A Great Man, Arnold Bennett [free children's online books .txt] 📗

pause. 'I'm sure he is. I've sketched out a bit of a scenario. Now, if you'd give permission and go shares, I'd do it, old chap.'

'A play, eh?' was all that Henry said.

Doxey nodded. 'There's nothing like the theatre, you know.'

'What do you mean--there's nothing like the theatre?'

'For money, old chap. Not short pieces, of course, but long ones; only, short ones lead to long ones.'

'I tell you what you'd better do,' said Henry, when they had discussed the matter. 'You'd better write the thing, and I'll have a look at it, and then decide.'

'Very well, if you like,' said Doxey slowly. 'What about shares?'

'If it comes to anything, I don't mind halving it,' Henry replied.

'I see,' said Doxey. 'Of course, I've had some little experience of the stage,' he added.

His name was one of those names which appear from time to time in the theatrical gossip of the newspapers as having adapted, or as being about to adapt, something or other for the stage which was not meant for the stage. It had never, however, appeared on the playbills of the theatres; except once, when, at a benefit matinee, the great John Pilgrim, whom to mention is to worship, had recited verses specially composed for the occasion by Alfred Doxey.

'And the signature, dear?' Geraldine glanced up at her husband, offering him a suggestion humbly, as a wife should in the presence of third parties.

'Oh!' said Henry. 'Of course, Mr. Doxey's name must go with mine, as one of the authors of the piece. Certainly.'

'Dearest,' Geraldine murmured when Doxey had gone, 'you are perfect. You don't really need an agent.'

He laughed. 'There's rather too much "old chap" about Doxey,' he said. 'Who's Doxey?'

'He's quite harmless, the little creature,' said Geraldine good-naturedly.

They sat silent for a time.

'Miles Robinson makes fifteen thousand a year out of plays,' Geraldine murmured reflectively.

'Does he?' Henry murmured reflectively.

The cavalry arrived, in full panoply of war.

'I am thankful Sarah stays with us,' said Mrs. Knight. 'Servants are so much more difficult to get now than they were in my time.'

Tea was nearly over; the cake-stand in four storeys had been depleted from attic to basement, and, after admiring the daintiness and taste displayed throughout Mrs. Henry's drawing-room, the ladies from Dawes Road had reached the most fascinating of all topics.

'When you keep several,' said Geraldine, 'they are not so hard to get. It's loneliness they object to.'

'How many shall you have, dear?' Aunt Annie asked.

'Forty,' said Henry, looking up from a paper.

'Don't be silly, dearest!' Geraldine protested. (She seemed so young and interesting and bright and precious, and so competent, as she sat there, behind the teapot, between her mature visitors in their black and their grey: this was what Henry thought.) 'No, Aunt Annie; I have four at present.'

'Four!' repeated Aunt Annie, aghast. 'But----'

'But, my dear!' exclaimed Mrs. Knight. 'Surely----'

Geraldine glanced with respectful interest at Mrs. Knight.

'Surely you'll find it a great trial to manage them all?' said Aunt Annie.

'No,' said Geraldine. 'At least, I hope not. I never allow myself to be bothered by servants. I just tell them what they are to do. If they do it, well and good. If they don't, they must leave. I give an hour a day to domestic affairs. My time is too occupied to give more.'

'She likes to spend her time going up and down in the lift,' Henry explained.

Geraldine put her hand over her husband's mouth and silenced him. It was a pretty spectacle, and reconciled the visitors to much.

Aunt Annie examined Henry's face. 'Are you quite well, Henry?' she inquired.

'I'm all right,' he said, yawning. 'But I want a little exercise. I haven't been out much to-day. I think I'll go for a short walk.'

'Yes, do, dearest.'

'Do, my dear.'

As he approached the door, having kissed his wife, his mother, without looking at him, remarked in a peculiarly dry tone, which she employed only at the rarest intervals: 'You haven't told me anything about your honeymoon yet, Henry.'

'You forget, sister,' said Aunt Annie stiffly, 'it's a secret.'

'Not now--not now!' cried Geraldine brightly. 'Well, we'll tell you. Where do you think we drove after leaving you? To the Savoy Hotel.'

'But why?' asked Mrs. Knight ingenuously.

'We spent our honeymoon there, right in the middle of London. We pretended we were strangers to London, and we saw all the sights that Londoners never do see. Wasn't it a good idea?'

'I--I don't know,' said Mrs. Knight.

'It seems rather queer--for a honeymoon,' Aunt Annie observed.

'Oh, but it was splendid!' continued Geraldine. 'We went to the theatre or the opera every night, and lived on the fat of the land in the best hotel in Europe, and saw everything--even the Tower and the Mint and the Thames Tunnel and the Tate Gallery. We enjoyed every moment.'

'And think of the saving in fares!' Henry put in, swinging the door to and fro.

'Yes, there was that, certainly,' Aunt Annie agreed.

'And we went everywhere that omnibuses go,' Henry proceeded. 'Once even we got as far as the Salisbury, Fulham.'

'Well, dear,' Mrs. Knight said sharply, 'I do think you might have popped in.'

'But, mamma,' Geraldine tried to explain, 'that would have spoilt it.'

'Spoilt what?' asked Mrs. Knight. 'The Salisbury isn't three minutes off our house. I do think you might have popped in. There I was--and me thinking you were gone abroad!'

'See you later,' said Henry, and disappeared.

'He doesn't look quite well, does he, Annie?' said Mrs. Knight.

'I know how it used to be,' Aunt Annie said. 'Whenever he began to make little jokes, we knew he was in for a bilious attack.'

'My dear people,' Geraldine endeavoured to cheer them, 'I assure you he's perfectly well--perfectly.'

'I've decided not to go out, after all,' said Henry, returning surprisingly to the room. 'I don't feel like it.' And he settled into an ear-flap chair that had cost sixteen pounds ten.

'Have one?' said Geraldine, offering him the coloured box from which she had just helped herself.

'No, thanks,' said he, shutting his eyes.

'I beg your pardon, I'm sure;' Geraldine turned to her visitors and extended the box. 'Won't you have a _marron glace_?'

And the visitors gazed at each other in startled, affrighted silence.

'Has Henry eaten some?' Mrs. Knight asked, shaken.

'He had one or two before tea,' Geraldine answered. 'Why?'

'I _knew_ he was going to be ill!' said Aunt Annie.

'But he's been eating _marrons glaces_ every day for a fortnight. Haven't you, sweetest?' said Geraldine.

'I can believe it,' Aunt Annie murmured, 'from his face.'

'Oh dear! Women! Women!' Henry whispered facetiously.

'He's only saving his appetite for dinner,' said Geraldine, with intrepid calm.

'My dear girl,' Mrs. Knight observed, again in that peculiar dry tone, 'if I know anything about your husband, and I've had him under my care for between twenty and thirty years, he will eat nothing more to-day.'

'Now, mater,' said Henry, 'don't get excited. By the way, we haven't told you that I'm going to write a play.'

'A play, Henry?'

'Yes. So you'll have to begin going to theatres in your old age, after all.'

There was a pause.

'Shan't you?' Henry persisted.

'I don't know, dear. What place of worship are you attending?'

There was another pause.

'St. Philip's, Regent Street, I think we shall choose,' said Geraldine.

'But surely that's a _church_?'

'Yes,' said Geraldine. 'It is a very good one. I have belonged to the Church of England all my life.'

'Not High, I hope,' said Aunt Annie.

'Certainly, High.'

The beneficent Providence which always watched over Henry, watched over him then. A gong resounded through the flat, and stopped the conversation. Geraldine put her lips together.

'There's the dressing-bell, dearest,' said she, controlling herself.

'I won't dress to-night,' Henry replied feebly. 'I'm not equal to it. You go. I'll stop with mother and auntie.'

'Don't you fret yourself, mater,' he said as soon as the chatelaine had left them. 'Sir George has gone to live at Redhill, and given up his pew at Great Queen Street. I shall return to the old place and take it.'

'I am very glad,' said Mrs. Knight. 'Very glad.'

'And Geraldine?' Aunt Annie asked.

'Leave me to look after the little girl,' said Henry. He then dozed for a few moments.

The dinner, with the Arctic lamps dotted about the table, and two servants to wait, began in the most stately and effective fashion imaginable. But it had got no further than the host's first spoonful of _soupe aux moules_, when the host rose abruptly, and without a word departed from the room.

The sisters nodded to each other with the cheerful gloom of prophetesses who find themselves in the midst of a disaster which they have predicted.

'You poor, foolish boy!' exclaimed Geraldine, running after Henry. She was adorably attired in white.

* * * * *


The clash of creeds was stilled in the darkened and sumptuous chamber, as the three women bent with murmurous affection over the bed on which lay, swathed in a redolent apparatus of eau-de-Cologne and fine linen, their hope and the hope of English literature. Towards midnight, when the agony had somewhat abated, Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie reluctantly retired in a 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