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 hadthe 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 inHome 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 inher 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. SupposingLove in Babylonsells 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 ofLove 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 andwrite. 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 arenaof emotions. Undoubtedly, then, a considerable number of hundreds of pounds were to come fromLove 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 ofLove in Babylonbeyond 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. Andjust 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 withmesome 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 toLove in Babylon—that successor out of which a mere couple of thousand pounds was to be made; and that he didn't care.
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. Henrywrote 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 itnearly 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 entitledHow to become a Successful Novelist, price half-a-crown. Just above it was an advertisement of the thirty-eighth thousand ofLove in Babylon. He went into a large bookseller's shop in the Strand and demandedHow 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 ofLove in Babylon, conspicuously placed near the door. Two further instalments of the Satin Library had been given to the world sinceLove 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 pocketedHow to become a Successful Novelistwith 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 buyingHow to become a Successful Noveliston 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 readHow 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 fromthe 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 pushedHow to become a Successful Novelistunder 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, sayingthat 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 readingChambers' Encyclopædia.
'We're going now, dear,' said Aunt Annie.
'Sarah will have your tea ready at half-pastfive,' 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.
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 blankverse, 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 ofclothed 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 ofbooking tables at a restaurant struck him as a surprising novelty.
'Upstairs or down, sir? Perhaps you'd prefer the balcony? For two, sir? I'llsee, 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 nodoubt about that; it was a point upon which opinions could not possibly conflict. She was in evening-dress.
'Now tell me all aboutyourself,' 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 inChambers' Encyclopædiaearlier 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 oncefurnished 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'sshop, 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 thenew 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 thereceipt; 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.
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 theprima ballerina assolutain 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. Alady 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-poundnotes 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 outuntil 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 temperwas 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 boxet 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, thatbusiness,' 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 heisa 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 softplup, and scattered.
Thus ended the miraculous evening.
The next day he was prostrate with one of his very worst dyspeptic visitations. The Knight pewat 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.
Amusing Incident at the Alhambra.A Novelist's Adventure.Vanishing Author at a Music-Hall.A Novelist in a Box.
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 thatA Question of Cubitswas 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 witha peculiar and special smile of sincerity as being not only 'good,' but 'reallygood.' People mentioned it with casual anticipatory remarks who had never previously been known to mention any novel later thanJohn 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 ofA Question of Cubitsupon a thirsty earth.A Question of Cubitsbecame 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 pacewhich 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 theChicago Inter-Oceanto theMontreal Star, and thence back again with the rapidity of light by way of theBoston Transcript, thePhiladelphia Ledger, and theWashington Post, down to theNew Orleans Picayune. Another day, and it was in theSan Francisco Call, and soon afterwards it had reachedLa Prensaat Buenos Ayres. It then disappeared for a period amid the Pacific Isles, and was next heard of in theSydney Bulletin, theBrisbane Courierand theMelbourne Argus. A moment, and it blazed in theNorth China Herald, and was shooting across India through the columns of the CalcuttaEnglishmanand theAllahabad Pioneer. It arrived in Paris as fresh as a new pin, and gained acceptance by the Paris edition of theNew 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 reckonedthat 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 ofA Question of Cubits: to wit, the genuine and ever-increasing vogue ofLove in Babylon, and the beautiful hopes of future joy which it aroused in the myriad breast of Henry's public.Love in Babylonhad 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 byLove 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 thelatter. 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 advancewith 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 ofA Question of Cubitscame 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.
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 layinga 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 wroteagain, 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 thespiteful 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.
'Idon'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 theQ. C.for a month.'
In his letters Mr. Snyder always referred toA Question of Cubitsas theQ. 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 withGordon's Weekly. They'll issue theQ. 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 seriallyA 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 amplerether 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 thestatement. 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.