But his business in life was to sell books, and he permitted himself no experiments in failure. A writer--whether he produced good work or popular trash--must generally have his definite market and his more or less a.s.sured position, before Ince and Amberley would take him up.

It was distinctly something for a member of the upper rank and files to say in the course of conversation, "Ince and Amberley are doing my new book, you know."

To-night Amberley, as he sat at the head of his table towards the close of dinner, was in high good humour, and very pleasant with himself and his guests.

The ladies had not yet gone away, coffee was being served at the table, and almost every one was smoking a cigarette. The party was quite a small one. There were only five guests, who, with Mr. and Mrs. Amberley and their only daughter Muriel, made up eight people in all. There was nothing ceremonious about it, and, though three of the guests were well known in the literary world, none of these were great, while the remaining couple were merely promising beginners.

There was, therefore, considerable animation and gaiety round this hospitable table, with its squat candlesticks, of dark-green Serpentine and silver, the topaz-coloured shades, its gleaming surface of dark mahogany (Mrs. Amberley had eagerly adopted the new habit of having no white table-cloth), its really interesting old silver, and the square mats of pure white Egyptian linen in front of each person.

In age, with the exception of Mr. Amberley and his wife, every one was young, while both host and hostess showed in perfection that modern grace of perfect correspondence with environment which seems to have quite banished the evidences of time"s progress among the folk of to-day who know every one, appreciate everything and are extremely well-to-do.

On Amberley"s right hand sat Mrs. Herbert Toftrees, while her husband was at the other end of the table at the right hand of his hostess--Gilbert Lothian, the guest of the evening, being on Mrs.

Amberley"s left.

Mr. and Mrs. Toftrees were novelists whose combined names were household words all over England. Their books were signed by both of them--"Enid and Herbert Toftrees" and they were quite at the head of their own peculiar line of business. They knew exactly what they were doing--"selling bacon" they called it to their intimate friends--and were two of the most successful trades-people in London. Unlike other eminent purveyors of literary trash they were far too clever not to know that neither of them had a trace of the real fire, and if their constant and cynical disclaimer of any real talent sometimes seemed to betray a hidden sore, it was at least admirably truthful.

They were shallow, clever, amusing people whom it was always pleasant to meet. They entertained a good deal and the majority of their guests were literary men and women of talent who fluttered like moths round the candle of their success. The talented writers who ate their dinners found a bitter joy in cursing a public taste which provided the Toftrees with several thousands a year, but they returned again and again, in the effort to find out how it was done.

They also had visions of just such another delightful house in Lancaster Gate, an automobile identical in its horse-power and appointments, and were certain that if they could only learn the recipe and trick, wrest the magic formula from these wizards of the typewriter, all these things might be theirs also!

The Herbert Toftrees themselves always appeared--in the frankest and kindest way--to be in thorough sympathy with such aspirations. Their candour was almost effusive. "Any one can do what we do" was their att.i.tude. Herbert Toftrees himself, a young man with a rather carefully-cultivated, elderly manner, was particularly impressive. He had a deep voice and slow enunciation, which, when he was upon his own hearthrug almost convinced himself.

"There is absolutely no reason," he would say, in tones which carried absolute conviction to his hearer at the moment, "why you shouldn"t be making fifteen hundred a year in six months."

But that was as far as it went. That was the voice of the genial host dispensing wines, entrees and advice, easy upon his own hearth, the centre of the one picture where he was certain of supremacy.

But let eager and hungry genius call next day for definite particulars, instructions as to the preparations of a "popular" plot, hints as to the shop-girl"s taste in heroines,--with hopes of introductory letters to the great firms who buy serials--and the greyest of grey dawns succeeded the rosy-coloured night.

It was all vague and cloudy now. General principles were alone vouchsafed--indeed who shall blame the tradesman for an adroit refusal to give away the secrets of the shop?

Genius retired--it happened over and over again--cursing successful mediocrity for its evasive cleverness, and with a deep hidden shame that it should have stooped so low, and so ineffectually! ... "That"s very true. What Toftrees says is absolutely true," Mr. Amberley said genially, turning to young d.i.c.kson Ingworth, who was sitting by his daughter Muriel.

He nodded to the eager youth with a little private encouragement and hint of understanding which was very flattering. It was as who should say, "Here you are at my house. For the first time you have been admitted to the Dining Room. I have taken you up, I am going to publish a book of yours and see what you are made of. Gather honey while you may, young d.i.c.kson Ingworth!"

Ingworth blushed slightly as the great man"s encouraging admonitions fell upon him. He was not down from Oxford more than a year. He had written very little, Gilbert Lothian was backing him and introducing him to literary circles in town, he was abnormally conscious of his own good fortune, all nervous anxiety to be adequate--all ears.

"Yes, sir," he said, with the pleasant boyish deference of an undergraduate to the Provost of his college--it sat gracefully upon his youth and was gracefully said.

Then he looked reverentially at Toftrees and waited to hear more.

Herbert Toftrees" face was large and clean shaven. His sleek hair was smoothly brushed over a somewhat protruding forehead. There was the coa.r.s.e determined vigour about his brow that the bull-dog jaw is supposed to indicate in another type of face, and the eyes below were grey and steadfast. Toftrees stared at people with tremendous gravity.

Only those who realised the shrewd emptiness behind them were able to discern what some one had once called their flickering "R.S.V.P.

expression"--that latent hope that his vis-a-vis might not be finding him out after all!

"I mean it," Toftrees said in his resonant, and yet quiet voice. "There really is no reason, Mr. Ingworth, why you should not be making an income of at least eight or nine hundred a year in twelve months"

time."

"Herbert has helped such a lot of boys," said Mrs. Toftrees, confidentially, to her host, although there was a slight weariness in her voice, the suggestion of a set phrase. "But who is Mr. d.i.c.kson Ingworth? What has he done?--he is quite good-looking, don"t you think?"

"Oh, a boy, a mere boy!" the big red-faced publisher purred in an undertone. "Lothian brought him to me first in Hanover Square. In fact, Lothian asked if he might bring him here to-night. We are doing a little book of his--the first novel he will have had published."

Mrs. Toftrees p.r.i.c.ked up her ears, so to say. She was really the business head of the Toftrees combination. Her husband did the ornamental part and provided the red-hot plots, but it was she who had invented and carried out the "note," and it was she who supervised the contracts. As Mr. Amberley was well aware, what this keen, pretty and well-dressed little woman didn"t know about publishing was worth nothing whatever.

"Oh, really," she said, in genuine surprise. "Rather unusual for you, isn"t it? Is the boy a genius then?"

Amberley shook his head. He hated everything the worthy Toftrees wrote--he had never been able to read more than ten lines of any of the half-dozen books he had published for them. But the Hanover Square side of him had a vast respect for the large sums the couple charmed from the pockets of the public no less than the handsome percentage they put into his own. And a confidential word on business matters with a pretty and pleasant little woman was not without allurement even under the Waggon-roof itself.

"Not at all. Not at all," he murmured into a pretty ear. "We are not paying the lad any advance upon royalties!" He laughed a well-fed laugh. "Ince and Amberley"s list," he continued, "is accepted for itself!"

Mrs. Toftrees smiled back at him. "_Of course_," she murmured. "But I wasn"t thinking of the financial side of it. Why? ... why are you departing from your usual traditions and throwing the shadow of your cloak over this fortunate boy?--if I may ask, of course!"

"Well," Amberley answered, and her keen ear detected--or thought that she detected--a slight reluctance in his voice... . "Well, Lothian brought him to me, you know."

Mrs. Toftrees" face changed and Amberley saw it.

She was looking down the table to where Lothian was sitting. Her face was a little flushed, and the expression upon it--though not allowed to be explicit--was by no means agreeable. "Lothian"s work is very wonderful," she said--and there was a question in her voice "--you think so, Mr. Amberley?"

Bryanstone Square, the Dining Room, a.s.serted itself. Truth to tell, Amberley felt a little uncomfortable and displeased with himself. The fun of the dinner table--the cigarette moment--had rather escaped him.

He had got young people round him to-night. He wanted them to be jolly.

He had meant to be a good host, to forget his dignities, to unbend and be jolly with them--this fiction-mongering woman was becoming annoying.

"I certainly do, Mrs. Toftrees," he replied, with dignity, and a distinct tone of reproof in his voice.

Mrs. Toftrees, the cool tradeswoman, gave the great man a soothing smile of complete understanding and agreement.

Mr. Amberley turned to a girl upon his left who had been taken in by d.i.c.kson Ingworth and who had been carrying on a laughing conversation with him during dinner.

She was a pretty girl, a friend of his daughter Muriel. He liked pretty girls, and he smiled half paternally, half gallantly at her.

"Won"t you have another cigarette, Miss Wallace?" he said, pushing a silver box towards her. "They are supposed to be rather wonderful. My cousin Eustace Amberley is in the Egyptian Army and an aide-de-camp to the Khedive. The Khedive receives the officers every month and every one takes away a box of five hundred when they leave the palace--His Highness" own peculiar brand. These are some of them, which Eustace sent me."

"May I?" she answered, a rounded, white arm stretched out to the box.

"They certainly are wonderful. I have to be content with Virginian at home. I buy fifty at a time, and a tin costs one and threepence."

She lit it delicately from the little methyl lamp he pa.s.sed her, and the big man"s kind eyes rested on her with appreciation.

She was, he thought, very like a Madonna of Donatello, which he had seen and liked in Florence. The abundant hair was a dark nut-brown, almost chocolate in certain lights. The eyes were brown also, the complexion the true Italian morbidezza, pale, but not pallid, like a furled magnolia bud. And the girl"s mouth was charming--"delicious" was the word in the mind of this connoisseur. It was as clear-cut as that of a girl"s face in a Grecian frieze of honey-coloured travertine, there was a serene sweetness about it. But when she smiled the whole face was changed. The young brown eyes lit up and visited others with their own, as a bee visits flowers. The smile was radiant and had a conscious provocation in it. The paleness of the cheeks showed such tints of pearl and rose that they seemed carved from the under surface of a sea-sh.e.l.l.

And, as Amberley looked, wishing that he had talked more to her during dinner, startled suddenly to discover such loveliness, he saw her lips suddenly glow out into colour in an extraordinary way. It wasn"t scarlet--unpainted lips are never really that--but of the veiled blood-colour that is warm and throbs with life; a colour that hardly any of the names we give to pigment can properly describe or fix.

What did he know about her? he asked himself as she was lighting her second cigarette. Hardly anything! She was a girl friend of his daughter"s--they had been to the same school together at Bath--an orphan he thought, without any people. She earned her own living--a.s.sistant Librarian, he remembered, at old Podley"s library.

Yes, Podley the millionaire nonconformist who was always endowing and inventing fads! And Muriel had told him that she wrote a little, short stories in some of the women"s papers... .

"At any rate," he said, while these thoughts were flashing through his mind "you smoke as if you liked it! All the girls smoke now, Muriel is inveterate, but I often have a suspicion that many of them do it because it"s the fashion."

Rita Wallace gave a wise little shake of her head.

"Oh, no," she answered. "Men know so little about girls! You think we"re so different from you in lots of things, but we aren"t really.

Muriel and I always used to smoke at school--it doesn"t matter about telling now, does it?"