Part 18

Ray thought how old Kane would be amused if he could know of the situation, how he would inspect and comment it from every side, and try to get novel phrases for it. He believed himself that no author had ever been quite in his place before; it was like something in Gilbert’s operas; it was as if a prisoner were invited to try himself and pronounce his own penalty. His chief seemed to see no joke in the affair; he remained soberly and somewhat severely waiting for Ray’s decision.

“I’m afraid you’re right,” said Ray. “I don’t think it would do for _Every Evening_. Even if it would, I should doubt the taste of working in something of my own on the reader at the beginning.”

“I shouldn’t care for that,” said the chief, “if it were the thing.”

Ray winced, but the chief did not see it. Now, as always, it was merely and simply a question of the paper. He added carelessly:

“I should think such a story as that would succeed as a book.”

“I wish you would get some publisher to think so.”

The chief had nothing to say to that. He opened his desk and began to write.

In spite of the rejected manuscript lying on the table before him, Ray made out a very fair day’s work himself, and then he took it up town with him. He did not go at once to his hotel, but pushed on as far as Chapley’s, where he hoped to see Peace before she went home, and ask how her father was getting on; he had not visited Hughes for several weeks; he made himself this excuse. What he really wished was to confront the girl and divine her thoughts concerning himself. He must do that, now; but if it were not for the cruelty of forsaking the old man, it might be the kindest and best thing never to go near any of them again.

He had the temporary relief of finding her gone home when he reached Chapley’s. Mr. Brandreth was there, and he welcomed Ray with something more than his usual cordiality.

“Look here,” he said, shutting the door of his little room. “Have you got that story of yours where you could put your hand on it easily?”

“I can put my hand on it instantly,” said Ray, and he touched it.

“Oh!” Mr. Brandreth returned, a little daunted. “I didn’t know you carried it around with you.”

“I don’t usually--or only when I’ve got it from some publisher who doesn’t want it.”

“I thought it had been the rounds,” said Mr. Brandreth, still uneasily.

“Oh, it’s an editor, this time. It’s just been offered to me for serial use in _Every Evening_, and I’ve declined it.”

“What do you mean?” Mr. Brandreth smiled in mystification.

“Exactly what I say.” Ray explained the affair as it had occurred. “It makes me feel like Brutus and the son of Brutus rolled into one. I’m going round to old Kane, to give the facts away to him. I think he’ll enjoy them.”

“Well! Hold on! What did the chief say about it?”

“Oh, he liked it. Everybody likes it, but nobody wants it. He said he thought it would succeed as a book. The editors all think that. The publishers think it would succeed as a serial.”

Ray carried it off buoyantly, and enjoyed the sort of daze Mr. Brandreth was in.

“See here,” said the publisher, “I want you to leave that manuscript with me.”

“Again?”

“Yes. I’ve never read it myself yet, you know.”

“Take it and be happy!” Ray bestowed it upon him with dramatic effusion.

“No, seriously!” said Mr. Brandreth. “I want to talk with you. Sit down, won’t you? You know the first time you were in here, I told you I was anxious to get Chapley & Co. in line as a publishing house again; I didn’t like the way we were dropping out and turning into mere jobbers. You remember.”

Ray nodded.

“Well, sir, I’ve never lost sight of that idea, and I’ve been keeping one eye out for a good novel, to start with, ever since. I haven’t found it, I don’t mind telling you. You see, all the established reputations are in the hands of other publishers, and you can’t get them away without paying ridiculous money, and violating the comity of the trade at the same time. If we are to start new, we must start with a new man.”

“I don’t know whether I’m a new man or not,” said Ray, “if you’re working up to me. Sometimes I feel like a pretty old one. I think I came to New York about the beginning of the Christian era. But _A Modern Romeo_ is as fresh as ever. It has the dew of the morning on it still--rubbed off in spots by the nose of the professional smeller.”

“Well,” said Mr. Brandreth, “it’s new enough for all practical purposes. I want you to let me take it home with me.”

“Which of the leading orchestras would you like to have accompany you to your door?” asked Ray.

“No, no! Don’t expect too much!” Mr. Brandreth entreated.

“I don’t expect anything,” Ray protested.

“Well, that’s right--that’s the only business basis. But if it _should_ happen to be the thing, I don’t believe you’d be personally any happier about it than I should.”

“Oh, thank you!”

“I’m not a fatalist”--

“But it would look a good deal like fatalism.”

“Yes, it would. It would look as if it were really intended to be, if it came back to us now, after it had been round to everybody else.”

“Yes; but if it was fated from the beginning, I don’t see why you didn’t take it in the beginning. I should rather wonder what all the bother had been for.”

“You might say that,” Mr. Brandreth admitted.

Ray went off on the wave of potential prosperity, and got Kane to come out and dine with him. They decided upon Martin’s, where the dinner cost twice as much as at Ray’s hotel, and had more the air of being a fine dinner; and they got a table in the corner, and Ray ordered a bottle of champagne.

“Yes,” said Kane, “that is the right drink for a man who wishes to spend his money before he has got it. It’s the true gambler’s beverage.”

“You needn’t drink it,” said Ray. “You shall have the _vin ordinaire_ that’s included in the price of the dinner.”

“Oh, I don’t mind a glass of champagne now and then, after I’ve brought my host under condemnation for ordering it,” said Kane.

“And I want to let my heart out to-night,” Ray pursued. “I may not have the chance to-morrow. Besides, as to the gambling, it isn’t I betting on my book; it’s Brandreth. I don’t understand yet why he wants to do it. To be sure, it isn’t a great risk he’s taking.”

“I rather think he _has_ to take some risks just now,” said Kane, significantly. He lowered his soft voice an octave as he went on. “I’m afraid that poor Henry, in his pursuit of personal perfectability, has let things get rather behindhand in his business. I don’t blame him--you know I never blame people--for there is always a question as to which is the cause and which is the effect in such matters. My dear old friend may have begun to let his business go to the bad because he had got interested in his soul, or he may have turned to his soul for refuge because he knew his business had begun to go to the bad. At any rate, he seems to have found the usual difficulty in serving God and Mammon; only, in this case Mammon has got the worst of it, for once: I suppose one ought to be glad of that. But the fact is that Henry has lost heart in business; he doesn’t respect business; he has a bad conscience; he wants to be out of it. I had a long talk with him before he went into the country, and I couldn’t help pitying him. I don’t think his wife and daughter even will ever get him back to New York. He knows it’s rather selfish to condemn them to the dulness of a country life, and that it’s rather selfish to leave young Brandreth to take the brunt of affairs here alone. But what are you to do in a world like this, where a man can’t get rid of one bad conscience without laying in another?”

In his pleasure with his paradox Kane suffered Ray to fill up his glass a second time. Then he looked dissatisfied, and Ray divined the cause. “Did you word that quite to your mind?”

“No, I didn’t. It’s too diffuse. Suppose we say that in our conditions no man can do right without doing harm?”

“That’s more succinct,” said Ray. “Is it known at all that they’re in difficulties?”

Kane smoothly ignored the question. “I fancy that the wrong is in Henry’s desire to cut himself loose from the ties that bind us all together here. Poor David has the right of that. We must stand or fall together in the pass we’ve come to; and we cannot helpfully eschew the world except by remaining in it.” He took up Ray’s question after a moment’s pause. “No, it isn’t known that they’re in difficulties, and I don’t say that it’s so. Their affairs have simply been allowed to run down, and Henry has left Brandreth to gather them up single-handed. I don’t know that Brandreth will complain. It leaves him unhampered, even if he can do nothing with his hands but clutch at straws.”

“Such straws as the _Modern 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 piety.

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 _me_.”

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 to-night. 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.