+future.
+
+Then the door opened, and Foxall, the emperor of the Powellian
+office-boys, entered.
+
+'Here's someone to see you,' Foxall whispered archly; he economized time
+by licking envelopes the while. Every night Foxall had to superintend
+and participate in the licking of about two hundred envelopes and as
+many stamps.
+
+'Who is it?' Henry asked, instantly perturbed and made self-conscious by
+the doggishness, the waggishness, the rakishness, of Foxall's tone. It
+must be explained that, since Henry did not happen to be an 'admitted'
+clerk, Foxall and himself, despite the difference in their ages and
+salaries, were theoretically equals in the social scale of the office.
+Foxall would say 'sir' to the meanest articled clerk that ever failed
+five times in his intermediate, but he would have expired on the rack
+before saying 'sir' to Henry. The favour accorded to Henry in high
+quarters, the speciality of his position, gave rise to a certain
+jealousy of him--a jealousy, however, which his natural simplicity and
+good-temper prevented from ever becoming formidable. Foxall, indeed,
+rather liked Henry, and would do favours for him in matters connected
+with press-copying, letter-indexing, despatching, and other mysteries of
+the office-boy's peculiar craft.
+
+'It's a girl,' said Foxall, smiling with the omniscience of a man of the
+world.
+
+'A girl!' Somehow Henry had guessed it was a girl. 'What's she like?'
+
+'She's a bit of all right,' Foxall explained. 'Miss Foster she says her
+name is. Better show her in here, hadn't I? The old woman's in your room
+now. It's nearly half-past six.'
+
+'Yes,' said Henry; 'show her in here. Foster? Foster? I don't know----'
+
+His heart began to beat like an engine under his waistcoat.
+
+And then Miss Foster tripped in. And she was Goldenhair!
+
+'Good-afternoon, Mr. Knight,' she said, with a charming affectation of a
+little lisp. 'I'm so glad I've caught you. I thought I should. What a
+lovely room you've got!'
+
+He wanted to explain that this was Sir George's room, not his own, and
+that any way he did not consider it lovely; but she gave him no chance.
+
+'I'm awfully nervous, you know, and I always talk fast and loud when I'm
+nervous,' she continued rapidly. 'I shall get over it in a few minutes.
+Meanwhile you must bear with me. Do you think you can? I want you to do
+me a favour, Mr. Knight. Only you can do it. May I sit down? Oh, thanks!
+What a huge chair! If I get lost in it, please advertise. Is this where
+your clients sit? Yes, I want you to do me a favour. It's quite easy for
+you to do. You won't say No, will you? You won't think I'm presuming on
+our slight acquaintanceship?'
+
+The words babbled and purled out of Miss Foster's mouth like a bright
+spring out of moss. It was simply wonderful. Henry did not understand
+quite precisely how the phenomenon affected him, but he was left in no
+doubt that his feelings were pleasurable. She had a manner of
+looking--of looking up at him and to him, of relying on him as a great
+big wise man who could get poor little silly her out of a difficulty.
+And when she wasn't talking she kept her mouth open, and showed her
+teeth and the tip of her red, red tongue. And there was her golden
+fluffy hair! But, after all, perhaps the principal thing was her
+dark-blue, tight-fitting bodice--not a wrinkle in all those curves!
+
+It is singular how a man may go through life absolutely blind to a
+patent, obvious, glaring fact, and then suddenly perceive it. Henry
+perceived that his mother and his aunt were badly dressed--in truth,
+dowdy. It struck him as a discovery.
+
+'Anything I can do, I'm sure----' he began.
+
+'Oh, thank you, Mr. Knight I felt I could count on your good-nature. You
+know----'
+
+She cleared her throat, and then smiled intimately, dazzlingly, and
+pushed a thin gold bangle over the wrist of her glove. And as she did so
+Henry thought what bliss it would be to slip a priceless diamond
+bracelet on to that arm. It was just an arm, the usual feminine arm;
+every normal woman in this world has two of them; and yet----! But at
+the same time, such is the contradictoriness of human nature, Henry
+would have given a considerable sum to have had Miss Foster magically
+removed from the room, and to be alone. The whole of his being was
+deeply disturbed, as if by an earthquake. And, moreover, he could scarce
+speak coherently.
+
+'You know,' said Miss Foster, 'I want to interview you.'
+
+He did not take the full meaning of the phrase at first.
+
+'What about?' he innocently asked.
+
+'Oh, about yourself, and your work, and your plans, and all that sort of
+thing. The usual sort of thing, you know.'
+
+'For a newspaper?'
+
+She nodded.
+
+He took the meaning. He was famous, then! People--that vague, vast
+entity known as 'people'--wished to know about him. He had done
+something. He had arrested attention--he, Henry, son of the draper's
+manager; aged twenty-three; eater of bacon for breakfast every morning
+like ordinary men; to be observed daily in the Underground, and daily
+in the A.B.C. shop in Chancery Lane.
+
+'You are thinking of _Love in Babylon_?' he inquired.
+
+She nodded again. (The nod itself was an enchantment. 'She's just about
+my age,' said Henry to himself. And he thought, without realizing that
+he thought: 'She's lots older than me _practically_. She could twist me
+round her little finger.')
+
+'Oh, Mr. Knight, she recommenced at a tremendous rate, sitting up in the
+great client's chair, 'you must let me tell you what I thought of _Love
+in Babylon_! It's the sweetest thing! I read it right off, at one go,
+without looking up! And the title! How _did_ you think of it? Oh! if I
+could write, I would write a book like that. Old Spring Onions has
+produced it awfully well, too, hasn't he? It's a boom, a positive,
+unmistakable boom! Everyone's talking about you, Mr. Knight. Personally,
+I tell everyone I meet to read your book.'
+
+Henry mildly protested against this excess of enthusiasm.
+
+'I must,' Miss Foster explained. 'I can't help it.'
+
+Her admiration was the most precious thing on earth to him at that
+moment. He had not imagined that he could enjoy anything so much as he
+enjoyed her admiration.
+
+'I'm going now, Mr. Knight,' Foxall sang out from the passage.
+
+'Very well, Foxall,' Henry replied, as who should say: 'Foxall, I
+benevolently permit you to go.'
+
+They were alone together in the great suite of rooms.
+
+'You know _Home and Beauty_, don't you?' Miss Foster demanded.
+
+'_Home and Beauty?_'
+
+'Oh, you don't! I thought perhaps you did. But then, of course, you're a
+man. It's one of the new ladies' penny papers. I believe it's doing
+rather well now. I write interviews for it. You see, Mr. Knight, I have
+a great ambition to be a regular journalist, and in my spare time at Mr.
+Snyder's, and in the evenings, I write--things. I'm getting quite a
+little connection. What I want to obtain is a regular column in some
+really good paper. It's rather awkward, me being engaged all day,
+especially for interviews. However, I just thought if I ran away at six
+I might catch you before you left. And so here I am. I don't know what
+you think of me, Mr. Knight, worrying you and boring you like this with
+my foolish chatter.... Ah! I see you don't want to be interviewed.'
+
+'Yes, I do,' said Henry. 'That is, I shall be most happy to oblige you
+in any way, I assure you. If you really think I'm sufficiently----'
+
+'Why, of course you are, Mr. Knight,' she urged forcefully. 'But, like
+most clever men, you're modest; you've no idea of it--of your success, I
+mean. By the way, you'll excuse me, but I do trust you made a proper
+bargain with Mr. Onions Winter.'
+
+'I think so,' said Henry. 'You see, I'm in the law, and we understand
+these things.'
+
+'Exactly,' she agreed, but without conviction. 'Then you'll make a lot
+of money. You must be very careful about your next contracts. I hope you
+didn't agree to let Mr. Winter have a second book on the same terms as
+this one.'
+
+Henry recalled a certain clause of the contract which he had signed.
+
+'I am afraid I did,' he admitted sheepishly. 'But the terms are quite
+fair. I saw to that.'
+
+'Mr. Knight! Mr. Knight!' she burst out. 'Why are all you young and
+clever men the same? Why do you perspire in order that publishers may
+grow fat? _I_ know what Spring Onions' terms would be. Seriously, you
+ought to employ an agent. He'd double your income. I don't say Mr.
+Snyder particularly----'
+
+'But Mr. Snyder is a very good agent, isn't he?'
+
+'Yes,' affirmed Miss Foster gravely. 'He acts for all the best men.'
+
+'Then I shall come to him,' said Henry. 'I had thought of doing so. You
+remember when I called that day--it was mentioned then.'
+
+He made this momentous decision in an instant, and even as he announced
+it he wondered why. However, Mr. Snyder's ten per cent no longer
+appeared to him outrageous.
+
+'And now can you give me some paper and a pencil, Mr. Knight? I forgot
+mine in my hurry not to miss you. And I'll sit at the table. May I?
+Thanks awfully.'
+
+She sat near to him, while he hastily and fumblingly searched for
+paper. The idea of being alone with her in the offices seemed delightful
+to him. And just then he heard a step in the passage, and a well-known
+dry cough, and the trailing of a long brush on the linoleum. Of course,
+the caretaker, the inevitable and omnipresent Mrs. Mawner, had invested
+the place, according to her nightly custom.
+
+Mrs. Mawner opened the door of Sir George's room, and stood on the mat,
+calmly gazing within, the brush in one hand and a duster in the other.
+
+'I beg pardon, sir,' said she inimically. 'I thought Sir George was
+gone.'
+
+'Sir George has gone,' Henry replied.
+
+Mrs. Mawner enveloped the pair in her sinister glance.
+
+'Shall you be long, sir?'
+
+'I can't say.' Henry was firm.
+
+Giving a hitch to her sackcloth, she departed and banged the door.
+
+Henry and Miss Foster were solitary again. And as he glanced at her, he
+thought deliciously: 'I am a gay spark.' Never before had such a notion
+visited him.
+
+'What first gave you the idea of writing _Love in Babylon_, Mr.
+Knight?' began Miss Foster, smiling upon him with a marvellous
+allurement.
+
+
+Henry was nearly an hour later than usual in arriving home, but he
+offered no explanation to his mother and aunt beyond saying that he had
+been detained by a caller, after Sir George's departure. He read in the
+faces of his mother and aunt their natural pride that he should be
+capable of conducting Sir George's business for him after Sir George's
+departure of a night. Yet he found himself incapable of correcting the
+false impression which he had wittingly given. In plain terms, he could
+not tell the ladies, he could not bring himself to tell them, that a
+well-dressed young woman had called upon him at a peculiar hour and
+interviewed him in the strict privacy of Sir George's own room on behalf
+of a lady's paper called _Home and Beauty_. He wanted very much to
+impart to them these quite harmless and, indeed, rather agreeable and
+honourable facts, but his lips would not frame the communicating words.
+Not even when the talk turned, as of course it did, to _Love in
+Babylon_, did he contrive to mention the interview. It was ridiculous;
+but so it was.
+
+'By the way----' he began once, but his mother happened to speak at the
+same instant.
+
+'What were you going to say, Henry?' Aunt Annie asked when Mrs. Knight
+had finished.
+
+'Oh, nothing. I forget,' said the miserable poltroon.
+
+'The next advertisement will say twentieth thousand, that's what it will
+say--you'll see!' remarked Mrs. Knight.
+
+'What an ass you are!' murmured Henry to Henry. 'You'll have to tell
+them some time, so why not now? Besides, what in thunder's the matter?'
+
+Vaguely, dimly, he saw that Miss Foster's tight-fitting bodice was the
+matter. Yes, there was something about that bodice, those teeth, that
+tongue, that hair, something about _her_, which seemed to challenge the
+whole system of his ideas, all his philosophy, self-satisfaction,
+seriousness, smugness, and general invincibility. And he thought of her
+continually--no particular thought, but a comprehensive, enveloping,
+brooding, static thought. And he was strangely jolly and uplifted, full
+of affectionate, absent-minded good humour towards his mother and Aunt
+Annie.
+
+There was a _ting-ting_ of the front-door bell.
+
+'Perhaps Dr. Dancer has called for a chat,' said Aunt Annie with
+pleasant anticipation.
+
+Sarah was heard to ascend and to run along the hall. Then Sarah entered
+the dining-room.
+
+'Please, sir, there's a young lady to see you.'
+
+Henry flushed.
+
+The sisters looked at one another.
+
+'What name, Sarah?' Aunt Annie whispered.
+
+'I didn't ask, mum.'
+
+'How often have I told you always to ask strangers' names when they come
+to the door!' Aunt Annie's whisper became angry. 'Go and see.'
+
+Henry hoped and feared, feared and hoped. But he knew not where to look.
+
+Sarah returned and said: 'The young lady's name is Foster, sir.'
+
+'Oh!' said Henry, bursting into speech as some plants burst suddenly and
+brilliantly into blossom. 'Miss Foster, eh? It's the lady who called at
+the office to-night. Show her into the front-room, Sarah, and light the
+gas. I'll come in a minute I wonder what she wants.'
+
+'You didn't say it was a lady,' said his mother.
+
+'No,' he admitted; his tongue was unloosed now on the subject. 'And I
+didn't say it was a lady-journalist, either. The truth is,' this liar
+proceeded with an effrontery which might have been born of incessant
+practice, but was not, 'I meant it as a surprise for you. I've been
+interviewed this afternoon, for a lady's paper. And I wouldn't mind
+betting--I wouldn't mind betting,' he repeated, 'that she's come for my
+photograph.'
+
+All this was whispered.
+
+Henry had guessed correctly. It was the question of a portrait which
+Miss Foster plunged into immediately he entered the drawing-room. She
+had forgotten it utterly--she had been so nervous. 'So I ran down here
+to-night,' she said, 'because if I send in my stuff and the portrait
+to-morrow morning, it may be in time for next week's issue. Now, don't
+say you haven't got a photograph of yourself, Mr. Knight. Don't say
+that! What a pretty, old-fashioned drawing-room! Oh, there's the very
+thing!'
+
+She pointed to a framed photograph on the plush-covered mantelpiece.
+
+'The very thing, is it?' said Henry. He was feeling his feet now, the
+dog. 'Well, you shall have it, then.' And he took the photograph out of
+the frame and gave it to her.
+
+No! she wouldn't stay, not a minute, not a second. One moment her
+delicious presence filled the drawing-room (he was relieved to hear her
+call it a pretty, old-fashioned drawing-room, because, as the
+drawing-room of a person important enough to be interviewed, it had
+seemed to him somewhat less than mediocre), and the next moment she had
+gone. By a singular coincidence, Aunt Annie was descending the stairs
+just as Henry showed Miss Foster out of the house; the stairs commanded
+the lobby and the front-door.
+
+On his return to the dining-room and the companionship of his relatives,
+Henry was conscious of a self-preserving instinct which drove him to
+make conversation as rapidly and in as large quantities as possible. In
+a brief space of time he got round to _Home and Beauty_.
+
+'Do you know it?' he demanded.
+
+'No,' said Aunt Annie. 'I never heard of it. But I dare say it's a very
+good paper.'
+
+Mrs. Knight rang the bell.
+
+'What do you want, sister?' Aunt Annie inquired.
+
+'I'm going to send Sarah out for a copy of _Home and Beauty_,' said Mrs.
+Knight, with the air of one who has determined to indulge a wild whim
+for once in a way. 'Let's see what it's like.'
+
+'Don't forget the name, Sarah--_Home and Beauty_!' Aunt Annie enjoined
+the girl when Mrs. Knight had given the order.
+
+'Not me, mum,' said Sarah. 'I know it. It's a beautiful paper. I often
+buys it myself. But it's like as if what must be--I lighted the kitchen
+fire with this week's this very morning, paper pattern and all.'
+
+'That will do, thank you, Sarah,' said Aunt Annie crushingly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+A LION IN HIS LAIR
+
+
+The respectable portion of the male sex in England may be divided into
+two classes, according to its method and manner of complete immersion in
+water. One class, the more clashing, dashes into a cold tub every
+morning. Another, the more cleanly, sedately takes a warm bath every
+Saturday night. There can be no doubt that the former class lends tone
+and distinction to the country, but the latter is the nation's backbone.
+Henry belonged to the Saturday-nighters, to the section which calls a
+bath a bath, not a tub, and which contrives to approach godliness
+without having to boast of it on frosty mornings.
+
+Henry performed the weekly rite in a zinc receptacle exactly circular,
+in his bedroom, because the house in Dawes Road had been built just
+before the craze for dashing had spread to such an extent among the
+lower middle-classes that no builder dared build a tenement without
+providing for it specially; in brutal terms, the house in Dawes Road had
+no bathroom. The preparations for Henry's immersion were always complex
+and thorough. Early in the evening Sarah began by putting two kettles
+and the largest saucepan to boil on the range. Then she took an old
+blanket and spread it out upon the master's bedroom floor, and drew the
+bathing-machine from beneath the bed and coaxed it, with considerable
+clangour, to the mathematical centre of the blanket. Then she filled
+ewers with cold water and arranged them round the machine. Then Aunt
+Annie went upstairs to see that the old blanket was well and truly laid,
+not too near the bed and not too near the mirror of the wardrobe, and
+that the machine did indeed rest in the mathematical centre of the
+blanket. (As a fact, Aunt Annie's mathematics never agreed with
+Sarah's.) Then Mrs. Knight went upstairs to bear witness that the window
+was shut, and to decide the question of towels. Then Sarah went
+upstairs, panting, with the kettles and the large saucepan, two journeys
+being necessary; and Aunt Annie followed her in order to indicate to
+Sarah every step upon which Sarah had spilled boiling-water. Then Mrs.
+Knight moved the key of Henry's door from the inside to the outside; she
+was always afraid lest he might lock himself in and be seized with a
+sudden and fatal illness. Then the women dispersed, and Aunt Annie came
+down to the dining-room, and in accents studiously calm (as though the
+preparation of Henry's bath was the merest nothing) announced:
+
+'Henry dear, your bath is waiting.'
+
+And Henry would disappear at once and begin by mixing his bath, out of
+the ewers, the kettles, and the saucepan, according to a recipe of which
+he alone had the secret. The hour would be about nine o'clock, or a
+little after. It was not his custom to appear again. He would put one
+kettle out on an old newspaper, specially placed to that end on the
+doormat in the passage, for the purposes of Sunday's breakfast; the rest
+of the various paraphernalia remained in his room till the following
+morning. He then slept the sleep of one who is aware of being the
+nation's backbone.
+
+Now, he was just putting a toe or so into the zinc receptacle, in order
+to test the accuracy of his dispensing of the recipe, when he heard a
+sharp tap at the bedroom door.
+
+'What is it?' he cried, withdrawing the toe.
+
+'Henry!'
+
+'Well?'
+
+'Can I open the door an inch?' It was Aunt Annie's voice.
+
+'Yes. What's the matter?'
+
+'There's come a copy of _Home and Beauty_ by the last post, and on the
+wrapper it says, "See page 16."'
+
+'I suppose it contains that--thing?'
+
+'That interview, you mean?'
+
+'Yes, I suppose so.'
+
+'Shall I open it?'
+
+'If you like,' said Henry. 'Certainly, with pleasure.'
+
+He stepped quietly and unconcernedly into the bath. He could hear the
+sharp ripping of paper.
+
+'Oh yes!' came Aunt Annie's voice through the chink. 'And there's the
+portrait! Oh! and what a smudge across the nose! Henry, it doesn't make
+you look at all nice. You're too black. Oh, Henry! what _do_ you think
+it's called? "Lions in their Lairs. No. 19. Interview with the
+brilliant author of _Love in Babylon_." And you told us her name was
+Foster.'
+
+'Whose name?' Henry demanded, reddening in the hot water.
+
+'You know--that lady's name, the one that called.'
+
+'So it is.'
+
+'No, it isn't, dear. It's Flossie Brighteye. Oh, I beg pardon, Henry!
+I'm sure I beg pardon!'
+
+Aunt Annie, in the excitement of discovering Miss Foster's real name,
+and ground withal for her original suspicion that the self-styled Miss
+Foster was no better than she ought to be, had leaned too heavily
+against the door, and thrust it wide open. She averted her eyes and drew
+it to in silence.
+
+'Shall I show the paper to your mother at once?' she asked, after a fit
+pause.
+
+'Yes, do,' said Henry.
+
+'And then bring it up to you again for you to read in bed?'
+
+'Oh,' replied Henry in the grand manner, 'I can read it to-morrow
+morning.
+
+He said to himself that he was not going to get excited about a mere
+interview, though it was his first interview. During the past few days
+the world had apparently wakened up to his existence. Even the men at
+the office had got wind of his achievement, and Sir George had been
+obliged to notice it. At Powells everyone pretended that this was the
+same old Henry Knight who arrived so punctually each day, and yet
+everyone knew secretly that it was not the same old Henry Knight.
+Everyone, including Henry, felt--and could not dismiss the feeling--that
+Henry was conferring a favour on the office by working as usual. There
+seemed to be something provisional, something unreal, something uncanny,
+in the continuance of his position there. And Sir George, when he
+demanded his services to take down letters in shorthand, had the air of
+saying apologetically: 'Of course, I know you're only here for fun; but,
+since you are here, we may as well carry out the joke in a practical
+manner.' Similar phenomena occurred at Dawes Road. Sarah's awe of Henry,
+always great, was enormously increased. His mother went about in a state
+of not being quite sure whether she had the right to be his mother,
+whether she was not taking a mean advantage of him in remaining his
+mother. Aunt Annie did not give herself away, but on her face might be
+read a continuous, proud, gentle surprise that Henry should eat as
+usual, drink as usual, talk simply as usual, and generally behave as
+though he was not one of the finest geniuses in England.
+
+Further, Mr. Onions Winter had written to ask whether Henry was
+proceeding with a new book, and how pleased he was at the prospective
+privilege of publishing it. Nine other publishers had written to inform
+him that they would esteem it a favour if he would give them the refusal
+of his next work. Messrs. Antonio, the eminent photographers of Regent
+Street, had written offering to take his portrait gratis, and asking him
+to deign to fix an appointment for a séance. The editor of _Which is
+Which_, a biographical annual of inconceivable utility, had written for
+intimate details of his age, weight, pastimes, works, ideals, and diet.
+The proprietary committee of the Park Club in St. James's Square had
+written to suggest that he might join the club without the formality of
+paying an entrance fee. The editor of a popular magazine had asked him
+to contribute his views to a 'symposium' about the proper method of
+spending quarter-day. Twenty-five charitable institutions had invited
+subscriptions from him. Three press-cutting agencies had sent him
+cuttings of reviews of _Love in Babylon_, and the reviews grew kinder
+and more laudatory every day. Lastly, Mr. Onions Winter was advertising
+the thirty-first thousand of that work.
+
+It was not to be expected that the recipient of all these overtures, the
+courted and sought-for author of _Love in Babylon_, should disarrange
+the tenor of his existence in order to read an interview with himself in
+a ladies' penny paper. And Henry repeated, as he sat in the midst of the
+zinc circle, that he would peruse Flossie Brighteye's article on Sunday
+morning at breakfast. Then he began thinking about Flossie's
+tight-fitting bodice, and wondered what she had written. Then he
+murmured: 'Oh, nonsense! I'll read it to-morrow. Plenty soon enough.'
+Then he stopped suddenly and causelessly while applying the towel to the
+small of his back, and stood for several moments in a state of fixity,
+staring at a particular spot on the wall-paper. And soon he dearly
+perceived that he had been too hasty in refusing Aunt Annie's
+suggestion. However, he had made his bed, and so he must lie on it,
+both figuratively and factually....
+
+The next thing was that he found himself, instead of putting on his
+pyjamas, putting on his day-clothes. He seemed to be doing this while
+wishing not to do it. He did not possess a
+dressing-gown--Saturday-nighters and backbones seldom do. Hence he was
+compelled to dress himself completely, save that he assumed a silk
+muffler instead of a collar and necktie, and omitted the usual stockings
+between his slippers and his feet. In another minute he unostentatiously
+entered the dining-room.
+
+'Nay,' his mother was saying, 'I can't read it.' Tears of joyous pride
+had rendered her spectacles worse than useless. 'Here, Annie, read it
+aloud.'
+
+Henry smiled, and he tried to make his smile carry so much meaning, of
+pleasant indifference, careless amusement, and benevolent joy in the joy
+of others, that it ended by being merely foolish.
+
+And Aunt Annie began:
+
+'"It is not too much to say that Mr. Henry Knight, the author of _Love
+in Babylon_, the initial volume of the already world-famous Satin
+Library, is the most-talked-of writer in London at the present moment.
+I shall therefore make no apology for offering to my readers an account
+of an interview which the young and gifted novelist was kind enough to
+give to me the other evening. Mr. Knight is a legal luminary well known
+in Lincoln's Inn Fields, the right-hand man of Sir George Powell, the
+celebrated lawyer. I found him in his formidable room seated at a----"'
+
+'What does she mean by "formidable," Henry? 'I don't think that's quite
+nice,' said Mrs. Knight.
+
+'No, it isn't,' said Aunt Annie. 'But perhaps she means it frightened
+her.'
+
+'That's it,' said Henry. 'It was Sir George's room, you know.'
+
+'She doesn't _look_ as if she would be easily frightened,' said Aunt
+Annie. 'However--"seated at a large table littered with legal documents.
+He was evidently immersed in business, but he was so good as to place
+himself at my disposal for a few minutes. Mr. Knight is twenty-three
+years of age. His father was a silk-mercer in Oxford Street, and laid
+the foundation of the fortunes of the house now known as Duck and
+Peabody Limited."'
+
+'That's very well put,' said Mrs. Knight.
+
+'Yes, isn't it?' said Aunt Annie, and continued in her precise, even
+tones:
+
+'"'What first gave you the idea of writing, Mr. Knight?' I inquired,
+plunging at once _in medias res_. Mr. Knight hesitated a few seconds,
+and then answered: 'I scarcely know. I owe a great deal to my late
+father. My father, although first and foremost a business man, was
+devoted to literature. He held that Shakspere, besides being our
+greatest poet, was the greatest moral teacher that England has ever
+produced. I was brought up on Shakspere,' said Mr. Knight, smiling. 'My
+father often sent communications to the leading London papers on
+subjects of topical interest, and one of my most precious possessions is
+a collection of these which he himself put into an album.'"'
+
+Mrs. Knight removed her spectacles and wiped her eyes.
+
+'"'With regard to _Love in Babylon_, the idea came to me--I cannot
+explain how. And I wrote it while I was recovering from a severe
+illness----'"'
+
+'I didn't say "severe,"' Henry interjected. 'She's got that wrong.'
+
+'But it _was_ severe, dear,' said Aunt Annie, and once more continued:
+'"'I should never have written it had it not been for the sympathy and
+encouragement of my dear mother----'"'
+
+At this point Mrs. Knight sobbed aloud, and waved her hand
+deprecatingly.
+
+'Nay, nay!' she managed to stammer at length. 'Read no more. I can't
+stand it. I'll try to read it myself to-morrow morning while you're at
+chapel and all's quiet.'
+
+And she cried freely into her handkerchief.
+
+Henry and Aunt Annie exchanged glances, and Henry retired to bed with
+_Home and Beauty_ under his arm. And he read through the entire
+interview twice, and knew by heart what he had said about his plans for
+the future, and the state of modern fiction, and the tendency of authors
+towards dyspepsia, and the question of realism in literature, and the
+Stream of Trashy Novels Constantly Poured Forth by the Press. The whole
+thing seemed to him at first rather dignified and effective. He
+understood that Miss Foster was no common Fleet Street hack.
+
+But what most impressed him, and coloured his dreams, was the final
+sentence: 'As I left Mr. Knight, I could not dismiss the sensation that
+I had been in the presence of a man who is morally certain, at no
+distant date, to loom large in the history of English fiction.--FLOSSIE
+BRIGHTEYE.'
+
+A passing remark about his 'pretty suburban home' was the sauce to this
+dish.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+HER NAME WAS GERALDINE
+
+
+A few mornings later, in his post, whose proportions grew daily nobler
+and more imposing, Henry found a letter from Mark Snyder. 'I have been
+detained in America by illness,' wrote Mark in his rapid, sprawling,
+inexcusable hand, 'and am only just back. I wonder whether you have come
+to any decision about the matter which we discussed when you called
+here. I see you took my advice and went to Onions Winter. If you could
+drop in to-morrow at noon or a little after, I have something to show
+you which ought to interest you.' And then there was a postscript: 'My
+congratulations on your extraordinary success go without saying.'
+
+After Henry had deciphered this invitation, he gave a glance at the page
+as a whole, which had the air of having been penned by Planchette in a
+state of violent hysteria, and he said to himself: 'It's exactly like
+Snyder, that is. He's a clever chap. He knows what he's up to. As to my
+choosing Onions Winter, yes, of course it was due to him.'
+
+Henry was simple, but he was not a fool. He was modest and diffident,
+but, as is generally the case with modest and diffident persons, there
+existed, somewhere within the recesses of his consciousness, a very good
+conceit of himself. He had already learnt, the trout, to look up through
+the water from his hole and compare the skill of the various anglers on
+the bank who were fishing for the rise. And he decided that morning,
+finally: 'Snyder shall catch me.' His previous decision to the same
+effect, made under the influence of the personal magnetism of Miss
+Foster, had been annulled only the day before. And the strange thing was
+that it had been annulled because of Miss Foster's share in it, and in
+consequence of the interview in _Home and Beauty_. For the more Henry
+meditated upon that interview the less he liked it. He could not have
+defined its offence in his eyes, but the offence was nevertheless
+there. And, further, the interview seemed now scarcely a real
+interview. Had it dealt with any other celebrity, it would have been
+real enough, but in Henry's view Henry was different. He was only an
+imitation celebrity, and Miss Foster's production was an imitation
+interview. The entire enterprise, from the moment when he gave her Sir
+George's lead pencil to write with, to the moment when he gave her his
+own photograph out of the frame on the drawing-room mantelpiece, had
+been a pretence, and an imposition on the public. Surely if the public
+knew...! And then, 'pretty suburban home'! It wasn't ugly, the house in
+Dawes Road; indeed, he esteemed it rather a nice sort of a place, but
+'pretty suburban home' meant--well, it meant the exact opposite of Dawes
+Road: he was sure of that. As for Miss Foster, he suspected, he allowed
+himself to suspect, he audaciously whispered when he was alone in a
+compartment on the Underground, that Miss Foster was a pushing little
+thing. A reaction had set in against Flossie Brighteye.
+
+And yet, when he called upon Mark Snyder for the purpose of being
+caught, he was decidedly piqued, he was even annoyed, not to find her
+in her chair in the outer room. 'She must have known I was coming,' he
+reflected swiftly. 'No, perhaps she didn't. The letter was not
+dictated.... But then it was press-copied; I am sure of that by the
+smudges on it. She must certainly have known I was coming.' And, despite
+the verdict that she was a pushing young thing, Henry felt it to be in
+the nature of a personal grievance that she was not always waiting for
+him there, in that chair, with her golden locks and her smile and her
+tight bodice, whenever he cared to look in. His right to expect her
+presence seemed part of his heritage as a man, and it could not be
+challenged without disturbing the very foundations of human society. He
+did not think these thoughts clearly as he crossed the outer room into
+the inner under the direction of Miss Foster's unexciting colleague, but
+they existed vaguely and furtively in his mind. Had anyone suggested
+that he cared twopence whether Miss Foster was there or not, he would
+have replied with warm sincerity that he did not care three halfpence,
+nor two straws, nor a bilberry, nor even a jot.
+
+'Well,' cried Mark Snyder, with his bluff and jolly habit of beginning
+interviews in the middle, and before the caller had found opportunity
+to sit down. 'All you want now is a little bit of judicious
+engineering!' And Mark's rosy face said: 'I'll engineer you.'
+
+Upon demand Henry produced the agreement with Onions Winter, and he
+produced it with a shamed countenance. He knew that Mark Snyder would
+criticise it.
+
+'Worse than I expected,' Mr. Snyder observed. 'Worse than I expected. A
+royalty of twopence in the shilling is all right. But why did you let
+him off the royalty on the first five thousand copies? You call yourself
+a lawyer! Listen, young man. I have seen the world, but I have never
+seen a lawyer who didn't make a d----d fool of himself when it came to
+his own affairs. Supposing _Love in Babylon_ sells fifty thousand--which
+it won't; it won't go past forty--you would have saved my ten per cent.
+commission by coming to me in the first place, because I should have got
+you a royalty on the first five thousand. See?'
+
+'But you weren't here,' Henry put in.
+
+'I wasn't here! God bless my soul! Little Geraldine Foster would have
+had the sense to get that!'
+
+(So her name was Geraldine.)
+
+'It isn't the money,' Mark Snyder proceeded. 'It's the idea of Onions
+Winter playing his old game with new men. And then I see you've let
+yourself in for a second book on the same terms, if he chooses to take
+it. That's another trick of his. Look here,' Mr. Snyder smiled
+persuasively, 'I'll thank you to go right home and get that second book
+done. Make it as short as you can. When that's out of the way---- Ah!'
+He clasped his hands in a sort of ecstasy.
+
+'I will,' said Henry obediently. But a dreadful apprehension which had
+menaced him for several weeks past now definitely seized him.
+
+'And I perceive further,' said Mr. Snyder, growing sarcastic, 'that in
+case Mr. Onions Winter chooses to copyright the book in America, you are
+to have half-royalties on all copies sold over there. Now about
+America,' Mark continued after an impressive pause, at the same time
+opening a drawer and dramatically producing several paper-covered
+volumes therefrom. 'See this--and this--and this--and this! What are
+they? They're pirated editions of _Love in Babylon_, that's what they
+are. You didn't know? No, of course not. I'm told that something like a
+couple of hundred thousand copies have been sold in America up to date.
+I brought these over with me as specimens.'
+
+'Then Onions Winter didn't copyright----'
+
+'No, sir, he didn't. That incredible ass did not. He's just issued what
+he calls an authorized edition there at half a dollar, but what will
+that do in the face of this at twenty cents, and this wretched pamphlet
+at ten cents?' Snyder fingered the piracies. 'Twopence in the shilling
+on two hundred thousand copies at half a dollar means over three
+thousand pounds. That's what you might well have made if Providence,
+doubtless in a moment of abstraction, had not created Onions Winter an
+incredible ass, and if you had not vainly imagined that because you were
+a lawyer you had nothing to learn about contracts.'
+
+'Still,' faltered Henry, after he had somewhat recovered from these
+shrewd blows, 'I shall do pretty well out of the English edition.'
+
+'Three thousand pounds is three thousand pounds,' said Mark Snyder with
+terrible emphasis. And suddenly he laughed. 'You really wish me to act
+for you?'
+
+'I do,' said Henry.
+
+'Very well. Go home and finish book number two. And don't let it be a
+page longer than the first one. I'll see Onions Winter. With care we may
+clear a couple of thousand out of book number two, even on that precious
+screed you call an agreement. Perhaps more. Perhaps I may have a
+pleasant little surprise for you. Then you shall do a long book, and
+we'll begin to make money, real money. Oh, you can do it! I've no fear
+at all of you fizzling out. You simply go home and sit down and _write_.
+I'll attend to the rest. And if you think Powells can struggle along
+without you, I should be inclined to leave.'
+
+'Surely not yet?' Henry protested.
+
+'Well,' said Snyder in a different tone, looking up quickly from his
+desk, 'perhaps you're right. Perhaps it will be as well to wait a bit,
+and just make quite sure about the quality of the next book. Want any
+money?'
+
+'No,' said Henry.
+
+'Because if you do, I can let you have whatever you need. And you can
+carry off these piracies if you like.'
+
+As he thoughtfully descended the stairways of Kenilworth Mansions,
+Henry's mind was an arena of emotions. Undoubtedly, then, a
+considerable number of hundreds of pounds were to come from _Love in
+Babylon_, to say nothing of three thousand lost! Two thousand from the
+next book! And after that, 'money, real money'! Mark Snyder had awakened
+the young man's imagination. He had entered the parlour of Mark Snyder
+with no knowledge of the Transatlantic glory of _Love in Babylon_ beyond
+the fact, gathered from a newspaper cutting, that the book had attracted
+attention in America; and in five minutes Mark had opened wide to him
+the doors of Paradise. Or, rather, Mark had pointed out to him that the
+doors of Paradise were open wide. Mr. Snyder, as Henry perceived, was
+apt unwittingly to give the impression that he, and not his clients,
+earned the wealth upon which he received ten per cent. commission. But
+Henry was not for a single instant blind to the certitude that, if his
+next book realized two thousand pounds, the credit would be due to
+himself, and to no other person whatever. Henry might be tongue-tied in
+front of Mark Snyder, but he was capable of estimating with some
+precision their relative fundamental importance in the scheme of things.
+
+In the clerks' office Henry had observed numerous tin boxes inscribed
+in white paint with the names of numerous eminent living authors. He
+wondered if Mr. Snyder played to all these great men the same rôle--half
+the frank and bluff uncle, half the fairy-godmother. He was surprised
+that he could remember no word said about literature, ideas, genius, or
+even talent. No doubt Mr. Snyder took such trifles for granted. No doubt
+he began where they left off.
+
+He sighed. He was dazzled by golden visions, but beneath the dizzy and
+delicious fabric of the dream, eating away at the foundations, lurked
+always that dreadful apprehension.
+
+As he reached the marble hall on the ground-floor a lady was getting
+into the lift. She turned sharply, gave a joyous and yet timid
+commencement of a scream, and left the lift to the liftman.
+
+'I'm so glad I've not missed you,' she said, holding out her small
+gloved hand, and putting her golden head on one side, and smiling. 'I
+was afraid I should. I had to go out. Don't tell me that interview was
+too awful. Don't crush me. I know it was pretty bad.'
+
+So her name was Geraldine.
+
+'I thought it was much too good for its subject,' said Henry. He saw in
+the tenth of a second that he had been wholly wrong, very unjust, and
+somewhat cruel, to set her down as a pushing little thing. She was
+nothing of the kind. She was a charming and extremely stylish woman,
+exquisitely feminine; and she admired him with a genuine admiration. 'I
+was just going to write and thank you,' he added. And he really believed
+that he was.
+
+What followed was due to the liftman. The impatient liftman, noticing
+that the pair were enjoying each other's company, made a disgraceful
+gesture behind their backs, slammed the gate, and ascended majestically
+alone in the lift towards some high altitude whence emanated an odour of
+boiled Spanish onions. Geraldine Foster glanced round carelessly at the
+rising and beautiful flunkey, and it was the sudden curve of her neck
+that did it. It was the sudden curve of her neck, possibly assisted by
+Henry's appreciation of the fact that they were now unobserved and
+solitary in the hall.
+
+Henry was made aware that women are the only really interesting
+phenomena in the world. And just as he stumbled on this profound truth,
+Geraldine, for her part, caught sight of the pirated editions in his
+hand, and murmured: 'So Mr. Snyder has told you! _What a shame_, isn't
+it?'
+
+The sympathy in her voice, the gaze of her eyes under the lashes,
+finished him.
+
+'Do you live far from here?' he stammered, he knew not why.
+
+'In Chenies Street,' she replied. 'I share a little flat with my friend
+upstairs. You must come and have tea with me some afternoon--some
+Saturday or Sunday. Will you? Dare I ask?'
+
+He said he should like to, awfully.
+
+'I was dining out last night, and we were talking about you,' she began
+a few seconds later.
+
+Women! Wine! Wealth! Joy! Life itself! He was swept off his feet by a
+sudden and tremendous impulse.
+
+'I wish,' he blurted out, interrupting her--'I wish you'd come and dine
+with _me_ some night, at a restaurant.'
+
+'Oh!' she exclaimed, 'I should love it.'
+
+'And we might go somewhere afterwards.' He was certainly capable of
+sublime conceptions.
+
+And she exclaimed again: 'I should love it!' The naïve and innocent
+candour of her bliss appealed to him with extraordinary force.
+
+In a moment or so he had regained his self-control, and he managed to
+tell her in a fairly usual tone that he would write and suggest an
+evening.
+
+He parted from her in a whirl of variegated ecstasies. 'Let us eat and
+drink, for to-morrow we die,' he remarked to the street. What he meant
+was that, after more than a month's excogitation, he had absolutely
+failed to get any single shred of a theme for the successor to _Love in
+Babylon_--that successor out of which a mere couple of thousand pounds
+was to be made; and that he didn't care.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+HIS TERRIBLE QUANDARY
+
+
+There was to be an important tea-meeting at the Munster Park Chapel on
+the next Saturday afternoon but one, and tea was to be on the tables at
+six o'clock. The gathering had some connection with an attempt on the
+part of the Wesleyan Connexion to destroy the vogue of Confucius in
+China. Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie had charge of the department of
+sandwiches, and they asked Henry whether he should be present at the
+entertainment. They were not surprised, however, when he answered that
+the exigencies of literary composition would make his attendance
+impossible. They lauded his self-denial, for Henry's literary work was
+quite naturally now the most important and the most exacting work in the
+world, the crusade against Confucius not excepted. Henry wrote to
+Geraldine and invited her to dine with him at the Louvre Restaurant on
+that Saturday night, and Geraldine replied that she should be charmed.
+Then Henry changed his tailor, and could not help blushing when he gave
+his order to the new man, who had a place in Conduit Street and a way of
+looking at the clothes Henry wore that reduced those neat garments to
+shapeless and shameful rags.
+
+The first fatal steps in a double life having been irrevocably taken,
+Henry drew a long breath, and once more seriously addressed himself to
+book number two. But ideas obstinately refused to show themselves above
+the horizon. And yet nothing had been left undone which ought to have
+been done in order to persuade ideas to arrive. The whole domestic
+existence of the house in Dawes Road revolved on Henry's precious brain
+as on a pivot. The drawing-room had not only been transformed into a
+study; it had been rechristened 'the study.' And in speaking of the
+apartment to each other or to Sarah, Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie employed
+a vocal inflection of peculiar impressiveness. Sarah entered the study
+with awe, the ladies with pride. Henry sat in it nearly every night and
+laboured hard, with no result whatever. If the ladies ventured to
+question him about his progress, he replied with false gaiety that they
+must ask him again in a month or so; and they smiled in sure
+anticipation of the beautiful thing that was in store for them and the
+public.
+
+He had no one to consult in his dilemma. Every morning he received
+several cuttings, chiefly of an amiable character, about himself from
+the daily and weekly press; he was a figure in literary circles; he had
+actually declined two invitations to be interviewed; and yet he knew no
+more of literary circles than Sarah did. His position struck him as
+curious, bizarre, and cruel. He sometimes felt that the history of the
+last few months was a dream from which he would probably wake up by
+falling heavily out of bed, so unreal did the events seem. One day, when
+he was at his wits' end, he saw in a newspaper an advertisement of a
+book entitled _How to become a Successful Novelist_, price half-a-crown.
+Just above it was an advertisement of the thirty-eighth thousand of
+_Love in Babylon_. He went into a large bookseller's shop in the Strand
+and demanded _How to become a Successful Novelist_. The volume had to
+be searched for, and while he was waiting Henry's eyes dwelt on a high
+pile of _Love in Babylon_, conspicuously placed near the door. Two
+further instalments of the Satin Library had been given to the world
+since _Love in Babylon_, but Henry noted with satisfaction that no
+excessive prominence was accorded to them in that emporium of
+literature. He paid the half-crown and pocketed _How to become a
+Successful Novelist_ with a blush, just as if the bookseller had been
+his new tailor. He had determined, should the bookseller recognise
+him--a not remote contingency--to explain that he was buying _How to
+become a Successful Novelist_ on behalf of a young friend. However, the
+suspicions of the bookseller happened not to be aroused, and hence there
+was no occasion to lull them.
+
+That same evening, in the privacy of his study, he eagerly read _How to
+become a Successful Novelist_. It disappointed him; nay, it desolated
+him. He was shocked to discover that he had done nothing that a man must
+do who wishes to be a successful novelist. He had not practised style;
+he had not paraphrased choice pages from the classics; he had not kept
+note-books; he had not begun with short stories; he had not even
+performed the elementary, obvious task of studying human nature. He had
+never thought of 'atmosphere' as 'atmosphere'; nor had he considered the
+important question of the 'functions of dialogue.' As for the
+'significance of scenery,' it had never occurred to him. In brief, he
+was a lost man. And he could detect in the book no practical hint
+towards salvation. 'Having decided upon your theme----' said the writer
+in a chapter entitled 'The Composition of a Novel.' But what Henry
+desired was a chapter entitled 'The Finding of a Theme.' He suffered the
+aggravated distress of a starving man who has picked up a cookery-book.
+
+There was a knock at the study door, and Henry hastily pushed _How to
+become a Successful Novelist_ under the blotting-paper, and assumed a
+meditative air. Not for worlds would he have been caught reading it.
+
+'A letter, dear, by the last post,' said Aunt Annie, entering; and then
+discreetly departed.
+
+The letter was from Mark Snyder, and it enclosed a cheque for a hundred
+pounds, saying that Mr. Onions Winter, though under no obligation to
+furnish a statement until the end of the year, had sent this cheque on
+account out of courtesy to Mr. Knight, and in the hope that Mr. Knight
+would find it agreeable; also in the hope that Mr. Knight was proceeding
+satisfactorily with book number two. The letter was typewritten, and
+signed 'Mark Snyder, per G. F.,' and the 'G. F.' was very large and
+distinct.
+
+Henry instantly settled in his own mind that he would attempt no more
+with book number two until the famous dinner with 'G. F.' had come to
+pass. He cherished a sort of hopeful feeling that after he had seen her,
+and spent that about-to-be-wonderful evening with her, he might be able
+to invent a theme. The next day he cashed the cheque. The day after that
+was Saturday, and he came home at two o'clock with a large flat box,
+which he surreptitiously conveyed to his bedroom. Small parcels had been
+arriving for him during the week. At half-past four Mrs. Knight and Aunt
+Annie, invading the study, found him reading _Chambers' Encyclopædia_.
+
+'We're going now, dear,' said Aunt Annie.
+
+'Sarah will have your tea ready at half-past five,' said his mother.
+'And I've told her to be sure and boil the eggs three and three-quarter
+minutes.'
+
+'And we shall be back about half-past nine,' said Aunt Annie.
+
+'Don't stick at it too closely,' said his mother. 'You ought to take a
+little exercise. It's a beautiful afternoon.'
+
+'I shall see,' Henry answered gravely. 'I shall be all right.'
+
+He watched the ladies down the road in the direction of the tea-meeting,
+and no sooner were they out of sight than he nipped upstairs and locked
+himself in his bedroom. At half-past five Sarah tapped at his door and
+announced that tea was ready. He descended to tea in his overcoat, and
+the collar of his overcoat was turned up and buttoned across his neck.
+He poured out some tea, and drank it, and poured some more into the
+slop-basin. He crumpled a piece or two of bread-and-butter and spread
+crumbs on the cloth. He shelled the eggs very carefully, and, climbing
+on to a chair, dropped the eggs themselves into a large blue jar which
+stood on the top of the bookcase. After these singular feats he rang the
+bell for Sarah.
+
+'Sarah,' he said in a firm voice, 'I've had my tea, and I'm going out
+for a long walk. Tell my mother and aunt that they are on no account to
+wait up for me, if I am not back.'
+
+'Yes, sir,' said Sarah timidly. 'Was the eggs hard enough, sir?'
+
+'Yes, thank you.' His generous, kindly approval of the eggs cheered this
+devotee.
+
+Henry brushed his silk hat, put it on, and stole out of the house
+feeling, as all livers of double lives must feel, a guilty thing. It was
+six o'clock. The last domestic sound he heard was Sarah singing in the
+kitchen. 'Innocent, simple creature!' he thought, and pitied her, and
+turned down the collar of his overcoat.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+DURING THE TEA-MEETING
+
+
+In spite of the sincerest intention not to arrive too soon, Henry
+reached the Louvre Restaurant a quarter of an hour before the appointed
+time. He had meant to come in an omnibus, and descend from it at
+Piccadilly Circus, but his attire made him feel self-conscious, and he
+had walked on, allowing omnibus after omnibus to pass him, in the hope
+of being able to get into an empty one; until at last, afraid that he
+was risking his fine reputation for exact promptitude, he had suddenly
+yielded to the alluring gesture of a cabman.
+
+The commissionaire of the Louvre, who stood six feet six and a half
+inches high, who wore a coat like the side of a blue house divided by
+means of pairs of buttons into eighty-five storeys, who had the face of
+a poet addicted to blank verse, and who was one of the glories of the
+Louvre, stepped across the pavement in one stride and assisted Henry to
+alight. Henry had meant to give the cabman eighteenpence, but the occult
+influence of the glorious commissionaire mysteriously compelled him,
+much against his will, to make it half a crown. He hesitated whether to
+await Geraldine within the Louvre or without; he was rather bashful
+about entering (hitherto he had never flown higher than Sweeting's). The
+commissionaire, however, attributing this indecision to Henry's
+unwillingness to open doors for himself, stepped back across the
+pavement in another stride, and held the portal ajar. Henry had no
+alternative but to pass beneath the commissionaire's bended and
+respectful head. Once within the gorgeous twilit hall of the Louvre,
+Henry was set upon by two very diminutive and infantile replicas of the
+commissionaire, one of whom staggered away with his overcoat, while the
+other secured the remainder of the booty in the shape of his hat,
+muffler, and stick, and left Henry naked. I say 'naked' purposely.
+Anyone who has dreamed the familiar dream of being discovered in a state
+of nudity amid a roomful of clothed and haughty strangers may, by
+recalling his sensations, realize Henry's feelings as he stood alone and
+unfriended there, exposed for the first time in his life in evening
+dress to the vulgar gaze. Several minutes passed before Henry could
+conquer the delusion that everybody was staring at him in amused
+curiosity. Having conquered it, he sank sternly into a chair, and
+surreptitiously felt the sovereigns in his pocket.
+
+Soon an official bore down on him, wearing a massive silver necklet
+which fell gracefully over his chest. Henry saw and trembled.
+
+'Are you expecting someone, sir?' the man whispered in a velvety and
+confidential voice, as who should say: 'Have no secrets from me. I am
+discretion itself.'
+
+'Yes,' answered Henry boldly, and he was inclined to add: 'But it's all
+right, you know. I've nothing to be ashamed of.'
+
+'Have you booked a table, sir?' the official proceeded with relentless
+suavity. As he stooped towards Henry's ear his chain swung in the air
+and gently clanked.
+
+'No,' said Henry, and then hastened to assure the official: 'But I want
+one.' The idea of booking tables at a restaurant struck him as a
+surprising novelty.
+
+'Upstairs or down, sir? Perhaps you'd prefer the balcony? For two, sir?
+I'll _see_, sir. We're always rather full. What name, sir?'
+
+'Knight,' said Henry majestically.
+
+He was a bad starter, but once started he could travel fast. Already he
+was beginning to feel at home in the princely foyer of the Louvre, and
+to stare at new arrivals with a cold and supercilious stare. His
+complacency, however, was roughly disturbed by a sudden alarm lest
+Geraldine might not come in evening-dress, might not have quite
+appreciated what the Louvre was.
+
+'Table No. 16, sir,' said the chain-wearer in his ear, as if depositing
+with him a state-secret.
+
+'Right,' said Henry, and at the same instant she irradiated the hall
+like a vision.
+
+'Am I not prompt?' she demanded sweetly, as she took a light wrap from
+her shoulders.
+
+Henry began to talk very rapidly and rather loudly. 'I thought you'd
+prefer the balcony,' he said with a tremendous air of the man about
+town; 'so I got a table upstairs. No. 16, I fancy it is.'
+
+She was in evening-dress. There could be no doubt about that; it was a
+point upon which opinions could not possibly conflict. She was in
+evening-dress.
+
+
+'Now tell me all about _your_self,' Henry suggested. They were in the
+middle of the dinner.
+
+'Oh, you can't be interested in the affairs of poor little me!'
+
+'Can't I!'
+
+He had never been so ecstatically happy in his life before. In fact, he
+had not hitherto suspected even the possibility of that rapture. In the
+first place, he perceived that in choosing the Louvre he had builded
+better than he knew. He saw that the Louvre was perfect. Such napery,
+such argent, such crystal, such porcelain, such flowers, such electric
+and glowing splendour, such food and so many kinds of it, such men, such
+women, such chattering gaiety, such a conspiracy on the part of menials
+to persuade him that he was the Shah of Persia, and Geraldine the
+peerless Circassian odalisque! The reality left his fancy far behind. In
+the second place, owing to his prudence in looking up the subject in
+_Chambers' Encyclopædia_ earlier in the day, he, who was almost a
+teetotaler, had cut a more than tolerable figure in handling the
+wine-list. He had gathered that champagne was in truth scarcely worthy
+of its reputation among the uninitiated, that the greatest of all wines
+was burgundy, and that the greatest of all burgundies was Romanée-Conti.
+'Got a good Romanée-Conti?' he said casually to the waiter. It was
+immense, the look of genuine respect that came into the face of the
+waiter. The Louvre had a good Romanée-Conti. Its price, two pounds five
+a bottle, staggered Henry, and he thought of his poor mother and aunt at
+the tea-meeting, but his impassive features showed no sign of the
+internal agitation. And when he had drunk half a glass of the
+incomparable fluid, he felt that a hundred and two pounds five a bottle
+would not have been too much to pay for it. The physical, moral, and
+spiritual effects upon him of that wine were remarkable in the highest
+degree. That wine banished instantly all awkwardness, diffidence,
+timidity, taciturnity, and meanness. It filled him with generous
+emotions and the pride of life. It ennobled him.
+
+And, in the third place, Geraldine at once furnished him with a new
+ideal of the feminine and satisfied it. He saw that the women of Munster
+Park were not real women; they were afraid to be real women, afraid to
+be joyous, afraid to be pretty, afraid to attract; they held themselves
+in instead of letting themselves go; they assumed that every pleasure
+was guilty until it was proved innocent, thus transgressing the
+fundamental principle of English justice; their watchful eyes seemed to
+be continually saying: 'Touch me--and I shall scream for help!' In
+costume, any elegance, any elaboration, any coquetry, was eschewed by
+them as akin to wantonness. Now Geraldine reversed all that. Her frock
+was candidly ornate. She told him she had made it herself, but it
+appeared to him that there were more stitches in it than ten women could
+have accomplished in ten years. She openly revelled in her charms; she
+openly made the most of them. She did not attempt to disguise her wish
+to please, to flatter, to intoxicate. Her eyes said nothing about
+screaming for help. Her eyes said: 'I'm a woman; you're a man. How
+jolly!' Her eyes said: 'I was born to do what I'm doing now.' Her eyes
+said: 'Touch me--and we shall see'. But what chiefly enchanted Henry
+was her intellectual courage and her freedom from cant. In conversing
+with her you hadn't got to tread lightly and warily, lest at any moment
+you might put your foot through the thin crust of a false modesty, and
+tumble into eternal disgrace. You could talk to her about anything; and
+she did not pretend to be blind to the obvious facts of existence, to
+the obvious facts of the Louvre Restaurant, for example. Moreover, she
+had a way of being suddenly and deliciously serious, and of indicating
+by an earnest glance that of course she was very ignorant really, and
+only too glad to learn from a man like him.
+
+'Can't I!' he replied, after she had gazed at him in silence over the
+yellow roses and the fowl.
+
+So she told him that she was an orphan, and had a brother who was a
+solicitor in Leicester. Why Henry should have immediately thought that
+her brother was a somewhat dull and tedious person cannot easily be
+explained; but he did think so.
+
+She went on to tell him that she had been in London five years, and had
+begun in a milliner's shop, had then learnt typewriting and shorthand,
+advertised for a post, and obtained her present situation with Mark
+Snyder.
+
+'I was determined to earn my own living,' she said, with a charming
+smile. 'My brother would have looked after me, but I preferred to look
+after myself.' A bangle slipped down her arm.
+
+'She's perfectly wonderful!' Henry thought.
+
+And then she informed him that she was doing fairly well in journalism,
+and had attempted sensational fiction, but that none saw more clearly
+than she how worthless and contemptible her sort of work was, and none
+longed more sincerely than she to produce good work, serious work....
+However, she knew she couldn't.
+
+'Will you do me a favour?' she coaxed.
+
+'What is it?' he said.
+
+'Oh! No! You must promise.'
+
+'Of course, if I can.'
+
+'Well, you can. I want to know what your next book's about. I won't
+breathe a word to a soul. But I would like you to tell me. I would like
+to feel that it was you that had told me. You can't imagine how keen I
+am.'
+
+'Ask me a little later,' he said. 'Will you?'
+
+'To-night?'
+
+She put her head on one side.
+
+And he replied audaciously: 'Yes.'
+
+'Very well,' she agreed. 'And I shan't forget. I shall hold you to your
+promise.'
+
+Just then two men passed the table, and one of them caught Geraldine's
+eye, and Geraldine bowed.
+
+'Well, Mr. Doxey,' she exclaimed. 'What ages since I saw you!'
+
+'Yes, isn't it?' said Mr. Doxey.
+
+They shook hands and talked a moment.
+
+'Let me introduce you to Mr. Henry Knight,' said Geraldine. 'Mr.
+Knight--Mr. Doxey, of the P.A.'
+
+'_Love in Babylon?_' murmured Mr. Doxey inquiringly. 'Very pleased to
+meet you, sir.'
+
+Henry was not favourably impressed by Mr. Doxey's personal appearance,
+which was attenuated and riggish. He wondered what 'P.A.' meant. Not
+till later in the evening did he learn that it stood for Press
+Association, and had no connection with Pleasant Sunday Afternoons. Mr.
+Doxey stated that he was going on to the Alhambra to 'do' the celebrated
+Toscato, the inventor of the new vanishing trick, who made his first
+public appearance in England at nine forty-five that night.
+
+'You didn't mind my introducing him to you? He's a decent little man in
+some ways,' said Geraldine humbly, when they were alone again.
+
+'Oh, of course not!' Henry assured her. 'By the way, what would you like
+to do to-night?'
+
+'I don't know,' she said. 'It's awfully late, isn't it? Time flies so
+when you're interested.'
+
+'It's a quarter to nine. What about the Alhambra?' he suggested.
+
+(He who had never been inside a theatre, not to mention a music-hall!)
+
+'Oh!' she burst out. 'I adore the Alhambra. What an instinct you have! I
+was just hoping you'd say the Alhambra!'
+
+They had Turkish coffee. He succeeded very well in pretending that he
+had been thoroughly accustomed all his life to the spectacle of women
+smoking--that, indeed, he was rather discomposed than otherwise when
+they did not smoke. He paid the bill, and the waiter brought him half a
+crown concealed on a plate in the folds of the receipt; it was the
+change out of a five-pound note.
+
+Being in a hansom with her, though only for two minutes, surpassed even
+the rapture of the restaurant. It was the quintessence of Life.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+A NOVELIST IN A BOX
+
+
+Perhaps it was just as well that the curtain was falling on the ballet
+when Henry and Geraldine took possession of their stalls in the superb
+Iberian auditorium of the Alhambra Theatre. The glimpse which Henry had
+of the _prima ballerina assoluta_ in her final pose and her costume, and
+of the hundred minor choregraphic artists, caused him to turn
+involuntarily to Geraldine to see whether she was not shocked. She,
+however, seemed to be keeping her nerve fairly well; so he smothered up
+his consternation in a series of short, dry coughs, and bought a
+programme. He said to himself bravely: 'I'm in for it, and I may as well
+go through with it.' The next item, while it puzzled, reassured him. The
+stage showed a restaurant, with a large screen on one side. A lady
+entered, chattered at an incredible rate in Italian, and disappeared
+behind the screen, where she knocked a chair over and rang for the
+waiter. Then the waiter entered and disappeared behind the screen,
+chattering at an incredible rate in Italian. The waiter reappeared and
+made his exit, and then a gentleman appeared, and disappeared behind the
+screen, chattering at an incredible rate in Italian. Kissing was heard
+behind the screen. Instantly the waiter served a dinner, chattering
+always behind the screen with his customers at an incredible rate in
+Italian. Then another gentleman appeared, and no sooner had he
+disappeared behind the screen, chattering at an incredible rate in
+Italian, than a policeman appeared, and he too, chattering at an
+incredible rate in Italian, disappeared behind the screen. A fearsome
+altercation was now developing behind the screen in the tongue of Dante,
+and from time to time one or other of the characters--the lady, the
+policeman, the first or second gentleman, the waiter--came from cover
+into view of the audience, and harangued the rest at an incredible rate
+in Italian. Then a disaster happened behind the screen: a table was
+upset, to an accompaniment of yells; and the curtain fell rapidly, amid
+loud applause, to rise again with equal rapidity on the spectacle of a
+bowing and smiling little man in ordinary evening dress.
+
+This singular and enigmatic drama disconcerted Henry.
+
+'What is it?' he whispered.
+
+'Pauletti,' said Geraldine, rather surprised at the question.
+
+He gathered from her tone that Pauletti was a personage of some
+importance, and, consulting the programme, read: 'Pauletti, the
+world-renowned quick-change artiste.' Then he figuratively kicked
+himself, like a man kicks himself figuratively in bed when he wakes up
+in the middle of the night and sees the point of what has hitherto
+appeared to be rather less than a joke.
+
+'He's very good,' said Henry, as the excellence of Pauletti became more
+and more clear to him.
+
+'He gets a hundred a week,' said Geraldine.
+
+When Pauletti had performed two other violent dramas, and dressed and
+undressed himself thirty-nine times in twenty minutes, he gave way to
+his fellow-countryman Toscato. Toscato began gently with a little
+prestidigitation, picking five-pound notes out of the air, and
+simplicities of that kind. He then borrowed a handkerchief, produced an
+orange out of the handkerchief, a vegetable-marrow out of the orange, a
+gibus hat out of the vegetable-marrow, a live sucking-pig out of the
+gibus hat, five hundred yards of coloured paper out of the sucking-pig,
+a Union-jack twelve feet by ten out of the bunch of paper, and a
+wardrobe with real doors and full of ladies' dresses out of the
+Union-jack. Lastly, a beautiful young girl stepped forth from the
+wardrobe.
+
+'_I never saw anything like it!_' Henry gasped, very truthfully. He had
+a momentary fancy that the devil was in this extraordinary defiance of
+natural laws.
+
+'Yes,' Geraldine admitted. 'It's not bad, is it?'
+
+As Toscato could speak no English, an Englishman now joined him and
+announced that Toscato would proceed to perform his latest and greatest
+illusion--namely, the unique vanishing trick--for the first time in
+England; also that Toscato extended a cordial invitation to members of
+the audience to come up on to the stage and do their acutest to pierce
+the mystery.
+
+'Come along,' said a voice in Henry's ear, 'I'm going.' It was Mr.
+Doxey's.
+
+'Oh, no, thanks!' Henry replied hastily.
+
+'Nothing to be afraid of,' said Mr. Doxey, shrugging his shoulders with
+an air which Henry judged slightly patronizing.
+
+'Oh yes, do go,' Geraldine urged. 'It will be such fun.'
+
+He hated to go, but there was no alternative, and so he went, stumbling
+after Mr. Doxey up the step-ladder which had been placed against the
+footlights for the ascending of people who prided themselves on being
+acute. There were seven such persons on the stage, not counting himself,
+but Henry honestly thought that the eyes of the entire audience were
+directed upon him alone. The stage seemed very large, and he was cut off
+from the audience by a wall of blinding rays, and at first he could only
+distinguish vast vague semicircles and a floor of pale, featureless
+faces. However, he depended upon Mr. Doxey.
+
+But when the trick-box had been brought on to the stage--it was a sort
+of a sentry-box raised on four legs--Henry soon began to recover his
+self-possession. He examined that box inside and out until he became
+thoroughly convinced that it was without guile. The jury of seven stood
+round the erection, and the English assistant stated that a sheet
+(produced) would be thrown over Toscato, who would then step into the
+box and shut the door. The door would then be closed for ten seconds,
+whereupon it would be opened and the beautiful young girl would step out
+of the box, while Toscato would magically appear in another part of the
+house.
+
+At this point Henry stooped to give a last glance under the box.
+Immediately Toscato held him with a fiery eye, as though enraged, and,
+going up to him, took eight court cards from Henry's sleeve, a lady's
+garter from his waistcoat pocket, and a Bath-bun out of his mouth. The
+audience received this professional joke in excellent part, and, indeed,
+roared its amusement. Henry blushed, would have given all the money he
+had on him--some ninety pounds--to be back in the stalls, and felt a hot
+desire to explain to everyone that the cards, the Bath-bun, and
+especially the garter, had not really been in his possession at all.
+That part of the episode over, the trick ought to have gone forward, but
+Toscato's Italian temper was effervescing, and he insisted by signs
+that one of the jury should actually get into the box bodily, and so
+satisfy the community that the box was a box _et præterea nilil_. The
+English assistant pointed to Henry, and Henry, to save argument,
+reluctantly entered the box. Toscato shut the door. Henry was in the
+dark, and quite mechanically he extended his hands and felt the sides of
+the box. His fingers touched a projection in a corner, and he heard a
+clicking sound. Then he was aware of Toscato shaking the door of the
+box, frantically and more frantically, and of the noise of distant
+multitudinous laughter.
+
+'Don't hold the door,' whispered a voice.
+
+'I'm not doing so,' Henry whispered in reply.
+
+The box trembled.
+
+'I say, old chap, don't hold the door. They want to get on with the
+trick.' This time it was Mr. Doxey who addressed him in persuasive
+tones.
+
+'Don't I tell you I'm not holding the door, you silly fool!' retorted
+Henry, nettled.
+
+The box trembled anew and more dangerously. The distant laughter grew
+immense and formidable.
+
+'Carry it off,' said a third voice, 'and get him out in the wings.'
+
+The box underwent an earthquake; it rocked; Henry was thrown with
+excessive violence from side to side; the sound of the laughter receded.
+
+Happily, the box had no roof; it was laid with all tenderness on its
+flank, and the tenant crawled out of it into the midst of an interested
+crowd consisting of Toscato, some stage-managers, several
+scene-shifters, and many ballerinas. His natural good-temper reasserted
+itself at once, and he received apologies in the spirit in which they
+were offered, while Toscato set the box to rights. Henry was returning
+to the stage in order to escape from the ballerinas, whose proximity
+disturbed and frightened him, but he had scarcely shown his face to the
+house before he was, as it were, beaten back by a terrific wave of
+jubilant cheers. The great vanishing trick was brilliantly accomplished
+without his presence on the boards, and an official guided him through
+various passages back to the floor of the house. Nobody seemed to
+observe him as he sat down beside Geraldine.
+
+'Of course it was all part of the show, that business,' he heard a man
+remark loudly some distance behind him.
+
+He much enjoyed explaining the whole thing to Geraldine. Now that it was
+over, he felt rather proud, rather triumphant. He did not know that he
+was very excited, but he observed that Geraldine was excited.
+
+
+'You needn't think you are going to escape from telling me all about
+your new book, because you aren't,' said Geraldine prettily.
+
+They were supping at a restaurant of the discreet sort, divided into
+many compartments, and situated, with a charming symbolism, at the back
+of St. George's, Hanover Square. Geraldine had chosen it. They did not
+need food, but they needed their own unadulterated society.
+
+'I'm only too pleased to tell you,' Henry replied. 'You're about the
+only person that I would tell. It's like this. You must imagine a youth
+growing up to manhood, and wanting to be a great artist. I don't mean a
+painter. I mean a--an actor. Yes, a very great actor. Shakspere's
+tragedies, you know, and all that.'
+
+She nodded earnestly.
+
+'What's his name?' she inquired.
+
+Henry gazed at her. 'His name's Gerald,' he said, and she flushed.
+'Well, at sixteen this youth is considerably over six feet in height,
+and still growing. At eighteen his figure has begun to excite remark in
+the streets. At nineteen he has a severe attack of scarlet fever, and
+while ill he grows still more, in bed, like people do, you know. And at
+twenty he is six feet eight inches high.'
+
+'A giant, in fact.'
+
+'Just so. But he doesn't want to be a giant He wants to be an actor, a
+great actor. Nobody will look at him, except to stare. The idea of his
+going on the stage is laughed at. He scarcely dare walk out in the
+streets because children follow him. But he _is_ a great actor, all the
+same, in spirit. He's got the artistic temperament, and he can't be a
+clerk. He can only be one thing, and that one thing is made impossible
+by his height. He falls in love with a girl. She rather likes him, but
+naturally the idea of marrying a giant doesn't appeal to her. So that's
+off, too. And he's got no resources, and he's gradually starving in a
+garret. See the tragedy?'
+
+She nodded, reflective, sympathetically silent.
+
+Henry continued: 'Well, he's starving. He doesn't know what to do. He
+isn't quite tall enough to be a show-giant--they have to be over seven
+feet--otherwise he might at any rate try the music-hall stage. Then the
+manager of a West End restaurant catches sight of him one day, and
+offers him a place as doorkeeper at a pound a week and tips. He refuses
+it indignantly. But after a week or two more of hunger he changes his
+mind and accepts. And this man who has the soul and the brains of a
+great artist is reduced to taking sixpences for opening cab-doors.'
+
+'Does it end there?'
+
+'No. It's a sad story, I'm afraid. He dies one night in the snow outside
+the restaurant, while the rich noodles are gorging themselves inside to
+the music of a band. Consumption.'
+
+'It's the most original story I ever heard in all my life,' said
+Geraldine enthusiastically.
+
+'Do you think so?'
+
+'I do, honestly. What are you going to call it--if I may ask?'
+
+'Call it?' He hesitated a second. '_A Question of Cubits_,' he said.
+
+'You are simply wonderful at titles,' she observed. 'Thank you. Thank
+you so much.'
+
+'No one else knows,' he finished.
+
+
+When he had seen her safely to Chenies Street, and was travelling to
+Dawes Road in a cab, he felt perfectly happy. The story had come to him
+almost by itself. It had been coming all the evening, even while he was
+in the box, even while he was lost in admiration of Geraldine. It had
+cost him nothing. He knew he could write it with perfect ease. And
+Geraldine admired it! It was the most original story she had ever heard
+in all her life! He himself thought it extremely original, too. He saw
+now how foolish and premature had been his fears for the future. Of
+course he had studied human nature. Of course he had been through the
+mill, and practised style. Had he not won the prize for composition at
+the age of twelve? And was there not the tangible evidence of his essays
+for the Polytechnic, not to mention his continual work for Sir George?
+
+He crept upstairs to his bedroom joyous, jaunty, exultant.
+
+'Is that you, Henry?' It was Aunt Annie's inquiry.
+
+'Yes,' he answered, safely within his room.
+
+'How late you are! It's half-past twelve and more.'
+
+'I got lost,' he explained to her.
+
+But he could not explain to himself what instinct had forced him to
+conceal from his adoring relatives the fact that he had bought a suit of
+dress-clothes, put them on, and sallied forth in them to spend an
+evening with a young lady.
+
+Just as he was dropping off to sleep and beauteous visions, he sprang up
+with a start, and, lighting a candle, descended to the dining-room.
+There he stood on a chair, reached for the blue jar on the bookcase,
+extracted the two eggs, and carried them upstairs. He opened his window
+and threw the eggs into the middle of Dawes Road, but several houses
+lower down; they fell with a soft _plup_, and scattered.
+
+Thus ended the miraculous evening.
+
+
+The next day he was prostrate with one of his very worst dyspeptic
+visitations. The Knight pew at Munster Park Chapel was empty at both
+services, and Henry learnt from loving lips that he must expect to be
+ill if he persisted in working so hard. He meekly acknowledged the
+justice of the rebuke.
+
+On Monday morning at half-past eight, before he had appeared at
+breakfast, there came a telegram, which Aunt Annie opened. It had been
+despatched from Paris on the previous evening, and it ran:
+'_Congratulations on the box trick. Worth half a dozen books with the
+dear simple public A sincere admirer._' This telegram puzzled everybody,
+including Henry; though perhaps it puzzled Henry a little less than the
+ladies. When Aunt Annie suggested that it had been wrongly addressed, he
+agreed that no other explanation was possible, and Sarah took it back to
+the post-office.
+
+He departed to business. At all the newspaper-shops, at all the
+bookstalls, he saw the placards of morning newspapers with lines
+conceived thus:
+
+
+     AMUSING INCIDENT AT THE ALHAMBRA.
+     A NOVELIST'S ADVENTURE.
+     VANISHING AUTHOR AT A MUSIC-HALL.
+     A NOVELIST IN A BOX.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+HIS JACK-HORNERISM
+
+
+That autumn the Chancelleries of Europe happened to be rather less
+egotistic than usual, and the English and American publics, seeing no
+war-cloud on the horizon, were enabled to give the whole of their
+attention to the balloon sent up into the sky by Mr. Onions Winter. They
+stared to some purpose. There are some books which succeed before they
+are published, and the commercial travellers of Mr. Onions Winter
+reported unhesitatingly that _A Question of Cubits_ was such a book. The
+libraries and the booksellers were alike graciously interested in the
+rumour of its advent. It was universally considered a 'safe' novel; it
+was the sort of novel that the honest provincial bookseller reads
+himself for his own pleasure and recommends to his customers with a
+peculiar and special smile of sincerity as being not only 'good,' but
+'_really_ good.' People mentioned it with casual anticipatory remarks
+who had never previously been known to mention any novel later than
+_John Halifax Gentleman_.
+
+This and other similar pleasing phenomena were, of course, due in part
+to the mercantile sagacity of Mr. Onions Winter. For during a
+considerable period the Anglo-Saxon race was not permitted to forget for
+a single day that at a given moment the balloon would burst and rain
+down copies of _A Question of Cubits_ upon a thirsty earth. _A Question
+of Cubits_ became the universal question, the question of questions,
+transcending in its insistence the liver question, the soap question,
+the Encyclopædia question, the whisky question, the cigarette question,
+the patent food question, the bicycle tyre question, and even the
+formidable uric acid question. Another powerful factor in the case was
+undoubtedly the lengthy paragraph concerning Henry's adventure at the
+Alhambra. That paragraph, having crystallized itself into a fixed form
+under the title 'A Novelist in a Box,' had started on a journey round
+the press of the entire world, and was making a pace which would have
+left Jules Verne's hero out of sight in twenty-four hours. No editor
+could deny his hospitality to it. From the New York dailies it travelled
+viâ the _Chicago Inter-Ocean_ to the _Montreal Star_, and thence back
+again with the rapidity of light by way of the _Boston Transcript_, the
+_Philadelphia Ledger_, and the _Washington Post_, down to the _New
+Orleans Picayune_. Another day, and it was in the _San Francisco Call_,
+and soon afterwards it had reached _La Prensa_ at Buenos Ayres. It then
+disappeared for a period amid the Pacific Isles, and was next heard of
+in the _Sydney Bulletin_, the _Brisbane Courier_ and the _Melbourne
+Argus_. A moment, and it blazed in the _North China Herald_, and was
+shooting across India through the columns of the Calcutta _Englishman_
+and the _Allahabad Pioneer_. It arrived in Paris as fresh as a new pin,
+and gained acceptance by the Paris edition of the _New York Herald_,
+which had printed it two months before and forgotten it, as a brand-new
+item of the most luscious personal gossip. Thence, later, it had a
+smooth passage to London, and was seen everywhere with a new
+frontispiece consisting of the words: 'Our readers may remember.' Mr.
+Onions Winter reckoned that it had been worth at least five hundred
+pounds to him.
+
+But there was something that counted more than the paragraph, and more
+than Mr. Onions Winter's mercantile sagacity, in the immense preliminary
+noise and rattle of _A Question of Cubits_: to wit, the genuine and
+ever-increasing vogue of _Love in Babylon_, and the beautiful hopes of
+future joy which it aroused in the myriad breast of Henry's public.
+_Love in Babylon_ had falsified the expert prediction of Mark Snyder,
+and had reached seventy-five thousand in Great Britain alone. What
+figure it reached in America no man could tell. The average citizen and
+his wife and daughter were truly enchanted by _Love in Babylon_, and
+since the state of being enchanted is one of almost ecstatic felicity,
+they were extremely anxious that Henry in a second work should repeat
+the operation upon them at the earliest possible instant.
+
+The effect of the whole business upon Henry was what might have been
+expected. He was a modest young man, but there are two kinds of modesty,
+which may be called the internal and the external, and Henry excelled
+more in the former than in the latter. While never free from a secret
+and profound amazement that people could really care for his stuff (an
+infallible symptom of authentic modesty), Henry gradually lost the
+pristine virginity of his early diffidence. His demeanour grew confident
+and bold. His glance said: 'I know exactly who I am, and let no one
+think otherwise.' His self-esteem as a celebrity, stimulated and
+fattened by a tremendous daily diet of press-cuttings, and letters from
+feminine admirers all over the vastest of empires, was certainly in no
+immediate danger of inanition. Nor did the fact that he was still
+outside the rings known as literary circles injure that self-esteem in
+the slightest degree; by a curious trick of nature it performed the same
+function as the press-cuttings and the correspondence. Mark Snyder said:
+'Keep yourself to yourself. Don't be interviewed. Don't do anything
+except write. If publishers or editors approach you, refer them to me.'
+This suited Henry. He liked to think that he was in the hands of Mark
+Snyder, as an athlete in the hands of his trainer. He liked to think
+that he was alone with his leviathan public; and he could find a sort of
+mild, proud pleasure in meeting every advance with a frigid, courteous
+refusal. It tickled his fancy that he, who had shaken a couple of
+continents or so with one little book; and had written another and a
+better one with the ease and assurance of a novelist born, should be
+willing to remain a shorthand clerk earning three guineas a week. (He
+preferred now to regard himself as a common shorthand clerk, not as
+private secretary to a knight: the piquancy of the situation was thereby
+intensified.) And as the day of publication of _A Question of Cubits_
+came nearer and nearer, he more and more resembled a little Jack Horner
+sitting in his private corner, and pulling out the plums of fame, and
+soliloquizing, 'What a curious, interesting, strange, uncanny, original
+boy am I!'
+
+Then one morning he received a telegram from Mark Snyder requesting his
+immediate presence at Kenilworth Mansions.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+HE JUSTIFIES HIS FATHER
+
+
+He went at once to Kenilworth Mansions, but he went against his will.
+And the reason of his disinclination was that he scarcely desired to
+encounter Geraldine. It was an ordeal for him to encounter Geraldine.
+The events which had led to this surprising condition of affairs were as
+follows:
+
+Henry was one of those men--and there exist, perhaps, more of them than
+may be imagined--who are capable of plunging off the roof of a house,
+and then reconsidering the enterprise and turning back. With Henry it
+was never too late for discretion. He would stop and think at the most
+extraordinary moments. Thirty-six hours after the roseate evening at the
+Louvre and the Alhambra, just when he ought to have been laying a
+scheme for meeting Geraldine at once by sheer accident, Henry was coldly
+remarking to himself: 'Let me see exactly where I am. Let me survey the
+position.' He liked Geraldine, but now it was with a sober liking, a
+liking which is not too excited to listen to Reason. And Reason said,
+after the position had been duly surveyed: 'I have nothing against this
+charming lady, and much in her favour. Nevertheless, there need be no
+hurry.' Geraldine wrote to thank Henry for the most enjoyable evening
+she had ever spent in her life, and Henry found the letter too effusive.
+When they next saw each other, Henry meant to keep strictly private the
+advice which he had accepted from Reason; but Geraldine knew all about
+it within the first ten seconds, and Henry knew that she knew.
+Politeness reigned, and the situation was felt to be difficult.
+Geraldine intended to be sisterly, but succeeded only in being
+resentful, and thus precipitated too soon the second stage of the
+entanglement, the stage in which a man, after seeing everything in a
+woman, sees nothing in her; this second stage is usually of the
+briefest, but circumstances may render it permanent. Then Geraldine
+wrote again, and asked Henry to tea at the flat in Chenies Street on a
+Saturday afternoon. Henry went, and found the flat closed. He expected
+to receive a note of bewitching, cajoling, feminine apology, but he did
+not receive it. They met again, always at Kenilworth Mansions, and in an
+interview full of pain at the start and full of insincerity at the
+finish Henry learnt that Geraldine's invitation had been for Sunday, and
+not Saturday, that various people of much importance in her eyes had
+been asked to meet him, and that the company was deeply disappointed and
+the hostess humiliated. Henry was certain that she had written Saturday.
+Geraldine was certain that he had misread the day. He said nothing about
+confronting her with the letter itself, but he determined, in his
+masculine way, to do so. She gracefully pretended that the incident was
+closed, and amicably closed, but the silly little thing had got into her
+head the wild, inexcusable idea that Henry had stayed away from her 'at
+home' on purpose, and Henry felt this.
+
+He rushed to Dawes Road to find the letter, but the letter was
+undiscoverable; with the spiteful waywardness which often characterizes
+such letters, it had disappeared. So Henry thought it would be as well
+to leave the incident alone. Their cheery politeness to each other when
+they chanced to meet was affecting to witness. As for Henry, he had
+always suspected in Geraldine the existence of some element, some
+quality, some factor, which was beyond his comprehension, and now his
+suspicions were confirmed.
+
+He fell into a habit of saying, in his inmost heart: 'Women!'
+
+This meant that he had learnt all that was knowable about them, and that
+they were all alike, and that--the third division of the meaning was
+somewhat vague.
+
+Just as he was ascending with the beautiful flunkey in the Kenilworth
+lift, a middle-aged and magnificently-dressed woman hastened into the
+marble hall from the street, and, seeing the lift in the act of
+vanishing with its precious burden, gave a slight scream and then a
+laugh. The beautiful flunkey permitted himself a derisive gesture, such
+as one male may make to another, and sped the lift more quickly upwards.
+
+'Who's she?' Henry demanded.
+
+'_I_ don't know, sir,' said the flunkey. 'But you'll hear her
+ting-tinging at the bell in half a second. There!' he added in
+triumphant disgust, as the lift-bell rang impatiently. 'There's some
+people,' he remarked, 'as thinks a lift can go up and down at once.'
+
+Geraldine with a few bright and pleasant remarks ushered Henry directly
+into the presence of Mark Snyder. Her companion was not in the office.
+
+'Well,' Mr. Snyder expansively and gaily welcomed him, 'come and sit
+down, my young friend.'
+
+'Anything wrong?' Henry asked.
+
+'No,' said Mark. 'But I've postponed publication of the _Q. C._ for a
+month.'
+
+In his letters Mr. Snyder always referred to _A Question of Cubits_ as
+the _Q. C._
+
+'What on earth for?' exclaimed Henry.
+
+He was not pleased. In strict truth, no one of his innumerable admirers
+was more keenly anxious for the appearance of that book than Henry
+himself. His appetite for notoriety and boom grew by what it fed on. He
+expected something colossal, and he expected it soon.
+
+'Both in England and America,' said Snyder.
+
+'But why?'
+
+'Serial rights,' said Snyder impressively. 'I told you some time since I
+might have a surprise for you, and I've got one. I fancied I might sell
+the serial rights in England to Macalistairs, at my own price, but they
+thought the end was too sad. However, I've done business in New York
+with _Gordon's Weekly_. They'll issue the _Q. C._ in four instalments.
+It was really settled last week, but I had to arrange with Spring
+Onions. They've paid cash. I made 'em. How much d'you think?'
+
+'I don't know,' Henry said expectantly.
+
+'Guess,' Mark Snyder commanded him.
+
+But Henry would not guess, and Snyder rang the bell for Geraldine.
+
+'Miss Foster,' he addressed the puzzling creature in a casual tone, 'did
+you draw that cheque for Mr. Knight?'
+
+'Yes, Mr. Snyder.'
+
+'Bring it me, please.'
+
+And she respectfully brought in a cheque, which Mr. Snyder signed.
+
+'There!' said he, handing it to Henry. 'What do you think of that?'
+
+It was a cheque for one thousand and eighty pounds. Gordon and
+Brothers, the greatest publishing firm of the United States, had paid
+six thousand dollars for the right to publish serially _A Question of
+Cubits_, and Mark Snyder's well-earned commission on the transaction
+amounted to six hundred dollars.
+
+'Things are looking up,' Henry stammered, feebly facetious.
+
+'It's nearly a record price,' said Snyder complacently. 'But you're a
+sort of a record man. And when they believe in a thing over there, they
+aren't afraid of making money talk and say so.'
+
+'Nay, nay!' thought Henry. 'This is too much! This beats everything!
+Either I shall wake up soon or I shall find myself in a lunatic asylum.'
+He was curiously reminded of the conjuring performance at the Alhambra.
+
+He said:
+
+'Thanks awfully, I'm sure!'
+
+A large grandiose notion swept over him that he had a great mission in
+the world.
+
+'That's all I have to say to you,' said Mark Snyder pawkily.
+
+Henry wanted to breathe instantly the ampler ether of the street, but
+on his way out he found Geraldine in rapid converse with the middle-aged
+and magnificently-dressed woman who thought that a lift could go up and
+down at once. They became silent.
+
+'_Good_-morning, Miss Foster,' said Henry hurriedly.
+
+Then a pause occurred, very brief but uncomfortable, and the stranger
+glanced in the direction of the window.
+
+'Let me introduce you to Mrs. Ashton Portway,' said Geraldine. 'Mrs.
+Portway, Mr. Knight.'
+
+Mrs. Portway bent forward her head, showed her teeth, smiled, laughed,
+and finally sniggered.
+
+'So glad to make your acquaintance, Mr. Knight!' she burst out loudly
+and uncontrollably, as though Geraldine's magic formula had loosened a
+valve capable of withstanding enormous strains. Then she smiled,
+laughed, and sniggered: not because she imagined that she had achieved
+humour, but because that was her way of making herself agreeable. If
+anybody had told her that she could not open her mouth without
+sniggering, she would have indignantly disbelieved the statement.
+Nevertheless it was true. When she said the weather was changeable, she
+sniggered; when she hoped you were quite well, she sniggered; and if
+circumstances had required her to say that she was sorry to hear of the
+death of your mother, she would have sniggered.
+
+Henry, however, unaccustomed to the phenomena accompanying her speech,
+mistook her at first for a woman determined to be witty at any cost.
+
+'I'm glad to meet you,' he said, and laughed as if to insinuate that
+that speech also was funny.
+
+'I was desolated, simply desolated, not to see you at Miss Foster's "at
+home,"' Mrs. Ashton Portway was presently sniggering. 'Now, will you
+come to one of my Wednesdays? They begin in November. First and third. I
+always try to get interesting people, people who have done something.'
+
+'Of course I shall be delighted,' Henry agreed. He was in a mood to
+scatter largesse among the crowd.
+
+'That's so good of you,' said Mrs. Ashton Portway, apparently overcome
+by the merry jest. 'Now remember, I shall hold you to your promise. I
+shall write and remind you. I know you great men.'
+
+When Henry reached the staircase he discovered her card in his hand. He
+could not have explained how it came there. Without the portals of
+Kenilworth Mansions a pair of fine horses were protesting against the
+bearing-rein, and throwing spume across the street.
+
+He walked straight up to the Louvre, and there lunched to the sound of
+wild Hungarian music. It was nearly three o'clock when he returned to
+his seat at Powells.
+
+'The governor's pretty nearly breaking up the happy home,' Foxall
+alarmingly greeted him in the inquiry office.
+
+'Oh!' said Henry with a very passable imitation of guilelessness.
+'What's amiss?'
+
+'He rang for you just after you went out at a quarter-past twelve.' Here
+Foxall glanced mischievously at the clock. 'He had his lunch sent in,
+and he's been raving ever since.'
+
+'What did you tell him?'
+
+'I told him you'd gone to lunch.'
+
+'Did he say anything?'
+
+'He asked whether you'd gone to Brighton for lunch. Krikey! He nearly
+sacked _me_! You know it's his golfing afternoon.'
+
+'So it is. I'd forgotten,' Henry observed calmly.
+
+Then he removed his hat and gloves, found his note-book and pencil, and
+strode forward to joust with the knight.
+
+'Did you want to dictate letters, Sir George?' he asked, opening Sir
+George's door.
+
+The knight was taken aback.
+
+'Where have you been,' the famous solicitor demanded, 'since the middle
+of the morning?'
+
+'I had some urgent private business to attend to,' said Henry. 'And I've
+been to lunch. I went out at a quarter-past twelve.'
+
+'And it's now three o'clock. Why didn't you tell me you were going out?'
+
+'Because you were engaged, Sir George.'
+
+'Listen to me,' said Sir George. 'You've been getting above yourself
+lately, my friend. And I won't have it. Understand, I will not have it.
+The rules of this office apply just as much to you as to anyone.'
+
+'I'm sorry,' Henry put in coldly, 'if I've put you to any
+inconvenience.'
+
+'Sorry be d----d, sir!' exclaimed Sir George.
+
+'Where on earth do you go for your lunch?'
+
+'That concerns no one but me, Sir George,' was the reply.
+
+He would have given a five-pound note to know that Foxall and the entire
+staff were listening behind the door.
+
+'You are an insolent puppy,' Sir George stated.
+
+'If you think so, Sir George,' said Henry, 'I resign my position here.'
+
+'And a fool!' the knight added.
+
+
+'And did you say anything about the thousand pounds?' Aunt Annie asked,
+when, in the evening domesticity of Dawes Road, Henry recounted the
+doings of that day so full of emotions.
+
+'Not I!' Henry replied. 'Not a word!'
+
+'You did quite right, my dear!' said Aunt Annie. 'A pretty thing, that
+you can't go out for a few minutes!'
+
+'Yes, isn't it?' said Henry.
+
+'Whatever will Sir George do without you, though?' his mother wondered.
+
+And later, after he had displayed for her inspection the cheque for a
+thousand and eighty pounds, the old lady cried, with moist eyes:
+
+'My darling, your poor father might well insist on having you called
+Shakspere! And to think that I didn't want it! To think that I didn't
+want it!'
+
+'Mark my words!' said Aunt Annie. 'Sir George will ask you to stay on.'
+
+And Aunt Annie was not deceived.
+
+'I hope you've come to your senses,' the lawyer began early the next
+morning, not unkindly, but rather with an intention obviously pacific.
+'Literature, or whatever you call it, may be all very well, but you
+won't get another place like this in a hurry. There's many an admitted
+solicitor earns less than you, young man.'
+
+'Thanks very much, Sir George,' Henry answered. 'But I think, on the
+whole, I had better leave.'
+
+'As you wish,' said Sir George, hurt.
+
+'Still,' Henry proceeded, 'I hope our relations will remain pleasant. I
+hope I may continue to employ you.'
+
+'Continue to employ me?' Sir George gasped.
+
+'Yes,' said Henry. 'I got you to invest some moneys for me some time
+ago. I have another thousand now that I want a sound security for.'
+
+It was one of those rare flashes of his--rare, but blindingly brilliant.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+PRESS AND PUBLIC
+
+
+At length arrived the eve of the consummation of Mr. Onions Winter's
+mercantile labours. Forty thousand copies of _A Question of Cubits_ (No.
+8 of the Satin Library) had been printed, and already, twenty-four hours
+before they were to shine in booksellers' shops and on the counters of
+libraries, every copy had been sold to the trade and a second edition
+was in the press. Thus, it was certain that one immortal soul per
+thousand of the entire British race would read Henry's story. In
+literature, when nine hundred and ninety-nine souls ignore you, but the
+thousandth buys your work, or at least borrows it--that is called
+enormous popularity. Henry retired to bed in Dawes Road that night sure
+of his enormous popularity. But he did not dream of the devoted army of
+forty thousand admirers. He dreamt of the reviews, some of which he knew
+were to appear on the day of publication itself. A hundred copies of _A
+Question of Cubits_ had been sent out for review, and in his dreams he
+saw a hundred highly-educated men, who had given their lives to the
+study of fiction, bending anxiously over the tome and seeking with
+conscientious care the precise phrases in which most accurately to
+express their expert appreciation of it. He dreamt much of the reviewer
+of the _Daily Tribune_, his favourite morning paper, whom he pictured as
+a man of forty-five or so, with gold-rimmed spectacles and an air of
+generous enthusiasm. He hoped great things from the article in the
+_Daily Tribune_ (which, by a strange accident, had completely ignored
+_Love in Babylon_), and when he arose in the morning (he had been lying
+awake a long time waiting to hear the scamper of the newsboy on the
+steps) he discovered that his hopes were happily realized. The _Daily
+Tribune_ had given nearly a column of praise to _A Question of Cubits_,
+had quoted some choice extracts, had drawn special attention to the
+wonderful originality of the plot, and asserted that the story was an
+advance, 'if an advance were possible,' on the author's previous book.
+His mother and Aunt Annie consumed the review at breakfast with an
+excellent appetite, and lauded the insight of the critic.
+
+What had happened at the offices of the _Daily Tribune_ was this. At the
+very moment when Henry was dreaming of its reviewer--namely, half-past
+eleven p.m.--its editor was gesticulating and shouting at the end of a
+speaking-tube:
+
+'Haven't had proof of that review of a book called _A Question of
+Cubits_, or some such idiotic title! Send it down at once, instantly. Do
+you hear? What? Nonsense!'
+
+The editor sprang away from the tube, and dashed into the middle of a
+vast mass of papers on his desk, turning them all over, first in heaps,
+then singly. He then sprang in succession to various side-tables and
+served their contents in the same manner.
+
+'I tell you I sent it up myself before dinner,' he roared into the tube.
+'It's Mr. Clackmannan's "copy"--you know that peculiar paper he writes
+on. Just look about. Oh, conf----!'
+
+Then the editor rang a bell.
+
+'Send Mr. Heeky to me, quick!' he commanded the messenger-boy.
+
+'I'm just finishing that leaderette,' began Mr. Heeley, when he obeyed
+the summons. Mr. Heeley was a young man who had published a book of
+verse.
+
+'Never mind the leaderette,' said the editor. 'Run across to the other
+shop yourself, and see if they've got a copy of _A Question of
+Cubits_--yes, that's it, _A Question of Cubits_--and do me fifteen
+inches on it at once. I've lost Clackmannan's "copy."' (The 'other shop'
+was a wing occupied by a separate journal belonging to the proprietors
+of the _Tribune_.)
+
+'What, that thing!' exclaimed Mr. Heeley. 'Won't it do to-morrow? You
+know I hate messing my hands with that sort of piffle.'
+
+'No, it won't do to-morrow. I met Onions Winter at dinner on Saturday
+night, and I told him I'd review it on the day of publication. And when
+I promise a thing I promise it. Cut, my son! And I say'--the editor
+recalled Mr. Heeley, who was gloomily departing--'We're under no
+obligations to anyone. Write what you think, but, all the same, no
+antics, no spleen. You've got to learn yet that that isn't our
+speciality. You're not on the _Whitehall_ now.'
+
+'Oh, all right, chief--all right!' Mr. Heeley concurred.
+
+Five minutes later Mr. Heeley entered what he called his private
+boudoir, bearing a satinesque volume.
+
+'Here, boys,' he cried to two other young men who were already there,
+smoking clay pipes--'here's a lark! The chief wants fifteen inches on
+this charming and pathetic art-work as quick as you can. And no antics,
+he says. Here, Jack, here's fifty pages for you'--Mr. Heeley ripped the
+beautiful inoffensive volume ruthlessly in pieces--and here's fifty for
+you, Clementina. Tell me your parts of the plot I'll deal with the first
+fifty my noble self.'
+
+Presently, after laughter, snipping out of pages with scissors, and some
+unseemly language, Mr. Heeley began to write.
+
+'Oh, he's shot up to six foot eight!' exclaimed Jack, interrupting the
+scribe.
+
+'Snow!' observed the bearded man styled Clementina. 'He dies in the
+snow. Listen.' He read a passage from Henry's final scene, ending with
+'His spirit had passed.' 'Chuck me the scissors, Jack.'
+
+Mr. Heeley paused, looked up, and then drew his pen through what he had
+written.
+
+'I say, boys,'he almost whispered, 'I'll praise it, eh? I'll take it
+seriously. It'll be simply delicious.'
+
+'What about the chief?'
+
+'Oh, the chief won't notice it! It'll be just for us three, and a few at
+the club.'
+
+Then there was hard scribbling, and pasting of extracts into blank
+spaces, and more laughter.
+
+'"If an advance were possible,"' Clementina read, over Mr. Heeley's
+shoulder. 'You'll give the show away, you fool!'
+
+'No, I shan't, Clemmy, my boy,' said Mr. Heeley judicially. 'They'll
+stand simply anything. I bet you what you like Onions Winter quotes that
+all over the place.'
+
+And he handed the last sheet of the review to a messenger, and ran off
+to the editorial room to report that instructions had been executed.
+Jack and Clementina relighted their pipes with select bits of _A
+Question of Cubits_, and threw the remaining débris of the volume into
+the waste-paper basket. The hour was twenty minutes past midnight....
+
+The great majority of the reviews were exceedingly favourable, and even
+where praise was diluted with blame, the blame was administered with
+respect, as a dentist might respectfully pain a prince in pulling his
+tooth out. The public had voted for Henry, and the press, organ of
+public opinion, displayed a wise discretion. The daring freshness of
+Henry's plot, his inventive power, his skill in 'creating atmosphere,'
+his gift for pathos, his unfailing wholesomeness, and his knack in the
+management of narrative, were noted and eulogized in dozens of articles.
+Nearly every reviewer prophesied brilliant success for him; several
+admitted frankly that his equipment revealed genius of the first rank. A
+mere handful of papers scorned him. Prominent among this handful was the
+_Whitehall Gazette_. The distinguished mouthpiece of the superior
+classes dealt with _A Question of Cubits_ at the foot of a column, in a
+brief paragraph headed 'Our Worst Fears realized.' The paragraph, which
+was nothing but a summary of the plot, concluded in these terms: 'So he
+expired, every inch of him, in the snow, a victim to the British
+Public's rapacious appetite for the sentimental.'
+
+The rudeness of the _Whitehall Gazette_, however, did nothing whatever
+to impair the wondrous vogue which Henry now began to enjoy. His first
+boom had been great, but it was a trifle compared to his second. The
+title of the new book became a catchword. When a little man was seen
+walking with a tall woman, people exclaimed: 'It's a question of
+cubits.' When the recruiting regulations of the British army were
+relaxed, people also exclaimed: 'It's a question of cubits.' During a
+famous royal procession, sightseers trying to see the sight over the
+heads of a crowd five deep shouted to each other all along the route:
+'It's a question of cubits.' Exceptionally tall men were nicknamed
+'Gerald' by their friends. Henry's Gerald, by the way, had died as
+doorkeeper at a restaurant called the Trianon. The Trianon was at once
+recognised as the Louvre, and the tall commissionaire at the Louvre
+thereby trebled his former renown. 'Not dead in the snow yet?' the wits
+of the West End would greet him on descending from their hansoms, and he
+would reply, infinitely gratified: 'No, sir. No snow, sir.' A
+music-hall star of no mean eminence sang a song with the refrain:
+
+
+     'You may think what you like,
+     You may say what you like,
+         It was simply a question of cubits.'
+
+
+The lyric related the history of a new suit of clothes that was worn by
+everyone except the person who had ordered it.
+
+Those benefactors of humanity, the leading advertisers, used 'A Question
+of Cubits' for their own exalted ends. A firm of manufacturers of
+high-heeled shoes played with it for a month in various forms. The
+proprietors of an unrivalled cheap cigarette disbursed thousands of
+pounds in order to familiarize the public with certain facts. As thus:
+'A Question of Cubits. Every hour of every day we sell as many
+cigarettes as, if placed on end one on the top of the other, would make
+a column as lofty as the Eiffel Tower. Owing to the fact that cigarettes
+are not once mentioned in _A Question of Cubits_, we regret to say that
+the author has not authorized us to assert that he was thinking of our
+cigarettes when he wrote Chapter VII. of that popular novel.'
+
+Editors and publishers cried in vain for Henry. They could get from him
+neither interviews, short stories, nor novels. They could only get
+polite references to Mark Snyder. And Mark Snyder had made his
+unalterable plans for the exploitation of this most wonderful racehorse
+that he had ever trained for the Fame Stakes. The supply of chatty
+paragraphs concerning the hero and the book of the day would have
+utterly failed had not Mr. Onions Winter courageously come to the rescue
+and allowed himself to be interviewed. And even then respectable
+journals were reduced to this sort of paragraph: 'Apropos of Mr.
+Knight's phenomenal book, it may not be generally known what the exact
+measure of a cubit is. There have been three different cubits--the
+Scriptural, the Roman, and the English. Of these, the first-named,' etc.
+
+So the thing ran on.
+
+And at the back of it all, supporting it all, was the steady and
+prodigious sale of the book, the genuine enthusiasm for it of the
+average sensible, healthy-minded woman and man.
+
+Finally, the information leaked out that Macalistairs had made august
+and successful overtures for the reception of Henry into their fold.
+Sir Hugh Macalistair, the head of the firm, was (at that time) the only
+publisher who had ever been knighted. And the history of Macalistairs
+was the history of all that was greatest and purest in English
+literature during the nineteenth century. Without Macalistairs, English
+literature since Scott would have been nowhere. Henry was to write a
+long novel in due course, and Macalistairs were to have the world's
+rights of the book, and were to use it as a serial in their venerable
+and lusty _Magazine_, and to pay Henry, on delivery of the manuscript,
+eight thousand pounds, of which six thousand was to count as in advance
+of royalties on the book.
+
+Mr. Onions Winter was very angry at what he termed an ungrateful
+desertion. The unfortunate man died a year or two later of appendicitis,
+and his last words were that he, and he alone, had 'discovered' Henry.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+PLAYING THE NEW GAME
+
+
+When Henry had seceded from Powells, and had begun to devote several
+dignified hours a day to the excogitation of a theme for his new novel,
+and the triumph of _A Question of Cubits_ was at its height, he thought
+that there ought to be some change in his secret self to correspond with
+the change in his circumstances. But he could perceive none, except,
+perhaps, that now and then he was visited by the feeling that he had a
+great mission in the world. That feeling, however, came rarely, and, for
+the most part, he existed in a state of not being quite able to
+comprehend exactly how and why his stories roused the enthusiasm of an
+immense public.
+
+In essentials he remained the same Henry, and the sameness of his simple
+self was never more apparent to him than when he got out of a cab one
+foggy Wednesday night in November, and rang at the Grecian portico of
+Mrs. Ashton Portway's house in Lowndes Square. A crimson cloth covered
+the footpath. This was his first entry into the truly great world, and
+though he was perfectly aware that as a lion he could not easily be
+surpassed in no matter what menagerie, his nervousness and timidity were
+so acute as to be painful; they annoyed him, in fact. When, in the wide
+hall, a servant respectfully but firmly closed the door after him, thus
+cutting off a possible retreat to the homely society of the cabman, he
+became resigned, careless, reckless, desperate, as who should say, 'Now
+I _have_ done it!' And as at the Louvre, so at Mrs. Ashton Portway's,
+his outer garments were taken forcibly from him, and a ticket given to
+him in exchange. The ticket startled him, especially as he saw no notice
+on the walls that the management would not be responsible for articles
+not deposited in the cloakroom. Nobody inquired about his identity, and
+without further ritual he was asked to ascend towards regions whence
+came the faint sound of music. At the top of the stairs a young and
+handsome man, faultless alike in costume and in manners, suavely
+accosted him.
+
+'What name, sir?'
+
+'Knight,' said Henry gruffly. The young man thought that Henry was on
+the point of losing his temper from some cause or causes unknown,
+whereas Henry was merely timid.
+
+Then the music ceased, and was succeeded by violent chatter; the young
+man threw open a door, and announced in loud clear tones, which Henry
+deemed ridiculously loud and ridiculously clear:
+
+'MR. KNIGHT!'
+
+Henry saw a vast apartment full of women's shoulders and black patches
+of masculinity; the violent chatter died into a profound silence; every
+face was turned towards him. He nearly fell down dead on the doormat,
+and then, remembering that life was after all sweet, he plunged into the
+room as into the sea.
+
+When he came up breathless and spluttering, Mrs. Ashton Portway (in
+black and silver) was introducing him to her husband, Mr. Ashton
+Portway, known to a small circle of readers as Raymond Quick, the author
+of several mild novels issued at his own expense. Mr. Portway was rich
+in money and in his wife; he had inherited the money, and his literary
+instincts had discovered the wife in a publisher's daughter. The union
+had not been blessed with children, which was fortunate, since Mrs.
+Portway was left free to devote the whole of her time to the
+encouragement of literary talent in the most unliterary of cities.
+
+Henry rather liked Mr. Ashton Portway, whose small black eyes seemed to
+say: 'That's all right, my friend. I share your ideas fully. When you
+want a quiet whisky, come to me.'
+
+'And what have you been doing this dark day?' Mrs. Ashton Portway began,
+with her snigger.
+
+'Well,' said Henry, 'I dropped into the National Gallery this afternoon,
+but really it was so----'
+
+'The National Gallery?' exclaimed Mrs. Ashton Portway swiftly. 'I must
+introduce you to Miss Marchrose, the author of that charming hand-book
+to _Pictures in London_. Miss Marchrose,' she called out, urging Henry
+towards a corner of the room, 'this is Mr. Knight.' She sniggered on the
+name. 'He's just dropped into the National Gallery.'
+
+Then Mrs. Ashton Portway sailed off to receive other guests, and Henry
+was alone with Miss Marchrose in a nook between a cabinet and a
+phonograph. Many eyes were upon them. Miss Marchrose, a woman of thirty,
+with a thin face and an amorphous body draped in two shades of olive,
+was obviously flattered.
+
+'Be frank, and admit you've never heard of me,' she said.
+
+'Oh yes, I have,' he lied.
+
+'Do you often go to the National Gallery, Mr. Knight?'
+
+'Not as often as I ought.'
+
+Pause.
+
+Several observant women began to think that Miss Marchrose was not
+making the best of Henry--that, indeed, she had proved unworthy of an
+unmerited honour.
+
+'I sometimes think----' Miss Marchrose essayed.
+
+But a young lady got up in the middle of the room, and with
+extraordinary self-command and presence of mind began to recite
+Wordsworth's 'The Brothers.' She continued to recite and recite until
+she had finished it, and then sat down amid universal joy.
+
+'Matthew Arnold said that was the greatest poem of the century,'
+remarked a man near the phonograph.
+
+'You'll pardon me,' said Miss Marchrose, turning to him. 'If you are
+thinking of Matthew Arnold's introduction to the selected poems, you'll
+and----'
+
+'My dear,' said Mrs. Ashton Portway, suddenly looming up opposite the
+reciter, 'what a memory you have!'
+
+'Was it so long, then?' murmured a tall man with spectacles and a light
+wavy beard.
+
+'I shall send you back to Paris, Mr. Dolbiac,' said Mrs. Ashton Portway,
+'if you are too witty.' The hostess smiled and sniggered, but it was
+generally felt that Mr. Dolbiac's remark had not been in the best taste.
+
+For a few moments Henry was alone and uncared for, and he examined his
+surroundings. His first conclusion was that there was not a pretty woman
+in the room, and his second, that this fact had not escaped the notice
+of several other men who were hanging about in corners. Then Mrs. Ashton
+Portway, having accomplished the task of receiving, beckoned him, and
+intimated to him that, being a lion and the king of beasts, he must
+roar. 'I think everyone here has done something,' she said as she took
+him round and forced him to roar. His roaring was a miserable fiasco,
+but most people mistook it for the latest fashion in roaring, and were
+impressed.
+
+'Now you must take someone down to get something to eat,' she apprised
+him, when he had growled out soft nothings to poetesses, paragraphists,
+publicists, positivists, penny-a-liners, and other pale persons. 'Whom
+shall it be?--Ashton! What have you done?'
+
+The phonograph had been advertised to give a reproduction of Ternina in
+the Liebestod from _Tristan und Isolde_, but instead it broke into the
+'Washington Post,' and the room, braced to a great occasion, was
+horrified. Mrs. Portway, abandoning Henry, ran to silence the disastrous
+consequence of her husband's clumsiness. Henry, perhaps impelled by an
+instinctive longing, gazed absently through the open door into the
+passage, and there, with two other girls on a settee, he perceived
+Geraldine! She smiled, rose, and came towards him. She looked
+disconcertingly pretty; she was always at her best in the evening; and
+she had such eyes to gaze on him.
+
+'You here!' she murmured.
+
+Ordinary words, but they were enveloped in layers of feeling, as a
+child's simple gift may be wrapped in lovely tinted tissue-papers!
+
+'She's the finest woman in the place,' he thought decisively. And he
+said to her: 'Will you come down and have something to eat?'
+
+'I can talk to _her_,' he reflected with satisfaction, as the faultless
+young man handed them desired sandwiches in the supper-room. What he
+meant was that she could talk to him; but men often make this mistake.
+
+Before he had eaten half a sandwich, the period of time between that
+night and the night at the Louvre had been absolutely blotted out. He
+did not know why. He could think of no explanation. It merely was so.
+
+She told him she had sold a sensational serial for a pound a thousand
+words.
+
+'Not a bad price--for me,' she added.
+
+'Not half enough!' he exclaimed ardently.
+
+Her eyes moistened. He thought what a shame it was that a creature like
+her should be compelled to earn even a portion of her livelihood by
+typewriting for Mark Snyder. The faultless young man unostentatiously
+poured more wine into their glasses. No other guests happened to be in
+the room....
+
+
+'Ah, you're here!' It was the hostess, sniggering.
+
+'You told me to bring someone down,' said Henry, who had no intention of
+being outfaced now.
+
+'We're just coming up,' Geraldine added.
+
+'That's right!' said Mrs. Ashton Portway. 'A lot of people have gone,
+and now that we shall be a little bit more intimate, I want to try that
+new game. I don't think it's ever been played in London anywhere yet. I
+saw it in the _New York Herald_. Of course, nobody who isn't just a
+little clever could play at it.'
+
+'Oh yes!' Geraldine smiled. 'You mean "Characters." I remember you told
+me about it.'
+
+And Mrs. Ashton Portway said that she did mean 'Characters.'
+
+In the drawing-room she explained that in playing the game of
+'Characters' you chose a subject for discussion, and then each player
+secretly thought of a character in fiction, and spoke in the discussion
+as he imagined that character would have spoken. At the end of the game
+you tried to guess the characters chosen.
+
+'I think it ought to be classical fiction only,' she said.
+
+Sundry guests declined to play, on the ground that they lacked the
+needful brilliance. Henry declined utterly, but he had the wit not to
+give his reasons. It was he who suggested that the non-players should
+form a jury. At last seven players were recruited, including Mr. Ashton
+Portway, Miss Marchrose, Geraldine, Mr. Dolbiac, and three others. Mrs.
+Ashton Portway sat down by Henry as a jurywoman.
+
+'And now what are you going to discuss?' said she.
+
+No one could find a topic.
+
+'Let us discuss love,' Miss Marchrose ventured.
+
+'Yes,' said Mr. Dolbiac, 'let's. There's nothing like leather.'
+
+So the seven in the centre of the room assumed attitudes suitable for
+the discussion of love.
+
+'Have you all chosen your characters?' asked the hostess.
+
+'We have,' replied the seven.
+
+'Then begin.'
+
+'Don't all speak at once,' said Mr. Dolbiac, after a pause.
+
+'Who is that chap?' Henry whispered.
+
+'Mr. Dolbiac? He's a sculptor from Paris. Quite English, I believe,
+except for his grandmother. Intensely clever.' Mrs. Ashton Portway
+distilled these facts into Henry's ear, and then turned to the silent
+seven. 'It _is_ rather difficult, isn't it?' she breathed encouragingly.
+
+'Love is not for such as me,' said Mr. Dolbiac solemnly. Then he looked
+at his hostess, and called out in an undertone: 'I've begun.'
+
+'The question,' said Miss Marchrose, clearing her throat, 'is, not what
+love is not, but what it is.'
+
+'You must kindly stand up,' said Mr. Dolbiac. 'I can't hear.'
+
+Miss Marchrose glanced at Mrs. Ashton Portway, and Mrs. Ashton Portway
+told Mr. Dolbiac that he was on no account to be silly.
+
+Then Mr. Ashton Portway and Geraldine both began to speak at once, and
+then insisted on being silent at once, and in the end Mr. Ashton Portway
+was induced to say something about Dulcinea.
+
+'He's chosen Don Quixote,' his wife informed Henry behind her hand.
+'It's his favourite novel.'
+
+The discussion proceeded under difficulties, for no one was loquacious
+except Mr. Dolbiac, and all Mr. Dolbiac's utterances were staccato and
+senseless. The game had had several narrow escapes of extinction, when
+Miss Marchrose galvanized it by means of a long and serious monologue
+treating of the sorts of man with whom a self-respecting woman will
+never fall in love. There appeared to be about a hundred and
+thirty-three sorts of that man.
+
+'There is one sort of man with whom no woman, self-respecting or
+otherwise, will fall in love,' said Mr. Dolbiac, 'and that is the sort
+of man she can't kiss without having to stand on the mantelpiece.
+Alas!'--he hid his face in his handkerchief--'I am that sort.'
+
+'Without having to stand on the mantelpiece?' Mrs. Ashton Portway
+repeated. 'What can he mean? Mr. Dolbiac, you aren't playing the game.'
+
+'Yes, I am, gracious lady,' he contradicted her.
+
+'Well, what character are you, then?' demanded Miss Marchrose,
+irritated by his grotesque pendant to her oration.
+
+'I'm Gerald in _A Question of Cubits_.'
+
+The company felt extremely awkward. Henry blushed.
+
+'I said classical fiction,' Mrs. Ashton Portway corrected Mr. Dolbiac
+stiffly. 'Of course I don't mean to insinuate that it isn't----' She
+turned to Henry.
+
+'Oh! did you?' observed Dolbiac calmly. 'So sorry. I knew it was a silly
+and nincompoopish book, but I thought you wouldn't mind so long as----'
+
+'_Mr._ Dolbiac!'
+
+That particular Wednesday of Mrs. Ashton Portway's came to an end in
+hurried confusion. Mr. Dolbiac professed to be entirely ignorant of
+Henry's identity, and went out into the night. Henry assured his hostess
+that really it was nothing, except a good joke. But everyone felt that
+the less said, the better. Of such creases in the web of social life
+Time is the best smoother.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+HE LEARNS MORE ABOUT WOMEN
+
+
+When Henry had rendered up his ticket and recovered his garments, he
+found Geraldine in the hall, and a servant asking her if she wanted a
+four-wheeler or a hansom. He was not quite sure whether she had
+descended before him or after him: things were rather misty.
+
+'I am going your way,' he said. 'Can't I see you home?'
+
+He was going her way: the idea of going her way had occurred to him
+suddenly as a beautiful idea.
+
+Instead of replying, she looked at him. She looked at him sadly out of
+the white shawl which enveloped her head and her golden hair, and
+nodded.
+
+There was a four-wheeler at the kerb, and they entered it and sat down
+side by side in that restricted compartment, and the fat old driver,
+with his red face popping up out of a barrel consisting of scores of
+overcoats and aprons, drove off. It was very foggy, but one could see
+the lamp-posts.
+
+Geraldine coughed.
+
+'These fogs are simply awful, aren't they?' he remarked.
+
+She made no answer.
+
+'It isn't often they begin as early as this,' he proceeded; 'I suppose
+it means a bad winter.'
+
+But she made no answer.
+
+And then a sort of throb communicated itself to him, and then another,
+and then he heard a smothered sound. This magnificent creature, this
+independent, experienced, strong-minded, superior, dazzling creature was
+crying--was, indeed, sobbing. And cabs are so small, and she was so
+close. Pleasure may be so keen as to be agonizing: Henry discovered this
+profound truth in that moment. In that moment he learnt more about women
+than he had learnt during the whole of his previous life. He knew that
+her sobbing had some connection with _A Question of Cubits_, but he
+could not exactly determine the connection.
+
+'What's the matter?' the blundering fool inquired nervously. 'You
+aren't well.'
+
+'I'm so--so ashamed,' she stammered out, when she had patted her eyes
+with a fragment of lace.
+
+'Why? What of?'
+
+'I introduced her to you. It's my fault.'
+
+'But what's your fault?'
+
+'This horrible thing that happened.'
+
+She sobbed again frequently.
+
+'Oh, that was nothing!' said Henry kindly. 'You mustn't think about it.'
+
+'You don't know how I feel,' she managed to tell him.
+
+'I wish you'd forget it,' he urged her. 'He didn't mean to be rude.'
+
+'It isn't so much his rudeness,' she wept. 'It's--anyone saying a
+thing--like that--about your book. You don't know how I feel.'
+
+'Oh, come!' Henry enjoined her. 'What's my book, anyhow?'
+
+'It's yours,' she said, and began to cry gently, resignedly, femininely.
+
+It had grown dark. The cab had plunged into an opaque sea of blackest
+fog. No sound could be heard save the footfalls of the horse, which was
+now walking very slowly. They were cut off absolutely from the rest of
+the universe. There was no such thing as society, the state, traditions,
+etiquette; nothing existed, ever had existed, or ever would exist,
+except themselves, twain, in that lost four-wheeler.
+
+Henry had a box of matches in his overcoat pocket. He struck one,
+illuminating their tiny chamber, and he saw her face once more, as
+though after long years. And there were little black marks round her
+eyes, due to her tears and the fog and the fragment of lace. And those
+little black marks appeared to him to be the most delicious, enchanting,
+and wonderful little black marks that the mind of man could possibly
+conceive. And there was an exquisite, timid, confiding, surrendering
+look in her eyes, which said: 'I'm only a weak, foolish, fanciful woman,
+and you are a big, strong, wise, great man; my one merit is that I know
+_how_ great, _how_ chivalrous, you are!' And mixed up with the timidity
+in that look there was something else--something that made him almost
+shudder. All this by the light of one match....
+
+Good-bye world! Good-bye mother! Good-bye Aunt Annie! Good-bye the
+natural course of events! Good-bye correctness, prudence, precedents!
+Good-bye all! Good-bye everything! He dropped the match and kissed her.
+
+And his knowledge of women was still further increased.
+
+Oh, the unique ecstasy of such propinquity!
+
+Eternity set in. And in eternity one does not light matches....
+
+
+The next exterior phenomenon was a blinding flash through the window of
+what, after all, was a cab. The door opened.
+
+'You'd better get out o' this,' said the cabman, surveying them by the
+ray of one of his own lamps.
+
+'Why?' asked Henry.
+
+'Why?' replied the cabman sourly. 'Look here, governor, do you know
+where we are?'
+
+'No,' said Henry.
+
+'No. And I'm jiggered if I do, either. You'd better take the other
+blessed lamp and ask. No, not me. I don't leave my horse. I ain't agoin'
+to lose my horse.'
+
+So Henry got out of the cab, and took a lamp and moved forward into
+nothingness, and found a railing and some steps, and after climbing the
+steps saw a star, which proved ultimately to be a light over a
+swing-door. He pushed open the swing-door, and was confronted by a
+footman.
+
+'Will you kindly tell me where I am? he asked the footman.
+
+'This is Marlborough House,' said the footman.
+
+'Oh, is it? Thanks,' said Henry.
+
+'Well,' ejaculated the cabman when Henry had luckily regained the
+vehicle. 'I suppose that ain't good enough for you! Buckingham Palace is
+your doss, I suppose.'
+
+They could now hear distant sounds, which indicated other vessels in
+distress.
+
+The cabman said he would make an effort to reach Charing Cross, by
+leading his horse and sticking to the kerb; but not an inch further than
+Charing Cross would he undertake to go.
+
+The passage over Trafalgar Square was so exciting that, when at length
+the aged cabman touched pavement--that is to say, when his horse had
+planted two forefeet firmly on the steps of the Golden Cross Hotel--he
+announced that that precise point would be the end of the voyage.
+
+'You go in there and sleep it off,' he advised his passengers. 'Chenies
+Street won't see much of you to-night. And make it five bob, governor.
+I've done my best.'
+
+'You must stop the night here,' said Henry in a low voice to Geraldine,
+before opening the doors of the hotel. 'And I,' he added quickly, 'will
+go to Morley's. It's round the corner, and so I can't lose my way.'
+
+'Yes, dear,' she acquiesced. 'I dare say that will be best.'
+
+'Your eyes are a little black with the fog,' he told her.
+
+'Are they?' she said, wiping them. 'Thanks for telling me.'
+
+And they entered.
+
+'Nasty night, sir,' the hall-porter greeted them.
+
+'Very,' said Henry. 'This lady wants a room. Have you one?'
+
+'Certainly, sir.'
+
+At the foot of the staircase they shook hands, and kissed in
+imagination.
+
+'Good-night,' he said, and she said the same.
+
+But when she had climbed three or four stairs, she gave a little start
+and returned to him, smiling, appealing.
+
+'I've only got a shilling or two,' she whispered. 'Can you lend me some
+money to pay the bill with?'
+
+He produced a sovereign. Since the last kiss in the cab, nothing had
+afforded him one hundredth part of the joy which he experienced in
+parting with that sovereign. The transfer of the coin, so natural, so
+right, so proper, seemed to set a seal on what had occurred, to make it
+real and effective. He wished to shower gold upon her.
+
+As, bathed in joy and bliss, he watched her up the stairs, a little,
+obscure compartment of his brain was thinking: 'If anyone had told me
+two hours ago that before midnight I should be engaged to be married to
+the finest woman I ever saw, I should have said they were off their
+chumps. Curious, I've never mentioned her at home since she called!
+Rather awkward!'
+
+
+He turned sharply and resolutely to go to Morley's, and collided with
+Mr. Dolbiac, who, strangely enough, was standing immediately behind him,
+and gazing up the stairs, too.
+
+'Ah, my bold buccaneer!' said Mr. Dolbiac familiarly. 'Digested those
+_marrons glacés_? I've fairly caught you out this time, haven't I?'
+
+Henry stared at him, startled, and blushed a deep crimson.
+
+'You don't remember me. You've forgotten me,' said Mr. Dolbiac.
+
+'It isn't Cousin Tom?' Henry guessed.
+
+'Oh, isn't it?' said Mr. Dolbiac. 'That's just what it is.'
+
+Henry shook his hand generously. 'I'm awfully glad to see you,' he
+began, and then, feeling that he must be a man of the world: 'Come and
+have a drink. Are you stopping here?'
+
+The episode of Mrs. Ashton Portway's was, then, simply one of Cousin
+Tom's jokes, and he accepted it as such without the least demur or
+ill-will.
+
+'It was you who sent that funny telegram, wasn't it?' he asked Cousin
+Tom.
+
+In the smoking-room Tom explained how he had grown a beard in obedience
+to the dictates of nature, and changed his name in obedience to the
+dictates of art. And Henry, for his part, explained sundry things about
+himself, and about Geraldine.
+
+The next morning, when Henry arrived at Dawes Road, decidedly late, Tom
+was already there. And more, he had already told the ladies, evidently
+in a highly-decorated narrative, of Henry's engagement! The situation
+for Henry was delicate in the extreme, but, anyhow, his mother and aunt
+had received the first shock. They knew the naked fact, and that was
+something. And of course Cousin Tom always made delicate situations: it
+was his privilege to do so. Cousin Tom's two aunts were delighted to see
+him again, and in a state so flourishing. He was asked no inconvenient
+questions, and he furnished no information. Bygones were bygones. Henry
+had never been told about the trifling incident of the ten pounds.
+
+'She's coming down to-night,' Henry said, addressing his mother, after
+the mid-day meal.
+
+'I'm very glad,' replied his mother.
+
+'We shall be most pleased to welcome her,' Aunt Annie said. 'Well,
+Tom----'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+SEPARATION
+
+
+Henry's astonishment at finding himself so suddenly betrothed to the
+finest woman in the world began to fade and perish in three days or so.
+As he looked into the past with that searching eye of his, he thought he
+could see that his relations with Geraldine had never ceased to develop
+since their commencement, even when they had not been precisely cordial
+and sincere. He remembered strange things that he had read about love in
+books, things which had previously struck him as being absurd, but which
+now became explanatory commentaries on the puzzling text of the episode
+in the cab. It was not long before he decided that the episode in the
+cab was almost a normal episode.
+
+He was very proud and happy, and full of sad superior pity for all
+young men who, through incorrect views concerning women, had neglected
+to plight themselves.
+
+He imagined that he was going to settle down and live for ever in a
+state of bliss with the finest woman in the world, rich, famous,
+honoured; and that life held for him no other experience, and especially
+no disconcerting, dismaying experience. But in this supposition he was
+mistaken.
+
+One afternoon he had escorted Tom to Chenies Street, in order that Tom
+might formally meet Geraldine. It was rather nervous work, having regard
+to Tom's share in the disaster at Lowndes Square; and the more so
+because Geraldine's visit to Dawes Road had not been a dazzling success.
+Geraldine in Dawes Road had somehow the air, the brazen air, of an
+orchid in a clump of violets; the violets, by their mere quality of
+being violets, rebuked the orchid, and the orchid could not have
+flourished for any extended period in that temperature. Still, Mrs.
+Knight and Aunt Annie said to Henry afterwards that Geraldine was very
+clever and nice; and Geraldine said to Henry afterwards that his mother
+and aunt were delightful old ladies. The ordeal for Geraldine was now
+quite a different one. Henry hoped for the best. It did not follow,
+because Geraldine had not roused the enthusiasm of Dawes Road, that she
+would leave Tom cold. In fact, Henry could not see how Tom could fail to
+be enchanted.
+
+A minor question which troubled Henry, as they ascended the stone stairs
+at Chenies Street, was this: Should he kiss Geraldine in front of Tom?
+He decided that it was not only his right, but his duty, to kiss her in
+the privacy of her own flat, with none but a relative present. 'Kiss her
+I will!' his thought ran. And kiss her he did. Nothing untoward
+occurred. 'Why, of course!' he reflected. 'What on earth was I worrying
+about?' He was conscious of glory. And he soon saw that Tom really was
+impressed by Geraldine. Tom's eyes said to him: 'You're not such a fool
+as you might have been.'
+
+Geraldine scolded Tom for his behaviour at Mrs. Ashton Portway's, and
+Tom replied in Tom's manner; and then, when they were all at ease, she
+turned to Henry.
+
+'My poor friend,' she said, 'I've got bad news.'
+
+She handed him a letter from her brother in Leicester, from which it
+appeared that the brother's two elder children were down with
+scarlatina, while the youngest, three days old, and the mother, were in
+a condition to cause a certain anxiety ... and could Geraldine come to
+the rescue?
+
+'Shall you go?' Henry asked.
+
+'Oh yes,' she said. 'I've arranged with Mr. Snyder, and wired Teddy that
+I'll arrive early to-morrow.'
+
+She spoke in an extremely matter-of-fact tone, as though there were no
+such things as love and ecstasy in the world, as though to indicate that
+in her opinion life was no joke, after all.
+
+'And what about me?' said Henry. He thought: 'My shrewd, capable girl
+has to sacrifice herself--and me--in order to look after incompetent
+persons who can't look after themselves!'
+
+'You'll be all right,' said she, still in the same tone.
+
+'Can't I run down and see you?' he suggested.
+
+She laughed briefly, as at a pleasantry, and so Henry laughed too.
+
+'With four sick people on my hands!' she exclaimed.
+
+'How long shall you be away?' he inquired.
+
+'My dear--can I tell?'
+
+'You'd better come back to Paris with me for a week or so, my son,' said
+Tom. 'I shall leave the day after to-morrow.'
+
+And now Henry laughed, as at a pleasantry. But, to his surprise,
+Geraldine said:
+
+'Yes, do. What a good idea! I should like you to enjoy yourself, and
+Paris is so jolly. You've been, haven't you, dearest?'
+
+'No,' Henry replied. 'I've never been abroad at all.'
+
+'_Never?_ Oh, that settles it. You must go.'
+
+Henry had neither the slightest desire nor the slightest intention to go
+to Paris. The idea of him being in Paris, of all places, while Geraldine
+was nursing the sick night and day, was not a pleasant one.
+
+'You really ought to go, you know,' Tom resumed. 'You, a novelist ...
+can't see too much! The monuments of Paris, the genius of the French
+nation! And there's notepaper and envelopes and stamps, just the same as
+in London. Letters posted in Paris before six o'clock will arrive in
+Leicester on the following afternoon. Am I not right, Miss Foster?'
+
+Geraldine smiled.
+
+'No,' said Henry. 'I'm not going to Paris--not me!'
+
+'But I wish it,' Geraldine remarked calmly.
+
+And he saw, amazed, that she did wish it. Pursuing his researches into
+the nature of women, he perceived vaguely that she would find pleasure
+in martyrizing herself in Leicester while he was gadding about Paris;
+and pleasure also in the thought of his uncomfortable thought of her
+martyrizing herself in Leicester while he was gadding about Paris.
+
+But he said to himself that he did not mean to yield to womanish
+whims--he, a man.
+
+'And my work?' he questioned lightly.
+
+'Your work will be all the better,' said Geraldine with a firm accent.
+
+And then it seemed to be borne in upon him that womanish whims needed
+delicate handling. And why not yield this once? It would please her. And
+he could have been firm had he chosen.
+
+Hence it was arranged.
+
+'I'm only going to please you,' he said to her when he was mournfully
+seeing her off at St. Pancras the next morning.
+
+'Yes, I know,' she answered, 'and it's sweet of you. But you want
+someone to make you move, dearest.'
+
+'Oh, do I?' he thought; 'do I?'
+
+His mother and Aunt Annie were politely surprised at the excursion. But
+they succeeded in conveying to him that they had decided to be prepared
+for anything now.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+COSETTE
+
+
+Tom and Henry put up at the Grand Hotel, Paris. The idea was Tom's. He
+decried the hotel, its clients and its reputation, but he said that it
+had one advantage: when you were at the Grand Hotel you knew where you
+were. Tom, it appeared, had a studio and bedroom up in Montmartre. He
+postponed visiting this abode, however, until the morrow, partly because
+it would not be prepared for him, and partly in order to give Henry the
+full advantage of his society. They sat on the terrace of the Café de la
+Paix, after a very late dinner, and drank bock, and watched the
+nocturnal life of the boulevard, and talked. Henry gathered--not from
+any direct statement, but by inference--that Tom must have acquired a
+position in the art world of Paris. Tom mentioned the Salon as if the
+Salon were his pocket, and stated casually that there was work of his in
+the Luxembourg. Strange that the cosmopolitan quality of Tom's
+reputation--if, in comparison with Henry's, it might be called a
+reputation at all--roused the author's envy! He, too, wished to be
+famous in France, and to be at home in two capitals. Tom retired at what
+he considered an early hour--namely, midnight--the oceanic part of the
+journey having saddened him. Before they separated he borrowed a
+sovereign from Henry, and this simple monetary transaction had the
+singular effect of reducing Henry's envy.
+
+The next morning Henry wished to begin a systematic course of the
+monuments of Paris and the artistic genius of the French nation. But Tom
+would not get up. At eleven o'clock Henry, armed with a map and the
+English talent for exploration, set forth alone to grasp the general
+outlines of the city, and came back successful at half-past one. At
+half-past two Tom was inclined to consider the question of getting up,
+and Henry strolled out again and lost himself between the Moulin Rouge
+and the Church of Sacré Coeur. It was turned four o'clock when he
+sighted the façade of the hotel, and by that time Tom had not only
+arisen, but departed, leaving a message that he should be back at six
+o'clock. So Henry wandered up and down the boulevard, from the Madeleine
+to Marguéry's Restaurant, had an automatic tea at the Express-Bar, and
+continued to wander up and down the boulevard.
+
+He felt that he could have wandered up and down the boulevard for ever.
+
+And then night fell; and all along the boulevard, high on seventh
+storeys and low as the street names, there flashed and flickered and
+winked, in red and yellow and a most voluptuous purple, electric
+invitations to drink inspiriting liqueurs and to go and amuse yourself
+in places where the last word of amusement was spoken. There was one
+name, a name almost revered by the average healthy Englishman, which
+wrote itself magically on the dark blue sky in yellow, then extinguished
+itself and wrote itself anew in red, and so on tirelessly: that name was
+'Folies-Bergère.' It gave birth to the most extraordinary sensations in
+Henry's breast. And other names, such as 'Casino de Paris,' 'Eldorado,'
+'Scala,' glittered, with their guiding arrows of light, from bronze
+columns full in the middle of the street. And what with these devices,
+and the splendid glowing windows of the shops, and the enlarged
+photographs of surpassingly beautiful women which hung in heavy frames
+from almost every lamp-post, and the jollity of the slowly-moving
+crowds, and the incredible illustrations displayed on the newspaper
+kiosks, and the moon creeping up the velvet sky, and the thousands of
+little tables at which the jolly crowds halted to drink liquids coloured
+like the rainbow--what with all that, and what with the curious gay
+feeling in the air, Henry felt that possibly Berlin, or Boston, or even
+Timbuctoo, might be a suitable and proper place for an engaged young
+man, but that decidedly Paris was not.
+
+At six o'clock there was no sign of Tom. He arrived at half-past seven,
+admitted that he was a little late, and said that a friend had given him
+tickets for the first performance of the new 'revue' at the
+Folies-Bergère, that night.
+
+
+'And now, since we are alone, we can talk,' said Cosette, adding, '_Mon
+petit._'
+
+'Yes,' Henry agreed.
+
+'Dolbiac has told me you are very rich--_une vogue épatante_.... One
+would not say it.... But how your ears are pretty!' Cosette glanced
+admiringly at the lobe of his left ear.
+
+('Anyhow,' Henry reflected, 'she would insist on me coming to Paris. I
+didn't want to come.')
+
+They were alone, and yet not alone. They occupied a 'loge' in the
+crammed, gorgeous, noisy Folies-Bergère. But it resembled a box in an
+English theatre less than an old-fashioned family pew at the Great Queen
+Street Wesleyan Chapel. It was divided from other boxes and from the
+stalls and from the jostling promenade by white partitions scarcely as
+high as a walking-stick. There were four enamelled chairs in it, and
+Henry and Cosette were seated on two of them; the other two were empty.
+Tom had led Henry like a sheep to the box, where they were evidently
+expected by two excessively stylish young women, whom Tom had introduced
+to the overcome Henry as Loulou and Cosette, two artistes of the Théâtre
+des Capucines. Loulou was short and fair and of a full habit, and spoke
+no English. Cosette was tall and slim and dark, and talked slowly, and
+with smiles, a language which was frequently a recognisable imitation of
+English. She had learnt it, she said, in Ireland, where she had been
+educated in a French convent. She had just finished a long engagement at
+the Capucines, and in a fortnight she was to commence at the Scala: this
+was an off-night for her. She protested a deep admiration for Tom.
+
+Cosette and Loulou and Tom had held several colloquies, in
+incomprehensible French that raced like a mill-stream over a weir, with
+acquaintances who accosted them on the promenade or in the stalls, and
+at length Tom and Loulou had left the 'loge' for a few minutes in order
+to accept the hospitality of friends in the great hall at the back of
+the auditorium. The new 'revue' seemed to be the very last thing that
+they were interested in.
+
+'Don't be afraid,' Tom, departing, had said to Henry. 'She won't eat
+you.'
+
+'You leave me to take care of myself,' Henry had replied, lifting his
+chin.
+
+Cosette transgressed the English code governing the externals of women
+in various particulars. And the principal result was to make the
+English code seem insular and antique. She had an extremely large white
+hat, with a very feathery feather in it, and some large white roses
+between the brim and her black hair. Her black hair was positively
+sable, and one single immense lock of it was drawn level across her
+forehead. With the large white hat she wore a low evening-dress,
+lace-covered, with loose sleeves to the elbow, and white gloves running
+up into the mystery of the sleeves. Round her neck was a tight string of
+pearls. The combination of the hat and the evening-dress startled Henry,
+but he saw in the theatre many other women similarly contemptuous of the
+English code, and came to the conclusion that, though queer and
+un-English, the French custom had its points. Cosette's complexion was
+even more audacious in its contempt of Henry's deepest English
+convictions. Her lips were most obviously painted, and her eyebrows had
+received some assistance, and once, in a manner absolutely ingenuous,
+she produced a little bag and gazed at herself in a little mirror, and
+patted her chin with a little puff, and then smiled happily at Henry.
+Yes, and Henry approved. He was forced to approve, forced to admit the
+artificial and decadent but indubitable charm of paint and powder. The
+contrast between Cosette's lips and her brilliant teeth was utterly
+bewitching.
+
+She was not beautiful. In facial looks, she was simply not in the same
+class with Geraldine. And as to intellect, also, Geraldine was an easy
+first.
+
+But in all other things, in the things that really mattered (such was
+the dim thought at the back of Henry's mind), she was to Geraldine what
+Geraldine was to Aunt Annie. Her gown was a miracle, her hat was
+another, and her coiffure a third. And when she removed a glove--her
+rings, and her finger-nails! And the glimpses of her shoes! She was so
+_finished_. And in the way of being frankly feminine, Geraldine might go
+to school to her. Geraldine had brains and did not hide them; Geraldine
+used the weapon of seriousness. But Cosette knew better than that.
+Cosette could surround you with a something, an emanation of all the
+woman in her, that was more efficient to enchant than the brains of a
+Georges Sand could have been.
+
+And Paris, or that part of the city which constitutes Paris for the
+average healthy Englishman, was an open book to this woman of
+twenty-four. Nothing was hid from her. Nothing startled her, nothing
+seemed unusual to her. Nothing shocked her except Henry's ignorance of
+all the most interesting things in the world.
+
+'Well, what do you think of a French "revue," my son?' asked Tom when he
+returned with Loulou.
+
+'Don't know,' said Henry, with his gibus tipped a little backward.
+'Haven't seen it. We've been talking. The music's a fearful din.' He
+felt nearly as Parisian as Tom looked.
+
+'_Tiens!_' Cosette twittered to Loulou, making a gesture towards Henry's
+ears. '_Regarde-moi ces oreilles. Sont jolies. Pas?_'
+
+And she brought her teeth together with a click that seemed to render
+somewhat doubtful Tom's assurance that she would not eat Henry.
+
+Soon afterwards Tom and Henry left the auditorium, and Henry parted from
+Cosette with mingled sensations of regret and relief. He might never see
+her again. Geraldine....
+
+But Tom did not emerge from the outer precincts of the vast music-hall
+without several more conversations with fellows-well-met, and when he
+and Henry reached the pavement, Cosette and Loulou happened to be just
+getting into a cab. Tom did not see them, but Henry and Cosette caught
+sight of each other. She beckoned to him.
+
+'You come and take lunch with me to-morrow? _Hein?_' she almost
+whispered in that ear of his.
+
+'_Avec plaisir_,' said Henry. He had studied French regularly for six
+years at school.
+
+'Rue de Bruxelles, No. 3,' she instructed him. 'Noon.'
+
+'I know it!' he exclaimed delightedly. He had, in fact, passed through
+the street during the day.
+
+No one had ever told him before that his ears were pretty.
+
+
+When, after parleying nervously with the concierge, he arrived at the
+second-floor of No. 3, Rue de Bruxelles, he heard violent high sounds of
+altercation through the door at which he was about to ring, and then the
+door opened, and a young woman, flushed and weeping, was sped out on to
+the landing, Cosette herself being the exterminator.
+
+'Ah, _mon ami_!' said Cosette, seeing him. 'Enter then.'
+
+She charmed him inwards and shut the door, breathing quickly.
+
+'It is my _domestique_, my servant, who steals me,' she explained. 'Come
+and sit down in the salon. I will tell you.'
+
+The salon was a little room about eight feet by ten, silkily furnished.
+Besides being the salon, it was clearly also the _salle à manger_, and
+when one person had sat down therein it was full. Cosette took Henry's
+hat and coat and umbrella and pressed him into a chair by the shoulders,
+and then gave him the full history of her unparalleled difficulties with
+the exterminated servant. She looked quite a different Cosette now from
+the Cosette of the previous evening. Her black hair was loose; her face
+pale, and her lips also a little pale; and she was draped from neck to
+feet in a crimson peignoir, very fluffy.
+
+'And now I must buy the lunch,' she said. 'I must go myself. Excuse me.'
+
+She disappeared into the adjoining room, the bedroom, and Henry could
+hear the _fracas_ of silk and stuff. 'What do you eat for lunch?' she
+cried out.
+
+'Anything,' Henry called in reply.
+
+'Oh! _Que les hommes sont bêtes!_' she murmured, her voice seemingly
+lost in the folds of a dress. 'One must choose. Say.'
+
+'Whatever you like,' said Henry.
+
+'Rumsteak? Say.'
+
+'Oh yes,' said Henry.
+
+She reappeared in a plain black frock, with a reticule in her hand, and
+at the same moment a fox-terrier wandered in from somewhere.
+
+'_Mimisse!_' she cried in ecstasy, snatching up the animal and kissing
+it. 'You want to go with your mamma? Yess. What do you think of my
+_fox_? She is real English. _Elle est si gentille avec sa mère! Ma
+Mimisse! Ma petite fille!_ My little girl! _Dites, mon ami_'--she
+abandoned the dog--'have you some money for our lunch? Five francs?'
+
+'That enough?' Henry asked, handing her the piece.
+
+'Thank you,' she said. '_Viens, Mimisse._'
+
+'You haven't put your hat on,' Henry informed her.
+
+'_Mais, mon pauvre ami_, is it that you take me for a duchess? I come
+from the _ouvriers_, me, the working peoples. I avow it. Never can I do
+my shops in a hat. I should blush.'
+
+And with a tremendous flutter, scamper, and chatter, Cosette and her
+_fox_ departed, leaving Henry solitary to guard the flat.
+
+He laughed to himself, at himself. 'Well,' he murmured, looking down
+into the court, 'I suppose----'
+
+Cosette came back with a tin of sardines, a piece of steak, some French
+beans, two cakes of the kind called 'nuns,' a bunch of grapes, and a
+segment of Brie cheese. She put on an apron, and went into the
+kitchenlet, and began to cook, giving Henry instructions the while how
+to lay the table and where to find the things. Then she brought him the
+coffee-mill full of coffee, and told him to grind it.
+
+The lunch seemed to be ready in about three minutes, and it was merely
+perfection. Such steak, such masterly handling of green vegetables, and
+such 'nuns!' And the wine!
+
+There were three at table, Mimisse being the third. Mimisse partook of
+everything except wine.
+
+'You see I am a woman _pot-au-feu_,' said Cosette, not without
+satisfaction, in response to his praises of the meal. He did not exactly
+know what a woman _pot-au-feu_ might be, but he agreed enthusiastically
+that she was that sort of woman.
+
+At the stage of coffee--Mimisse had a piece of sugar steeped in
+coffee--she produced cigarettes, and made him light his cigarette at
+hers, and put her elbows on the table and looked at his ears. She was
+still wearing the apron, which appeared to Henry to be an apron of
+ineffable grace.
+
+'So you are _fiancé, mon petit_? Eh?' she said.
+
+'Who told you?' Henry asked quickly. 'Tom?'
+
+She nodded; then sighed. He was instructed to describe Geraldine in
+detail. Cosette sighed once more.
+
+'Why do you sigh?' he demanded.
+
+'Who knows?' she answered. '_Dites!_ English ladies are cold? Like
+that?' She affected the supercilious gestures of Englishwomen whom she
+had seen in the streets and elsewhere. 'No?'
+
+'Perhaps,' Henry said.
+
+'Frenchwomen are better? Yes? _Dites-moi franchement._ You think?'
+
+'In some ways,' Henry agreed.
+
+'You like Frenchwomen more than those cold Englishwomen who have no
+_chic_?'
+
+'When I'm in Paris I do,' said Henry.
+
+'_Ah! Comme tous les Anglais!_'
+
+She rose, and just grazed his ear with her little finger. '_Va!_' she
+said.
+
+He felt that she was beyond anything in his previous experience.
+
+A little later she told him she had to go to the Scala to sign her
+contract, and she issued an order that he was to take Mimisse out for a
+little exercise, and return for her in half an hour, when she would be
+dressed. So Henry went forth with Mimisse at the end of a strap.
+
+In the Boulevard de Clichy who should accost him but Tom, whom he had
+left asleep as usual at the hotel!
+
+'What dog is that?' Tom asked.
+
+'Cosette's,' said Henry, unsuccessfully trying to assume a demeanour at
+once natural and tranquil.
+
+'My young friend,' said Tom, 'I perceive that it will be necessary to
+look after you. I was just going to my studio, but I will accompany you
+in your divagations.'
+
+They returned to the Rue de Bruxelles together. Cosette was dressed in
+all her afternoon splendour, for the undoing of theatrical managers.
+The rôle of woman _pot-au-feu_ was finished for that day.
+
+'I'm off to Monte Carlo to-morrow,' said Tom to her. 'I'm going to paint
+a portrait there. And Henry will come with me.'
+
+'To Monte Carlo?' Henry gasped.
+
+'To Monte Carlo.'
+
+'But----'
+
+'Do you suppose I'm going to leave you here?' Tom inquired. 'And you
+can't return to London yet.'
+
+'No,' said Cosette thoughtfully, 'not London.'
+
+
+They left her in the Boulevard de Strasbourg, and then Tom suggested a
+visit to the Luxembourg Gallery. It was true: a life-sized statue of
+Sappho, signed 'Dolbiac,' did in feet occupy a prominent place in the
+sculpture-room. Henry was impressed; so also was Tom, who explained to
+his young cousin all the beauties of the work.
+
+'What else is there to see here?' Henry asked, when the stream of
+explanations had slackened.
+
+'Oh, there's nothing much else,' said Tom dejectedly.
+
+They came away. This was the beginning and the end of Henry's studies
+in the monuments of Paris.
+
+At the hotel he found opportunity to be alone.
+
+He wished to know exactly where he stood, and which way he was looking.
+It was certain that the day had been unlike any other day in his career.
+
+'I suppose that's what they call Bohemia,' he exclaimed wistfully,
+solitary in his bedroom.
+
+And then later:
+
+'Jove! I've never written to Geraldine to-day!'
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+THE RAKE'S PROGRESS
+
+
+'_Faites vos jeux, messieurs_,' said the chief croupier of the table.
+
+Henry's fingers touched a solitary five-franc piece in his pocket,
+large, massive, seductive.
+
+Yes, he was at Monte Carlo. He could scarcely believe it, but it was so.
+Tom had brought him. The curious thing about Tom was that, though he
+lied frequently and casually, just as some men hitch their collars, his
+wildest statements had a way of being truthful. Thus, a work of his had
+in fact been purchased by the French Government and placed on exhibition
+in the Luxembourg. And thus he had in fact come to Monte Carlo to paint
+a portrait--the portrait of a Sicilian Countess, he said, and Henry
+believed, without actually having seen the alleged Countess--at a high
+price. There were more complexities in Tom's character than Henry could
+unravel. Henry had paid the entire bill at the Grand Hotel, had lent Tom
+a sovereign, another sovereign, and a five-pound note, and would
+certainly have been mulcted in Tom's fare on the expensive _train de
+luxe_ had he not sagaciously demanded money from Tom before entering the
+ticket-office. Without being told, Henry knew that money lent to Tom was
+money dropped down a grating in the street. During the long journey
+southwards Tom had confessed, with a fine appreciation of the fun, that
+he lived in Paris until his creditors made Paris disagreeable, and then
+went elsewhere, Rome or London, until other creditors made Rome or
+London disagreeable, and then he returned to Paris.
+
+Henry had received this remark in silence.
+
+As the train neared Monte Carlo--the hour was roseate and
+matutinal--Henry had observed Tom staring at the scenery through the
+window, his coffee untasted, and tears in his rapt eyes. 'What's up?'
+Henry had innocently inquired. Tom turned on him fiercely. 'Silly ass!'
+Tom growled with scathing contempt. 'Can't you feel how beautiful it all
+is?'
+
+And this remark, too, Henry had received in silence.
+
+'Do you reckon yourself a great artist?' Tom had asked, and Henry had
+laughed. 'No, I'm not joking,' Tom had insisted. 'Do you honestly reckon
+yourself a great artist? I reckon myself one. There's candour for you.
+Now tell me, frankly.' There was a wonderful and rare charm in Tom's
+manner as he uttered these words. 'I don't know,' Henry had replied.
+'Yes, you do,' Tom had insisted. 'Speak the truth. I won't let it go any
+further. Do you think yourself as big as George Eliot, for example?'
+Henry had hesitated, forced into sincerity by Tom's persuasive and
+serious tone. 'It's not a fair question,' Henry had said at length.
+Whereupon Tom, without the least warning, had burst into loud laughter:
+'My bold buccaneer, you take the cake. You always did. You always will.
+There is something about you that is colossal, immense, and
+magnificent.'
+
+And this third remark also Henry had received in silence.
+
+It was their second day at Monte Carlo, and Tom, after getting Henry's
+card of admission for him, had left him in the gaming-rooms, and gone
+off to the alleged Countess. The hour was only half-past eleven, and
+none of the roulette tables was crowded; two of the trente-et-quarante
+tables had not even begun to operate. For some minutes Henry watched a
+roulette table, fascinated by the munificent style of the croupiers in
+throwing five-franc pieces, louis, and bank-notes about the green cloth,
+and the neat twist of the thumb and finger with which the chief croupier
+spun the ball. There were thirty or forty persons round the table, all
+solemn and intent, and most of them noting the sequence of winning
+numbers on little cards. 'What fools!' thought Henry. 'They know the
+Casino people make a profit of two thousand a day. They know the chances
+are mathematically against them. And yet they expect to win!'
+
+It was just at this point in his meditations upon the spectacle of human
+foolishness that he felt the five-franc piece in his pocket. An idea
+crossed his mind that he would stake it, merely in order to be able to
+say that he had gambled at Monte Carlo. Absurd! How much more effective
+to assert that he had visited the tables and not gambled!... And then he
+knew that something within him more powerful than his common-sense
+would force him to stake that five-franc piece. He glanced furtively at
+the crowd to see whether anyone was observing him. No. Well, it having
+been decided to bet, the next question was, how to bet? Now, Henry had
+read a magazine article concerning the tables at Monte Carlo, and, being
+of a mathematical turn, had clearly grasped the principles of the game.
+He said to himself, with his characteristic caution: 'I'll wait till red
+wins four times running, and then I'll stake on the black.'
+
+('But surely,' remarked the logical superior person in him, 'you don't
+mean to argue that a spin of the ball is affected by the spins that have
+preceded it? You don't mean to argue that, because red wins four times,
+or forty times, running, black is any the more likely to win at the next
+spin?' 'You shut up!' retorted the human side of him crossly. 'I know
+all about that.')
+
+At last, after a considerable period of waiting, red won four times in
+succession. Henry felt hot and excited. He pulled the great coin out of
+his pocket, and dropped it in again, and then the croupier spun the ball
+and exhorted the company several times to make their games, and
+precisely as the croupier was saying sternly, _'Rien ne va plus_,'
+Henry took the coin again, and with a tremendous effort of will, leaning
+over an old man seated in front of him, pitched it into the meadow
+devoted to black stakes. He blushed; his hair tingled at the root; he
+was convinced that everybody round the table was looking at him with
+sardonic amusement.
+
+'_Quatre, noir, pair, et manque_,' cried the croupier.
+
+Black had won.
+
+Henry's heart was beating like a hammer. Even now he was afraid lest one
+of the scoundrels who, according to the magazine article, infested the
+rooms, might lean over his shoulder and snatch his lawful gains. He kept
+an eye lifting. The croupier threw a five-franc piece to join his own,
+and Henry, with elaborate calmness, picked both pieces up. His
+temperature fell; he breathed more easily. 'It's nothing, after all,' he
+thought. 'Of course, on that system I'm bound to win.'
+
+Soon afterwards the old man in front of him grunted and left, and Henry
+slipped into the vacant chair. In half an hour he had made twenty
+francs; his demeanour had hardened; he felt as though he had frequented
+Monte Carlo steadily for years; and what he did not know about the art
+and craft of roulette was apocryphal.
+
+'Place this for me,' said a feminine voice.
+
+He turned swiftly. It was Cosette's voice! There she stood, exquisitely
+and miraculously dressed, behind his chair, holding a note of the Bank
+of France in her gloved hand!
+
+'When did you come?' he asked loudly, in his extreme astonishment.
+
+'_Pstt!_' she smilingly admonished him for breaking the rule of the
+saloons. 'Place this for me.'
+
+It was a note for a thousand francs.
+
+'This?' he said.
+
+'Yes.'
+
+'But where?'
+
+'Choose,' she whispered. 'You are lucky. You will bring happiness.'
+
+He did not know what he was doing, so madly whirled his brain, and, as
+the black enclosure happened to be nearest to him, he dropped the note
+there. The croupier at the end of the table manoeuvred it with his
+rake, and called out to the centre: '_Billet de mille francs._' Then,
+when it was too late, Henry recollected that black had already turned
+up three times together. But in a moment black had won.
+
+'I can quite understand the fascination this game has for people,' Henry
+thought.
+
+'Leave them there,' said Cosette, pointing to the two notes for a
+thousand francs each. 'I like to follow the run.'
+
+Black won again.
+
+'Leave them there,' said Cosette, pointing to the four notes for a
+thousand francs each. 'I did say you would bring happiness.' They smiled
+at each other happily.
+
+Black won again.
+
+Cosette repeated her orders. Such a method of playing was entirely
+contrary to Henry's expert opinion. Nevertheless, black, in defiance of
+rules, continued to win. When sixteen thousand francs of paper lay
+before Henry, the croupier addressed him sharply, and he gathered, with
+Cosette's assistance, that the maximum stake was twelve thousand francs.
+
+'Put four thousand on the odd numbers,' said Cosette. 'Eh? You think?'
+
+'No,' said Henry. 'Evens.'
+
+And the number four turned up again.
+
+At a stroke he had won sixteen thousand francs, six hundred and forty
+pounds, for Cosette, and the total gains were one thousand two hundred
+and forty pounds.
+
+The spectators were at last interested in Henry's play. It was no longer
+an illusion on his part that people stared at him.
+
+'Say a number,' whispered Cosette. 'Shut the eyes and say a number.'
+
+'Twenty-four,' said Henry. She had told him it was her age.
+
+'_Bien! Voilà huit louis!_' she exclaimed, opening her purse of netted
+gold; and he took the eight coins and put them on number twenty-four.
+Eight notes for a thousand francs each remained on the even numbers. The
+other notes were in Henry's hip-pocket, a crushed mass.
+
+Twenty-four won. It was nothing but black that morning. '_Mais c'est
+épatant!_' murmured several on lookers anxiously.
+
+A croupier counted out innumerable notes, and sundry noble and glorious
+gold _plaques_ of a hundred francs each. Henry could not check the
+totals, but he knew vaguely that another three hundred pounds or so had
+accrued to him, on behalf of Cosette.
+
+'I fancy red now,' he said, sighing.
+
+And feeling a terrible habitué, he said to the croupier in French:
+'_Maximum. Rouge._'
+
+'_Maximum. Rouge_,' repeated the croupier.
+
+Instantly the red enclosure was covered with the stakes of a quantity of
+persons who had determined to partake of Henry's luck.
+
+And red won; it was the number fourteen.
+
+Henry was so absorbed that he did not observe a colloquy between two of
+the croupiers at the middle of the table. The bank was broken, and every
+soul in every room knew it in the fraction of a second.
+
+'Come,' said Cosette, as soon as Henry had received the winnings.
+'Come,' she repeated, pulling his sleeve nervously.
+
+'I've broken the bank at Monte Carlo!' he thought as they hurried out of
+the luxurious halls. 'I've broken the bank at Monte Carlo! I've broken
+the bank at Monte Carlo!'
+
+If he had succeeded to the imperial throne of China, he would have felt
+much the same as he felt then.
+
+Quite by chance he remembered the magazine article, and a statement
+therein that prudent people, when they had won a large sum, drove
+straight to Smith's Bank and banked it _coram publico_, so that
+scoundrels might be aware that assault with violence in the night hours
+would be futile.
+
+'If we lunch?' Cosette suggested, while Henry was getting his hat.
+
+'No, not yet,' he said importantly.
+
+At Smith's Bank he found that he had sixty-three thousand francs of
+hers.
+
+'You dear,' she murmured in ecstasy, and actually pressed a light kiss
+on his ear in the presence of the bank clerk! 'You let me keep the three
+thousand?' she pleaded, like a charming child.
+
+So he let her keep the three thousand. The sixty thousand was banked in
+her name.
+
+'You offer me a lunch?' she chirruped deliciously, in the street. 'I
+gave you a lunch. You give me one. It is why I am come to Monte Carlo,
+for that lunch.'
+
+They lunched at the Hôtel de Paris.
+
+
+He was intoxicated that afternoon, though not with the Heidsieck they
+had consumed. They sat out on the terrace. It was December, but like an
+English June. And the pride of life, and the beauty of the world and of
+women and of the costumes of women, informed and uplifted his soul. He
+thought neither of the past nor of the future, but simply and intensely
+of the present. He would not even ask himself why, really, Cosette had
+come to Monte Carlo. She said she had come with Loulou, because they
+both wanted to come; and Loulou was in bed with _migraine_; but as for
+Cosette, she never had the _migraine_, she was never ill. And then the
+sun touched the Italian hills, and the sea slept, and ... and ... what a
+planet, this earth! He could almost understand why Tom had wept between
+Cannes and Nice.
+
+It was arranged that the four should dine together that evening, if
+Loulou had improved and Tom was discoverable. Henry promised to discover
+him. Cosette announced that she must visit Loulou, and they parted for a
+few brief hours.
+
+'_Mon petit!_' she threw after him.
+
+To see that girl tripping along the terrace in the sunset was a sight!
+
+Henry went to the Hôtel des Anglais, but Tom had not been seen there.
+He strolled back to the Casino gardens. The gardeners were drawing
+suspended sheets over priceless blossoms. When that operation was
+finished, he yawned, and decided that he might as well go into the
+Casino for half an hour, just to watch the play.
+
+The atmosphere of the gay but unventilated rooms was heavy and noxious.
+
+He chose a different table to watch, a table far from the scene of his
+early triumph. In a few minutes he said that he might as well play, to
+pass the time. So he began to play, feeling like a giant among pigmies.
+He lost two hundred francs in five spins.
+
+'Steady, my friend!' he enjoined himself.
+
+Now, two hundred francs should be the merest trifle to a man who has won
+sixty-three thousand francs. Henry, however, had not won sixty-three
+thousand francs. On the other hand, it was precisely Henry who had paid
+sixty-five francs for lunch for two that day, and Henry who had lent Tom
+a hundred and seventy-five francs, and Henry who had paid Tom's hotel
+bill in Paris, and Henry who had left England with just fifty-five
+pounds--a sum which he had imagined to be royally ample for his needs on
+the Continent.
+
+He considered the situation.
+
+He had his return-ticket from Monte Carlo to Paris, and his
+return-ticket from Paris to London. He probably owed fifty francs at the
+hotel, and he possessed a note for a hundred francs, two notes for fifty
+francs, some French gold and silver, and some English silver.
+
+Continuing to play upon his faultless system, he lost another fifty
+francs.
+
+'I can ask her to lend me something. I won all that lot for her,' he
+said.
+
+'You know perfectly well you can't ask her to lend you something,' said
+an abstract reasoning power within him. 'It's just because you won all
+that lot for her that you can't. You'd be afraid lest she should think
+you were sponging on her. Can you imagine yourself asking her?'
+
+'Well, I can ask Tom,' he said.
+
+'Tom!' exclaimed the abstract reasoning power.
+
+'I can wire to Snyder,' he said.
+
+'That would look a bit thick,' replied the abstract reasoning power,
+'telegraphing for money--from Monte Carlo.'
+
+Henry took the note for a hundred francs, and put it on red, and went
+icy cold in the feet and hands, and swore a horrid oath.
+
+Black won.
+
+He had sworn, and he was a man of his word. He walked straight out of
+the Casino; but uncertainly, feebly, as a man who has received a
+staggering blow between the eyes, as a man who has been pitched into a
+mountain-pool in January, as a somnambulist who has wakened to find
+himself on the edge of a precipice.
+
+He paid his bill at the hotel, and asked the time of the next train to
+Paris. There was no next train to Paris that night, but there was a
+train to Marseilles. He took it. Had it been a train only to Nice, or to
+the Plutonian realms, he would have taken it. He said no good-byes. He
+left no messages, no explanations. He went. On the next afternoon but
+one he arrived at Victoria with fivepence in his pocket. Twopence he
+paid to deposit his luggage in the cloakroom, and threepence for the
+Underground fare to Charing Cross. From Charing Cross he walked up to
+Kenilworth Mansions and got a sovereign from Mark Snyder. Coutts's,
+where Mark financed himself, was closed, and a sovereign was all that
+Mark had.
+
+Henry was thankful that the news had not yet reached London--at any
+rate, it had not reached Mark Snyder. It was certain to do so, however.
+Henry had read in that morning's Paris edition of the _New York Herald_:
+'Mr. Henry S. Knight, the famous young English novelist, broke the bank
+at Monte Carlo the other day. He was understood to be playing in
+conjunction with Mademoiselle Cosette, the well-known Parisian
+_divette_, who is also on a visit to Monte Carlo. I am told that the
+pair have netted over a hundred and sixty thousand francs.'
+
+He reflected upon Cosette, and he reflected upon Geraldine. It was like
+returning to two lumps of sugar in one's tea after having got accustomed
+to three.
+
+He was very proud of himself for having so ruthlessly abandoned Monte
+Carlo, Cosette, Loulou, Tom, and the whole apparatus. And he had the
+right to be.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+THE NEW LIFE
+
+
+They were nervous, both of them. Although they had been legally and
+publicly married and their situation was in every way regular, although
+the new flat in Ashley Gardens was spacious, spotless, and luxurious to
+an extraordinary degree, although they had a sum of nearly seven
+thousand pounds at the bank, although their consciences were clear and
+their persons ornamental, Henry and Geraldine were decidedly nervous as
+they sat in their drawing-room awaiting the arrival of Mrs. Knight and
+Aunt Annie, who had accepted an invitation to afternoon tea and dinner.
+
+It was the third day after the conclusion of their mysterious honeymoon.
+
+'Have one, dearest?' said Geraldine, determined to be gay, holding up a
+morsel which she took from a coloured box by her side. And Henry took
+it with his teeth from between her charming fingers. 'Lovely, aren't
+they?' she mumbled, munching another morsel herself, and he mumbled that
+they were.
+
+She was certainly charming, if English. Thoughts of Cosette, which used
+to flit through his brain with a surprising effect that can only be
+likened to an effect of flamingoes sweeping across an English meadow,
+had now almost entirely ceased to disturb him. He had but to imagine
+what Geraldine's attitude towards Cosette would have been had the two
+met, in order to perceive the overpowering balance of advantages in
+Geraldine's favour.
+
+Much had happened since Cosette.
+
+As a consequence of natural reaction, he had at once settled down to be
+extremely serious, and to take himself seriously. He had been assisted
+in the endeavour by the publication of an article in a monthly review,
+entitled 'The Art of Henry Shakspere Knight.' The article explained to
+him how wonderful he was, and he was ingenuously and sincerely thankful
+for the revelation. It also, incidentally, showed him that 'Henry
+Shakspere Knight' was a better signature for his books than 'Henry S.
+Knight,' and he decided to adopt it in his next work. Further, it had
+enormously quickened in him the sense of his mission in the world, of
+his duty to his colossal public, and his potentiality for good.
+
+He put aside a book which he had already haltingly commenced, and began
+a new one, in which a victim to the passion for gambling was redeemed by
+the love of a pure young girl. It contained dramatic scenes in Paris, in
+the _train de luxe_, and in Monte Carlo. One of the most striking scenes
+was a harmony of moonlight and love on board a yacht in the
+Mediterranean, in which sea Veronica prevailed upon Hubert to submerge
+an ill-gotten gain of six hundred and sixty-three thousand francs,
+although the renunciation would leave Hubert penniless. Geraldine
+watched the progress of this book with absolute satisfaction. She had no
+fault to find with it. She gazed at Henry with large admiring eyes as he
+read aloud to her chapter after chapter.
+
+'What do you think I'm going to call it?' he had demanded of her once,
+gleefully.
+
+'I don't know,' she said.
+
+'_Red and Black_,' he told her. 'Isn't that a fine title?'
+
+'Yes,' she said. 'But it's been used before;' and she gave him
+particulars of Stendhal's novel, of which he had never heard.
+
+'Oh, well!' he exclaimed, somewhat dashed. 'As Stendhal was a Frenchman,
+and his book doesn't deal with gambling at all, I think I may stick to
+my title. I thought of it myself, you know.'
+
+'Oh yes, dearest. I _know_ you did,' Geraldine said eagerly.
+
+'You think I'd better alter it?'
+
+Geraldine glanced at the floor. 'You see,' she murmured, 'Stendhal was a
+really great writer.'
+
+He started, shocked. She had spoken in such a way that he could not be
+sure whether she meant, 'Stendhal was a really _great_ writer,' or,
+'_Stendhal_ was a _really_ great writer.' If the former, he did not
+mind, much. But if the latter--well, he thought uncomfortably of what
+Tom had said to him in the train. And he perceived again, and more
+clearly than ever before, that there was something in Geraldine which
+baffled him--something which he could not penetrate, and never would
+penetrate.
+
+'Suppose I call it _Black and Red_? Will that do?' he asked forlornly.
+
+'It would do,' she answered; 'but it doesn't sound so well.'
+
+'I've got it!' he cried exultantly. 'I've got it! _The Plague-Spot._
+Monte Carlo the plague-spot of Europe, you know.'
+
+'Splendid!' she said with enthusiasm. 'You are always magnificent at
+titles.'
+
+And it was universally admitted that he was.
+
+The book had been triumphantly finished, and the manuscript delivered to
+Macalistairs viâ Mark Snyder, and the huge cheque received under cover
+of a letter full of compliments on Henry's achievement. Macalistairs
+announced that their _Magazine_ would shortly contain the opening
+chapters of Mr. Henry Shakspere Knight's great romance, _The
+Plague-Spot_, which would run for one year, and which combined a
+tremendous indictment of certain phases of modern life with an original
+love-story by turns idyllic and dramatic. _Gordon's Monthly_ was
+serializing the novel in America. About this time, an interview with
+Henry, suggested by Sir Hugh Macalistair himself, appeared in an
+important daily paper. 'It is quite true,' said Henry in the interview,
+'that I went to Monte Carlo to obtain first-hand material for my book.
+The stories of my breaking the bank there, however, are wildly
+exaggerated. Of course, I played a little, in order to be able to put
+myself in the place of my hero. I should explain that I was in Monte
+Carlo with my cousin, Mr. Dolbiac, the well-known sculptor and painter,
+who was painting portraits there. Mr. Dolbiac is very much at home in
+Parisian artistic society, and he happened to introduce me to a famous
+French lady singer who was in Monte Carlo at the time. This lady and I
+found ourselves playing at the same table. From time to time I put down
+her stakes for her; that was all. She certainly had an extraordinary run
+of luck, but the bank was actually broken at last by the united bets of
+a number of people. That is the whole story, and I'm afraid it is much
+less exciting and picturesque than the rumours which have been flying
+about. I have never seen the lady since that day.'
+
+Then his marriage had filled the air.
+
+At an early stage in the preparations for that event his mother and
+Aunt Annie became passive--ceased all activity. Perfect peace was
+maintained, but they withdrew. Fundamentally and absolutely, Geraldine's
+ideas were not theirs, and Geraldine did as she liked with Henry.
+Geraldine and Henry interrogated Mark Snyder as to the future. 'Shall we
+be justified in living at the rate of two thousand a year?' they asked
+him. 'Yes,' he said, 'and four times that!' He had just perused _The
+Plague-Spot_ in manuscript. 'Let's make it three thousand, then,' said
+Geraldine to Henry. And she had planned the establishment of their home
+on that scale. Henry did not tell the ladies at Dawes Road that the rent
+of the flat was three hundred a year, and that the furniture had cost
+over a thousand, and that he was going to give Geraldine two hundred a
+year for dress. He feared apoplexy in his mother, and a nervous crisis
+in Aunt Annie.
+
+The marriage took place in a church. It was not this that secretly
+pained Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie; all good Wesleyan Methodists marry
+themselves in church. What secretly pained them was the fact that Henry
+would not divulge, even to his own mother, the locality of the
+honeymoon. He did say that Geraldine had been bent upon Paris, and that
+he had completely barred Paris ('Quite right,' Aunt Annie remarked), but
+he would say no more. And so after the ceremony the self-conscious pair
+had disappeared for a fortnight into the unknown and the unknowable.
+
+And now they had reappeared out of the unknown and the unknowable, and,
+with the help of four servants, meant to sustain life in Mrs. Knight and
+Aunt Annie for a period of some five hours.
+
+They heard a ring in the distance of the flat.
+
+'Prepare to receive cavalry,' said Geraldine, sitting erect in her blue
+dress on the green settee in the middle of the immense drawing-room.
+
+Then, seeing Henry's face, she jumped up, crossed over to her husband,
+and gave him a smacking kiss between the eyes. 'Dearest, I didn't mean
+it!' she whispered enchantingly. He smiled. She flew back to her seat
+just as the door opened.
+
+'Mr. Doxey,' said a new parlourmaid, intensely white and black, and
+intensely aware of the eminence of her young employers. And little
+Doxey of the P.A. came in, rather shabby and insinuating as usual, and
+obviously impressed by the magnificence of his surroundings.
+
+'My good Doxey,' exclaimed the chatelaine. 'How delicious of you to have
+found us out so soon!'
+
+'How d'you do, Doxey?' said Henry, rising.
+
+'Awfully good of you to see me!' began Doxey, depositing his
+well-preserved hat on a chair. 'Hope I don't interrupt.' He smiled.
+'Can't stop a minute. Got a most infernal bazaar on at the Cecil. Look
+here, old man,' he addressed Henry: 'I've been reading your _Love in
+Babylon_ again, and I fancied I could make a little curtain-raiser out
+of it--out of the picture incident, you know. I mentioned the idea to
+Pilgrim, of the Prince's Theatre, and he's fearfully stuck on it.'
+
+'You mean, you think he is,' Geraldine put in.
+
+'Well, he is,' Doxey pursued, after a brief pause. 'I'm sure he is. I've
+sketched out a bit of a scenario. Now, if you'd give permission and go
+shares, I'd do it, old chap.'
+
+'A play, eh?' was all that Henry said.
+
+Doxey nodded. 'There's nothing like the theatre, you know.'
+
+'What do you mean--there's nothing like the theatre?'
+
+'For money, old chap. Not short pieces, of course, but long ones; only,
+short ones lead to long ones.'
+
+'I tell you what you'd better do,' said Henry, when they had discussed
+the matter. 'You'd better write the thing, and I'll have a look at it,
+and then decide.'
+
+'Very well, if you like,' said Doxey slowly. 'What about shares?'
+
+'If it comes to anything, I don't mind halving it,' Henry replied.
+
+'I see,' said Doxey. 'Of course, I've had some little experience of the
+stage,' he added.
+
+His name was one of those names which appear from time to time in the
+theatrical gossip of the newspapers as having adapted, or as being about
+to adapt, something or other for the stage which was not meant for the
+stage. It had never, however, appeared on the playbills of the theatres;
+except once, when, at a benefit matinée, the great John Pilgrim, whom to
+mention is to worship, had recited verses specially composed for the
+occasion by Alfred Doxey.
+
+'And the signature, dear?' Geraldine glanced up at her husband,
+offering him a suggestion humbly, as a wife should in the presence of
+third parties.
+
+'Oh!' said Henry. 'Of course, Mr. Doxey's name must go with mine, as one
+of the authors of the piece. Certainly.'
+
+'Dearest,' Geraldine murmured when Doxey had gone, 'you are perfect. You
+don't really need an agent.'
+
+He laughed. 'There's rather too much "old chap" about Doxey,' he said.
+'Who's Doxey?'
+
+'He's quite harmless, the little creature,' said Geraldine
+good-naturedly.
+
+They sat silent for a time.
+
+'Miles Robinson makes fifteen thousand a year out of plays,' Geraldine
+murmured reflectively.
+
+'Does he?' Henry murmured reflectively.
+
+The cavalry arrived, in full panoply of war.
+
+
+'I am thankful Sarah stays with us,' said Mrs. Knight. 'Servants are so
+much more difficult to get now than they were in my time.'
+
+Tea was nearly over; the cake-stand in four storeys had been depleted
+from attic to basement, and, after admiring the daintiness and taste
+displayed throughout Mrs. Henry's drawing-room, the ladies from Dawes
+Road had reached the most fascinating of all topics.
+
+'When you keep several,' said Geraldine, 'they are not so hard to get.
+It's loneliness they object to.'
+
+'How many shall you have, dear?' Aunt Annie asked.
+
+'Forty,' said Henry, looking up from a paper.
+
+'Don't be silly, dearest!' Geraldine protested. (She seemed so young and
+interesting and bright and precious, and so competent, as she sat there,
+behind the teapot, between her mature visitors in their black and their
+grey: this was what Henry thought.) 'No, Aunt Annie; I have four at
+present.'
+
+'Four!' repeated Aunt Annie, aghast. 'But----'
+
+'But, my dear!' exclaimed Mrs. Knight. 'Surely----'
+
+Geraldine glanced with respectful interest at Mrs. Knight.
+
+'Surely you'll find it a great trial to manage them all?' said Aunt
+Annie.
+
+'No,' said Geraldine. 'At least, I hope not. I never allow myself to be
+bothered by servants. I just tell them what they are to do. If they do
+it, well and good. If they don't, they must leave. I give an hour a day
+to domestic affairs. My time is too occupied to give more.'
+
+'She likes to spend her time going up and down in the lift,' Henry
+explained.
+
+Geraldine put her hand over her husband's mouth and silenced him. It was
+a pretty spectacle, and reconciled the visitors to much.
+
+Aunt Annie examined Henry's face. 'Are you quite well, Henry?' she
+inquired.
+
+'I'm all right,' he said, yawning. 'But I want a little exercise. I
+haven't been out much to-day. I think I'll go for a short walk.'
+
+'Yes, do, dearest.'
+
+'Do, my dear.'
+
+As he approached the door, having kissed his wife, his mother, without
+looking at him, remarked in a peculiarly dry tone, which she employed
+only at the rarest intervals: 'You haven't told me anything about your
+honeymoon yet, Henry.'
+
+'You forget, sister,' said Aunt Annie stiffly, 'it's a secret.'
+
+'Not now--not now!' cried Geraldine brightly. 'Well, we'll tell you.
+Where do you think we drove after leaving you? To the Savoy Hotel.'
+
+'But why?' asked Mrs. Knight ingenuously.
+
+'We spent our honeymoon there, right in the middle of London. We
+pretended we were strangers to London, and we saw all the sights that
+Londoners never do see. Wasn't it a good idea?'
+
+'I--I don't know,' said Mrs. Knight.
+
+'It seems rather queer--for a honeymoon,' Aunt Annie observed.
+
+'Oh, but it was splendid!' continued Geraldine. 'We went to the theatre
+or the opera every night, and lived on the fat of the land in the best
+hotel in Europe, and saw everything--even the Tower and the Mint and the
+Thames Tunnel and the Tate Gallery. We enjoyed every moment.'
+
+'And think of the saving in fares!' Henry put in, swinging the door to
+and fro.
+
+'Yes, there was that, certainly,' Aunt Annie agreed.
+
+'And we went everywhere that omnibuses go,' Henry proceeded. 'Once even
+we got as far as the Salisbury, Fulham.'
+
+'Well, dear,' Mrs. Knight said sharply, 'I do think you might have
+popped in.'
+
+'But, mamma,' Geraldine tried to explain, 'that would have spoilt it.'
+
+'Spoilt what?' asked Mrs. Knight. 'The Salisbury isn't three minutes off
+our house. I do think you might have popped in. There I was--and me
+thinking you were gone abroad!'
+
+'See you later,' said Henry, and disappeared.
+
+'He doesn't look quite well, does he, Annie?' said Mrs. Knight.
+
+'I know how it used to be,' Aunt Annie said. 'Whenever he began to make
+little jokes, we knew he was in for a bilious attack.'
+
+'My dear people,' Geraldine endeavoured to cheer them, 'I assure you
+he's perfectly well--perfectly.'
+
+'I've decided not to go out, after all,' said Henry, returning
+surprisingly to the room. 'I don't feel like it.' And he settled into an
+ear-flap chair that had cost sixteen pounds ten.
+
+'Have one?' said Geraldine, offering him the coloured box from which she
+had just helped herself.
+
+'No, thanks,' said he, shutting his eyes.
+
+'I beg your pardon, I'm sure;' Geraldine turned to her visitors and
+extended the box. 'Won't you have a _marron glacé_?'
+
+And the visitors gazed at each other in startled, affrighted silence.
+
+'Has Henry eaten some?' Mrs. Knight asked, shaken.
+
+'He had one or two before tea,' Geraldine answered. 'Why?'
+
+'I _knew_ he was going to be ill!' said Aunt Annie.
+
+'But he's been eating _marrons glacés_ every day for a fortnight.
+Haven't you, sweetest?' said Geraldine.
+
+'I can believe it,' Aunt Annie murmured, 'from his face.'
+
+'Oh dear! Women! Women!' Henry whispered facetiously.
+
+'He's only saving his appetite for dinner,' said Geraldine, with
+intrepid calm.
+
+'My dear girl,' Mrs. Knight observed, again in that peculiar dry tone,
+'if I know anything about your husband, and I've had him under my care
+for between twenty and thirty years, he will eat nothing more to-day.'
+
+'Now, mater,' said Henry, 'don't get excited. By the way, we haven't
+told you that I'm going to write a play.'
+
+'A play, Henry?'
+
+'Yes. So you'll have to begin going to theatres in your old age, after
+all.'
+
+There was a pause.
+
+'Shan't you?' Henry persisted.
+
+'I don't know, dear. What place of worship are you attending?'
+
+There was another pause.
+
+'St. Philip's, Regent Street, I think we shall choose,' said Geraldine.
+
+'But surely that's a _church_?'
+
+'Yes,' said Geraldine. 'It is a very good one. I have belonged to the
+Church of England all my life.'
+
+'Not High, I hope,' said Aunt Annie.
+
+'Certainly, High.'
+
+The beneficent Providence which always watched over Henry, watched over
+him then. A gong resounded through the flat, and stopped the
+conversation. Geraldine put her lips together.
+
+'There's the dressing-bell, dearest,' said she, controlling herself.
+
+'I won't dress to-night,' Henry replied feebly. 'I'm not equal to it.
+You go. I'll stop with mother and auntie.'
+
+'Don't you fret yourself, mater,' he said as soon as the chatelaine had
+left them. 'Sir George has gone to live at Redhill, and given up his pew
+at Great Queen Street. I shall return to the old place and take it.'
+
+'I am very glad,' said Mrs. Knight. 'Very glad.'
+
+'And Geraldine?' Aunt Annie asked.
+
+'Leave me to look after the little girl,' said Henry. He then dozed for
+a few moments.
+
+The dinner, with the Arctic lamps dotted about the table, and two
+servants to wait, began in the most stately and effective fashion
+imaginable. But it had got no further than the host's first spoonful of
+_soupe aux moules_, when the host rose abruptly, and without a word
+departed from the room.
+
+The sisters nodded to each other with the cheerful gloom of prophetesses
+who find themselves in the midst of a disaster which they have
+predicted.
+
+'You poor, foolish boy!' exclaimed Geraldine, running after Henry. She
+was adorably attired in white.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The clash of creeds was stilled in the darkened and sumptuous chamber,
+as the three women bent with murmurous affection over the bed on which
+lay, swathed in a redolent apparatus of eau-de-Cologne and fine linen,
+their hope and the hope of English literature. Towards midnight, when
+the agony had somewhat abated, Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie reluctantly
+retired in a coupé which Geraldine had ordered for them by telephone.
+
+And in the early June dawn Henry awoke, refreshed and renewed, full of
+that languid but genuine interest in mortal things which is at once the
+compensation and the sole charm of a dyspepsy. By reaching out an arm he
+could just touch the hand of his wife as she slept in her twin couch. He
+touched it; she awoke, and they exchanged the morning smile.
+
+'I'm glad that's over,' he said.
+
+But whether he meant the _marrons glacés_ or the first visit of his
+beloved elders to the glorious flat cannot be decided.
+
+Certain it is, however, that deep in the minds of both the spouses was
+the idea that the new life, the new heaven on the new earth, had now
+fairly begun.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+HE IS NOT NERVOUS
+
+
+'Yes,' said Henry with judicial calm, after he had read Mr. Doxey's
+stage version of _Love in Babylon_, 'it makes a nice little piece.'
+
+'I'm glad you like it, old chap,' said Doxey. 'I thought you would.'
+
+They were in Henry's study, seated almost side by side at Henry's great
+American roll-top desk.
+
+'You've got it a bit hard in places,' Henry pursued. 'But I'll soon put
+that right.'
+
+'Can you do it to-day?' asked the adapter.
+
+'Why?'
+
+'Because I know old Johnny Pilgrim wants to shove a new curtain-raiser
+into the bill at once. If I could take him this to-morrow----'
+
+'I'll post it to you to-night,' said Henry. 'But I shall want to see Mr.
+Pilgrim myself before anything is definitely arranged.'
+
+'Oh, of course,' Mr. Doxey agreed. 'Of course. I'll tell him.'
+
+Henry softened the rigour of his collaborator's pen in something like
+half an hour. The perusal of this trifling essay in the dramatic form
+(it certainly did not exceed four thousand words, and could be played in
+twenty-five minutes) filled his mind with a fresh set of ideas. He
+suspected that he could write for the stage rather better than Mr.
+Doxey, and he saw, with the eye of faith, new plumes waving in his cap.
+He was aware, because he had read it in the papers, that the English
+drama needed immediate assistance, and he determined to render that
+assistance. The first instalment of _The Plague-Spot_ had just come out
+in the July number of _Macalistair's Magazine_, and the extraordinary
+warmth of its reception had done nothing to impair Henry's belief in his
+gift for pleasing the public. Hence he stretched out a hand to the West
+End stage with a magnanimous gesture of rescuing the fallen.
+
+
+And yet, curiously enough, when he entered the stage-door of Prince's
+Theatre one afternoon, to see John Pilgrim, he was as meek as if the
+world had never heard of him.
+
+He informed the doorkeeper that he had an appointment with Mr. Pilgrim,
+whereupon the doorkeeper looked him over, took a pull at a glass of
+rum-and-milk, and said he would presently inquire whether Mr. Pilgrim
+could see anyone. The passage from the portals of the theatre to Mr.
+Pilgrim's private room occupied exactly a quarter of an hour.
+
+Then, upon beholding the figure of John Pilgrim, he seemed suddenly to
+perceive what fame and celebrity and renown really were. Here was the
+man whose figure and voice were known to every theatre-goer in England
+and America, and to every idler who had once glanced at a
+photograph-window; the man who for five-and-twenty years had stilled
+unruly crowds by a gesture, conquered the most beautiful women with a
+single smile, died for the fatherland, and lived for love, before a
+nightly audience of two thousand persons; who existed absolutely in the
+eye of the public, and who long ago had formed a settled, honest,
+serious conviction that he was the most interesting and remarkable
+phenomenon in the world. In the ingenuous mind of Mr. Pilgrim the
+universe was the frame, and John Pilgrim was the picture: his countless
+admirers had forced him to think so.
+
+Mr. Pilgrim greeted Henry as though in a dream.
+
+'What name?' he whispered, glancing round, apparently not quite sure
+whether they were alone and unobserved.
+
+He seemed to be trying to awake from his dream, to recall the mundane
+and the actual, without success.
+
+He said, still whispering, that the little play pleased him.
+
+'Let me see,' he reflected. 'Didn't Doxey say that you had written other
+things?'
+
+'Several books,' Henry informed him.
+
+'Books? Ah!' Mr. Pilgrim had the air of trying to imagine what sort of
+thing books were. 'That's very interesting. Novels?'
+
+'Yes,' said Henry.
+
+Mr. Pilgrim, opening his magnificent chest and passing a hand through
+his brown hair, grew impressively humble. 'You must excuse my
+ignorance,' he explained. 'I am afraid I'm not quite abreast of modern
+literature. I never read.' And he repeated firmly: 'I never read. Not
+even the newspapers. What time have I for reading?' he whispered sadly.
+'In my brougham, I snatch a glance at the contents-bills of the evening
+papers. No more.'
+
+Henry had the idea that even to be ignored by John Pilgrim was more
+flattering than to be admired by the rest of mankind.
+
+Mr. Pilgrim rose and walked several times across the room; then
+addressed Henry mysteriously and imposingly:
+
+'I've got the finest theatre in London.'
+
+'Yes?' said Henry.
+
+'In the world,' Mr. Pilgrim corrected himself.
+
+Then he walked again, and again stopped.
+
+'I'll produce your piece,' he whispered. 'Yes, I'll produce it.'
+
+He spoke as if saying also: 'You will have a difficulty in crediting
+this extraordinary and generous decision: nevertheless you must
+endeavour to do so.'
+
+Henry thanked him lamely.
+
+'Of course I shan't play in it myself,' added Mr. Pilgrim, laughing as
+one laughs at a fantastic conceit.
+
+'No, naturally not,' said Henry.
+
+'Nor will Jane,' said Mr. Pilgrim.
+
+Jane Map was Mr. Pilgrim's leading lady, for the time being.
+
+'And about terms, young man?' Mr. Pilgrim demanded, folding his arms.
+'What is your notion of terms?'
+
+Now, Henry had taken the precaution of seeking advice concerning fair
+terms.
+
+'One pound a performance is my notion,' he answered.
+
+'I never give more than ten shillings a night for a curtain-raiser,'
+said Mr. Pilgrim ultimatively, 'Never. I can't afford to.'
+
+'I'm afraid that settles it, then, Mr. Pilgrim,' said Henry.
+
+'You'll take ten shillings?'
+
+'I'll take a pound. I can't take less. I'm like you, I can't afford to.'
+
+John Pilgrim showed a faint interest in Henry's singular--indeed,
+incredible--attitude.
+
+'You don't mean to say,' he mournfully murmured, 'that you'll miss the
+chance of having your play produced in my theatre for the sake of half a
+sovereign?'
+
+Before Henry could reply to this grieved question, Jane Map burst into
+the room. She was twenty-five, tall, dark, and arresting. John Pilgrim
+had found her somewhere.
+
+'Jane,' said Mr. Pilgrim sadly, 'this is Mr. Knight.'
+
+'Not the author of _The Plague-Spot_?' asked Jane Map, clasping her
+jewelled fingers.
+
+'_Are_ you the author of _The Plague-Spot_?' Mr. Pilgrim
+whispered--'whatever _The Plague-Spot_ is.'
+
+The next moment Jane Map was shaking hands effusively with Henry. 'I
+just adore you!' she told him. 'And your _Love in Babylon_--oh, Mr.
+Knight, how _do_ you think of such beautiful stories?'
+
+John Pilgrim sank into a chair and closed his eyes.
+
+'Oh, you must take it! you must take it!' cried Jane to John, as soon as
+she learnt that a piece based on _Love in Babylon_ was under discussion.
+'I shall play Enid Anstruther myself. Don't you see me in it, Mr.
+Knight?'
+
+'Mr. Knight's terms are twice mine,' John Pilgrim intoned, without
+opening his eyes. 'He wants a pound a night.'
+
+'He must have it,' said Jane Map. 'If I'm in the piece----'
+
+'But, Jane----'
+
+'I insist!' said Jane, with fire.
+
+'Very well, Mr. Knight,' John Pilgrim continued to intone, his eyes
+still shut, his legs stretched out, his feet resting perpendicularly on
+the heels. 'Jane insists. You understand--Jane insists. Take your pound,
+I call the first rehearsal for Monday.'
+
+
+Thenceforward Henry lived largely in the world of the theatre, a
+pariah's life, the life almost of a poor relation. Doxey appeared to
+enjoy the existence; it was Doxey's brief hour of bliss. But Henry,
+spoilt by editors, publishers, and the reading public, could not easily
+reconcile himself to the classical position of an author in the world of
+the theatre. It hurt him to encounter the prevalent opinion that, just
+as you cannot have a dog without a tail or a stump, so you cannot have a
+play without an author. The actors and actresses were the play, and when
+they were pleased with themselves the author was expected to fulfil his
+sole function of wagging.
+
+Even Jane Map, Henry's confessed adorer, was the victim, Henry thought,
+of a highly-distorted sense of perspective. The principal comfort which
+he derived from Jane Map was that she ignored Doxey entirely.
+
+The preliminary rehearsals were desolating. Henry went away from the
+first one convinced that the piece would have to be rewritten from end
+to end. No performer could make anything of his own part, and yet each
+was sure that all the other parts were effective in the highest degree.
+
+At the fourth rehearsal John Pilgrim came down to direct. He sat in the
+dim stalls by Henry's side, and Henry could hear him murmuring softly
+and endlessly:
+
+
+     'Punch, brothers, punch with care--
+     Punch in the presence of the passenjare!'
+
+
+The scene was imagined to represent a studio, and Jane Map, as Enid
+Anstruther, was posing on the model's throne.
+
+'Jane,' Mr. Pilgrim hissed out, 'you pose for all the world like an
+artist's model!'
+
+'Well,' Jane retorted, 'I am an artist's model.'
+
+'No, you aren't,' said John. 'You're an actress on my stage, and you
+must pose like one.'
+
+Whereupon Mr. Pilgrim ascended to the stage and began to arrange Jane's
+limbs. By accident Jane's delightful elbow came into contact with John
+Pilgrim's eye. The company was horror-struck as Mr. Pilgrim lowered his
+head and pressed a handkerchief to that eye.
+
+'Jane, Jane!' he complained in his hoarse and conspiratorial whisper,
+'I've been teaching you the elements of your art for two years, and all
+you have achieved is to poke your elbow in my eye. The rehearsal is
+stopped.'
+
+And everybody went home.
+
+Such is a specimen of the incidents which were continually happening.
+
+However, as the first night approached, the condition of affairs
+improved a little, and Henry saw with satisfaction that the resemblance
+of Prince's Theatre to a lunatic asylum was more superficial than real.
+Also, the tone of the newspapers in referring to the imminent production
+convinced even John Pilgrim that Henry was perhaps not quite an ordinary
+author. John Pilgrim cancelled a proof of a poster which he had already
+passed, and ordered a double-crown, thus:
+
+
+                           LOVE IN BABYLON.
+
+                     A PLAY IN ONE ACT, FOUNDED ON
+
+                        HENRY SHAKSPERE KNIGHT'S
+
+                            FAMOUS NOVEL.
+
+                                 BY
+
+                HENRY SHAKSPERE KNIGHT AND ALFRED DOXEY.
+
+                    ENID ANSTRUTHER--MISS JANE MAP.
+
+
+Geraldine met Jane, and asked her to tea at the flat. And Geraldine
+hired a brougham at thirty pounds a month. From that day Henry's
+reception at the theatre was all that he could have desired, and more
+than any mere author had the right to expect. At the final rehearsals,
+in the absence of John Pilgrim, his word was law. It was whispered in
+the green-room that he earned ten thousand a year by writing things
+called novels. 'Well, dear old pal,' said one old actor to another old
+actor, 'it takes all sorts to make a world. But ten thousand! Johnny
+himself don't make more than that, though he spends more.'
+
+The mischief was that Henry's digestion, what with the irregular hours
+and the irregular drinks, went all to pieces.
+
+
+'You don't _look_ nervous, Harry,' said Geraldine when he came into the
+drawing-room before dinner on the evening of the production.
+
+'Nervous?' said Henry. 'Of course I'm not.'
+
+'Then, why have you forgotten to brush your hair, dearest?' she asked.
+
+He glanced in a mirror. Yes, he had certainly forgotten to brush his
+hair.
+
+'Sheer coincidence,' he said, and ate a hearty meal.
+
+Geraldine drove to the theatre. She was to meet there Mrs. Knight and
+Aunt Annie, in whose breasts pride and curiosity had won a tardy victory
+over the habits of a lifetime; they had a stage-box. Henry remarked that
+it was a warm night and that he preferred to walk; he would see them
+afterwards.
+
+No one could have been more surprised than Henry, when he arrived at
+Prince's Theatre, to discover that he was incapable of entering that
+edifice. He honestly and physically tried to go in by the stage-door,
+but he could not, and, instead of turning within, he kept a straight
+course along the footpath. It was as though an invisible barrier had
+been raised to prevent his ingress.
+
+'Never mind!' he said. 'I'll walk to the Circus and back again, and then
+I'll go in.'
+
+He walked to the Circus and back again, and once more failed to get
+himself inside Prince's Theatre.
+
+'This is the most curious thing that ever happened to me,' he thought,
+as he stood for the second time in Piccadilly Circus. 'Why the devil
+can't I go into that theatre? I'm not nervous. I'm not a bit nervous.'
+It was so curious that he felt an impulse to confide to someone how
+curious it was.
+
+Then he went into the Criterion bar and sat down. The clock showed
+seventeen minutes to nine. His piece was advertised to start at
+eight-thirty precisely. The Criterion Bar is never empty, but it has its
+moments of lassitude, and seventeen minutes to nine is one of them.
+After an interval a waiter slackly approached him.
+
+'Brandy-and-soda!' Henry ordered, well knowing that brandy-and-soda
+never suited him.
+
+He glanced away from the clock, repeated 'Punch, brothers, punch with
+care,' twenty times, recited 'God save the Queen,' took six small sips
+at the brandy-and-soda, and then looked at the clock again, and it was
+only fourteen minutes to nine. He had guessed it might be fourteen
+minutes to ten.
+
+He caught the eye of a barmaid, and she seemed to be saying to him
+sternly: 'If you think you can occupy this place all night on a
+ninepenny drink, you are mistaken. Either you ought to order another or
+hook it.' He braved it for several more ages, then paid, and went; and
+still it was only ten minutes to nine. All mundane phenomena were
+inexplicably contorted that night. As he was passing the end of the
+short street which contains the stage-door of Prince's Theatre, a man,
+standing at the door on the lookout, hailed him loudly. He hesitated,
+and the man--it was the doorkeeper--flew forward and seized him and
+dragged him in.
+
+'Drink this, Mr. Knight,' commanded the doorkeeper.
+
+'I'm all right,' said Henry. 'What's up?'
+
+'Yes, I know you're all right. Drink it.'
+
+And he drank a whisky-and-soda.
+
+'Come upstairs,' said the doorkeeper. 'You'll be wanted, Mr. Knight.'
+
+As he approached the wings of the stage, under the traction of the
+breathless doorkeeper, he was conscious of the falling of the curtain,
+and of the noisiest noise beyond the curtain that he had ever heard.
+
+'Here, Mr. Knight, drink this,' said someone in his ear. 'Keep steady.
+It's nothing.'
+
+And he drank a glass of port.
+
+His overcoat was jerked off by a mysterious agency.
+
+The noise continued to be terrible: it rose and fell like the sea.
+
+Then he was aware of Jane Map rushing towards him and of Jane Map
+kissing him rapturously on the mouth. 'Come _on_,' cried Jane Map, and
+pulled him by the hand, helter-skelter, until they came in front of a
+blaze of light and the noise crashed at his ears.
+
+'I've been through this before somewhere,' he thought, while Jane Map
+wrung his hand. 'Was it in a previous existence? No. The Alhambra!' What
+made him remember the Alhambra was the figure of little Doxey sheepishly
+joining himself and Jane. Doxey, with a disastrous lack of foresight,
+had been in the opposite wing, and had had to run round the stage in
+order to come before the curtain. Doxey's share in the triumph was
+decidedly less than half....
+
+'No,' Henry said later, with splendid calm, when Geraldine, Jane, Doxey,
+and himself were drinking champagne in Jane's Empire dressing-room, 'it
+wasn't nervousness. I don't quite know what it was.'
+
+He gathered that the success had been indescribable.
+
+Jane radiated bliss.
+
+'I tell you what, old man,' said Doxey: 'we must adapt _The
+Plague-Spot_, eh?'
+
+'We'll see about that,' said Henry.
+
+
+Two days afterwards Henry arose from a bed of pain, and was able to
+consume a little tea and dry toast. Geraldine regaled his spiritual man
+with the press notices, which were tremendous. But more tremendous than
+the press notices was John Pilgrim's decision to put _Love in Babylon_
+after the main piece in the bill of Prince's Theatre. _Love in Babylon_
+was to begin at the honourable hour of ten-forty in future, for the
+benefit of the stalls and the dress-circle.
+
+'Have you thought about Mr. Doxey's suggestion?' Geraldine asked him.
+
+'Yes,' said Henry; 'but I don't quite see the point of it.'
+
+'Don't see the point of it, sweetheart?' she protested, stroking his
+dressing-gown. 'But it would be bound to be a frightful success, after
+this.'
+
+'I know,' said Henry. 'But why drag in Doxey? I can write the next play
+myself.'
+
+She kissed him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+HE SHORTENS HIS NAME
+
+
+One day Geraldine needed a doctor. Henry was startled, frightened,
+almost shocked. But when the doctor, having seen Geraldine, came into
+the study to chat with Geraldine's husband, Henry put on a calm
+demeanour, said he had been expecting the doctor's news, said also that
+he saw no cause for anxiety or excitement, and generally gave the doctor
+to understand that he was in no way disturbed by the work of Nature to
+secure a continuance of the British Empire. The conversation shifted to
+Henry's self, and soon Henry was engaged in a detailed description of
+his symptoms.
+
+'Purely nervous,' remarked the doctor--'purely nervous.'
+
+'You think so?'
+
+'I am sure of it.'
+
+'Then, of course, there is no cure for it. I must put up with it.'
+
+'Pardon me,' said the doctor, 'there is an absolutely certain cure for
+nervous dyspepsia--at any rate, in such a case as yours.'
+
+'What is it?'
+
+'Go without breakfast'
+
+'But I don't eat too much, doctor,' Henry said plaintively.
+
+'Yes, you do,' said the doctor. 'We all do.'
+
+'And I'm always hungry at meal-times. If a meal is late it makes me
+quite ill.'
+
+'You'll feel somewhat uncomfortable for a few days,' the doctor blandly
+continued. 'But in a month you'll be cured.'
+
+'You say that professionally?'
+
+'I guarantee it.'
+
+The doctor shook hands, departed, and then returned. 'And eat rather
+less lunch than usual,' said he. 'Mind that.'
+
+Within three days Henry was informing his friends: 'I never have any
+breakfast. No, none. Two meals a day.' It was astonishing how frequently
+the talk approached the great food topic. He never sought an opportunity
+to discuss the various methods and processes of sustaining life, yet,
+somehow, he seemed to be always discussing them. Some of his
+acquaintances annoyed him excessively--for example, Doxey.
+
+'That won't last long, old chap,' said Doxey, who had called about
+finance. 'I've known other men try that. Give me the good old English
+breakfast. Nothing like making a good start.'
+
+'Ass!' thought Henry, and determined once again, and more decisively,
+that Doxey should pass out of his life.
+
+His preoccupation with this matter had the happy effect of preventing
+him from worrying too much about the perils which lay before Geraldine.
+Discovering the existence of an Anti-Breakfast League, he joined it, and
+in less than a week every newspaper in the land announced that the ranks
+of the Anti-Breakfasters had secured a notable recruit in the person of
+Mr. Henry Shakspere Knight. It was widely felt that the Anti-Breakfast
+Movement had come to stay.
+
+Still, he was profoundly interested in Geraldine, too. And between his
+solicitude for her and his scientific curiosity concerning the secret
+recesses of himself the flat soon overflowed with medical literature.
+
+The entire world of the theatre woke up suddenly and simultaneously to
+the colossal fact of Henry's genius. One day they had never thought of
+him; the next they could think of nothing else. Every West End manager,
+except two, wrote to him to express pleasure at the prospect of
+producing a play by him; the exceptional two telegraphed. Henry,
+however, had decided upon his arrangements. He had grasped the important
+truth that there was only one John Pilgrim in the world.
+
+He threw the twenty-five chapters of _The Plague-Spot_ into a scheme of
+four acts, and began to write a drama without the aid of Mr. Alfred
+Doxey. It travelled fast, did the drama; and the author himself was
+astonished at the ease with which he put it together out of little
+pieces of the novel. The scene of the third act was laid in the
+gaming-saloons of Monte Carlo; the scene of the fourth disclosed the
+deck of a luxurious private yacht at sea under a full Mediterranean
+moon. Such flights of imagination had hitherto been unknown in the
+serious drama of London. When Henry, after three months' labour, showed
+the play to John Pilgrim, John Pilgrim said:
+
+'This is the play I have waited twenty years for!'
+
+'You think it will do, then?' said Henry.
+
+'It will enable me,' observed John Pilgrim, 'to show the British public
+what acting is.'
+
+Henry insisted on an agreement which gave him ten per cent. of the gross
+receipts. Soon after the news of the signed contract had reached the
+press, Mr. Louis Lewis, the English agent of Lionel Belmont, of the
+United States Theatrical Trust, came unostentatiously round to Ashley
+Gardens, and obtained the American rights on the same terms.
+
+Then Pilgrim said that he must run through the manuscript with Henry,
+and teach him those things about the theatre which he did not know.
+Henry arrived at Prince's at eleven o'clock, by appointment; Mr. Pilgrim
+came at a quarter to twelve.
+
+'You have the sense _du théâtre_, my friend,' said Pilgrim, turning over
+the leaves of the manuscript. 'That precious and incommunicable
+gift--you have it. But you are too fond of explanations. Now, the public
+won't stand explanations. No long speeches. And so whenever I glance
+through a play I can tell instantly whether it is an acting play. If I
+see a lot of speeches over four lines long, I say, Dull! Useless! Won't
+do! For instance, here. That speech of Veronica's while she's at the
+piano. Dull! I see it. I feel it. It must go! The last two lines must
+go!'
+
+So saying, he obliterated the last two lines with a large and imperial
+blue pencil.
+
+'But it's impossible,' Henry protested. 'You've not read them.'
+
+'I don't need to read them,' said John Pilgrim. 'I know they won't do. I
+know the public won't have them. It must be give and take--give and take
+between the characters. The ball must be kept in the air. Ah! The
+theatre!' He paused, and gave Henry a piercing glance. 'Do you know how
+I came to be _du théâtre_--of the theatre, young man?' he demanded. 'No?
+I will tell you. My father was an old fox-hunting squire in the Quorn
+country. One of the best English families, the Pilgrims, related to the
+Earls of Waverley. Poor, unfortunately. My eldest brother was brought up
+to inherit the paternal mortgages. My second brother went into the army.
+And they wanted me to go into the Church. I refused. "Well," said my
+old father, "damn it, Jack! if you won't go to heaven, you may as well
+ride straight to hell. Go on the stage." And I did, sir. I did. Idea for
+a book there, isn't there?'
+
+The blue-pencilling of the play proceeded. But whenever John Pilgrim
+came to a long speech by Hubert, the part which he destined for himself,
+he hesitated to shorten it. 'It's too long! It's too long!' he
+whispered. 'I feel it's too long. But, somehow, that seems to me
+essential to the action. I must try to carry it off as best I can.'
+
+At the end of the second act Henry suggested an interval for lunch, but
+John Pilgrim, opening Act III. accidentally, and pouncing on a line with
+his blue pencil, exclaimed with profound interest:
+
+'Ah! I remember noting this when I read it. You've got Hubert saying
+here: "I know I'm a silly fool." Now, I don't think that's quite in the
+part. You must understand that when I study a character I become that
+character. Perhaps it would not be too much to say that I know more
+about that character than the author does. I merge myself into the
+character with an intense effort. Now, I can't see Hubert saying "I
+know I'm a silly fool." Of course I've no objection whatever to the
+words, but it seemed to me--you understand what I mean? Shall we strike
+that out?'
+
+A little farther on Henry had given Veronica a little epigram: 'When a
+man has to stand on his dignity, you may be sure his moral stature is
+very small.'
+
+'That's more like the sort of thing that Hubert would say,' John Pilgrim
+whispered. 'Women never say those things. It's not true to nature. But
+it seems to fit in exactly with the character of Hubert. Shall
+we--transfer----?' His pencil waved in the air....
+
+'Heavenly powers!' Mr. Pilgrim hoarsely murmured, as they attained the
+curtain of Act III., 'it's four o'clock. And I had an appointment for
+lunch at two. But I never think of food when I am working. Never!'
+
+Henry, however, had not broken his fast since the previous evening.
+
+
+The third and the greatest crisis in the unparalleled popularity of
+Henry Shakspere Knight began to prepare itself. The rumour of its
+coming was heard afar off, and every literary genius in England and
+America who was earning less than ten thousand pounds a year ground his
+teeth and clenched his hands in impotent wrath. The boom and resounding
+of _The Plague-Spot_ would have been deafening and immense in any case;
+but Henry had an idea, and executed it, which multiplied the
+advertisement tenfold. It was one of those ideas, at once quite simple
+and utterly original, which only occur to the favourites of the gods.
+
+The serial publication of _The Plague-Spot_ finished in June, and it had
+been settled that the book should be issued simultaneously in England
+and America in August. Now, that summer John Pilgrim was illuminating
+the provinces, and he had fixed a definite date, namely, the tenth of
+October, for the reopening of Prince's Theatre with the dramatic version
+of _The Plague-Spot_. Henry's idea was merely to postpone publication of
+the book until the production of the play. Mark Snyder admitted himself
+struck by the beauty of this scheme, and he made a special journey to
+America in connection with it, a journey which cost over a hundred
+pounds. The result was an arrangement under which the book was to be
+issued in London and New York, and the play to be produced by John
+Pilgrim at Prince's Theatre, London, and by Lionel Belmont at the
+Madison Square Theatre, New York, simultaneously on one golden date.
+
+The splendour of the conception appealed to all that was fundamental in
+the Anglo-Saxon race.
+
+John Pilgrim was a finished master of advertisement, but if any man in
+the wide world could give him lessons in the craft, that man was Lionel
+Belmont. Macalistairs, too, in their stately, royal way, knew how to
+impress facts upon, the public.
+
+Add to these things that Geraldine bore twins, boys.
+
+No earthly power could have kept those twins out of the papers, and
+accordingly they had their share in the prodigious, unsurpassed and
+unforgettable publicity which their father enjoyed without any apparent
+direct effort of his own.
+
+He had declined to be interviewed; but one day, late in September, his
+good-nature forced him to yield to the pressure of a journalist. That
+journalist was Alfred Doxey, who had married on the success of _Love in
+Babylon_, and was already in financial difficulties. He said he could
+get twenty-five pounds for an interview with Henry, and Henry gave him
+the interview. The interview accomplished, he asked Henry whether he
+cared to acquire for cash his, Doxey's, share of the amateur rights of
+_Love in Babylon_. Doxey demanded fifty pounds, and Henry amiably wrote
+out the cheque on the spot and received Doxey's lavish gratitude. _Love
+in Babylon_ is played on the average a hundred and fifty times a year by
+the amateur dramatic societies of Great Britain and Ireland, and for
+each performance Henry touches a guinea. The piece had run for two
+hundred nights at Prince's, so that the authors got a hundred pounds
+each from John Pilgrim.
+
+On the morning of the tenth of October Henry strolled incognito round
+London. Every bookseller's shop displayed piles upon piles of _The
+Plague-Spot_. Every newspaper had a long review of it. The _Whitehall
+Gazette_ was satirical as usual, but most people felt that it was the
+_Whitehall Gazette_, and not Henry, that thereby looked ridiculous.
+Nearly every other omnibus carried the legend of _The Plague-Spot_;
+every hoarding had it. At noon Henry passed by Prince's Theatre. Two
+small crowds had already taken up positions in front of the entrances to
+the pit and the gallery; and several women, seated on campstools, were
+diligently reading the book in order the better to appreciate the play.
+
+Twelve hours later John Pilgrim was thanking his kind patrons for a
+success unique even in his rich and gorgeous annals. He stated that he
+should cable the verdict of London to the Madison Square Theatre, New
+York, where the representation of the noble work of art which he had had
+the honour of interpreting to them was about to begin.
+
+'It was a lucky day for you when you met me, young man,' he whispered
+grandiosely and mysteriously, yet genially, to Henry.
+
+On the façade of Prince's there still blazed the fiery sign, which an
+excited electrician had forgotten to extinguish:
+
+
+                         THE PLAGUE-SPOT.
+
+                         SHAKSPERE KNIGHT.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+THE PRESIDENT
+
+
+Prince's Theatre, when it was full, held three hundred and forty pounds'
+worth of solid interest in the British drama. Of _The Plague-Spot_ six
+evening and two morning performances were given every week for nearly a
+year, and Henry's tenth averaged more than two hundred pounds a week.
+His receipts from Lionel Belmont's various theatres averaged rather
+more. The book had a circulation of a hundred and twenty thousand in
+England, and two hundred thousand in America, and on every copy Henry
+got one shilling and sixpence. The magnificent and disconcerting total
+of his income from _The Plague-Spot_ within the first year, excluding
+the eight thousand pounds which he had received in advance from
+Macalistairs, was thirty-eight thousand pounds. I say disconcerting
+because it emphatically did disconcert Henry. He could not cope with
+it. He was like a child who has turned on a tap and can't turn it off
+again, and finds the water covering the floor and rising, rising, over
+its little shoe-tops. Not even with the help of Sir George could he
+quite successfully cope with this deluge of money which threatened to
+drown him each week. Sir George, accustomed to keep his nerve in such
+crises, bored one hole in the floor and called it India Three per
+Cents., bored a second and called it Freehold Mortgages, bored a third
+and called it Great Northern Preference, and so on; but, still, Henry
+was never free from danger. And the worst of it was that, long before
+_The Plague-Spot_ had exhausted its geyser-like activity of throwing up
+money, Henry had finished another book and another play. Fortunately,
+Geraldine was ever by his side to play the wife's part.
+
+From this point his artistic history becomes monotonous. It is the
+history of his investments alone which might perchance interest the
+public.
+
+Of course, it was absolutely necessary to abandon the flat in Ashley
+Gardens. A man burdened with an income of forty thousand a year, and
+never secure against a sudden rise of it to fifty, sixty, or even
+seventy thousand, cannot possibly live in a flat in Ashley Gardens.
+Henry exists in a superb mansion in Cumberland Place. He also possesses
+a vast country-house at Hindhead, Surrey. He employs a secretary, though
+he prefers to dictate his work into a phonograph. His wife employs a
+secretary, whose chief duty is, apparently, to see to the flowers. The
+twins have each a nurse, and each a perambulator; but when they are good
+they are permitted to crowd themselves into one perambulator, as a
+special treat. In the newspapers they are invariably referred to as Mr.
+Shakspere Knight's 'pretty children' or Mrs. Shakspere Knight's
+'charming twins.' Geraldine, who has abandoned the pen, is undisputed
+ruler of the material side of Henry's life. The dinners and the
+receptions at Cumberland Place are her dinners and receptions. Henry has
+no trouble; he does what he is told, and does it neatly. Only once did
+he indicate to her, in his mild, calm way, that he could draw a line
+when he chose. He chose to draw the line when Geraldine spoke of
+engaging a butler, and perhaps footmen.
+
+'I couldn't stand a butler,' said Henry.
+
+'But, dearest, a great house like this----'
+
+'I couldn't stand a butler,' said Henry.
+
+'As you wish, dearest, of course.'
+
+He would not have minded the butler, perhaps, had not his mother and
+Aunt Annie been in the habit of coming up to Cumberland Place for tea.
+
+Upon the whole the newspapers and periodicals were very kind to Henry,
+and even the rudest organs were deeply interested in him. Each morning
+his secretary opened an enormous packet of press-cuttings. In a good
+average year he was referred to in print as a genius about a thousand
+times, and as a charlatan about twenty times. He was not thin-skinned;
+and he certainly was good-tempered and forgiving; and he could make
+allowances for jealousy and envy. Nevertheless, now and then, some
+casual mention of him, or some omission of his name from a list of
+names, would sting him into momentary bitterness.
+
+He endeavoured to enforce his old rule against interviews. But he could
+not. The power of public opinion was too strong, especially the power of
+American public opinion. As for photographs, they increased. He was
+photographed alone, with Geraldine, with the twins, and with Geraldine
+and the twins. It had to be. For permission to reproduce the most
+pleasing groups, Messrs. Antonio, the eminent firm in Regent Street,
+charged weekly papers a fee of two guineas.
+
+'And this is fame!' he sometimes said to himself. And he decided that,
+though fame was pleasant in many ways, it did not exactly coincide with
+his early vision of it. He felt himself to be so singularly
+unchangeable! It was always the same he! And he could only wear one suit
+of clothes at a time, after all; and in the matter of eating, he ate
+less, much less, than in the era of Dawes Road. He persisted in his
+scheme of two meals a day, for it had fulfilled the doctor's prediction.
+He was no longer dyspeptic. That fact alone contributed much to his
+happiness.
+
+Yes, he was happy, because he had a good digestion and a kind heart. The
+sole shadow on his career was a spasmodic tendency to be bored. 'I miss
+the daily journey on the Underground,' he once said to his wife. 'I
+always feel that I ought to be going to the office in the morning.' 'You
+dear thing!' Geraldine caressed him with her voice. 'Fancy anyone with
+a gift like yours going to an office!'
+
+Ah, that gift! That gift utterly puzzled him. 'I just sit down and
+write,' he thought. 'And there it is! They go mad over it!'
+
+At Dawes Road they worshipped him, but they worshipped the twins more.
+Occasionally the twins, in state, visited Dawes Road, where Henry's
+mother was a little stouter and Aunt Annie a little thinner and a little
+primmer, but where nothing else was changed. Henry would have allowed
+his mother fifty pounds a week or so without an instant's hesitation,
+but she would not accept a penny over three pounds; she said she did not
+want to be bothered.
+
+
+One day Henry read in the _Times_ that the French Government had made
+Tom a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour, and that Tom had been elected
+President of the newly-formed Cosmopolitan Art Society, which was to
+hold exhibitions both in London and Paris. And the _Times_ seemed to
+assume that in these transactions the honour was the French Government's
+and the Cosmopolitan Art Society's.
+
+Frankly, Henry could not understand it. Tom did not even pay his
+creditors.
+
+'Well, of course,' said Geraldine, 'everybody knows that Tom _is_ a
+genius.'
+
+This speech slightly disturbed Henry. And the thought floated again
+vaguely through his mind that there was something about Geraldine which
+baffled him. 'But, then,' he argued, 'I expect all women are like that.'
+
+A few days later his secretary brought him a letter.
+
+'I say, Geraldine,' he cried, genuinely moved, on reading it. 'What do
+you think? The Anti-Breakfast League want me to be the President of the
+League.'
+
+'And shall you accept?' she asked.
+
+'Oh, certainly!' said Henry. 'And I shall suggest that it's called the
+National Anti-Breakfast League in future.'
+
+'That will be much better, dearest,' Geraldine smiled.
+
+
+BILLING AND SONS, LTD., PRINTERS, GUILDFORD
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of A Great Man, by Arnold Bennett
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