The Drunkard. Thorne Guy

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СКАЧАТЬ were shallow, clever, amusing people whom it was always pleasant to meet. They entertained a good deal and the majority of their guests were literary men and women of talent who fluttered like moths round the candle of their success. The talented writers who ate their dinners found a bitter joy in cursing a public taste which provided the Toftrees with several thousands a year, but they returned again and again, in the effort to find out how it was done.

      They also had visions of just such another delightful house in Lancaster Gate, an automobile identical in its horse-power and appointments, and were certain that if they could only learn the recipe and trick, wrest the magic formula from these wizards of the typewriter, all these things might be theirs also!

      The Herbert Toftrees themselves always appeared – in the frankest and kindest way – to be in thorough sympathy with such aspirations. Their candour was almost effusive. "Any one can do what we do" was their attitude. Herbert Toftrees himself, a young man with a rather carefully-cultivated, elderly manner, was particularly impressive. He had a deep voice and slow enunciation, which, when he was upon his own hearthrug almost convinced himself.

      "There is absolutely no reason," he would say, in tones which carried absolute conviction to his hearer at the moment, "why you shouldn't be making fifteen hundred a year in six months."

      But that was as far as it went. That was the voice of the genial host dispensing wines, entrées and advice, easy upon his own hearth, the centre of the one picture where he was certain of supremacy.

      But let eager and hungry genius call next day for definite particulars, instructions as to the preparations of a "popular" plot, hints as to the shop-girl's taste in heroines, – with hopes of introductory letters to the great firms who buy serials – and the greyest of grey dawns succeeded the rosy-coloured night.

      It was all vague and cloudy now. General principles were alone vouchsafed – indeed who shall blame the tradesman for an adroit refusal to give away the secrets of the shop?

      Genius retired – it happened over and over again – cursing successful mediocrity for its evasive cleverness, and with a deep hidden shame that it should have stooped so low, and so ineffectually! .. "That's very true. What Toftrees says is absolutely true," Mr. Amberley said genially, turning to young Dickson Ingworth, who was sitting by his daughter Muriel.

      He nodded to the eager youth with a little private encouragement and hint of understanding which was very flattering. It was as who should say, "Here you are at my house. For the first time you have been admitted to the Dining Room. I have taken you up, I am going to publish a book of yours and see what you are made of. Gather honey while you may, young Dickson Ingworth!"

      Ingworth blushed slightly as the great man's encouraging admonitions fell upon him. He was not down from Oxford more than a year. He had written very little, Gilbert Lothian was backing him and introducing him to literary circles in town, he was abnormally conscious of his own good fortune, all nervous anxiety to be adequate – all ears.

      "Yes, sir," he said, with the pleasant boyish deference of an undergraduate to the Provost of his college – it sat gracefully upon his youth and was gracefully said.

      Then he looked reverentially at Toftrees and waited to hear more.

      Herbert Toftrees' face was large and clean shaven. His sleek hair was smoothly brushed over a somewhat protruding forehead. There was the coarse determined vigour about his brow that the bull-dog jaw is supposed to indicate in another type of face, and the eyes below were grey and steadfast. Toftrees stared at people with tremendous gravity. Only those who realised the shrewd emptiness behind them were able to discern what some one had once called their flickering "R.S.V.P. expression" – that latent hope that his vis-à-vis might not be finding him out after all!

      "I mean it," Toftrees said in his resonant, and yet quiet voice. "There really is no reason, Mr. Ingworth, why you should not be making an income of at least eight or nine hundred a year in twelve months' time."

      "Herbert has helped such a lot of boys," said Mrs. Toftrees, confidentially, to her host, although there was a slight weariness in her voice, the suggestion of a set phrase. "But who is Mr. Dickson Ingworth? What has he done? – he is quite good-looking, don't you think?"

      "Oh, a boy, a mere boy!" the big red-faced publisher purred in an undertone. "Lothian brought him to me first in Hanover Square. In fact, Lothian asked if he might bring him here to-night. We are doing a little book of his – the first novel he will have had published."

      Mrs. Toftrees pricked up her ears, so to say. She was really the business head of the Toftrees combination. Her husband did the ornamental part and provided the red-hot plots, but it was she who had invented and carried out the "note," and it was she who supervised the contracts. As Mr. Amberley was well aware, what this keen, pretty and well-dressed little woman didn't know about publishing was worth nothing whatever.

      "Oh, really," she said, in genuine surprise. "Rather unusual for you, isn't it? Is the boy a genius then?"

      Amberley shook his head. He hated everything the worthy Toftrees wrote – he had never been able to read more than ten lines of any of the half-dozen books he had published for them. But the Hanover Square side of him had a vast respect for the large sums the couple charmed from the pockets of the public no less than the handsome percentage they put into his own. And a confidential word on business matters with a pretty and pleasant little woman was not without allurement even under the Waggon-roof itself.

      "Not at all. Not at all," he murmured into a pretty ear. "We are not paying the lad any advance upon royalties!" He laughed a well-fed laugh. "Ince and Amberley's list," he continued, "is accepted for itself!"

      Mrs. Toftrees smiled back at him. "Of course," she murmured. "But I wasn't thinking of the financial side of it. Why? .. why are you departing from your usual traditions and throwing the shadow of your cloak over this fortunate boy? – if I may ask, of course!"

      "Well," Amberley answered, and her keen ear detected – or thought that she detected – a slight reluctance in his voice… "Well, Lothian brought him to me, you know."

      Mrs. Toftrees' face changed and Amberley saw it.

      She was looking down the table to where Lothian was sitting. Her face was a little flushed, and the expression upon it – though not allowed to be explicit – was by no means agreeable. "Lothian's work is very wonderful," she said – and there was a question in her voice " – you think so, Mr. Amberley?"

      Bryanstone Square, the Dining Room, asserted itself. Truth to tell, Amberley felt a little uncomfortable and displeased with himself. The fun of the dinner table – the cigarette moment – had rather escaped him. He had got young people round him to-night. He wanted them to be jolly. He had meant to be a good host, to forget his dignities, to unbend and be jolly with them – this fiction-mongering woman was becoming annoying.

      "I certainly do, Mrs. Toftrees," he replied, with dignity, and a distinct tone of reproof in his voice.

      Mrs. Toftrees, the cool tradeswoman, gave the great man a soothing smile of complete understanding and agreement.

      Mr. Amberley turned to a girl upon his left who had been taken in by Dickson Ingworth and who had been carrying on a laughing conversation with him during dinner.

      She was a pretty girl, a friend of his daughter Muriel. He liked pretty girls, and he smiled half paternally, half gallantly at her.

      "Won't you have another cigarette, Miss Wallace?" he said, pushing a silver box towards her. "They are supposed to be rather wonderful. My cousin Eustace Amberley is in the Egyptian Army and an aide-de-camp to the Khedive. The Khedive СКАЧАТЬ