HIS FAME
Henry's sleep was feverish, and shot with the iridescence of strange
dreams. And during the whole of the next day one thought burned in his
brain, the thought of the immense success of _Love in Babylon_. It
burned so fiercely and so brightly, it so completely preoccupied Henry,
that he would not have been surprised to overhear men whisper to each
other in the street as he passed: 'See that extraordinary thought
blazing away there in that fellow's brain?' It was, in fact, curious to
him that people did not stop and gaze at his cranium, so much the thing
felt like a hollowed turnip illuminated by this candle of an idea. But
nobody with whom he came into contact appeared to be aware of the
immense success of _Love in Babylon_. In the office of Powells were
seven full-fledged solicitors and seventeen other clerks, without
counting Henry, and not a man or youth of the educated lot of them made
the slightest reference to _Love in Babylon_ during all that day. (It
was an ordinary, plain, common, unromantic, dismal Tuesday in Lincoln's
Inn Fields.) Eighteen thousand persons had already bought _Love in
Babylon_; possibly several hundreds of copies had been sold since nine
o'clock that morning; doubtless someone was every minute inquiring for
it and demanding it in bookshop or library, just as someone is born
every minute. And yet here was the author, the author himself, the
veritable and only genuine author, going about his daily business
unhonoured, unsung, uncongratulated, even unnoticed! It was incredible,
and, besides being incredible, it was exasperating. Henry was modest,
but there are limits to modesty, and more than once in the course of
that amazing and endless Tuesday Henry had a narrow escape of dragging
_Love in Babylon_ bodily into the miscellaneous conversation of the
office. However, with the aid of his natural diffidence he refrained
from doing so.
At five-fifty Sir George departed, as usual, to catch the six-five for
Wimbledon, where he had a large residence, which outwardly resembled at
once a Bloomsbury boarding-house, a golf-club, and a Riviera hotel.
Henry, after Sir George's exit, lapsed into his principal's chair and
into meditation. The busy life of the establishment died down until only
the office-boys and Henry were left. And still Henry sat, in the
leathern chair at the big table in Sir George's big room, thinking,
thinking, thinking, in a vague but golden and roseate manner, about the
future.
Then the door opened, and Foxall, the emperor of the Powellian
office-boys, entered.
'Here's someone to see you,' Foxall whispered archly; he economized time
by licking envelopes the while. Every night Foxall had to superintend
and participate in the licking of about two hundred envelopes and as
many stamps.
'Who is it?' Henry asked, instantly perturbed and made self-conscious by
the doggishness, the waggishness, the rakishness, of Foxall's tone. It
must be explained that, since Henry did not happen to be an 'admitted'
clerk, Foxall and himself, despite the difference in their ages and
salaries, were theoretically equals in the social scale of the office.
Foxall would say 'sir' to the meanest articled clerk that ever failed
five times in his intermediate, but he would have expired on the rack
before saying 'sir' to Henry. The favour accorded to Henry in high
quarters, the speciality of his position, gave rise to a certain
jealousy of him--a jealousy, however, which his natural simplicity and
good-temper prevented from ever becoming formidable. Foxall, indeed,
rather liked Henry, and would do favours for him in matters connected
with press-copying, letter-indexing, despatching, and other mysteries of
the office-boy's peculiar craft.
'It's a girl,' said Foxall, smiling with the omniscience of a man of the
world.
'A girl!' Somehow Henry had guessed it was a girl. 'What's she like?'
'She's a bit of all right,' Foxall explained. 'Miss Foster she says her
name is. Better show her in here, hadn't I? The old woman's in your room
now. It's nearly half-past six.'
'Yes,' said Henry; 'show her in here. Foster? Foster? I don't know----'
His heart began to beat like an engine under his waistcoat.
And then Miss Foster tripped in. And she was Goldenhair!
'Good-afternoon, Mr. Knight,' she said, with a charming affectation of a
little lisp. 'I'm so glad I've caught you. I thought I should. What a
lovely room you've got!'
He wanted to explain that this was Sir George's room, not his own, and
that any way he did not consider it lovely; but she gave him no chance.
'I'm awfully nervous, you know, and I always talk fast and loud when I'm
nervous,' she continued rapidly. 'I shall get over it in a few minutes.
Meanwhile you must bear with me. Do you think you can? I want you to do
me a favour, Mr. Knight. Only you can do it. May I sit down? Oh, thanks!
What a huge chair! If I get lost in it, please advertise. Is this where
your clients sit? Yes, I want you to do me a favour. It's quite easy for
you to do. You won't say No, will you? You won't think I'm presuming on
our slight acquaintanceship?'
The words babbled and purled out of Miss Foster's mouth like a bright
spring out of moss. It was simply wonderful. Henry did not understand
quite precisely how the phenomenon affected him, but he was left in no
doubt that his feelings were pleasurable. She had a manner of
looking--of looking up at him and to him, of relying on him as a great
big wise man who could get poor little silly her out of a difficulty.
And when she wasn't talking she kept her mouth open, and showed her
teeth and the tip of her red, red tongue. And there was her golden
fluffy hair! But, after all, perhaps the principal thing was her
dark-blue, tight-fitting bodice--not a wrinkle in all those curves!
It is singular how a man may go through life absolutely blind to a
patent, obvious, glaring fact, and then suddenly perceive it. Henry
perceived that his mother and his aunt were badly dressed--in truth,
dowdy. It struck him as a discovery.
'Anything I can do, I'm sure----' he began.
'Oh, thank you, Mr. Knight I felt I could count on your good-nature. You
know----'
She cleared her throat, and then smiled intimately, dazzlingly, and
pushed a thin gold bangle over the wrist of her glove. And as she did so
Henry thought what bliss it would be to slip a priceless diamond
bracelet on to that arm. It was just an arm, the usual feminine arm;
every normal woman in this world has two of them; and yet----! But at
the same time, such is the contradictoriness of human nature, Henry
would have given a considerable sum to have had Miss Foster magically
removed from the room, and to be alone. The whole of his being was
deeply disturbed, as if by an earthquake. And, moreover, he could scarce
speak coherently.
'You know,' said Miss Foster, 'I want to interview you.'
He did not take the full meaning of the phrase at first.
'What about?' he innocently asked.
'Oh, about yourself, and your work, and your plans, and all that sort of
thing. The usual sort of thing, you know.'
'For a newspaper?'
She nodded.
He took the meaning. He was famous, then! People--that vague, vast
entity known as 'people'--wished to know about him. He had done
something. He had arrested attention--he, Henry, son of the draper's
manager; aged twenty-three; eater of bacon for breakfast every morning
like ordinary men; to be observed daily in the Underground, and daily
in the A.B.C. shop in Chancery Lane.
'You are thinking of _Love in Babylon_?' he inquired.
She nodded again. (The nod itself was an enchantment. 'She's just about
my age,' said Henry to himself. And he thought, without realizing that
he thought: 'She's lots older than me _practically_. She could twist me
round her little finger.')
'Oh, Mr. Knight, she recommenced at a tremendous rate, sitting up in the
great client's chair, 'you must let me tell you what I thought of _Love
in Babylon_! It's the sweetest thing! I read it right off, at one go,
without looking up! And the title! How _did_ you think of it? Oh! if I
could write, I would write a book like that. Old Spring Onions has
produced it awfully well, too, hasn't he? It's a boom, a positive,
unmistakable boom! Everyone's talking about you, Mr. Knight. Personally,
I tell everyone I meet to read your book.'
Henry mildly protested against this excess of enthusiasm.
'I must,' Miss Foster explained. 'I can't help it.'
Her admiration was the most precious thing on earth to him at that
moment. He had not imagined that he could enjoy anything so much as he
enjoyed her admiration.
'I'm going now, Mr. Knight,' Foxall sang out from the passage.
'Very well, Foxall,' Henry replied, as who should say: 'Foxall, I
benevolently permit you to go.'
They were alone together in the great suite of rooms.
'You know _Home and Beauty_, don't you?' Miss Foster demanded.
'_Home and Beauty?_'
'Oh, you don't! I thought perhaps you did. But then, of course, you're a
man. It's one of the new ladies' penny papers. I believe it's doing
rather well now. I write interviews for it. You see, Mr. Knight, I have
a great ambition to be a regular journalist, and in my spare time at Mr.
Snyder's, and in the evenings, I write--things. I'm getting quite a
little connection. What I want to obtain is a regular column in some
really good paper. It's rather awkward, me being engaged all day,
especially for interviews. However, I just thought if I ran away at six
I might catch you before you left. And so here I am. I don't know what
you think of me, Mr. Knight, worrying you and boring you like this with
my foolish chatter.... Ah! I see you don't want to be interviewed.'
'Yes, I do,' said Henry. 'That is, I shall be most happy to oblige you
in any way, I assure you. If you really think I'm sufficiently----'
'Why, of course you are, Mr. Knight,' she urged forcefully. 'But, like
most clever men, you're modest; you've no idea of it--of your success, I
mean. By the way, you'll excuse me, but I do trust you made a proper
bargain with Mr. Onions Winter.'
'I think so,' said Henry. 'You see, I'm in the law, and we understand
these things.'
'Exactly,' she agreed, but without conviction. 'Then you'll make a lot
of money. You must be very careful about your next contracts. I hope you
didn't agree to let Mr. Winter have a second book on the same terms as
this one.'
Henry recalled a certain clause of the contract which he had signed.
'I am afraid I did,' he admitted sheepishly. 'But the terms are quite
fair. I saw to that.'
'Mr. Knight! Mr. Knight!' she burst out. 'Why are all you young and
clever men the same? Why do you perspire in order that publishers may
grow fat? _I_ know what Spring Onions' terms would be. Seriously, you
ought to employ an agent. He'd double your income. I don't say Mr.
Snyder particularly----'
'But Mr. Snyder is a very good agent, isn't he?'
'Yes,' affirmed Miss Foster gravely. 'He acts for all the best men.'
'Then I shall come to him,' said Henry. 'I had thought of doing so. You
remember when I called that day--it was mentioned then.'
He made this momentous decision in an instant, and even as he announced
it he wondered why. However, Mr. Snyder's ten per cent no longer
appeared to him outrageous.
'And now can you give me some paper and a pencil, Mr. Knight? I forgot
mine in my hurry not to miss you. And I'll sit at the table. May I?
Thanks awfully.'
She sat near to him, while he hastily and fumblingly searched for
paper. The idea of being alone with her in the offices seemed delightful
to him. And just then he heard a step in the passage, and a well-known
dry cough, and the trailing of a long brush on the linoleum. Of course,
the caretaker, the inevitable and omnipresent Mrs. Mawner, had invested
the place, according to her nightly custom.
Mrs. Mawner opened the door of Sir George's room, and stood on the mat,
calmly gazing within, the brush in one hand and a duster in the other.
'I beg pardon, sir,' said she inimically. 'I thought Sir George was
gone.'
'Sir George has gone,' Henry replied.
Mrs. Mawner enveloped the pair in her sinister glance.
'Shall you be long, sir?'
'I can't say.' Henry was firm.
Giving a hitch to her sackcloth, she departed and banged the door.
Henry and Miss Foster were solitary again. And as he glanced at her, he
thought deliciously: 'I am a gay spark.' Never before had such a notion
visited him.
'What first gave you the idea of writing _Love in Babylon_, Mr.
Knight?' began Miss Foster, smiling upon him with a marvellous
allurement.
Henry was nearly an hour later than usual in arriving home, but he
offered no explanation to his mother and aunt beyond saying that he had
been detained by a caller, after Sir George's departure. He read in the
faces of his mother and aunt their natural pride that he should be
capable of conducting Sir George's business for him after Sir George's
departure of a night. Yet he found himself incapable of correcting the
false impression which he had wittingly given. In plain terms, he could
not tell the ladies, he could not bring himself to tell them, that a
well-dressed young woman had called upon him at a peculiar hour and
interviewed him in the strict privacy of Sir George's own room on behalf
of a lady's paper called _Home and Beauty_. He wanted very much to
impart to them these quite harmless and, indeed, rather agreeable and
honourable facts, but his lips would not frame the communicating words.
Not even when the talk turned, as of course it did, to _Love in
Babylon_, did he contrive to mention the interview. It was ridiculous;
but so it was.
'By the way----' he began once, but his mother happened to speak at the
same instant.
'What were you going to say, Henry?' Aunt Annie asked when Mrs. Knight
had finished.
'Oh, nothing. I forget,' said the miserable poltroon.
'The next advertisement will say twentieth thousand, that's what it will
say--you'll see!' remarked Mrs. Knight.
'What an ass you are!' murmured Henry to Henry. 'You'll have to tell
them some time, so why not now? Besides, what in thunder's the matter?'
Vaguely, dimly, he saw that Miss Foster's tight-fitting bodice was the
matter. Yes, there was something about that bodice, those teeth, that
tongue, that hair, something about _her_, which seemed to challenge the
whole system of his ideas, all his philosophy, self-satisfaction,
seriousness, smugness, and general invincibility. And he thought of her
continually--no particular thought, but a comprehensive, enveloping,
brooding, static thought. And he was strangely jolly and uplifted, full
of affectionate, absent-minded good humour towards his mother and Aunt
Annie.
There was a _ting-ting_ of the front-door bell.
'Perhaps Dr. Dancer has called for a chat,' said Aunt Annie with
pleasant anticipation.
Sarah was heard to ascend and to run along the hall. Then Sarah entered
the dining-room.
'Please, sir, there's a young lady to see you.'
Henry flushed.
The sisters looked at one another.
'What name, Sarah?' Aunt Annie whispered.
'I didn't ask, mum.'
'How often have I told you always to ask strangers' names when they come
to the door!' Aunt Annie's whisper became angry. 'Go and see.'
Henry hoped and feared, feared and hoped. But he knew not where to look.
Sarah returned and said: 'The young lady's name is Foster, sir.'
'Oh!' said Henry, bursting into speech as some plants burst suddenly and
brilliantly into blossom. 'Miss Foster, eh? It's the lady who called at
the office to-night. Show her into the front-room, Sarah, and light the
gas. I'll come in a minute I wonder what she wants.'
'You didn't say it was a lady,' said his mother.
'No,' he admitted; his tongue was unloosed now on the subject. 'And I
didn't say it was a lady-journalist, either. The truth is,' this liar
proceeded with an effrontery which might have been born of incessant
practice, but was not, 'I meant it as a surprise for you. I've been
interviewed this afternoon, for a lady's paper. And I wouldn't mind
betting--I wouldn't mind betting,' he repeated, 'that she's come for my
photograph.'
All this was whispered.
Henry had guessed correctly. It was the question of a portrait which
Miss Foster plunged into immediately he entered the drawing-room. She
had forgotten it utterly--she had been so nervous. 'So I ran down here
to-night,' she said, 'because if I send in my stuff and the portrait
to-morrow morning, it may be in time for next week's issue. Now, don't
say you haven't got a photograph of yourself, Mr. Knight. Don't say
that! What a pretty, old-fashioned drawing-room! Oh, there's the very
thing!'
She pointed to a framed photograph on the plush-covered mantelpiece.
'The very thing, is it?' said Henry. He was feeling his feet now, the
dog. 'Well, you shall have it, then.' And he took the photograph out of
the frame and gave it to her.
No! she wouldn't stay, not a minute, not a second. One moment her
delicious presence filled the drawing-room (he was relieved to hear her
call it a pretty, old-fashioned drawing-room, because, as the
drawing-room of a person important enough to be interviewed, it had
seemed to him somewhat less than mediocre), and the next moment she had
gone. By a singular coincidence, Aunt Annie was descending the stairs
just as Henry showed Miss Foster out of the house; the stairs commanded
the lobby and the front-door.
On his return to the dining-room and the companionship of his relatives,
Henry was conscious of a self-preserving instinct which drove him to
make conversation as rapidly and in as large quantities as possible. In
a brief space of time he got round to _Home and Beauty_.
'Do you know it?' he demanded.
'No,' said Aunt Annie. 'I never heard of it. But I dare say it's a very
good paper.'
Mrs. Knight rang the bell.
'What do you want, sister?' Aunt Annie inquired.
'I'm going to send Sarah out for a copy of _Home and Beauty_,' said Mrs.
Knight, with the air of one who has determined to indulge a wild whim
for once in a way. 'Let's see what it's like.'
'Don't forget the name, Sarah--_Home and Beauty_!' Aunt Annie enjoined
the girl when Mrs. Knight had given the order.
'Not me, mum,' said Sarah. 'I know it. It's a beautiful paper. I often
buys it myself. But it's like as if what must be--I lighted the kitchen
fire with this week's this very morning, paper pattern and all.'
'That will do, thank you, Sarah,' said Aunt Annie crushingly.