The Drunkard. Thorne Guy

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СКАЧАТЬ years back. The Waggon-roof alone remained unaltered from its earlier periods.

      The Publishing house of Ince and Amberley had been a bulwark of the Victorian era, and not without some growing celebrity in the earlier Georgian Period.

      Lord Byron had spoken well of the young firm once, Rogers was believed to have advanced them money, and when that eminent Cornish pugilist "The Lamorna Cove" wrote his reminiscences they were published by Ince and Amberley, while old Lord Alvanley himself contributed a preface.

      From small beginnings came great things. The firm grew and acquired a status, and about this time, or possibly a little later, the dining-room at Bryanstone Square had come into being.

      Its walls were not panelled then in delicate green. They were covered with rich plum-coloured paper festooned by roses of high-gilt. In the pictures, with their heavy frames of gold, the dogs and stags of Landseer were let loose, or the sly sleek gipsies of Mr. Frith told rustic fortunes beneath the spreading chestnut trees.

      But Browning had dined there – in the later times – an inextinguishable fire just covered with a sprinkling of grey ash. With solemn ritual, Charles Dickens had brewed milk punch in an old bowl of Lowestoft china, still preserved in the drawing-room. The young Robert Cecil, in his early Saturday Review days, had cracked his walnuts and sipped his "pint of port" with little thought of the high destiny to which he should come, and Alfred Tennyson, then Bohemian and unknown, had been allowed to vent that grim philosophy which is the reaction of all imaginative and sensitive natures against the seeming impossibility of success and being understood.

      The traditions of Ince and Amberley – its dignified and quiet home was in Hanover Square – had always been preserved.

      Its policy, at the same time, had continually altered with the passage of years and the change of the public taste. Yet, so carefully, and indeed so genuinely, had this been accomplished that none of the historic prestige of the business had been lost. It still stood as a bulwark of the old dignified age. A young modern author, whatever his new celebrity, felt that to be published by Ince and Amberley hall-marked him as it were.

      Younger firms, greedy of his momentary notoriety, might offer him better terms – and generally did – but Ince and Amberley conferred the Accolade!

      He was admitted to the Dining Room.

      John Amberley (the Inces had long since disappeared), at fifty was a great publisher, and a charming man of the world. He was one of the personalities of London, carrying out what heredity and natural aptitude had fitted him to do, and was this evening entertaining some literary personages of the day in the famous Dining Room.

      The Waggon-roof, which had looked down upon just such gatherings as these for generations, would, if it could have spoken, have discovered no very essential difference between this dinner party and others in the past. True, the walls were differently coloured and pictures which appealed to a different set of artistic conventions were hanging upon them.

      The people who were accustomed to meet round the table in 19 – were not dressed as other gatherings had been. There was no huge silver epergne in the centre of that table now. Nor did the Amberley at one end of it display his mastery of ritual carving.

      But the talk was the same. Words only were different. The guests' vocabularies were wider and less restrained. It was the music of piano and the pizzicato plucking of strings – there was no pompous organ note, no ore rotundo any more. They all talked of what they had done, were doing, and hoped to do. There was a hurry of the mind, inherent in people of their craft and like a man running, in all of them. The eyes of some of them burned like restless ghosts as they tried to explain themselves, display their own genius, become prophets and acquire honour in the heart of their own country.

      Yes! it had always been so!

      The brightest and most lucent brains had flashed into winged words and illuminated that long handsome room.

      And ever, at the head of the long table, there had been a bland, listening Amberley, catching, tasting and sifting the idea, analysing the constituents of the flash, balancing the brilliant theory against the momentary public taste. A kind, uncreative, managing Amberley! A fair and honest enough Amberley in the main. Serene, enthroned and necessary.

      The publisher was a large man, broad in the shoulder and slightly corpulent. There was something Georgian about him – he cultivated it rather, and was delighted when pleated shirts became again fashionable for evening wear. He had a veritable face of the Regency, more especially in profile, sensual, fine, a thought gluttonous and markedly intelligent.

      His voice was authoritative but bland, and frequently capable of a sympathetic interest which was almost musical. His love of letters was deep and genuine, his taste catholic and excellent, while many an author found real inspiration and intense pleasure in his personal praise.

      This was the cultured and human side of him, and he had another – the shrewd business man of Hanover Square.

      He was not, to use the slang of the literary agent, a "knifer." He paid die market price without being generous and he was perfectly honest in all his dealings.

      But his business in life was to sell books, and he permitted himself no experiments in failure. A writer – whether he produced good work or popular trash – must generally have his definite market and his more or less assured position, before Ince and Amberley would take him up.

      It was distinctly something for a member of the upper rank and files to say in the course of conversation, "Ince and Amberley are doing my new book, you know."

      To-night Amberley, as he sat at the head of his table towards the close of dinner, was in high good humour, and very pleasant with himself and his guests.

      The ladies had not yet gone away, coffee was being served at the table, and almost every one was smoking a cigarette. The party was quite a small one. There were only five guests, who, with Mr. and Mrs. Amberley and their only daughter Muriel, made up eight people in all. There was nothing ceremonious about it, and, though three of the guests were well known in the literary world, none of these were great, while the remaining couple were merely promising beginners.

      There was, therefore, considerable animation and gaiety round this hospitable table, with its squat candlesticks, of dark-green Serpentine and silver, the topaz-coloured shades, its gleaming surface of dark mahogany (Mrs. Amberley had eagerly adopted the new habit of having no white table-cloth), its really interesting old silver, and the square mats of pure white Egyptian linen in front of each person.

      In age, with the exception of Mr. Amberley and his wife, every one was young, while both host and hostess showed in perfection that modern grace of perfect correspondence with environment which seems to have quite banished the evidences of time's progress among the folk of to-day who know every one, appreciate everything and are extremely well-to-do.

      On Amberley's right hand sat Mrs. Herbert Toftrees, while her husband was at the other end of the table at the right hand of his hostess – Gilbert Lothian, the guest of the evening, being on Mrs. Amberley's left.

      Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees were novelists whose combined names were household words all over England. Their books were signed by both of them – "Enid and Herbert Toftrees" and they were quite at the head of their own peculiar line of business. They knew exactly what they were doing – "selling bacon" they called it to their intimate friends – and were two of the most successful trades-people in London. Unlike other eminent purveyors of literary trash they were far too clever not to know that neither of them had a trace of the real fire, and if their constant and cynical disclaimer of any real talent sometimes seemed to betray a hidden sore, it was at least admirably truthful.

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