Chapter XIV: “now Barabbas Was a Publisher.”

I regret to say that from that day forth Romeo was more marked in his courtesy to me than ever. His manner had always a tinge of sweet antique courtliness; but now he surpassed himself. I regret it, I say, because I was afraid I recognised in this courtesy some lingering undercurrent of class feeling. The dear fellow would have been polite to a type-writer girl from the dregs of the people, no doubt—he did not know how to be less than polite to anyone; but he was politer still when he understood that I was an officer’s daughter, and (as he learned a week later) that my mother had sprung from a great Anglo-Indian family. This was treason to his principles; for Romeo, as he had said, was more than half a socialist; but I condoned that fault for the sake of his unvarying kindness.

Besides, I think he thought well of me because I was loyal to my father’s memory. As though anyone who had known my dear father could have been otherwise!

Romeo published for Sidney Trevelyan. From the moment when I first noticed “An Heir of the Plantagenets” among the rows of books in glazed paper covers in the pigeon-holes, I had always longed to be present some day when the famous novelist came in to discuss royalties or _éditions de luxe_ with his publisher. Sidney Trevelyan’s name was like Charing Cross or Hyde Park Corner—a familiar piece of public property. One afternoon I had my will. I was seated at my table, clicking away at some letters, when I heard on the stairs a rich strident voice, diffusing itself very loud in clear shrill accents. I know not which struck me most, its richness or its stridency. It was a sonorous voice, which one turn of a note would have made unendurable. “He is in his lair?” it said, filling the room. “Plotting schemes to suck my blood? Then I will track him to his earth—the young vampire. My dear Barabbas, how are you?”

He burst into the sanctum, a whirlwind of a man—large, loose-limbed, masterful, with a restless grey eye, and a huge mop of brown hair, shot with threads of russet. Romeo rose to greet him. He flung himself into a chair. It creaked beneath his elephantine weight. I left off clicking at once, and went on with a piece of long-hand transcription. Or rather, to be frank, I feigned to transcribe, though my pen was inkless.

As a rule, when authors came, ’twas my place to leave the study for awhile, and take refuge with Puck and Ariel in the anteroom. But as the great man entered—two yards of humanity, double width—Romeo signed to me to remain, with a quick movement of the eyebrow. He knew my wish, and was kind enough to remember it. I counted it to him for righteousness.

Sidney Trevelyan sniffed, and scanned the room, with its Oriental hangings, and its scent of cedar-wood. “A nice den, Barabbas, a nice den!” he observed, in a condescending tone; “an Ali Baba’s cave, rich with bones of authors; vastly improved since the days of the old robber!”

Romeo winced. Like myself, he respected his father.

“You have garnished it afresh,” the great novelist continued, “from the spoils of the Egyptians. You have decked yourself in purple and fine linen! Well, ’tis well you should be comfortable in this world, no doubt: for in the next——But I refrain from painting a Tartarean picture. Dante has done it so well before me that, like the grocer in my street, he defies competition. I see you, my dear Barabbas,” he raised his voice still louder, almost lapsing into a falsetto, “I see you lolling here in Eastern opulence, bathed in Cyprian perfumes, and fanned by obsequious Circassian odalisques”—I _felt_ him glance my way, though my eyes were fixed on my paper; “I see you, like the sultan in Shelley’s _Hellas_, surrounded by large-eyed houris, of voluptuous bosoms, who strew your restless pillow with opiate flowers—I call your pillow restless, my dear fellow, partly because that was Shelley’s epithet, if memory serves me, but partly also because a publisher (especially a young one) can scarcely expect to enjoy sound slumber; later on, no doubt, as he becomes hardened in crime, he sleeps as well as a digestion impaired by old port permits; but at first, remorse must disturb his fitful rest—I see you, I say, with opiate flowers on your couch stripped—what was the rhyme?—ah, yes, ‘flowers,’ ‘pillow’—stripped from orient bowers by the Indian billow. That is the picture—_here_. But at last comes the awakening.” He struck a dramatic attitude, and held up one hand; he had impressive fat hands, which seemed always in evidence. “You start from your sleep like Mahmood. ‘Man the seraglio—guard! Make fast the gate!’ You dream yourself still lapped in Eastern magnificence. Then . . . . ha! what’s this? An odour of brimstone—a pallid whiff of blue flame—Mephistopheles smiling grimly on the victim he has landed—you know where you are—unlike the current hero of music-hall romance—you stretch dim hands of fear and grope—you sink down, down, down, on a couch of liquid fire. ‘All is lost! Why was I ever a publisher?’ In which of his circles did Dante place publishers? Was it not close between the avaricious and the prevaricators? But aloft in the empyrean, pillowed on purple cloud, meanwhile, I enjoy that delight upon which Tertullian insisted as a prime element in the ecstasy of the Blest—the delight of beholding you——But your satellites overhear me! Sense of discipline forbids! Barabbas,” he waved his hand, “I draw a veil over your future condition!”

He paused for want of breath. Most fat men are sluggish: this mountain of flesh was alive and volcanic in every atom. Romeo began in his soft voice, “And on what particular conspiracy of crime have you come to-day to consult the habitual criminal?”

Sidney Trevelyan smiled. He liked to be taken in his mood. “Well, my business,” he said, “is, as you anticipate, a fresh raid against the purses of the Philistines. We must spoil them, my dear Barabbas; we must spoil them, in unison. Here, our interests are identical. They have taken two thousand, I see, of the three-volume ‘Mahatmas.’ That’s not enough; you must issue at once a six-shilling edition. Grovelling beasts, prone in the mud they love, what do they mean by rejecting this so great salvation? Let Mudies see to it! I shall answer their neglect by flinging back ‘Mahatmas’ in their teeth for six shillings. I know whence it comes, this rebuff: those ignorant parrots, the critics. They toss at me ever their parrot cry of ‘Artificial, artificial!’ Their own thoughts grub and grunt in the mud of their sty, and they blame it to the eagle that he should circle about gleaming icy peaks in clear ether. ‘Unnatural,’ they say; ‘Overloaded.’ That man Snigg, or Snagg, or Snogg—something Teutonic and unlovely—I decline to remember his honoured name—he reviewed me in the _Parthenon_. He has no wings himself, and therefore he thinks flight an indecent gambolling. But what do I care for the whole crew? Not an obolus, not a doit—neither for Snagg nor Bagg, neither for Archer nor Parcher.”

He paused again to catch breath. In the lull, Romeo put in quietly, “It is too soon, in my opinion, for a cheap edition.”

“No, Barabbas, it is not; it is the psychological moment. The world awaits it with hushed breath. Six shillings—bound in cloth—Irish linen—dark green—a subtle shade—a shade I have in my mind’s eye—like lavender leaves in spring, when the sap mounts emerald through sea-hoary stems. You catch my idea? A green not wholly green, not altogether blue, not grey, not glaucous, but something of all, and more than all; with a cunning design by that mad young Belgian—withy-bands that twist into interlacing dragons; the title in their midst, in somewhat Celtic letters.”

He broke off abruptly. Once more I could feel him glance my way. I seemed to see through the back of my head. I was sensitive to his movements.

Suddenly, he burst out in a quite different voice, snorting like a war-horse: “Send that young woman away!” he cried, executing a sort of ponderous rhinoceros-dance before me. “Send her away! I tell you I can’t stand her. I won’t have her scribbling there and making notes of all I say. She’s a paragraphist—a paragraphist: the vilest spawn on God’s earth, a paragraphist! What do you mean by setting spavined shorthand writers to report my _obiter dicta_?” He advanced towards me, striding: I had risen hurriedly. “Go off!” he cried, waving his hands at me as if I were a gadfly. “Go off! I won’t be listened to and paragraphed. I could feel you paragraphing me. Away, young woman: away with you.” And by dint of sheer bulk, he drove me before him.

Romeo opened the door for me. He spoke with deference. “I think, Miss Appleton,” he said, “you had better take a seat in the anteroom for the moment, as your presence here seems to disturb Mr. Trevelyan.”

I went out, mystified. As the door closed behind me, I heard the great man snort again. “Now, really, Barabbas, if you choose to keep dusky Samian slaves chained in your lair for your hours of leisure, you should have the decency to unchain them when fellow-conspirators come in with proposals for a joint campaign against Askelon.”

I sat in the anteroom for half an hour. Ariel gazed in my face with sympathetic inquiry. “The old bear was rude?” he asked at last, in a low voice.

“I might almost call him so.”

“It is his way,” Ariel replied. “He seems to wipe his shoes on one.”

“But he’s not a bad old chap, either,” Puck put in. “He chucked me half-a-crown once for going a message for him.”

“And called you a Tartar-nosed imp,” Ariel added; “and hit you in the eye with it.”

“He is a very great genius,” I observed, sententiously, half to salve my own offended dignity.

“But a genius is a man,” Ariel remarked. And I felt he had reason.

Twenty minutes later, the famous writer emerged. He cast a scowl at me in passing. “Change your type-writer woman!” he said curtly to Romeo. “Good-bye, my dear Barabbas. Rob on, rob ever.” His broad back vanished down the staircase like a sinking hippopotamus.

“Well?” Romeo asked, with an anxious face, as I returned to my post when the tornado had passed. “Now you have seen him, what do you think of Sidney Trevelyan?”

“I think,” I said, “I would rather be a Barabbas than a Byron.”