THE NEW LIFE
They were nervous, both of them. Although they had been legally and
publicly married and their situation was in every way regular, although
the new flat in Ashley Gardens was spacious, spotless, and luxurious to
an extraordinary degree, although they had a sum of nearly seven
thousand pounds at the bank, although their consciences were clear and
their persons ornamental, Henry and Geraldine were decidedly nervous as
they sat in their drawing-room awaiting the arrival of Mrs. Knight and
Aunt Annie, who had accepted an invitation to afternoon tea and dinner.
It was the third day after the conclusion of their mysterious honeymoon.
'Have one, dearest?' said Geraldine, determined to be gay, holding up a
morsel which she took from a coloured box by her side. And Henry took
it with his teeth from between her charming fingers. 'Lovely, aren't
they?' she mumbled, munching another morsel herself, and he mumbled that
they were.
She was certainly charming, if English. Thoughts of Cosette, which used
to flit through his brain with a surprising effect that can only be
likened to an effect of flamingoes sweeping across an English meadow,
had now almost entirely ceased to disturb him. He had but to imagine
what Geraldine's attitude towards Cosette would have been had the two
met, in order to perceive the overpowering balance of advantages in
Geraldine's favour.
Much had happened since Cosette.
As a consequence of natural reaction, he had at once settled down to be
extremely serious, and to take himself seriously. He had been assisted
in the endeavour by the publication of an article in a monthly review,
entitled 'The Art of Henry Shakspere Knight.' The article explained to
him how wonderful he was, and he was ingenuously and sincerely thankful
for the revelation. It also, incidentally, showed him that 'Henry
Shakspere Knight' was a better signature for his books than 'Henry S.
Knight,' and he decided to adopt it in his next work. Further, it had
enormously quickened in him the sense of his mission in the world, of
his duty to his colossal public, and his potentiality for good.
He put aside a book which he had already haltingly commenced, and began
a new one, in which a victim to the passion for gambling was redeemed by
the love of a pure young girl. It contained dramatic scenes in Paris, in
the _train de luxe_, and in Monte Carlo. One of the most striking scenes
was a harmony of moonlight and love on board a yacht in the
Mediterranean, in which sea Veronica prevailed upon Hubert to submerge
an ill-gotten gain of six hundred and sixty-three thousand francs,
although the renunciation would leave Hubert penniless. Geraldine
watched the progress of this book with absolute satisfaction. She had no
fault to find with it. She gazed at Henry with large admiring eyes as he
read aloud to her chapter after chapter.
'What do you think I'm going to call it?' he had demanded of her once,
gleefully.
'I don't know,' she said.
'_Red and Black_,' he told her. 'Isn't that a fine title?'
'Yes,' she said. 'But it's been used before;' and she gave him
particulars of Stendhal's novel, of which he had never heard.
'Oh, well!' he exclaimed, somewhat dashed. 'As Stendhal was a Frenchman,
and his book doesn't deal with gambling at all, I think I may stick to
my title. I thought of it myself, you know.'
'Oh yes, dearest. I _know_ you did,' Geraldine said eagerly.
'You think I'd better alter it?'
Geraldine glanced at the floor. 'You see,' she murmured, 'Stendhal was a
really great writer.'
He started, shocked. She had spoken in such a way that he could not be
sure whether she meant, 'Stendhal was a really _great_ writer,' or,
'_Stendhal_ was a _really_ great writer.' If the former, he did not
mind, much. But if the latter--well, he thought uncomfortably of what
Tom had said to him in the train. And he perceived again, and more
clearly than ever before, that there was something in Geraldine which
baffled him--something which he could not penetrate, and never would
penetrate.
'Suppose I call it _Black and Red_? Will that do?' he asked forlornly.
'It would do,' she answered; 'but it doesn't sound so well.'
'I've got it!' he cried exultantly. 'I've got it! _The Plague-Spot._
Monte Carlo the plague-spot of Europe, you know.'
'Splendid!' she said with enthusiasm. 'You are always magnificent at
titles.'
And it was universally admitted that he was.
The book had been triumphantly finished, and the manuscript delivered to
Macalistairs via Mark Snyder, and the huge cheque received under cover
of a letter full of compliments on Henry's achievement. Macalistairs
announced that their _Magazine_ would shortly contain the opening
chapters of Mr. Henry Shakspere Knight's great romance, _The
Plague-Spot_, which would run for one year, and which combined a
tremendous indictment of certain phases of modern life with an original
love-story by turns idyllic and dramatic. _Gordon's Monthly_ was
serializing the novel in America. About this time, an interview with
Henry, suggested by Sir Hugh Macalistair himself, appeared in an
important daily paper. 'It is quite true,' said Henry in the interview,
'that I went to Monte Carlo to obtain first-hand material for my book.
The stories of my breaking the bank there, however, are wildly
exaggerated. Of course, I played a little, in order to be able to put
myself in the place of my hero. I should explain that I was in Monte
Carlo with my cousin, Mr. Dolbiac, the well-known sculptor and painter,
who was painting portraits there. Mr. Dolbiac is very much at home in
Parisian artistic society, and he happened to introduce me to a famous
French lady singer who was in Monte Carlo at the time. This lady and I
found ourselves playing at the same table. From time to time I put down
her stakes for her; that was all. She certainly had an extraordinary run
of luck, but the bank was actually broken at last by the united bets of
a number of people. That is the whole story, and I'm afraid it is much
less exciting and picturesque than the rumours which have been flying
about. I have never seen the lady since that day.'
Then his marriage had filled the air.
At an early stage in the preparations for that event his mother and
Aunt Annie became passive--ceased all activity. Perfect peace was
maintained, but they withdrew. Fundamentally and absolutely, Geraldine's
ideas were not theirs, and Geraldine did as she liked with Henry.
Geraldine and Henry interrogated Mark Snyder as to the future. 'Shall we
be justified in living at the rate of two thousand a year?' they asked
him. 'Yes,' he said, 'and four times that!' He had just perused _The
Plague-Spot_ in manuscript. 'Let's make it three thousand, then,' said
Geraldine to Henry. And she had planned the establishment of their home
on that scale. Henry did not tell the ladies at Dawes Road that the rent
of the flat was three hundred a year, and that the furniture had cost
over a thousand, and that he was going to give Geraldine two hundred a
year for dress. He feared apoplexy in his mother, and a nervous crisis
in Aunt Annie.
The marriage took place in a church. It was not this that secretly
pained Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie; all good Wesleyan Methodists marry
themselves in church. What secretly pained them was the fact that Henry
would not divulge, even to his own mother, the locality of the
honeymoon. He did say that Geraldine had been bent upon Paris, and that
he had completely barred Paris ('Quite right,' Aunt Annie remarked), but
he would say no more. And so after the ceremony the self-conscious pair
had disappeared for a fortnight into the unknown and the unknowable.
And now they had reappeared out of the unknown and the unknowable, and,
with the help of four servants, meant to sustain life in Mrs. Knight and
Aunt Annie for a period of some five hours.
They heard a ring in the distance of the flat.
'Prepare to receive cavalry,' said Geraldine, sitting erect in her blue
dress on the green settee in the middle of the immense drawing-room.
Then, seeing Henry's face, she jumped up, crossed over to her husband,
and gave him a smacking kiss between the eyes. 'Dearest, I didn't mean
it!' she whispered enchantingly. He smiled. She flew back to her seat
just as the door opened.
'Mr. Doxey,' said a new parlourmaid, intensely white and black, and
intensely aware of the eminence of her young employers. And little
Doxey of the P.A. came in, rather shabby and insinuating as usual, and
obviously impressed by the magnificence of his surroundings.
'My good Doxey,' exclaimed the chatelaine. 'How delicious of you to have
found us out so soon!'
'How d'you do, Doxey?' said Henry, rising.
'Awfully good of you to see me!' began Doxey, depositing his
well-preserved hat on a chair. 'Hope I don't interrupt.' He smiled.
'Can't stop a minute. Got a most infernal bazaar on at the Cecil. Look
here, old man,' he addressed Henry: 'I've been reading your _Love in
Babylon_ again, and I fancied I could make a little curtain-raiser out
of it--out of the picture incident, you know. I mentioned the idea to
Pilgrim, of the Prince's Theatre, and he's fearfully stuck on it.'
'You mean, you think he is,' Geraldine put in.
'Well, he is,' Doxey pursued, after a brief 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.