PLAYING THE NEW GAME
When Henry had seceded from Powells, and had begun to devote several
dignified hours a day to the excogitation of a theme for his new novel,
and the triumph of _A Question of Cubits_ was at its height, he thought
that there ought to be some change in his secret self to correspond with
the change in his circumstances. But he could perceive none, except,
perhaps, that now and then he was visited by the feeling that he had a
great mission in the world. That feeling, however, came rarely, and, for
the most part, he existed in a state of not being quite able to
comprehend exactly how and why his stories roused the enthusiasm of an
immense public.
In essentials he remained the same Henry, and the sameness of his simple
self was never more apparent to him than when he got out of a cab one
foggy Wednesday night in November, and rang at the Grecian portico of
Mrs. Ashton Portway's house in Lowndes Square. A crimson cloth covered
the footpath. This was his first entry into the truly great world, and
though he was perfectly aware that as a lion he could not easily be
surpassed in no matter what menagerie, his nervousness and timidity were
so acute as to be painful; they annoyed him, in fact. When, in the wide
hall, a servant respectfully but firmly closed the door after him, thus
cutting off a possible retreat to the homely society of the cabman, he
became resigned, careless, reckless, desperate, as who should say, 'Now
I _have_ done it!' And as at the Louvre, so at Mrs. Ashton Portway's,
his outer garments were taken forcibly from him, and a ticket given to
him in exchange. The ticket startled him, especially as he saw no notice
on the walls that the management would not be responsible for articles
not deposited in the cloakroom. Nobody inquired about his identity, and
without further ritual he was asked to ascend towards regions whence
came the faint sound of music. At the top of the stairs a young and
handsome man, faultless alike in costume and in manners, suavely
accosted him.
'What name, sir?'
'Knight,' said Henry gruffly. The young man thought that Henry was on
the point of losing his temper from some cause or causes unknown,
whereas Henry was merely timid.
Then the music ceased, and was succeeded by violent chatter; the young
man threw open a door, and announced in loud clear tones, which Henry
deemed ridiculously loud and ridiculously clear:
'MR. KNIGHT!'
Henry saw a vast apartment full of women's shoulders and black patches
of masculinity; the violent chatter died into a profound silence; every
face was turned towards him. He nearly fell down dead on the doormat,
and then, remembering that life was after all sweet, he plunged into the
room as into the sea.
When he came up breathless and spluttering, Mrs. Ashton Portway (in
black and silver) was introducing him to her husband, Mr. Ashton
Portway, known to a small circle of readers as Raymond Quick, the author
of several mild novels issued at his own expense. Mr. Portway was rich
in money and in his wife; he had inherited the money, and his literary
instincts had discovered the wife in a publisher's daughter. The union
had not been blessed with children, which was fortunate, since Mrs.
Portway was left free to devote the whole of her time to the
encouragement of literary talent in the most unliterary of cities.
Henry rather liked Mr. Ashton Portway, whose small black eyes seemed to
say: 'That's all right, my friend. I share your ideas fully. When you
want a quiet whisky, come to me.'
'And what have you been doing this dark day?' Mrs. Ashton Portway began,
with her snigger.
'Well,' said Henry, 'I dropped into the National Gallery this afternoon,
but really it was so----'
'The National Gallery?' exclaimed Mrs. Ashton Portway swiftly. 'I must
introduce you to Miss Marchrose, the author of that charming hand-book
to _Pictures in London_. Miss Marchrose,' she called out, urging Henry
towards a corner of the room, 'this is Mr. Knight.' She sniggered on the
name. 'He's just dropped into the National Gallery.'
Then Mrs. Ashton Portway sailed off to receive other guests, and Henry
was alone with Miss Marchrose in a nook between a cabinet and a
phonograph. Many eyes were upon them. Miss Marchrose, a woman of thirty,
with a thin face and an amorphous body draped in two shades of olive,
was obviously flattered.
'Be frank, and admit you've never heard of me,' she said.
'Oh yes, I have,' he lied.
'Do you often go to the National Gallery, Mr. Knight?'
'Not as often as I ought.'
Pause.
Several observant women began to think that Miss Marchrose was not
making the best of Henry--that, indeed, she had proved unworthy of an
unmerited honour.
'I sometimes think----' Miss Marchrose essayed.
But a young lady got up in the middle of the room, and with
extraordinary self-command and presence of mind began to recite
Wordsworth's 'The Brothers.' She continued to recite and recite until
she had finished it, and then sat down amid universal joy.
'Matthew Arnold said that was the greatest poem of the century,'
remarked a man near the phonograph.
'You'll pardon me,' said Miss Marchrose, turning to him. 'If you are
thinking of Matthew Arnold's introduction to the selected poems, you'll
and----'
'My dear,' said Mrs. Ashton Portway, suddenly looming up opposite the
reciter, 'what a memory you have!'
'Was it so long, then?' murmured a tall man with spectacles and a light
wavy beard.
'I shall send you back to Paris, Mr. Dolbiac,' said Mrs. Ashton Portway,
'if you are too witty.' The hostess smiled and sniggered, but it was
generally felt that Mr. Dolbiac's remark had not been in the best taste.
For a few moments Henry was alone and uncared for, and he examined his
surroundings. His first conclusion was that there was not a pretty woman
in the room, and his second, that this fact had not escaped the notice
of several other men who were hanging about in corners. Then Mrs. Ashton
Portway, having accomplished the task of receiving, beckoned him, and
intimated to him that, being a lion and the king of beasts, he must
roar. 'I think everyone here has done something,' she said as she took
him round and forced him to roar. His roaring was a miserable fiasco,
but most people mistook it for the latest fashion in roaring, and were
impressed.
'Now you must take someone down to get something to eat,' she apprised
him, when he had growled out soft nothings to poetesses, paragraphists,
publicists, positivists, penny-a-liners, and other pale persons. 'Whom
shall it be?--Ashton! What have you done?'
The phonograph had been advertised to give a reproduction of Ternina in
the Liebestod from _Tristan und Isolde_, but instead it broke into the
'Washington Post,' and the room, braced to a great occasion, was
horrified. Mrs. Portway, abandoning Henry, ran to silence the disastrous
consequence of her husband's clumsiness. Henry, perhaps impelled by an
instinctive longing, gazed absently through the open door into the
passage, and there, with two other girls on a settee, he perceived
Geraldine! She smiled, rose, and came towards him. She looked
disconcertingly pretty; she was always at her best in the evening; and
she had such eyes to gaze on him.
'You here!' she murmured.
Ordinary words, but they were enveloped in layers of feeling, as a
child's simple gift may be wrapped in lovely tinted tissue-papers!
'She's the finest woman in the place,' he thought decisively. And he
said to her: 'Will you come down and have something to eat?'
'I can talk to _her_,' he reflected with satisfaction, as the faultless
young man handed them desired sandwiches in the supper-room. What he
meant was that she could talk to him; but men often make this mistake.
Before he had eaten half a sandwich, the period of time between that
night and the night at the Louvre had been absolutely blotted out. He
did not know why. He could think of no explanation. It merely was so.
She told him she had sold a sensational serial for a pound a thousand
words.
'Not a bad price--for me,' she added.
'Not half enough!' he exclaimed ardently.
Her eyes moistened. He thought what a shame it was that a creature like
her should be compelled to earn even a portion of her livelihood by
typewriting for Mark Snyder. The faultless young man unostentatiously
poured more wine into their glasses. No other guests happened to be in
the room....
'Ah, you're here!' It was the hostess, sniggering.
'You told me to bring someone down,' said Henry, who had no intention of
being outfaced now.
'We're just coming up,' Geraldine added.
'That's right!' said Mrs. Ashton Portway. 'A lot of people have gone,
and now that we shall be a little bit more intimate, I want to try that
new game. I don't think it's ever been played in London anywhere yet. I
saw it in the _New York Herald_. Of course, nobody who isn't just a
little clever could play at it.'
'Oh yes!' Geraldine smiled. 'You mean "Characters." I remember you told
me about it.'
And Mrs. Ashton Portway said that she did mean 'Characters.'
In the drawing-room she explained that in playing the game of
'Characters' you chose a subject for discussion, and then each player
secretly thought of a character in fiction, and spoke in the discussion
as he imagined that character would have spoken. At the end of the game
you tried to guess the characters chosen.
'I think it ought to be classical fiction only,' she said.
Sundry guests declined to play, on the ground that they lacked the
needful brilliance. Henry declined utterly, but he had the wit not to
give his reasons. It was he who suggested that the non-players should
form a jury. At last seven players were recruited, including Mr. Ashton
Portway, Miss Marchrose, Geraldine, Mr. Dolbiac, and three others. Mrs.
Ashton Portway sat down by Henry as a jurywoman.
'And now what are you going to discuss?' said she.
No one could find a topic.
'Let us discuss love,' Miss Marchrose ventured.
'Yes,' said Mr. Dolbiac, 'let's. There's nothing like leather.'
So the seven in the centre of the room assumed attitudes suitable for
the discussion of love.
'Have you all chosen your characters?' asked the hostess.
'We have,' replied the seven.
'Then begin.'
'Don't all speak at once,' said Mr. Dolbiac, after a pause.
'Who is that chap?' Henry whispered.
'Mr. Dolbiac? He's a sculptor from Paris. Quite English, I believe,
except for his grandmother. Intensely clever.' Mrs. Ashton Portway
distilled these facts into Henry's ear, and then turned to the silent
seven. 'It _is_ rather difficult, isn't it?' she breathed encouragingly.
'Love is not for such as me,' said Mr. Dolbiac solemnly. Then he looked
at his hostess, and called out in an undertone: 'I've begun.'
'The question,' said Miss Marchrose, clearing her throat, 'is, not what
love is not, but what it is.'
'You must kindly stand up,' said Mr. Dolbiac. 'I can't hear.'
Miss Marchrose glanced at Mrs. Ashton Portway, and Mrs. Ashton Portway
told Mr. Dolbiac that he was on no account to be silly.
Then Mr. Ashton Portway and Geraldine both began to speak at once, and
then insisted on being silent at once, and in the end Mr. Ashton Portway
was induced to say something about Dulcinea.
'He's chosen Don Quixote,' his wife informed Henry behind her hand.
'It's his favourite novel.'
The discussion proceeded under difficulties, for no one was loquacious
except Mr. Dolbiac, and all Mr. Dolbiac's utterances were staccato and
senseless. The game had had several narrow escapes of extinction, when
Miss Marchrose galvanized it by means of a long and serious monologue
treating of the sorts of man with whom a self-respecting woman will
never fall in love. There appeared to be about a hundred and
thirty-three sorts of that man.
'There is one sort of man with whom no woman, self-respecting or
otherwise, will fall in love,' said Mr. Dolbiac, 'and that is the sort
of man she can't kiss without having to stand on the mantelpiece.
Alas!'--he hid his face in his handkerchief--'I am that sort.'
'Without having to stand on the mantelpiece?' Mrs. Ashton Portway
repeated. 'What can he mean? Mr. Dolbiac, you aren't playing the game.'
'Yes, I am, gracious lady,' he contradicted her.
'Well, what character are you, then?' demanded Miss Marchrose,
irritated by his grotesque pendant to her oration.
'I'm Gerald in _A Question of Cubits_.'
The company felt extremely awkward. Henry blushed.
'I said classical fiction,' Mrs. Ashton Portway corrected Mr. Dolbiac
stiffly. 'Of course I don't mean to insinuate that it isn't----' She
turned to Henry.
'Oh! did you?' observed Dolbiac calmly. 'So sorry. I knew it was a silly
and nincompoopish book, but I thought you wouldn't mind so long as----'
'_Mr._ Dolbiac!'
That particular Wednesday of Mrs. Ashton Portway's came to an end in
hurried confusion. Mr. Dolbiac professed to be entirely ignorant of
Henry's identity, and went out into the night. Henry assured his hostess
that really it was nothing, except a good joke. But everyone felt that
the less said, the better. Of such creases in the web of social life
Time is the best smoother.