<h2><SPAN name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></SPAN>CHAPTER IX</h2>
<h3>SPRING ONIONS</h3>
<p>The return to the world and to Powells, while partaking of the nature of
a triumph, was at the same time something of a cold, fume-dispersing,
commonsense-bestowing bath for Henry. He had meant to tell Sir George
casually that he had taken advantage of his enforced leisure to write a
book. 'Taken advantage of his enforced leisure' was the precise phrase
which Henry had in mind to use. But, when he found himself in the
strenuous, stern, staid, sapient and rational atmosphere of Powells, he
felt with a shock of perception that in rattling off <i>Love in Babylon</i>
he had been guilty of one of those charming weaknesses to which great
and serious men are sometimes tempted, but of which great and serious
men never boast. And he therefore confined his<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</SPAN></span> personal gossip with Sir
George to the turkey, the mince-tarts, and the question of contagion. He
plunged into his work with a feeling akin to dignified remorse, and Sir
George was vehemently and openly delighted by the proofs which he gave
of undiminished loyalty and devotion.</p>
<p>Nevertheless Henry continued to believe in the excellence of his book,
and he determined that, in duty to himself, his mother and aunt, and the
cause of wholesome fiction, he must try to get it published. From that
moment he began to be worried, for he had scarcely a notion how
sagaciously to set about the business. He felt like a bachelor of
pronounced views who has been given a baby to hold. He knew no one in
the realms of literature, and no one who knew anyone. Sir George, warily
sounded, appeared to be unaware that such a thing as fiction existed.
Not a soul at the Polytechnic enjoyed the acquaintance of either an
author or a publisher, though various souls had theories about these
classes of persons. Then one day a new edition of the works of Carlyle
burst on the world, and Henry bought the first volume, <i>Sartor
Resartus</i>, a book which he much admired, and which he had learnt from<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</SPAN></span>
his father to call simply and familiarly—<i>Sartor</i>. The edition, though
inexpensive, had a great air of dignity. It met, in short, with Henry's
approval, and he suddenly decided to give the publishers of it the
opportunity of publishing <i>Love in Babylon</i>. The deed was done in a
moment. He wrote a letter explaining the motives which had led him to
write <i>Love in Babylon</i>, and remarked that, if the publishers cared for
the story, mutually satisfactory terms might be arranged later; and Aunt
Annie did <i>Love in Babylon</i> up in a neat parcel. Henry was in the very
act of taking the parcel to the post, on his way to town, when Aunt Annie exclaimed:</p>
<p>'Of course you'll register it?'</p>
<p>He had not thought of doing so, but the advisability of such a step at
once appealed to him.</p>
<p>'Perhaps I'd better,' he said.</p>
<p>'But that only means two pounds if it's lost, doesn't it?' Mrs. Knight
inquired.</p>
<p>Henry nodded and pondered.</p>
<p>'Perhaps I'd better insure it,' he suggested.</p>
<p>'If I were you, I should insure it for a hundred pounds,' said Aunt
Annie positively.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>'But that will cost one and a penny,' said Henry, who had all such
details by heart. 'I could insure it for twenty pounds for fivepence.'</p>
<p>'Well, say twenty pounds then,' Aunt Annie agreed, relenting.</p>
<p>So he insured <i>Love in Babylon</i> for twenty pounds and despatched it. In
three weeks it returned like the dove to the ark (but soiled), with a
note to say that, though the publishers' reader regarded it as
promising, the publishers could not give themselves the pleasure of
making an offer for it. Thenceforward Henry and the manuscript suffered
all the usual experiences, and the post-office reaped all the usual
profits. One firm said the story was good, but too short. ('A pitiful
excuse,' thought Henry. 'As if length could affect merit.') Another said
nothing. Another offered to publish it if Henry would pay a hundred
pounds down. (At this point Henry ceased to insure the parcel.) Another
sent it back minus the last leaf, the matter of which Henry had to
reinvent and Aunt Annie to recopy. Another returned it insufficiently
stamped, and there was fourpence to pay.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</SPAN></span> Another kept it four months,
and disgorged it only under threat of a writ; the threat was launched
forth on Powells' formidable notepaper. At length there arrived a day
when even Henry's pertinacity was fatigued, and he forgot, merely
forgot, to send out the parcel again. It was put in a drawer, after a
year of ceaseless adventures, and Mrs. Knight and Aunt Annie discreetly
forbore to mention it. During that year Henry's opinion on his work had
fluctuated. There had been moments, days perhaps, of discouragement,
when he regarded it as drivel, and himself as a fool—in so far, that
is, as he had trafficked with literature. On the other hand, his
original view of it reasserted itself with frequency. And in the end he
gloomily and proudly decided, once and for all, that the Stream of
Trashy Novels Constantly Poured Forth by the Press had killed all demand
for wholesome fiction; he came reluctantly to the conclusion that modern
English literature was in a very poor way. He breathed a sigh, and
dismissed the episode utterly from his mind.</p>
<p>And <i>Love in Babylon</i> languished in the drawer for three months.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Then, upon an April morning, the following telegram was received at
Dawes Road, Fulham: '<i>Please bring manuscript me immediately top left
take cab Henry</i>.'</p>
<p>Mrs. Knight was alone in the house with Sarah when the imperious summons
of the telegraph-boy and the apparition of the orange envelope threw the
domestic atmosphere into a state of cyclonic confusion. Before tearing
the envelope she had guessed that Aunt Annie had met with an accident,
that Henry was dead, and that her own Aunt Eliza in Glossop had died
without making a will; and these imaginings had done nothing to increase
the efficiency of her intellectual powers. She could not read sense into
the message, not even with the aid of spectacles and Sarah.</p>
<p>Happily Aunt Annie returned, with her masculine grasp of affairs.</p>
<p>'He means <i>Love in Babylon</i>,' said Aunt Annie. 'It's in the top
left-hand drawer of his desk. That's what he means. Perhaps I'd better
take it. I'm ready dressed.'</p>
<p>'Oh yes, sister,' Mrs. Knight replied hastily. 'You had better take it.'</p>
<p>Aunt Annie rang the bell with quick decision.</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>'Sarah,' she said, 'run out and get me a cab, a four-wheeler. You
understand, a four-wheeler.'</p>
<p>'Yes'm. Shall I put my jacket on, mum?' Sarah asked, glancing through the window.</p>
<p>'No. Go instantly!'</p>
<p>'Yes'm.'</p>
<p>'I wonder what he wants it for,' Aunt Annie remarked, after she had
found the manuscript and put it under her arm. 'Perhaps he has mentioned
it to Sir George, and Sir George is going to do something.'</p>
<p>'I thought he had forgotten all about it,' said Mrs. Knight. 'But he
never gives a thing up, Henry doesn't.'</p>
<p>Sarah drove dashingly up to the door in a hansom.</p>
<p>'Take that back again,' commanded Aunt Annie, cautiously putting her
nose outside the front-door. It was a snowy and sleety April morning,
and she had already had experience of its rigour. 'I said a four-wheeler.'</p>
<p>'Please'm, there wasn't one,' Sarah defended herself.</p>
<p>'None on the stand, lady,' said the cabman brightly. 'You'll never get a
four-wheeler on a day like this.'</p>
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</SPAN></span></p>
<p>Aunt Annie raised her veil and looked at her sister. Like many
strong-minded and vigorous women, she had a dislike of hansoms which
amounted to dread. She feared a hansom as though it had been a
revolver—something that might go off unexpectedly at any moment and destroy her.</p>
<p>'I daren't go in that,' she admitted frankly. She was torn between her
allegiance to the darling Henry and her fear of the terrible machine.</p>
<p>'Suppose I go with you?' Mrs. Knight suggested.</p>
<p>'Very well,' said Aunt Annie, clenching her teeth for the sacrifice.</p>
<p>Sarah flew for Mrs. Knight's bonnet, fur mantle, gloves, and muff; and
with remarkably little delay the sisters and the manuscript started.
First they had the window down because of the snow and the sleet; then
they had it up because of the impure air; and lastly Aunt Annie wedged a
corner of the manuscript between the door and the window, leaving a slit
of an inch or so for ventilation. The main body of the manuscript she
supported by means of her muff.</p>
<p>Alas! her morbid fear of hansoms was about<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</SPAN></span> to be justified—at any
rate, justified in her own eyes. As the machine was passing along Walham
Green, it began to overtake a huge market-cart laden, fraught, and piled
up with an immense cargo of spring onions from Isleworth; and just as
the head of the horse of the hansom drew level with the tail of the
market-cart, the off hind wheel of the cart succumbed, and a ton or more
of spring onions wavered and slanted in the snowy air. The driver of the
hansom did his best, but he could not prevent his horse from premature
burial amid spring onions. The animal nobly resisted several
hundredweight of them, and then tottered and fell and was lost to view
under spring onions. The ladies screamed in concert, and discovered
themselves miraculously in the roadway, unhurt, but white and
breathless. A constable and a knife-grinder picked them up.</p>
<p>The accident was more amusing than tragic, though neither Mrs. Knight
nor Aunt Annie was capable of perceiving this fact. The horse emerged
gallantly, unharmed, and the window of the hansom was not even cracked.
The constable congratulated everyone and took down the names of the two
drivers, the two ladies, and the knife-grinder.<span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</SPAN></span> The condition of the
weather fortunately, militated against the formation of a large crowd.</p>
<p>Quite two minutes elapsed before Aunt Annie made the horrible discovery
that <i>Love in Babylon</i> had disappeared. <i>Love in Babylon</i> was smothered
up in spring onions.</p>
<p>'Keep your nerve, madam,' said the constable, seeing signs of an
emotional crisis, 'and go and stand in that barber's doorway—both of you.'</p>
<p>The ladies obeyed.</p>
<p>In due course <i>Love in Babylon</i> was excavated, chapter by chapter, and
Aunt Annie held it safely once more, rumpled but complete.</p>
<p>By the luckiest chance an empty four-wheeler approached.</p>
<p>The sisters got into it, and Aunt Annie gave the address.</p>
<p>'As quick as you can,' she said to the driver, 'but do drive slowly.'</p>
<hr />
<p><span class="pagenum"><SPAN name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</SPAN></span></p>
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