What would the Three Graces say, how would the editor of Hoops regard him, did they know what he did night after night in the secrecy of his own chamber, or rather of Mr. King's chamber? Perhaps they would not greatly care—they did not in any case consider him as of any very real importance. Nevertheless he could not but feel that he was treating them to double-dealing.
And then his trouble was suddenly healed by the amazing, overwhelming adventure of Piccadilly Circus. As he had discovered at the Hunters' party, nothing now mattered but the outcome of that adventure. He worked at his Romance with redoubled vigour; it did not seem to him any longer a shameful affair, simply because he had now in his own experience a Romance greater and wilder than any fancy could give him. Also images and similes occurred to him more swiftly than ever, and they were no longer modern, no longer had any connection with Hoops or the new critics, but were simply the attempts that his own soul was making to clothe Her and everything about Her, even Her horrible mother, with all the beauty and colour that his genius could provide. (Henry did not really, at this time, doubt that he had genius—the doubting time was later.)
It will be seen then that he started for Sir Charles Duncombe's house in a very romantic spirit.
The address was No. 13 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, so that Henry had a very little way to go from his Panton Street room. Hill Street is a bright, cheerful place enough with a sense of dignity and age about it and a consciousness that it knows only the very best people. Even the pillar-boxes and the lamp-posts call for decorum and are accustomed, you can see, to butlers, footmen and very superior ladies'-maids. But it cannot be denied that many of the Hill Street houses are dark inside and No. 13 is no exception to that rule. Unlike most of the Hill Street houses which all often change masters, No. 13 had been in the possession of the Duncombe family for a great many years, ever since the days of Queen Anne, in fact, the days of the famous Richard Duncombe who, being both the most desperate gambler and the astutest brain for a bargain in all London, made and lost fortunes with the greatest frequency.
Henry on this first morning knew nothing about the family history of the Duncombes, but if he had known he might have readily believed that so far as the hall and the butler went no change whatever had been made since those elegant polished Queen Anne days. The hall was so dark and the butler so old that Henry dared neither to move, lest he should fall over something, nor to speak lest it should seem irreverent. He stood, therefore, rooted to the stone floor and muttered something so inaudibly that the old man courteously waiting could not hear at all.
"Henry Trenchard," he said at last, looking wildly about him. How the cold seemed to strike up through the stone flags into his very marrow!
"Quite so, sir," said the old man. "Sir Charles is expecting you."
Up an enormous stone staircase they went, Henry's boots making a great clatter, his teeth against his will chattering. Portraits looked down upon him, but so dark it was that you could only catch a glimmer of their old gold frames.
To Henry, modern though he might endeavour to be, there would recur persistently that picture—the most romantic picture perhaps in all his childish picture-gallery—of Alan Fairford, sick and ill, dragged by Nanty Ewart through the dying avenues of Fairladies, having at long last that interview with the imperious Father Bonaventure in the long gallery of the crumbling house—the interview, the secret letter, the mysterious lady "whose step was that of a queen." "Whose neck and bosom were admirably formed, and of a dazzling whiteness"—the words still echoed in Henry's heart calling from that far day when a tiny boy in his attic at Garth he read by the light of a dipping candle the history of Redgauntlet from a yellowing closely-printed page.