A Great Man Part 10

'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 ma.n.u.script 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 rea.s.serted 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 ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script 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 das.h.i.+ngly 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 m.u.f.f; and with remarkably little delay the sisters and the ma.n.u.script 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 ma.n.u.script between the door and the window, leaving a slit of an inch or so for ventilation. The main body of the ma.n.u.script she supported by means of her m.u.f.f.

Alas! her morbid fear of hansoms was about to be justified--at any rate, justified in her own eyes. As the machine was pa.s.sing 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 succ.u.mbed, 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 n.o.bly 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 d.i.c.kensian 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 was.h.i.+ng 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, pa.s.sed through a pair of swinging doors, traversed eight feet of tesselated pavement, climbed three more granite steps, pa.s.sed through another pair of swinging doors, and discovered himself in a s.p.a.cious 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,' p.r.o.nounced 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 gla.s.sy 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 gla.s.s, 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 ma.n.u.script. 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.