Page:The Collector by May Sinclair.djvu/7

Rh contradictions, nobody believed them. .And when the book, his masterpiece, came out, the effect on his royalties was lamen- table. In America it simply ruined him. He tried desperately to recover, to live it down. He had some scheme of going cm a lecturing tour in the States; hut Ids agents made inquiries, and advised him not to* A lecturing tour in the States, they said, at the present juncture would prove a miserable fiasco, even if he could effect a landing. He, the darling of the American public, whose triumph on "the other side" bad been a gorgeous la try-tale, It was sharper because of the peace, that he had known. I can't tell you all Mrs. Folyat-Raikes's ruses, and Watt Gunn's revolts and flights, his dastardly and pitia- ble shifts. He had, I believe, a matrimo- nial project which he abandoned as too drastic, besides being probably ineffectual. And then he did a really clever thing. It served him for a whole season. I ought to tell you that Mrs. Folyat- Raikts was the most straight-laced hostess of her generation. Nobody was admitted to her house who had once figured in a scandal. And Watt Gunn had never fig- Drawn by Harry lialeijjli "ALL HE WANTED WAS TO LIE THERE ANI> HAVE HIS HAIR BRUSHED" saw himself returned on his country's hands as an insane alien. His American publisher, terrified by these rumors, came over himself for the sole purpose of seeing what was the mat- ter with Watt Gunn, and despite all that Burton, Furnival, and T could tell him, he was not altogether reassured. He went about too much. Besides, by this time Watt Gunn bad got so nervy over it all that his behavior lent itself to suspicion. Then the poor little chap persuaded himself that his only chance was to be seen again at Mrs. Folyat-Raikes's. For the next three months he was seen there and everywhere. Fumy published a funny ac- count of the whole thing, and Watt Gunn was ultimately reinstated. And the strug- gle and the agony began all over again. ured, had never desired to figure; he could n't, he used to say, he bored. Really, he had preserved the virtues and traditions of his class, besides being constitutionally timid in seductive presences. Then sud- denly and conspicuously, in. the beginning of the season, he figured. He appeared — you may remember it — as co-respondent in a rather bad divorce case. There were three other co-respondents, but they had been kept out ot it in the interests of Watt Gunn. I don't know how he had worked it; anyhow, the little chap ap- peared, wearing his borrowed purple with an air of reckless magnificence in sin, I can see him now, solemn and flushed with the weight and importance of it, stalking slowly up the staircase of the Old Marl- borough Club, trailing that gorgeous