"I've had time to look a little further into what we're prepared to do, and I find the case is one in which I should consider the advisability of going to an extreme length," said Mr.Locket.Jersey Villas the next morning had had the privilege of again receiving the editor of the Promiscuous, and he sat once more at the davenport, where the bone of contention, in the shape of a large, loose heap of papers that showed how much they had been handled, was placed well in view."We shall see our way to offering you three hundred, but we shouldn't, I must positively assure you, see it a single step further."Peter Baron, in his dressing-gown and slippers, with his hands in his pockets, crept softly about the room, repeating, below his breath and with inflections that for his own sake he endeavoured to make humorous: "Three hundred--three hundred." His state of mind was far from hilarious, for he felt poor and sore and disappointed; but he wanted to prove to himself that he was gallant--was made, in general and in particular, of undiscourageable stuff.The first thing he had been aware of on stepping into his front room was that a four-wheeled cab, with Mrs.Ryves's luggage upon it, stood at the door of No.3.
Permitting himself, behind his curtain, a pardonable peep, he saw the mistress of his thoughts come out of the house, attended by Mrs.
Bundy, and take her place in the modest vehicle.After this his eyes rested for a long time on the sprigged cotton back of the landlady, who kept bobbing at the window of the cab an endlessly moralising old head.Mrs.Ryves had really taken flight--he had made Jersey Villas impossible for her--but Mrs.Bundy, with a magnanimity unprecedented in the profession, seemed to express a belief in the purity of her motives.Baron felt that his own separation had been, for the present at least, effected; every instinct of delicacy prompted him to stand back.
Mr.Locket talked a long time, and Peter Baron listened and waited.
He reflected that his willingness to listen would probably excite hopes in his visitor--hopes which he himself was ready to contemplate without a scruple.He felt no pity for Mr.Locket and had no consideration for his suspense or for his possible illusions; he only felt sick and forsaken and in want of comfort and of money.Yet it was a kind of outrage to his dignity to have the knife held to his throat, and he was irritated above all by the ground on which Mr.
Locket put the question--the ground of a service rendered to historical truth.It might be--he wasn't clear; it might be--the question was deep, too deep, probably, for his wisdom; at any rate he had to control himself not to interrupt angrily such dry, interested palaver, the false voice of commerce and of cant.He stared tragically out of the window and saw the stupid rain begin to fall;the day was duller even than his own soul, and Jersey Villas looked so sordidly hideous that it was no wonder Mrs.Ryves couldn't endure them.Hideous as they were he should have to tell Mrs.Bundy in the course of the day that he was obliged to seek humbler quarters.
Suddenly he interrupted Mr.Locket; he observed to him: "I take it that if I should make you this concession the hospitality of the Promiscuous would be by that very fact unrestrictedly secured to me."Mr.Locket stared."Hospitality--secured?" He thumbed the proposition as if it were a hard peach.
"I mean that of course you wouldn't--in courtsey, in gratitude--keep on declining my things.""I should give them my best attention--as I've always done in the past."Peter Baron hesitated.It was a case in which there would have seemed to be some chance for the ideally shrewd aspirant in such an advantage as he possessed; but after a moment the blood rushed into his face with the shame of the idea of pleading for his productions in the name of anything but their merit.It was as if he had stupidly uttered evil of them.Nevertheless be added the interrogation:
"Would you for instance publish my little story?""The one I read (and objected to some features of) the other day? Do you mean--a--with the alteration?" Mr.Locket continued.
"Oh, no, I mean utterly without it.The pages you want altered contain, as I explained to you very lucidly, I think, the very raison d'etre of the work, and it would therefore, it seems to me, be an imbecility of the first magnitude to cancel them." Peter had really renounced all hope that his critic would understand what he meant, but, under favour of circumstances, he couldn't forbear to taste the luxury, which probably never again would come within his reach, of being really plain, for one wild moment, with an editor.
Mr.Locket gave a constrained smile."Think of the scandal, Mr.
Baron."
"But isn't this other scandal just what you're going in for?""It will be a great public service."