Then followed a term with men who might have been called cranks. Bernard Shaw declined to dine with them ... he preferred to eat at home....

"Voluptuous vegetarian!" said Gilbert ... but he talked to them for an hour on "Equality" and tried to persuade them to advocate equal incomes for all, a.s.serting that this was desirable from every point of view, biological, social and economic. Following Bernard Shaw, came Edward Carpenter, very gentle and very gracious, denouncing modern civilisation in words which were spoken quietly, but which, in print, read like a thunderstorm. Alfred Russell Wallace, whom they invited to talk on Evolution, came and talked instead on the nationalisation of land. He sat, huddled in a chair, very old and very bright, with eyes that sparkled behind his gla.s.ses ... and suddenly, in the middle of his discourse on land, he informed them that he had positive proof of the existence of angels. "My G.o.d, he'll want to make civil servants of 'em!"

Gilbert whispered to Henry.... Sir Horace Plunkett dined with them one night, eating so little that he scarcely seemed to eat at all, and he preached the whole gospel of co-operation. It was through him that they got hold of an agricultural genius called T. Wibberley, an English-Irishman, who reorganised the entire farming system on a basis of continuous cropping inside an hour and ten minutes. Wibberley knew Henry's father, and for the first time in his life Henry learned that Mr. Quinn's agricultural experiments were of value.... Then came H. G.

Wells, smiling and very deprecating and almost inarticulate, to tell them of the enormous importance of the novelist. They got him into a corner of the room, when he had finished reading his paper, and persuaded him to make caricatures of them ... and while he was making the caricatures, he talked to them far more brilliantly than he had read to them. G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc came to lecture and stayed to drink. Chesterton's lecture would have been funny, they agreed, if they had been able to hear it, but he laughed so heartily at his jokes, as he, so to speak, saw them approaching, that he forgot to make them.

His method of speech was a mixture of giggle and whisper.

"Chuckle-and-squeak!" Gilbert called it. Belloc whispered dark things about Influential Families and Hebrews and seemed to think that a man who changed his name only did so with the very worst intentions. He and Chesterton said harsh things about the Party System, and they babbled beatifically about the Catholic Church.... "Two big men like that gabbling like a couple of priest-smitten flappers!" said Gilbert in disgust as he listened to them. "Them and their Cathlik Church!" he added, imitating Belloc's way of p.r.o.nouncing the word "Catholic."

Mouldy, grovelling, fat Papists! he called them, and vowed that he would resign from the Improved Tories if any more of that sort were asked to address them. That was because some one had suggested that Cecil Chesterton should also be invited to dine with them. "He's simply Belloc's echo," Gilbert protested. "I should feel as if I were listening to his master's voice. Besides, he's fatter than Belloc and he's a d.a.m.ned jiggery-pokery Papist too! Why don't these chaps go and cover themselves with blue woad and play mumbo-jumbo tricks before the village idol! That 'ud be about as intelligent as their Popery!" They intended to ask Lord Hugh Cecil to talk to them about Conservatism, but when they read his book on the subject they decided that such a Conservative was utterly d.a.m.nable ... and so they asked his brother, Lord Robert, instead, and found that his point of view, although much more human and less logical than that of Lord Hugh, was antipathetic to theirs.

"Let's get Garvin!" Gilbert suggested, when they discussed the question of a more improved Tory than Lord Robert. "The Cecils are no good ...

they're too superst.i.tious!" which was his way of saying that they were too religious. "They're worse than priests: they're ... they're laymen!

I propose that we ask Garvin to come and talk to us. He seems to be shoving the Tories all over the place!" So they invited the editor of the _Observer_ to dine and talk with them, and he came, a quick, eager, intense man, with large, starting eyes, who spoke so quickly that his words became entangled and were wrecked on his teeth. They liked him, but they were dubious of his right to represent the Tory spirit. It seemed to them that this eager, thrusting-forward man, who banged the table in his earnestness, might carry a political party off its feet in his pa.s.sion, but they were afraid that the feet would trail, that the party would be reluctant to be lifted. "He's Irish," said Roger in judgment.

"It isn't any good," Gilbert remarked, when Garvin had gone home, "trying to persuade the English to spread their wings. They haven't got any. Garvin 'ud do better if he'd hold a carrot in front of them ...

they'd follow that. Quinny," he added, "you ought to ask Garvin for a job on the _Observer_. They say he can't resist an Irishman!"

"I will," Henry replied.

"Oh, and there's a chance of doing book reviews on the _Morning Report_!" Geoffrey Grant said. "I told Leonard, the literary editor, about you, and he said he'd look at you if you went round one day!"

"I'll go and look at him," Henry answered.

2

While they were spending their evenings in this fashion, Henry, working steadily in the mornings, completely revised his novel. Gilbert, working less steadily than Henry, finished a new comedy and sent it to Sir Goeffrey Mundane, the manager of the Pall Mall Theatre, who utterly astounded Gilbert by accepting it.

"Quinny!" he shouted, running up to Henry's room with the letter which had been delivered by the mid-day post, "Mundane's accepted 'The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt'!"

"What's that?" said Henry, turning round from his desk.

"He's accepted it, Quinny! I always said he was a d.a.m.ned good actor, and so he is. My Lord, this is ripping! He says _it's a splendid comedy_ ...

so it is ... _as good as Oscar Wilde at his best_ ... oh, better, d.a.m.n it, better ... and will I _please come and see him on Friday morning at eleven o'clock_ ... I'll be there before he's out of bed!... I say, Quinny, we ought to do something, ought'nt we? Is it the correct thing to get drunk on these occasions?"

His joy was so extravagant that Henry felt many years older than Gilbert, and he patted him paternally on the shoulder and told him to develop the stoic virtues.

"I'm most frightfully pleased, Gilbert!" he said, when he had done with the paternal manner. "When's he going to put the play on?"

"He doesn't say. The thing he's doing now is no d.a.m.n good, and he'll probably take it off soon. Perhaps he'll produce 'The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt'

after that. Quinny, it is a good play, isn't it? Sometimes I get a most shocking hump about things, and I think I'm no good at all...."

"Of course, it's a good play, Gilbert!..."

"Yes, but is it good enough?"

"I don't know. I don't suppose anything ever is. I thought 'Drusilla'

was a great book until my father read it, and then I thought it was rubbish...."

"It wasn't rubbish, Quinny, and the revised version is really good."

"I think that, too, but sometimes I'm not sure!"

"Isn't it d.a.m.nable, Quinny, this job of writing? You never get any satisfaction out of it. I'd like to make cheeses ... I'm sure people who make cheeses feel that they've just made the very best cheese that can be made ... but I'm always seeing something in my work that might have been done better."

Henry nodded his head. "I suppose," he said, "it'll always be like that I think," he went on, "Maiden is going to take my novel. I saw Redder yesterday!..." Redder was his agent ... "and he says Maiden's the likeliest person. I shan't get much. Forty or fifty pounds on account of royalties, but it's a start!"

"The great thing," said Gilbert, "is to get into print. I wonder how much I'll make out of my play!"

"More than I shall make out of my novel," Henry answered. His talks with Mr. Redder had modified Henry's ideas of the profits made by novelists.

Gilbert started up from the low chair into which he had thrown himself.

"I'm going to start on another play this minute!" he said. "My head's simply humming with ideas!" He stopped half way to the door, and turned towards Henry again. "You were working when I came in," he said. "What are you doing?"

"I've started another novel," Henry answered.

"Oh! Done much of it?"

"No, only the t.i.tle. I'm calling it 'Broken Spears.'"

"d.a.m.n good t.i.tle, too," said Gilbert.

3

The book was published long before Gilbert's play was produced; for Sir Geoffrey Mundane had taken fright at Gilbert's play. He was afraid that it was too clever, too original, too much above their heads, and so forth. "I'd like to produce it," he said. "I'd regard it as an honour to be allowed to produce it, but the Pall Mall is a very expensive theatre to maintain and I don't mind telling you, Mr. Farlow, that I lost money on that last piece, too much money, and I must retrieve some of it. Your play is excellent ... excellent ... in fact, it's a piece of literature ... almost Greek in its form ... Greek ... yes, I think, Greek ...

remarkable plays those were, weren't they? ... Have you seen this portrait of me in to-day's _Daily Reflexion_ ... quite jolly, I think ... but it won't be popular, Mr. Farlow, and I must put on something that is likely to be popular!"

Gilbert found Sir Geoffrey's sudden changes of conversation curiously interesting, but the hint of disaster to "The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt" disturbed him too much to let his interest absorb him.

"Then you've decided not to do the play?" he said, with a throb of disappointment in his voice.

Sir Geoffrey rose at him, fixing his eye-gla.s.s, and patted him on the shoulder. "No, _no_," he said. "I didn't mean _that_. I'll produce the play gladly ... some day ... but not just at present. If you care to leave it with me...."

Gilbert wondered what he ought to say next. Sir Geoffrey might retain the play for a year or two, and then decide that he could not produce it.

"Perhaps," he said, "you'd undertake to do it within a certain time...."

He wanted to add that Sir Geoffrey should undertake to pay a fine if he failed to produce the play within the "certain time," but his courage was not strong enough. He was afraid that Sir Geoffrey might be offended by the suggestion and return the play at once. He wished that he had gone to Mr. Redder, as Henry had done, and asked him to place the play for him. "Redder'd stand no humbug," he said to himself.

Sir Geoffrey murmured something about the undesirability of committing oneself, and added that Gilbert should be content to wait for a year without any legal undertaking. "Of course," he said magnanimously, "if you can place the play elsewhere, don't let me stand in your way!" but Gilbert, alarmed, hurriedly said that he would be glad to leave the play with him for the time he mentioned. "I'd like you to take the part of Rupert Westlake," he said. "I don't think any one could play it so well as you could!" and Sir Geoffrey, still responsive to flattery, smiled and said he would be delighted to create the part.

The play which he produced instead of "The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt" ran for six weeks, bringing neither profit nor honour to Sir Geoffrey, who began to lose his head, with the result that he produced another play which was a greater failure than its predecessor. Then came a revival of an old play which had a moderate amount of success, and "I'll do your play next," he said to Gilbert. "I shall certainly do your play next!"

It was because of these delays in the production of "The Magic Cas.e.m.e.nt"

that Henry's novel, "Brasilia," was published much earlier than the play was performed. He had rewritten it so extensively that it was almost a new novel, very different from the ma.n.u.script which his father had read, and it received a fair number of reviews. The critics whose judgment he valued, praised it liberally, but the critics whose judgment he despised, either d.a.m.ned it or ignored it. Gilbert said it was splendid.

"There's still some Slop in it," he said, "but it's miles better than the first version." Roger liked it. He said, "I like it, Quinny!" and that was all, but Henry knew that his speech was considerable praise.

Ninian's praise was extravagant, and he was almost like a child in his pleasure at receiving an inscribed copy from Henry. He spent the better part of an afternoon in going to bookshops and asking the grossly ignorant a.s.sistants why they had not got "Drusilla" prominently placed in the window. The a.s.sistants were not humiliated by his charge of gross ignorance, nor were they impressed by his statement that the _Times_ Literary Supplement had described the book as "remarkable." So many remarkable books are published in the course of a season that the a.s.sistants do not attempt to remember them; and so many friends of remarkable young authors wish to know why the works of these remarkable young men are not stacked in the window that the a.s.sistants have learned to look listlessly at the people who make the demands. Ninian bought three copies of the novel, and sent one to his mother and one to the Headmaster of Rumpell's and one to his uncle, the Dean of Exebury. "That ought to help the sales, Quinny!" he said. "I bought 'em in three different shops, and I stuffed the chaps that I'd been to other places to get it, but found they were sold out!"

"That'll make two copies Mrs. Graham'll have," Henry replied. "I've sent one to her to-day...."

"Well, she can give the other one to Mary," said Ninian.