Chapter II
Mr. Questing Goes Down for the First Time
“We’ve heard from Dr. Forster, sir,” said Dikon Bell. He glanced anxiously at his employer. When Gaunt stood with his hands rammed down in the pockets of his dressing gown and his shoulders hunched up to his ears one watched one’s step. Gaunt turned away from the window, and Dikon noticed apprehensively that his leg was very stiff this morning.
“Ha!” said Gaunt.
“He makes a suggestion.”
“I won’t go to that sulphurous resort.”
“Rotorua, sir?”
“Is that what it’s called?”
“He realizes you want somewhere quiet, sir. He’s made inquiries about another place. It’s in the Northland. On the west coast. Subtropical climate.”
“Sulphurous pneumonia?”
“Well, sir, we do want to clear up that leg, don’t we?”
“We do.” With one of those swift changes of demeanor by which he so easily commanded devotion, Gaunt turned to his secretary and clapped him on the shoulder. “I think you’re as homesick as I am, Dikon. Isn’t that true? You’re a New Zealander, of course, but wouldn’t you ten thousand times rather be there? In London? Isn’t it exactly as if someone you loved was ill and you couldn’t get to them?”
“A little like that, certainly,” said Dikon dryly.
“I shouldn’t keep you here. Go back, my dear chap. I’ll find somebody in New Zealand,” said Gaunt with a certain melancholy relish.
“Are you giving me the sack, sir?”
“If only they can patch me up…”
“But they will, sir. Dr. Forster said the leg ought to respond very quickly to hydrotherapy,” said Dikon with a prime imitation of the doctor’s manner. “They simply hated the sight of me in the Australian recruiting offices. And I fancy I should have little more than refuse-value at Home. I’m as blind as a bat, you know. Of course, there’s office work.”
“You must do what you think best,” said Gaunt gloomily. “Leave me to stagnate. I’m no good to my country. Ha!”
“If you call raising twelve thousand for colonial patriotic funds no good…”
“I’m a useless hulk,” said Gaunt, and even Dikon was reminded of the penultimate scene in Jane Eyre.
“What are you grinning at, blast you?” Gaunt demanded.
“You don’t look precisely like a useless hulk. I’ll stay a little longer if you’ll have me.”
“Well, let’s hear about this new place. You’re looking wonderfully self-conscious. What hideous surprise have you got up your sleeve?”
Dikon put his attaché case on the writing table and opened it.
“There’s a princely fan mail to-day,” he said, and laid a stack of typed sheets and photographs on one side.
“Good! I adore being adored. How many have written a little something themselves and wonder if I can advise them how to have their plays produced?”
“Four. One lady has sent a copy of her piece. She has dedicated it to you. It’s a fantasy.”
“God!”
“Here is Dr. Forster’s letter, and one enclosed from a Dr. James Ackrington who appears to be a celebrity from Harley Street. Perhaps you’d like to read them.”
“I should hate to read them.”
“I think you’d better, sir.”
Gaunt grimaced, took the letters and lowered himself into a chair by the writing desk. Dikon watched him rather nervously.
Geoffrey Gaunt had spent twenty-seven of his forty-five years on the stage, and the last sixteen had seen him firmly established in the first rank. He was what used to be called a romantic actor, but he was also an intelligent one. His greatest distinction lay in his genius for making an audience hear the sense as well as the music of Shakespearean verse. So accurate and clear was his tracing out of the speeches’ content that his art had about it something of mathematical precision and was saved from coldness only by the apparent profundity of his emotional understanding. How far this understanding was instinctive and how far intellectual, not even his secretary, who had been with him for six years, could decide. He was middle-sized, dark, and not particularly striking, but as an actor he possessed the two great assets: his skull was well shaped, and his hands were beautiful. As for his disposition, Dikon Bell, writing six years before from London to a friend in New Zealand, had said, after a week in Gaunt’s employment: “He’s tricky, affected, clever as a bagful of monkeys, a bit of a bounder with the temper of a fury, and no end of an egotist, but I think I’m going to like him.” He had never found reason to revise this first impression.
Gaunt read Dr. Forster’s note and then Dr. Ackrington’s letter. “For heaven’s sake,” he cried, “what sort of an antic is this old person? Have you noted the acid treatment of his relations? Does he call this letter a recommendation? Discomfort leavened with inefficient kindness is the bait he offers. Moreover, there’s a dirty little knock at me in the last paragraph. If Forster wants me to endure the place, one would have thought his policy would have been to suppress the letter. He’s a poor psychologist.”
“The psychology,” said Dikon modestly, “is mine. Forster wanted to suppress the letter. I took it upon myself to show it to you. I thought that if you jibbed at the Claires, sir, you wouldn’t be able to resist Dr. Ackrington.”
Gaunt shot a suspicious glance at his secretary. “You’re too clever by half, my friend,” he said.
“And he does say,” Dikon added persuasively, “he does say ‘the mud may be miraculous.’ ”
Gaunt laughed, made an abrupt movement, and drew in his breath sharply.
“Isn’t it worth enduring the place if it puts your leg right, sir? And at least we could get on with the boek.”
“Certain it is I can’t write in this bloody hotel. How I hate hotels. Dikon,” cried Gaunt with an assumption of boyish enthusiasm, “shall we fly to America? Shall we do Henry Vth in New York? They’d take it, you know, just now. ‘And Crispin, Crispian shall ne’er go by …’ God, I think I must play Henry in New York.”
“Wouldn’t you rather play him in London, sir, on a fit-up stage with the blitz for battle noises off?”
“Of course I would, damn you.”
“Why not try this place? At least it may turn out to be copy for the Life. Thermal divertissements. And then, when you’re fit and ready to hit ’em… London.”
“You talk like a Nanny in her dotage,” said Gaunt fretfully. “I suppose you and Colly have plotted this frightfulness between you. Where is Colly?”
“Ironing your trousers, sir.”
“Tell him to come here.”
Dikon spoke on the telephone and in a moment the door opened to admit a wisp of a man with a face that resembled a wrinkled kid glove. This was Gaunt’s dresser and personal servant, Alfred Colly. Colly had been the dresser provided by the management when Gaunt, a promising young leading man with no social background, had made his first great success. After a phenomenal run, Colly accepted Gaunt’s offer of permanent employment, but had never adopted the technique of a manservant. His attitude towards his employer held the balance between extreme familiarity and a cheerful recognition of Gaunt’s prestige. He laid the trousers that he carried over the back of a chair, folded his hands and blinked.
“You’ve heard all about this damned hot spot, no doubt?” said Gaunt.
“That’s right, sir,” said Colly. “Going to turn mudlarks, aren’t we?”
“I haven’t said so.”
“It’s about time we did something about ourself though, isn’t it, sir? We’re not sleeping as pretty as we’d like, are we? And how about our leg?”