Part 22 (2/2)

'Yes, isn't it?' said Henry.

'Whatever will Sir George do without you, though?' his mother wondered.

And later, after he had displayed for her inspection the cheque for a thousand and eighty pounds, the old lady cried, with moist eyes:

'My darling, your poor father might well insist on having you called Shakspere! And to think that I didn't want it! To think that I didn't want it!'

'Mark my words!' said Aunt Annie. 'Sir George will ask you to stay on.'

And Aunt Annie was not deceived.

'I hope you've come to your senses,' the lawyer began early the next morning, not unkindly, but rather with an intention obviously pacific.

'Literature, or whatever you call it, may be all very well, but you won't get another place like this in a hurry. There's many an admitted solicitor earns less than you, young man.'

'Thanks very much, Sir George,' Henry answered. 'But I think, on the whole, I had better leave.'

'As you wish,' said Sir George, hurt.

'Still,' Henry proceeded, 'I hope our relations will remain pleasant. I hope I may continue to employ you.'

'Continue to employ me?' Sir George gasped.

'Yes,' said Henry. 'I got you to invest some moneys for me some time ago. I have another thousand now that I want a sound security for.'

It was one of those rare flashes of his--rare, but blindingly brilliant.

CHAPTER XX

PRESS AND PUBLIC

At length arrived the eve of the consummation of Mr. Onions Winter's mercantile labours. Forty thousand copies of _A Question of Cubits_ (No.

8 of the Satin Library) had been printed, and already, twenty-four hours before they were to s.h.i.+ne in booksellers' shops and on the counters of libraries, every copy had been sold to the trade and a second edition was in the press. Thus, it was certain that one immortal soul per thousand of the entire British race would read Henry's story. In literature, when nine hundred and ninety-nine souls ignore you, but the thousandth buys your work, or at least borrows it--that is called enormous popularity. Henry retired to bed in Dawes Road that night sure of his enormous popularity. But he did not dream of the devoted army of forty thousand admirers. He dreamt of the reviews, some of which he knew were to appear on the day of publication itself. A hundred copies of _A Question of Cubits_ had been sent out for review, and in his dreams he saw a hundred highly-educated men, who had given their lives to the study of fiction, bending anxiously over the tome and seeking with conscientious care the precise phrases in which most accurately to express their expert appreciation of it. He dreamt much of the reviewer of the _Daily Tribune_, his favourite morning paper, whom he pictured as a man of forty-five or so, with gold-rimmed spectacles and an air of generous enthusiasm. He hoped great things from the article in the _Daily Tribune_ (which, by a strange accident, had completely ignored _Love in Babylon_), and when he arose in the morning (he had been lying awake a long time waiting to hear the scamper of the newsboy on the steps) he discovered that his hopes were happily realized. The _Daily Tribune_ had given nearly a column of praise to _A Question of Cubits_, had quoted some choice extracts, had drawn special attention to the wonderful originality of the plot, and a.s.serted that the story was an advance, 'if an advance were possible,' on the author's previous book.

His mother and Aunt Annie consumed the review at breakfast with an excellent appet.i.te, and lauded the insight of the critic.

What had happened at the offices of the _Daily Tribune_ was this. At the very moment when Henry was dreaming of its reviewer--namely, half-past eleven p.m.--its editor was gesticulating and shouting at the end of a speaking-tube:

'Haven't had proof of that review of a book called _A Question of Cubits_, or some such idiotic t.i.tle! Send it down at once, instantly. Do you hear? What? Nonsense!'

The editor sprang away from the tube, and dashed into the middle of a vast ma.s.s of papers on his desk, turning them all over, first in heaps, then singly. He then sprang in succession to various side-tables and served their contents in the same manner.

'I tell you I sent it up myself before dinner,' he roared into the tube.

'It's Mr. Clackmannan's ”copy”--you know that peculiar paper he writes on. Just look about. Oh, conf----!'

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