A Great Man - Arnold Bennett (romantic story to read txt) 📗

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