The Giant's Robe Part 37

Mark was his own master now, for he had given up his appointment at St. Peter's, although Mr. Shelford strongly advised him to go in for some regular profession besides literature.

'There'll come a day,' he told him, 'when you've played out all your tunes and your barrel is worn smooth, and no one will throw you any more coppers. Then you'll want a regular employment to fall back upon.

Why don't you get called?'

'Because I don't want to be tied down,' said Mark. 'I want to go about and study character. I want to enjoy my life while I can.'

'So did the gra.s.shopper,' said Mr. Shelford.

'You don't believe in me, I know,' said Mark. 'You think I shall never do anything like "Illusion" again. Well, I believe in myself. I think my tunes will last out my life at all events. I really work uncommonly hard. I have two novels ready for the press at this moment, which is pretty well for a mere gra.s.shopper.'

'But wearing for a mere barrel-organ,' said the old gentleman. 'Be careful; don't write too much. The public never forgive a disappointment. Whatever you do, give them of your best.'

And shortly after this conversation Mark left his novel, 'Sweet Bells Jangled,' with Chilton and Fladgate, mentioning terms which even to himself seemed slightly exorbitant. He had a note from the firm in the course of a day or two, appointing an interview, and on going up to the publis.h.i.+ng office found both of the partners waiting to receive him. Mr. Chilton was a spare angular man, who confined himself chiefly to the purely financial department.

'We have decided to accept your terms, subject to a few modifications which we can discuss presently,' he said.

'You think the book is likely to be a success?' asked Mark, unable to control his anxiety.

'Any work by the author of "Illusion" is sure to command attention,'

said Mr. Chilton.

'But you like the subject?' pursued Mark.

Mr. Chilton coughed. 'I can express no opinion,' he said. 'I don't profess to be a judge of these matters. Fladgate has read the book; he will tell you what he thinks about it.'

But Mr. Fladgate remained silent, and Mark, much as he longed to press him, was too proud to do so. However, as the firm demanded a rather considerable reduction of the original terms, Mr. Fladgate, in explanation, admitted at length that he did _not_ consider 'Sweet Bells Jangled' altogether up to the standard of Mark's first work, and intimated that it would not be advisable to risk bringing it out before the spring season.

'I see,' said Mark, nettled; 'you are not particularly hopeful about it?'

'Oh,' said Mr. Fladgate, with a wave of his hand, 'I wouldn't say that. Chance has a good deal to do with these affairs--a good deal to do. I confess I miss some of the qualities that charmed me in your "Illusion." It reads to me, if I may say so, like an earlier effort, a much earlier effort; but it may hit the popular taste for all that; and it is certainly in quite a different vein.'

Mark came away rather depressed, but he soon persuaded himself that a publisher was a not infallible judge of literary merit; and then, the firm had every object in depreciating the work whilst negotiations were proceeding. For all that he felt uncomfortable now and then, and he had not wholly got rid of his depression by the time of Dolly's birthday party.

On his arrival, he found that Dolly's wish had been gratified. Dancing was the main attraction, and in the princ.i.p.al room were the usual iron-fisted pianist and red-faced cornet-player, who should be such profound moralists with all their nightly experiences; and dainty little girls were whirling round with the fortunate boys who had elder sisters at home to bully them into acquiring the mysteries of the valse, while the less favoured stood in doorways gibing with the scornfulness of envy.

The least observing might trace the course of several nave preferences and innocent flirtations during the earlier part of the evening. Big bright-faced boys in devoted attendance on shy and unconscious small maidens many years their juniors, and, _en revanche_, determined little ladies triumphantly towing about smaller boys, who seemed sometimes elated, but mostly resigned, while one youthful misogynist openly rebelled and fled to Mabel for protection, declaring ungallantly that he would rather be 'at home in bed than bothered like that any longer.'

Dolly was enjoying herself amazingly, dancing chiefly, however, with her dearest girl friend for the time being, since none of the boys danced well enough to please either of them. And besides, boys rather bored Dolly, to whom dancing, as yet, was merely a particularly delightful form of exercise, and who had no precocious tendencies to coquetry. She deigned to dance once with Mark, after which he did his duty by trotting out a succession of calm and self-possessed little girls, who were as unchildlike as if they had been out for a season or two. Then he thought he might reward himself by going to look for Mabel, whom he found in one of the lower rooms endeavouring to amuse the smaller and non-dancing members of the company. She was standing under the centre lamp, flushed and laughing, with two or three children clinging to her dress, and met his amused and admiring eyes with a little gesture of comic despair.

'We've played all the games that were ever invented,' she said; 'and now some of them are getting rough and the rest cross, and there's half an hour before supper, and I don't in the least know what to do with them till then.'

'Shall I see what _I_ can do with them?' said Mark rather rashly.

'Oh, if you would it would be so kind of you. I'm afraid you don't know what you are exposing yourself to.'

Mark, not being devoted to children, felt more than a little dubious himself; but he wanted to be a.s.sociated with her in something, and volunteered manfully.

'Look here,' he began, as they all stood about staring at him, 'Miss Langton's a little tired. I--I am going to play with you a little now.

What shall we have, eh? Blind man's buff?'

But they had had that, and presently one small boy, bolder than the rest, said, 'Play at being Jumbo'--a proposal which seemed generally popular.

'Then may I leave you here?' said Mabel. 'I must go and speak to mother about something. Don't let them be too tiresome.'

This was by no means what Mark had bargained for; but he found himself deserted and reduced to 'play at being Jumbo' with the best possible grace. It was a simple but severe game, consisting in the performer of the princ.i.p.al _role_--who was Mark himself on this occasion--going down on his hands and knees and staggering about the carpet, while everyone else who could find room climbed on his back and thumped him on the head. At last, in self-defence, he was obliged to get rid of them by intimating that he had gone mad, when he had to justify his words by careering round the room trumpeting fiercely, while the children scuttled away before him in an ecstasy of sham terror. At first Mark was profoundly miserable, and even glad that Mabel had not remained to witness his humiliation; but by-and-by he began to enter into the spirit of the thing, and had entirely forgotten his dignity by the time Mabel reappeared. Caffyn (who had now returned from the Featherstones', and had received an invitation from Mrs. Langton in Mabel's absence: 'We've known him from a boy, my dear,' the former had said in justification, 'and he can recite some things to keep the children quiet, you know') stood in the doorway behind her, and looked on with a smile of pity, but she saw nothing ridiculous in Mark just then (and, as he was probably aware, he could stand such tests better than most men). She only thought that his willingness to sacrifice himself for others was a pleasant trait in his character.

'Don't get up, Ashburn; it's delightful to see you making yourself so hot, my dear fellow,' said Caffyn. 'One doesn't get the chance of seeing a successful author ramping about on all fours every day.'

'I _can't_ get up,' said Mark; and in fact a small but unpleasantly st.u.r.dy boy had pounced on him as he paused for breath, and, with the sense that he was doing something courageous, was in course of taming the elephant with a hearth-brush.

'What a shame!' cried Mabel. 'Tommy, you horrid boy, you're hurting Mr. Ashburn.' And the hearth-brush was certainly coming down with considerable vigour on the small of the amateur elephant's back.

'I think myself,' gasped Mark, 'that I could bear being s.h.i.+pped off to America now.'

'Yes, indeed,' she said compa.s.sionately; 'you mustn't be tormented any more. Tommy, let the poor elephant alone; you've tamed him very nicely.'

'Jumbo had his hind legs tied,' urged Tommy, who had a taste for realism.

'I don't think that will be necessary,' objected Mark. 'I'm beautifully tame now, Master Tommy; observe the mildness of my eye.'

'The game's over now,' said Mabel with decision. 'There, Mr. Ashburn, your elephant life is over. Tommy, come and b.u.t.ton my glove for me, like a dear fellow. How dreadfully hot you are! And now Mr. Caffyn is going to recite something; come upstairs, all of you, and listen.'

For Mrs. Langton had begged him to do something to amuse the children.

'I don't want them to dance too much,' she had said. 'If you could manage to cool them down before supper.'

'_I'll_ cool them down!' said Caffyn to himself, with one of his peculiar impulses to safe and secret malevolence. 'If you will get them all together, dear Mrs. Langton,' he replied, 'I'll see what I can do.' And accordingly he entertained them with a harrowing little poem about a poor child dying of starvation in a garret, and dreaming of wealthier and happier children enjoying themselves at parties, which made all the children uncomfortable, and some of the less stolid ones cry. And then he told them a ghost story, crammed with ingenious horrors, which followed most of them home to bed.

Mabel listened in burning indignation; she would have liked to stop him, but grown-up persons were beginning to filter in, and she was afraid of making anything like a scene by interfering. However, when he came up blandly after the performance she let him see her opinion of it.

'Oh, they like to have their flesh creep,' he said with a shrug; 'it's one of the luxuries of youth.'

'It isn't a wholesome one,' said she; 'but I know you have your own theories of the proper way to amuse a child.' She felt a revival of her disgust for the sly treachery he had revealed once before. He gave her a cold keen glance, and the lines round his mouth tightened for an instant.

'You haven't forgiven me, then?' he said.

'I can't forget,' she answered in a low voice.

'We both have good memories, it seems,' he retorted with a short laugh as he held up a curtain for her to pa.s.s, and turned away.

It was after supper, and most of the children had been weeded out to be replaced by children of a larger growth. Mark came up to Mabel as she stood by the doorway while the musicians were playing the first few bars of a waltz, and each couple was waiting for some other to begin before them. 'You promised me a dance,' he said, 'in reward for my agility as an elephant. Aren't your duties over now?'

'I think everybody knows everybody now, and no one is sitting out,'

said Mabel. 'But really I would rather not dance just yet; I'm a little tired.' For the Fraulein was still away with her family in Germany, and most of the work had fallen upon Mabel, who was feeling some need of a rest. Mark did not try to persuade her.

'You must be,' he agreed. 'Will you--do you mind sitting this dance out with me?'

She made no objection, and they were presently sitting together under the soft light of the ribbed Chinese lanterns in a fernery at the back of the rooms.