Delphi complete works of.., p.532
Delphi Complete Works of William Dean Howells, page 532
“Such straws as the Modem Romeo?” Ray asked. “It seems to me that I have a case of conscience here. Is it right for me to let Mr. Brandreth bet his money on my book when there are so many chances of his losing?”
“Let us hope he won’t finally bet,” Kane suggested, and he smiled at the refusal which instantly came into Ray’s eyes. “But if he does, we must leave the end with God. People,” he mused on, “used to leave the end with God a great deal oftener than they do now. I remember that I did, myself, once. It was easier. I think I will go back to it. There is something very curious in our relation to the divine. God is where we believe He is, and He is a daily Providence or not, as we choose. People used to see His hand in a corner, or a deal, which prospered them, though it ruined others. They may be ashamed to do that now. But we might get back to faith by taking a wider sweep and seeing God in our personal disadvantages — finding Him not only in luck but in bad luck. Chance may be a larger law, with an orbit far transcending the range of the little statutes by which fire always burns, and water always finds its level.”
“That is a better Hard Saying than the other,” Ray mocked. “I’ faith an excellent song.” Have some more champagne. Now go on; but let us talk of A Modern Romeo.”
“We will drink to it,” said Kane, with an air of
XXXVII.
“WELL, sir,” said Mr. Brandreth when he found Ray waiting for him in his little room the next morning, “I haven’t slept a wink all night.”
Ray had not slept a wink himself, and he had not been able to keep away from Chapley’s in his fear and his hope concerning his book. He hoped Mr. Brandreth might have looked at it; he feared he had not. His heart began to go down, but he paused in his despair at the smiles that Mr. Brandreth broke into.
“It was that book of yours. I thought I would just dip into it after dinner, and try a chapter or two on Mrs. Brandreth; but I read on till eleven o’clock, and then she went to bed, and I kept at it till I finished it, about three this morning. Then the baby took up the strain for about half an hour and finished we.” Ray did not know what to say. He gasped out, “I’m proud to have been associated with young Mr. Brandreth in destroying his father’s rest.”
The publisher did not heed this poor attempt at nonchalance. “I left the manuscript for Mrs. Brandreth — she called me back to make sure, before I got out of doors — and if she likes it as well to the end — But I know she will! She likes you, Ray.”
“Does she?” Ray faintly questioned back.
“Yes; she thinks you’re all kinds of a nice fellow, and that you’ve been rather sacrificed in some ways. She thinks you behaved splendidly in that Denton business.”
Ray remained mutely astonished at the flattering opinions of Mrs. Brandreth; he had suspected them so little. Her husband went on, smiling:
“She wasn’t long making out the original of your hero.” Ray blushed consciously, but made no attempt to disown the self-portraiture. “Of course,” said Mr. Brandreth, “we’re all in the dark about the heroine. But Mrs. Brandreth doesn’t care so much for her.”
Now that he was launched upon the characters of the story, Mr. Brandreth discussed them all, and went over the incidents with the author, whose brain reeled with the ecstacy of beholding them objectively in the flattering light of another’s appreciation.
“Well,” said Mr. Brandreth, at last, when Ray found strength to rise from this debauch of praise, “you’ll hear from me, now, very soon. I’ve made up my mind about the story, and unless Mrs. Brandreth should hate it very much before she gets through with it — Curious about women, isn’t it, how they always take the personal view? I believe the main reason why my wife dislikes your heroine is because she got her mixed up with the girl that took the part of Juliet away from her in our out-door theatricals. I tell her that you and I are not only the two Percys, we’re the two Romeos, too. She thinks your heroine is rather weak; of course you meant her to be so.”
Ray had not, but he said that he had, and he made a noisy pretence of thinking the two Romeos a prodigious joke. His complaisance brought its punishment.
“Oh!” said Mr. Brandreth, “I must tell you a singular thing that happened. Just as I got to that place where he shoots himself, you know, and she starts up out of her hypnotic trance, our baby gave a frightful scream, and Mrs. Brandreth woke and thought the house was on fire. I suppose the little fellow had a bad dream; it’s strange what dreams babies do have! But wasn’t it odd, happening when I was wrought up so? Looks like telepathy, doesn’t it? Of course my mind’s always on the child. By-the-way, if this thing goes, you must try a telepathic story. It hasn’t been done yet.”
“Magnificent!” said Ray. “I’ll do it!”
They got away from each other, and Ray went down to his work at the Every Evening office. He enslaved himself to it by an effort twice as costly as that of writing when he was in the deepest and darkest of his despair; his hope danced before him, and there was a tumult in his pulses which he could quiet a little only by convincing himself that as yet he had no promise from Mr. Brandreth, and that if the baby had given Mrs. Brandreth a bad day, it was quite within the range of possibility that the publisher might, after all, have perfectly good reasons for rejecting his book. He insisted with himself upon this view of the case; it was the only one that he could steady his nerves with; and besides, he somehow felt that if he could feign it strenuously enough, the fates would be propitiated, and the reverse would happen.
It is uncertain whether it was his pretence that produced the result intended, but in the evening Mr. Brandreth came down to Ray’s hotel to say that he had made up his mind to take the book.
“We talked it over at dinner, and my wife made me come right down and tell you. She said you had been kept in suspense long enough, and she wasn’t going to let you go overnight. It’s the first book we’ve ever taken, and I guess she feels a little romantic about the new departure. By-the-way, we found out what ailed the baby. It was a pin that had got loose, and stuck up through the sheet in his crib. You can’t trust those nurses a moment. But I believe that telepathic idea is a good one.”
“Yes, yes; it is,” said Ray. Now that the certainty of acceptance had come, he was sobered by it, and he could not rejoice openly, though he was afraid he was disappointing Mr. Brandreth. He could only say, “It’s awfully kind of Mrs. Brandreth to think of me.”
“That’s her way,” said Mr. Brandreth, and he added briskly, “Well, now, let’s come down to business. How do you want to publish? Want to make your own plates?”
“No,” Ray faltered; “I can’t afford to do that; I had one such offer” —
“I supposed you wouldn’t,” Mr. Brandreth cut in, but I thought I’d ask. Well, then, we’ll make the plates ourselves, and we’ll pay you ten per cent on the retail price of the book. That is the classic arrangement with authors, and I think it’s fair.” When he said this he swallowed, as if there were something in his throat, and added, “Up to a certain point. And as we take all the risk, I think we ought to have — You see, on one side it’s a perfect lottery, and on the other side it’s a dead certainty. You can’t count on the public, but you can count on the landlord, the salesman, the bookkeeper, the printer, and the paper-maker We’re at all the expense — rent, clerk-hire, plates, printing, binding, and advertising, and the author takes no risk whatever.”
It occurred to Ray afterwards that an author took the risk of losing his labor if his book failed; but the public estimates the artist’s time at the same pecuniary value as the sitting hen’s, and the artist insensibly accepts the estimate. Ray did not think of his point in season to urge it, but it would hardly have availed if he had. He was tremulously eager to close with Mr. Brandreth on any terms, and after they had agreed, he was afraid he had taken advantage of him.
When the thing was done it was like everything else. He had dwelt so long and intensely upon it in a thousand reveries that he had perhaps exhausted his possibilities of emotion concerning it. At any rate he found himself curiously cold; he wrote to his father about it, and he wrote to Sanderson, who would be sure to make a paragraph for the Echo, and unless Hanks Brothers killed his paragraph, would electrify Midland with the news. Ray forecast the matter and the manner of the paragraph, but it did not excite him.
“What is the trouble with me?” he asked Kane, whom he hastened to tell his news. “I ought to be in a transport; I’m not in anything of the kind.”
“Ah! That is very interesting. No doubt you’ll come to it. I had a friend once who was accepted in marriage by the object of his affections. His first state was apathy, mixed, as nearly as I could understand, with dismay. He became more enthusiastic later on, and lived ever after in the belief that he was one of the most fortunate of men. But I think we are the victims of conventional acceptations in regard to most of the great affairs of life. We are taught that we shall feel so and so about such and such things: about success in love or in literature; about the birth of our first-born; about death. But probably no man feels as he expected to feel about these things. He finds them of exactly the same quality as all other experiences; there may be a little more or a little less about them, but there isn’t any essential difference. Perhaps when we come to die ourselves, it will be as simply and naturally as — as” —
“As having a book accepted by a publisher,” Ray suggested.
“Exactly!” said Kane, and he breathed out his deep, soft laugh.
“Well, you needn’t go on. I’m sufficiently accounted for.” Ray rose, and Kane asked him what his hurry was, and where he was going.
“I’m going up to tell the Hugheses.”
“Ah! then I won’t offer to go with you,” said Kane. “I approve of your constancy, but I have my own philosophy of such things. I think David would have done much better to stay where he was; I do not wish to punish him for coming to meet the world, and reform it on its own ground; but I could have told him he would get beaten. He is a thinker, or a dreamer, if you please, and in his community he had just the right sort of distance. He could pose the world just as he wished, and turn it in this light and in that. But here he sees the exceptions to his rules, and when I am with him I find myself the prey of a desire to dwell on the exceptions, and I know that I afflict him. I always did, and I feel it the part of humanity to keep away from him. I am glad that I do, for I dislike very much being with sick people. Of course I shall go as often as decency requires. For Decency,” Kane concluded, with the effect of producing a Hard Saying, “transcends Humanity. So many reformers forget that,” he added.
The days were now getting so long that they had just lighted the lamps in Hughes’s room when Ray came in, a little after seven. He had a few words with Peace in the family room first, and she told him that her father had passed a bad day, and she did not know whether he was asleep or not.
“Then I’ll go away again,” said Ray.
“No, no; if he is awake, he will like to see you. He always does. And now he can’t see you much oftener,”
“Oh, Peace! Do you really think so?”
“The doctor says so. There is no hope any more.” There was no faltering in her voice, and its steadiness strengthened Ray, standing so close to one who stood so close to death.
“Does he — your father — know?”
“I can’t tell. He is always so hopeful. And Jenny won’t hear of giving up. She is with him more than I am, and she says he has a great deal of strength yet He can still work at his book a little. He has every part of it in mind so clearly that he can tell her what to do when he has the strength to speak. The worst is, when his voice fails him — he gets impatient That was what brought on his hemorrhage to-day.”
“Peace! I am ashamed to think why I came tonight But I hoped it might interest him.”
“About your book? Oh yes. Mr. Brandreth spoke to me about it. I thought you would like to tell him.”
“Thank you,” said Ray. He was silent for a moment. She stood against the pale light of one of the windows, a shadowy outline, and he felt as if they were two translated spirits meeting there exterior to the world and all its interests; he made a mental note of his impression for use some time. But now he said: “I thought I should like to tell him, too. But after all, I’m not so sure. I’m not like you, Peace.
And I suppose I’m punished for my egotism in the very hour of my triumph. It isn’t like a triumph; it’s like — nothing. I’ve looked forward to this so long — I’ve counted on it so much — I’ve expected it to be like having the world in my hand. But if I shut my hand, it’s empty.”
He knew that he was appealing to her for comfort, and he expected her to respond as she did.
“That’s because you don’t realize it yet. When you do, it will seem the great thing that it is.”
“Do you think it’s a great thing?”
“As great as any success can be.”
“Do you think it will succeed?”
“Mr. Brandreth thinks it will. He’s very hopeful about it.”
“Sometimes I wish it would fail. I don’t believe it deserves to succeed. I’m ashamed of it in places. Have I any right to let him foist it on the public if I don’t perfectly respect it? You wouldn’t if it were yours.”
He wished her to deny that it was bad in any part, but she did not. She merely said: “I suppose that’s the way our work always seems to us when it’s done. There must be a time when we ought to leave what we’ve done to others; it’s for them, not for ourselves; why shouldn’t they judge it?”
“Yes; that is true! How generous you are! How can you endure to talk to me of my book? But I suppose you think that if I can stand it, you can.”
“I will go in, now,” said Peace, ignoring the drift of his words, “ and see if father is awake.” She returned in a moment, and murmured softly, “Come!”
“Here is Mr. Ray, father,” said Mrs. Denton She had to lift her voice to make the sick man hear, for the window was open, and the maniacal clamor of the street flooded the chamber. Hughes lay at his thin full-length in his bed, like one already dead.
He stirred a little at the sound of his daughter’s voice, and when he had taken in the fact of Ray’s presence, he signed to her to shut the window. The smells of the street, and the sick, hot whiffs from the passing trains were excluded; the powerful odors of the useless drugs burdened the air; by the light of the lamp shaded from Hughes’s eyes Ray could see the red blotches on his sheet and pillow.
He no longer spoke, but he could write with a pencil on the little memorandum-block which lay on the stand by his bed. When Peace said, “Father, Mr. Ray has come to tell you that his book has been accepted; Chapley & Co are going to publish it,” the old man’s face lighted up. He waved his hand toward the stand, and Mrs. Denton put the block and pencil in it, and held the lamp for him to see.
Ray took the block, and read, faintly scribbled on it: “Good! You must get them to take my World Revisited.”
The sick man smiled as Ray turned his eyes toward him from the paper.
“What is it?” demanded Mrs. Denton, after a moment “Some secret? What is it, father?” she pursued, with the lightness that evidently pleased him, for he smiled again, and an inner light shone through his glassy eyes. “Tell us, Mr. Ray!”
Hughes shook his head weakly, still smiling, and Ray put the leaf in his pocket. Then he took up the old man’s long hand where it lay inert on the bed.
“I will do my very best, Mr. Hughes. I will do everything that I possibly can.”
XXXVIII.
A PURPOSE had instantly formed itself in Ray’s mind which he instantly set himself to carry out. It was none the less a burden because he tried to think it heroic and knew it to be fantastic; and it was in a mood of equally blended devotion and resentment that he disciplined himself to fulfill it. It was shocking to criticise the dying man’s prayer from any such point of view, but he could not help doing so, and censuring it for a want of taste, for a want of consideration. He did not account for the hope of good to the world which Hughes must have had in urging him to befriend his book; he could only regard it as a piece of literature, and judge the author’s motives by his own, which he was fully aware were primarily selfish.
But he went direct to Mr. Brandreth and laid the matter before him.
“Now I’m going to suggest something,” he hurried on, “which may strike you as ridiculous, but I’m thoroughly in earnest about it. I’ve read Mr. Hughes’s book, first and last, all through, and it’s good literature, I can assure you of that. I don’t know about the principles in it, but I know it’s very original and from a perfectly news stand-point, and I believe it would make a great hit.”
Mr. Brandreth listened, evidently shaken. “I couldn’t do it, now. I’m making a venture with your book.”
“That’s just what I’m coming to. Don’t make your venture with my book; make it with his! I solemnly believe that his would be the safest venture of the two; I believe it would stand two chances to one of mine.”
“Well, I’ll look at it for the fall.”
“It will be too late, then, as far as Hughes is concerned. It’s now or never, with him! You want to come out with a book that will draw attention to your house, as well as succeed. I believe that Hughes’s book will be an immense success. It has a taking name, and it’s a novel and taking conception. It’ll make no end of talk.”
“It’s too late,” said Mr. Brandreth. “I couldn’t take such a book as that without passing it round among all our readers, and you know what that means. Besides, I’ve begun to make my plans for getting out your book at once. There isn’t any time to lose. I’ve sent out a lot of literary notes, and you’ll see them in every leading paper to-morrow morning. I’ll have Mr. Hughes’s book faithfully examined, and if I can see my way to it — I tell you, I believe I shall make a success of the Modem Romeo. I like the title better and better. I think you’ll be pleased with the way I’ve primed the press. I’ve tried to avoid all vulgar claptrap, and yet I believe I’ve contrived to pique the public curiosity.”
