had made august
and successful overtures for the reception of Henry into their fold.
Sir Hugh Macalistair, the head of the firm, was (at that time) the only
publisher who had ever been knighted. And the history of Macalistairs
was the history of all that was greatest and purest in English
literature during the nineteenth century. Without Macalistairs, English
literature since Scott would have been nowhere. Henry was to write a
long novel in due course, and Macalistairs were to have the world's
rights of the book, and were to use it as a serial in their venerable
and lusty _Magazine_, and to pay Henry, on delivery of the manuscript,
eight thousand pounds, of which six thousand was to count as in advance
of royalties on the book.

Mr. Onions Winter was very angry at what he termed an ungrateful
desertion. The unfortunate man died a year or two later of appendicitis,
and his last words were that he, and he alone, had 'discovered' Henry.

CHAPTER XXI

PLAYING THE NEW GAME

When Henry had seceded from Powells, and had begun to devote several
dignified hours a day to the excogitation of a theme for his new novel,
and the triumph of _A Question of Cubits_ was at its height, he thought
that there ought to be some change in his secret self to correspond with
the change in his circumstances. But he could perceive none, except,
perhaps, that now and then he was visited by the feeling that he had a
great mission in the world. That feeling, however, came rarely, and, for
the most part, he existed in a state of not being quite able to
comprehend exactly how and why his stories roused the enthusiasm of an
immense public.

In essentials he remained the same Henry, and the sameness of his simple
self was never more apparent to him than when he got out of a cab one
foggy Wednesday night in November, and rang at the Grecian portico of
Mrs. Ashton Portway's house in Lowndes Square. A crimson cloth covered
the footpath. This was his first entry into the truly great world, and
though he was perfectly aware that as a lion he could not easily be
surpassed in no matter what menagerie, his nervousness and timidity were
so acute as to be painful; they annoyed him, in fact. When, in the wide
hall, a servant respectfully but firmly closed the door after him, thus
cutting off a possible retreat to the homely society of the cabman, he
became resigned, careless, reckless, desperate, as who should say, 'Now
I _have_ done it!' And as at th