Days of failure and disappointment had not suited Mrs. Lester, who had always lived for excitement and good society, and found neither in the Cromwell Road. There was only one other guest beside Westcott, and that was Edmund Robsart, the most successful of all modern novelists. For many years Robsart's name had been a synonym for success. "It must be," thought Westcott, looking at the man's red face and superb chest and portly stomach, "at least thirty years since you published The Prime Minister's Daughter and hit the nail at the very first time. What a loathsome fellow you are, what harm you've done to literature, and what a gorgeous time you must have had!"
And the very first thing that Robsart said was: "You don't mean to tell me that you're Westcott, the author of Reuben Hallard!"
"Now you're a fool to be touched by that," Westcott said to himself. But he was astonished, nevertheless—touched, it seemed, not so much for himself as in a kind of protective way for that poor little firstling who had been both begotten and produced in a London boarding-house and had held in his little hands so much promise, so many hopes, so much pride and ambition.
Westcott was touched; he did not resent Robsart's fatherly, patronising air as of one who held always in his chubby, gouty fist the golden keys to Paradise. He drank Lester's wine and laughed at Robsart's anecdotes and was sympathetic to Mrs. Lester's complaints; he, Peter Westcott, who throughout the war had been held to be cold, conceited, overbearing, the most unpopular officer in his regiment. At the end of the evening Robsart asked him to come to lunch. "I live in Duke Street, Hortons. Everyone knows Hortons." He gave him his number. "Tuesday, 1.30. Glad to see you."
Westcott cursed himself for a fool when he went back to his Strand lodging. What did he want with men of Robsart's kidney? Had he not been laughing and mocking at Robsart for years? Had he not taken Robsart's success as a sign of the contemptible character of the British Public; when men like Galleon and Lester had been barely able to live by their pens and Robsart rolled in money—rolled in money earned by tawdry fustian sentimentality like The Kings of the Earth and Love Laughs at Locksmiths.
Nevertheless, he went and brushed his old blue suit and rolled up to Duke Street, looking, as he always did, like an able-bodied seaman on leave. Robsart's flat was very much what he had expected it to be—quite sumptuous and quite lifeless. There was a little dining-room off what Robsart called the Library. This little dining-room had nothing in it save a round, shining gate-legged table with a glass top to it, a red Persian rug that must have been priceless, a Rodin bust of an evil-looking old woman who stuck her tongue out, and a Gauguin that looked to Westcott like a red apple and a banana, but was, in reality, a native woman by the seashore. In the Library there were wonderful books, the walls being completely covered by them.
"Most of them first or rare editions," said Robsart carelessly. Behind glass near the window were the books that he had himself written, all the different editions, the translations, the cheap "Shillings" and "Two Shillings," the strange Swedish and Norwegian and Russian copies with their paper backs, the row of "Tauchnitz," and then all the American editions with their solemn, heavy bindings. Then there were the manuscripts of the novels, all bound beautifully in red morocco, and in the bottom shelf the books with all the newspaper cuttings dating, as Westcott to his amazement saw, from 1884. Thirty-five years, and all this sumptuousness as a result! Nevertheless the books round the room looked dead, dead, dead. "Never touched," thought Peter, "except to show them to poor humble failures like myself."
Half an hour's conversation was quite enough to strip Peter of any illusions he may have had about Robsart's natural simplicity of heart. He had invited Westcott there because he wanted a little praise from "the Younger Generation"—"needed" rather than "wanted" was perhaps the right word. Westcott was hardly the ideal victim, because he was over forty, and an undoubted failure; nevertheless, at Lester's he had appeared amiable and kindly—a little encouragement and he would say something pleasant.
Then Robsart would have soothed that tiresome, biting, bitter irritation that had beset him of late, born he knew not where, a suggestion carried on the wind that "he was behind the times," that his books "no longer sold," that no young man or woman "thought of him with anything but contempt." These things had not been said directly to him; he had not even read them in the papers. There were certain critical journals that had, of course, since the beginning of his career given him nothing but abuse if they noticed him at all. They now treated him to silence. He did not expect them to alter. But his sales were falling; even the critics who had supported him through all weathers were complaining a little now of monotony of subject, of repetition of idea. "Damn it all, what can you do but repeat after thirty books?" Sometimes he wondered whether he would not stop and "rest on his laurels." But that meant a diminution of income; he had always lived well and spent every penny as it came along. Moreover, now was the worst moment to choose, with the income-tax at what it was and food and clothes and everything else at double its natural price!