'Because I know old Johnny Pilgrim wants to shove a new curtain-raiser into the bill at once. If I could take him this to-morrow——'
'I'll post it to you to-night,' said Henry. 'But I shall want to see Mr. Pilgrim myself before anything is definitely arranged.'
'Oh, of course,' Mr. Doxey agreed. 'Of course. I'll tell him.'
Henry softened the rigour of his collaborator's pen in something like half an hour. The perusal of this trifling essay in the dramatic form (it certainly did not exceed four thousand words, and could be played in twenty-five minutes) filled his mind with a fresh set of ideas. He suspected that he could write for the stage rather better than Mr. Doxey, and he saw, with the eye of faith, new plumes waving in his cap. He was aware, because he had read it in the papers, that the English drama needed immediate assistance, and he determined to render that assistance. The first instalment of The Plague-Spot had just come out in the July number of Macalistair's Magazine, and the extraordinary warmth of its reception had done nothing to impair Henry's belief in his gift for pleasing the public. Hence he stretched out a hand to the West End stage with a magnanimous gesture of rescuing the fallen.
And yet, curiously enough, when he entered the stage-door of Prince's Theatre one afternoon, to see John Pilgrim, he was as meek as if the world had never heard of him.
He informed the doorkeeper that he had an appointment with Mr. Pilgrim, whereupon the doorkeeper looked him over, took a pull at a glass of rum-and-milk, and said he would presently inquire whether Mr. Pilgrim could see anyone. The passage from the portals of the theatre to Mr. Pilgrim's private room occupied exactly a quarter of an hour.
Then, upon beholding the figure of John Pilgrim, he seemed suddenly to perceive what fame and celebrity and renown really were. Here was the man whose figure and voice were known to every theatre-goer in England and America, and to every idler who had once glanced at a photograph-window; the man who for five-and-twenty years had stilled unruly crowds by a gesture, conquered the most beautiful women with a single smile, died for the fatherland, and lived for love, before a nightly audience of two thousand persons; who existed absolutely in the eye of the public, and who long ago had formed a settled, honest, serious conviction that he was the most interesting and remarkable phenomenon in the world. In the ingenuous mind of Mr. Pilgrim the universe was the frame, and John Pilgrim was the picture: his countless admirers had forced him to think so.
Mr. Pilgrim greeted Henry as though in a dream.