A Great Man Part 34

'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 fas.h.i.+on 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 coupe 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 glaces_ 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 a.s.sistance, and he determined to render that a.s.sistance. 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 gla.s.s of rum-and-milk, and said he would presently inquire whether Mr. Pilgrim could see anyone. The pa.s.sage 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 un.o.bserved.

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 pa.s.sing 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 s.n.a.t.c.h a glance at the contents-bills of the evening papers. No more.'