“Nothing like it was ever written before. Have you shown it to a publisher yet?”
Gordon glanced at the third person in the room—a gray-haired elderly man with kindly eyes—as he replied:
“Dallas, here, took it to Miller. He declined it.”
“The devil!” shot out Hobhouse, incredulously.
“John Murray will publish it,” Gordon continued. “I had his letter with the copyhold an hour ago.” He took a paper from his pocket and held it up to view.
“I congratulate you both,” Hobhouse said heartily.
Gordon shrugged acridly, and rising, began to pace the room. The sore spot had been rankling since that walk with Sheridan.
“Wait till the critics see it. They will have other opinions, no doubt Well, never mind,” he added. “I was peppered so highly once that it must be aloes or cayenne to make me taste. They forced me to bitterness at first; I may as well go through to the last. Væ victis! I’ll fall fighting the host. That’s something.”
The gray-haired man had picked up his hat. It was not a hat of the primest curve, nor were his clothes of a fashionable cut. They were well-worn, but his neck-cloth was spotless, and though his face showed lines of toil and anxiety, it bore the inextinguishable marks of gentility. Gordon had not told him that he had spent a part of the day inquiring into the last detail of invalid wife and literary failure; now his glance veiled a singular look whose source lay very deep in the man.
“Don’t hasten,” he said. “I have a reputation for gloom, but my friends must not be among the reputants! Least of all you, Dallas.”