IV
On the following Tuesday “Reuben Hallard” was published and on the Thursday afternoon Henry Galleon and Clare Rossiter were to come to tea. “Reuben Hallard” arrived in a dark red cover with a white paper label. The six copies lay on the table and looked at Peter as though he had had nothing whatever to do with their existence. He looked down upon them, opened one of them very tenderly, read half a page and felt that it was the best stuff he'd ever seen. He read the rest of the page and thought that the author, whoever the creature might be, deserved, imprisonment for writing such nonsense.
The feeling of strangeness towards it all was increased by the fact that Bobby had, with the exception of the final proofs—these Peter had read down by the sea—done most of the proof-correcting. It was a task for which his practical common sense and lack of all imagination admirably fitted him. There, at any rate, “Reuben Hallard” was, ready to face all the world, to go, perhaps, to the farthest Hebrides, to be lost in all probability, utterly lost, in the turgid flood of contemporary fiction.
There was a dedication “To Stephen”... How surprised Stephen would be! He looked at the chapter headings—An Old Man with a Lantern—the Road at Night.... Sun on the Western Moor—Stevenson—Tushery all of it! How they'd tear it to bits, those papers!
He laughed to himself to think that there had once been a day when he had thought that the thing would make his fortune! And yet—he turned the pages over tenderly—there might be something to be said for it, Miss Monogue had thought well of it. These publishers, blasé, cynical fellows, surely believed in it.
It was fat and red and comfortable. It had a worldly, prosperous look. “Reuben Hallard and His Adventures” ... Good Lord! What cheek.
There were five copies to give away. One between Bobby and Mrs. Galleon, one for Stephen, one for Miss Monogue, one for Mrs. Brockett and one for Mr. Zanti. “Reuben Hallard and His Adventures,” by Peter Westcott. They would be getting it now at the newspaper offices. The Mascot would have a copy and the fat little chocolate consumer. It would stand with a heap of others, and be ticked off with a heap of others, for some youth to exercise his wit upon. As to any one buying the book? Who ever saw any one buying a six-shilling novel? It was only within the last year or so that the old three volumes with their thirty-one-and-six had departed this life. The publishers had assured Peter that this new six-shilling form was the thing. “Please have you got 'Reuben Hallard' by Peter Westcott?... Thank you, I'll take it with me.”
No, it was inconceivable.
There poor Reuben would lie—deserted, still-born, ever dustier and dustier whilst other stories came pouring, pouring from endless presses, covering, crowding it down, stamping upon it, burying it.... “Here lies 'Reuben Hallard.'...”
Poor Peter!
On Thursday, however, there was the tea-party—a Thursday never to be forgotten whilst Peter was alive. Bobby had told him the day before that his father might be coming. “The rest of the family will turn up for certain. They want to see you. They're always all agog for any new thing—one of them's always playing Cabot to somebody else's Columbus. But father's uncertain. He gets something into his head and then nothing whatever will draw him out—but I expect he'll turn up.”
The other visitor was announced to Peter on the very day.
“By the way, Peter, somebody's coming to tea this afternoon who's met you before—met you at that odd boarding-house of yours—a Miss Rossiter. Clare's an old friend of ours. I told you down at the sea about her and you said you remembered meeting her.”
“Remembered meeting her!” Did Dante remember meeting Beatrice—did Petrarch remember Laura? Did Keats forget his Fanny Brawne? Did Richard Feverel forget his Lucy?
On a level with these high-thinking gentlemen was Peter, disguising his emotions from Alice's sharp eyes but silent, breathless, wanting some other place than that high studio in which to breathe. “Yes—she came to tea once with a Miss Monogue there—I liked her....”
He was not there, but rather on some height alone with her and their hands touched over a photograph. “The Man on the Lion.” There was something worthy of his feeling for her!
Meanwhile, for the first part of the afternoon one must put up with the Galleon family. Had Peter been sufficiently calm and sensible these appendages to a great author would have been worth his attention. Behold them in relation to “Henry Lessingham,” soaked in the works, bearing on their backs the whole Edition de Luxe, decking themselves with the little odds and ends of literary finery that they had picked up, bursting with the good-nature of assured self-consequence—harmless, foolish, comfortable. Mrs. Galleon was massive with a large flat face that jumped suddenly into expression when one least expected it. There was a great deal of silk about her, much leisurely movement and her tactics were silence and a slow, significant smile—these she always contributed to any conversation that was really beyond her. Had she not, during many years of her life, been married to a genius she would have been an intensely slow-moving but adequate housekeeper—as it was, her size and her silence enabled her to keep her place at many literary dinners. Peter, watching her, was consumed with wonder that Henry Galleon could ever have married her and understood that Bobby was the child of both his parents. Bobby had a brother and sister—Percival and Millicent. Percival was twenty-five and had written two novels that were considered promising by those who did not know that he was the son of his father. He was slim and dark with a black thread of a moustache and rather fine white fingers. His clothes were very well cut but his appearance was a little too elaborately simple. His sister, a girl of about eighteen, was slim and dark also; she had the eager appearance of one who has heard just enough to make her very anxious to hear a great deal more.
One felt that she did not want to miss anything, but probably her determination to be her father's daughter would prevent her from becoming very valuable or intelligent.
Finally it was strange that Bobby had so completely escaped the shadow of his father's mantle. These people were intended, of course, to be the background of Peter's afternoon and it was therefore more than annoying that that was the very last thing that they were. Millicent and Percival made a ball and then flung it backwards and forwards throughout the affair. Their mother watched them with appreciation and Alice Galleon, who knew them, gave them tea and cake and let them have their way. Into the midst of this Henry Galleon came—a little, round, fat man with a face like a map, the body of Napoleon and a trot round the room like a very amiable pony, eyes that saw everything, understood everything, and forgave everything, a brown buff waistcoat with gilt buttons, white spats and a voice that rolled and roared ... he was the tenderest, most alarming person in any kind of a world. He was so gentle that any sparrow would trust him implicitly and so terrific that an army would most certainly fly from before him. He ate tea-cake, smiled and shook hands with Peter, listened for half an hour to the spirited conversation of his two children and trotted away again, leaving behind him an atmosphere of gentle politeness and an amazing savoir-faire that one saw his children struggling to catch. They finally gave it up about half-past five and retreated, pressing Peter to pay them a call at the earliest opportunity.
This was positively all that Peter saw, on this occasion, of Henry Galleon. It was quite enough to give him a great deal to think about, but it could scarcely be called a meeting.
At quarter to six when Peter was in despair and Alice Galleon had ordered the tea-things to be taken away Clare Rossiter rushed in. She stood a whirlwind of flying colours in the middle of the Studio now sinking into twilight. “Alice dear, I am most terribly sorry but mother would stay. I couldn't get her to leave and it was all so awkward. How do you do, Mr. Westcott? Do you remember—we met at Treliss—and now I must rush back this very minute. We are dining at seven before the Opera, and father wants that music you promised him—the Brahms thing. Oh! is it upstairs? Well, if you don't mind....”
Alice Galleon left them together. Peter could say nothing at all. He stood there, shifting from foot to foot, white, absolutely tongue-tied.
She felt his embarrassment and struggled.
“I hear that you've been very ill, Mr. Westcott. I'm so dreadfully sorry and I do hope that you're better?”
He muttered something.
“Your book is out, isn't it? 'Reuben Hallard' is the name. I must get father to put it down on his list. One's first books must be so dreadfully exciting—and so alarming ... the reviews and everything—what is it about?”
He murmured “Cornwall.”
“Cornwall? How delightful! I was only there once. Mullion. Do you know Mullion?” She struggled along. The pain that had begun in his heart was now at his throat—his throat was full of spiders' webs. He could scarcely see her in the dark but her pale blue dress and her dark eyes and her beautiful white hands—her little figure danced against the dark, shining floor like a fairy's.
He heard her sigh of relief at Alice Galleon's return.
“Oh! thank you, dear, so much. Good-bye, Mr. Westcott—I shall read the book.”
She was gone.
“Lights! Lights!” cried Alice Galleon. “How provoking of her not to come to tea properly. Well, Peter? How was it all?”
He was guilty of abominable rudeness.
He burst from the room without a word and banged, desperately, the door behind him.