New women have hats.
FRIENDLY CREATURE. Don"t call me a woman, ducky; I"m a lady.
YOU. I must be careful. If I don"t flatter you, you"ll take your umbrella away.
FRIENDLY CREATURE _(changing subject)_. There"s Matilda.
YOU. Where?
FRIENDLY CREATURE. Coming towards us in that landaulette.
YOU. Looks fit, doesn"t she?
FRIENDLY CREATURE. Her! She"s a blooming rotter.
YOU. Not so loud. She"ll hear you.
FRIENDLY CREATURE _(raising her voice)_. Good job. I want her to. _Stumer_!
YOU. S-s-s-sh! What _are_ you saying? Matilda"s a d.u.c.h.ess now.
FRIENDLY CREATURE. I know.
YOU. But you mustn"t say "Stumer" to a d.u.c.h.ess unless----
FRIENDLY CREATURE. Well?
YOU. Unless you"re a d.u.c.h.ess yourself?
FRIENDLY CREATURE. I am. At least I was. Only I chucked it.
YOU. But you said you were a lady.
FRIENDLY CREATURE. So I am. An extra lady--front row, second O.P.
YOU. How rude of me. Of course you were a d.u.c.h.ess. I know you perfectly. Gorell Barnes said----
FRIENDLY CREATURE. Drop it. What"s the good of the secrecy of the ballet if people are going to remember every single thing about you?
(At this point the rain stops. By an adroit flanking movement you get away without having to buy her a lunch.)
Everyone congratulated me. "Always knew he had it in him," "Found his vocation," "A distinctly clever head," "Reaping in the shekels"--that was the worst part. The "Moon," to a man, was bent on finding out "how much Sidney Price makes out of his bits in the papers." Some dropped hints--the G.M., Leach, and the men at the counter. Others, like Tommy Milner, asked slap out. You may be sure I didn"t tell them a fixed sum.
But it was hopeless to say I was getting the small sum which my ten per cent. commission worked out at. On the other hand, I dared not pretend I was being paid at the usual rates. I should have gone broke in twenty-four hours. You have no idea how constantly I was given the opportunity of lending five shillings to important members of the "Moon" staff. It struck me then--and I have found out for certain since--that there is a popular anxiety to borrow from a man who earns money by writing. The earnings of a successful writer are, to the common intelligence, something he ought not really to have. And anyone, in default of abstracting his income, may fall back upon taking up his time.
It did, no doubt, appear that I was coining the ready. Besides the _Strawberry Leaf_, _Features_, and _The Key of the Street_ were printing my signed contributions in weekly series. _The Mayfair_, too, had announced on its placards, "A Story in Dialogue, by Sidney Price."
This, then, was my position on the morning when I was late at the "Moon" and lost my bonus.
Whilst I went up in the lift to the New Business Room, and whilst I was entering the names and addresses of inquirers in the Proposal Book, I was trying to gather courage to meet what was in store.
For the future held this: that my name would disappear from the papers as suddenly as it had arrived there. People would want to know why I had given up writing. "Written himself out," "No staying power," "As short-lived as a Barnum monstrosity": these would be the remarks which would herald ridicule and possibly pity.
And I should be in just the same beastly fix at the "Hollyhocks" as I was at the "Moon." What would my people say? What would Norah say?
There was another reason, too, why a stoppage of the ten per cent.
cheques would be a whack in the eye. You see, I had been doing myself well on them--uncommonly well. I had ordered, as a present to my parents, new furniture for the drawing-room. I had pressed my father to have a small greenhouse put up at my expense. He had always wanted one, but had never been able to run to it. And I had taken Norah about a good deal. Our weekly visit to a matinee (upper circle and ices), followed by tea at the Cabin or Lyons" Popular, had become an inst.i.tution. We had gone occasionally to a ball at the Town Hall.
What would Norah say when all this ended abruptly without any explanation?
There was no getting away from it. Sidney Price was in the soup.
Chapter 20
NORAH WINS HOME _(Sidney Price"s narrative continued)_
My signed work had run out. For two weeks nothing had been printed over my signature. So far no comment had been raised.
But it was only a question of days. But then one afternoon it all came right. It was like this.
I was sitting eating my lunch at Eliza"s in Birchin Lane. Twenty minutes was the official allowance for the meal, and I took my twenty minutes at two o"clock. The _St. Stephen"s Gazette_ was lying near me. I picked it up. Anything to distract my thoughts from the trouble to come. That was how I felt. Reading mechanically the front page, I saw a poem, and started violently. This was the poem:--
A CRY
Hands at the tiller to steer: A star in the murky sky: Water and waste of mere: Whither and why?
Sting of absorbent night: Journey of weal or woe: And overhead the light: We go--we go?
Darkness a mortal"s part, Mortals of whom we are: Come to a mortal"s heart, Immortal star.
_Thos. Blake._ _June 6th._
"Rummy, very rummy," I exclaimed. The poem was dated yesterday. Had Mr. Cloyster, then, continued to work his system with Thomas Blake to the exclusion of the Reverend and myself?
Still worrying over the thing, I turned over the pages of the paper until I chanced to see the following paragraph:
LITERARY GOSSIP
Few will be surprised to learn that the Rev. John Hatton intends to publish another novel in the immediate future. Mr. Hatton"s first book, _When It Was Lurid_, created little less than a furore. The work on which he is now engaged, which will bear the t.i.tle of _The Browns of Brixton_, is a tender sketch of English domesticity. This new vein of Mr. Hatton"s will, doubtless, be distinguished by the naturalness of dialogue and sanity of characterisation of his first novel. Messrs. Prodder and Way are to publish it in the autumn.
"He"s running the Reverend again, is he?" said I to myself. "And I"m the only one left out. It"s a bit thick."
That night I wrote to Blake and to the Reverend asking whether they had been taken on afresh, and if so, couldn"t I get a look in, as things were pretty serious.
The Reverend"s reply arrived first:
THE TEMPLE, _June 7th._