Part 3

All the time that this went on in his mind, Ray was walking up Broadway, and holding fast to the novel under his arm, which the novel in his brain was eclipsing. His inner eye was fixed on the remembered face of that strange girl, or woman, whom he was fashioning into a fictitious heroine, but his outward vision roved over the women faces it encountered, and his taste made its swift selection among them, and his ambidextrous fancy wove romances around such, as he found pretty or interesting enough to give his heart to. They were mostly the silly or sordid faces that women wear when they are shopping, and they expressed such emotions as are roused by the chase of a certain shade of ribbon, or the hope of getting something rich and fashionable for less than its worth. But youth is not nice, or else its eyes are keener than those of after-life; and Ray found many beautiful and stylish girls where the middle-aged witness would have seen a long procession of average second-rate young women. He admired their New-Yorky dash; he saw their difference in look and carriage from the Midland girls; and he wondered what they would be like, if he knew them. He reflected that he did not know any one in New York; but he expected soon to be acquainted. If he got his novel taken he would very soon be known, and then his acquaintance would be sought. He saw himself launched upon a brilliant social career, and he suddenly had a difficulty presented to him which he had not foreseen a moment before; he had to choose between a brilliant marriage with a rich and well-born girl and fealty to the weird heroine of his story. The unexpected contingency suggested a new ending to his original story. The husband could die and the lovers be about to marry, when they could become aware that the rich girl was in love with the hero. They could renounce each other, and the hero could marry the rich girl; and shortly after the heroine could die. An ending like that could be made very powerful; and it would be popular, too.

Ray found himself in a jam of people who had begun suddenly to gather at the corner he was approaching. They were looking across at something on the other corner, and Ray looked too. Trunks and travelling-bags had overflowed from a store in the basement there, and piled themselves on the sidewalk and up the house wall; and against the background they formed stood two figures. One was a decent-looking young man in a Derby hat, and wearing spectacles, which gave him a sort of scholarly air; he remained passive in the grip of another, probably the shopman, who was quite colorless with excitement, and who clung fast to the shoulder of the first, as if his prisoner were making violent efforts to escape. A tall young policeman parted the crowd, and listened a moment to the complaint the shopman made, with many gestures toward his wares. Then he turned to the passive captive, and Ray heard the click of the handcuffs as they snapped on the wrists of this scholarly-looking man; and the policeman took him by the arm and led him away.

The intrusion of such a brutal fact of life into the tragic atmosphere of his revery made the young poet a little sick, but the young journalist avidly seized upon it. The poet would not have dreamed of using such an incident, but the journalist saw how well it would work into the scheme of that first letter he was writing home to the _Echo_, where he treated of the surface contrasts of life in New York as they present themselves to the stranger. A glad astonishment at the profusion of the material for his letters possessed him; at this rate he should have no trouble in writing them; he could make them an indispensable feature; they would be quoted and copied, and he could get a rise out of Hanks Brothers on the price.

He crossed to the next corner, where the shopman was the centre of a lessening number of spectators, and found him willing to prolong the interest he had created in the public mind. He said the thief had priced a number of bags in the place below, and on coming up had made a grab at one and tried to get off with it; but he was onto him like lightning. He showed Ray which bag it was, and turned it round and upside down as if with a fresh sense of its moral value. He said he should have to take that bag into court, and he set it aside so that he should not forget it.

“I suppose,” said a tall, elderly gentleman, who seemed to have been listening to Ray’s dialogue with the shopman, “you wouldn’t be willing to sell me that bag?” He spoke slowly with a thick, mellow voice, deep in his throat.

“Money wouldn’t buy that bag; no sir,” said the shopman; but he seemed uneasy.

“You know,” urged the soft-voiced stranger, “you could show some other bag in court that was just like it.”

“I couldn’t swear to no other bag,” said the shopman, daunted, and visibly relenting.

“That is true,” said the stranger. “But you could swear that it was exactly like this. Still, I dare say you’re quite right, and it’s better to produce the _corpus delicti_, if possible.”

He glanced at Ray with a whimsical demand for sympathy; Ray smiled, and they walked off together, leaving the shopman in dubious study of his eventful bag. He was opening it, and scrutinizing the inside.

VII.

The stranger skipped into step with Ray more lightly than would have been expected from one of his years. He wore a soft felt hat over locks of silken silver that were long enough to touch his beautiful white beard. He wore it with an effect of intention, as if he knew it was out of character with the city, but was so much in character with himself that the city must be left to reconcile itself to the incongruity or not, as it chose. For the same reason, apparently, his well-fitting frock-coat was of broadcloth, instead of modern diagonal; a black silk handkerchief tied in an easy knot at his throat strayed from under his beard, which had the same waviness as his hair; he had black trousers, and drab gaiters showing themselves above wide, low shoes. In his hands, which he held behind him, he dangled a stick with an effect of leisure and ease, enhanced somehow by the stoop he made towards the young fellow’s lower stature, and by his refusal to lift his voice above a certain pitch, whatever the uproar of the street about them. Ray screamed out his words, but the stranger spoke in what seemed his wonted tone, and left Ray to catch the words as he could.

“I didn’t think,” he said, after a moment, and with some misgiving, that this stranger who had got into step with him might be some kind of confidence man--“I didn’t think that fellow looked like a thief much.”

“You are a believer in physiognomy?” asked the stranger, with a philosophic poise. He had himself a regular face, with gay eyes, and a fine pearly tint; lips that must have been beautiful shaped his branching mustache to a whimsical smile.

“No,” said Ray. “I wasn’t near enough to see his face. But he looked so decent and quiet, and he behaved with so much dignity. Perhaps it was his spectacles.”

“Glasses can do much,” said the stranger, “to redeem the human countenance, even when worn as a protest against the presence of one’s portrait in the rogues’ gallery. I don’t say you’re wrong; I’m only afraid the chances are that you’ll never be proved right. I should prefer to make a speculative approach to the facts on another plane. As you suggest, he had a sage and dignified appearance; I observed it myself; he had the effect--how shall I express it?--of some sort of studious rustic. Say he was a belated farm youth, working his way through a fresh-water college, who had great latent gifts of peculation, such as might have won him a wide newspaper celebrity as a defaulter later in life, and under more favorable conditions. He finds himself alone in a great city for the first time, and is attracted by the display of the trunk-dealer’s cellarway. The opportunity seems favorable to the acquisition of a neat travelling-bag; perhaps he has never owned one, or he wishes to present it to the object of his affections, or to a sick mother; he may have had any respectable motive; but his outlook has been so restricted that he cannot realize the difference between stealing a travelling-bag and stealing, say, a street; though I believe Mr. Sharp only bought Broadway of those who did not own it, and who sold it low; but never mind, it may stand for an illustration. If this young man had stolen a street, he would not have been arrested and handcuffed in that disgraceful way and led off to the dungeon-keep of the Jefferson Market Police Court--I presume that is the nearest prison, though I won’t be quite positive--but he would have had to be attacked and exposed a long time in the newspapers; and he would have had counsel, and the case would have been fought from one tribunal to another, till at last he wouldn’t have known whether he was a common criminal or a public benefactor. The difficulty in his case is simply an inadequate outlook.”

The philosophic stranger lifted his face and gazed round over Ray’s head, but he came to a halt at the same time with the young fellow. “Well, sir,” he said, with bland ceremony, “I must bid you good-morning. As we go our several ways let us remember the day’s lesson, and when we steal, always steal enough.”

He held out his hand, and Ray took it with a pleasure in his discourse which he was wondering how he should express to him. He felt it due himself to say something clever in return, but he could not think of anything. “I’m sure I shall remember your interpretation of it,” was all he could get out.

“Ah, well, don’t act upon that without due reflection,” the stranger said; and he gave Ray’s hand a final and impressive downward shake. “Dear me!” he added, for Ray made no sign of going on. “Are we both stopping here--two spiders at the parlor of the same unsuspecting fly? But perhaps you are merely a buyer, not a writer, of books? After you, sir!”

The stranger promoted a little polite rivalry that ensued between them; he ended it by passing one hand through the young man’s arm, and with the other pressing open the door which they had both halted at, and which bore on either jamb a rounded metallic plate with the sign, “H. C. Chapley & Co., Publishers.” Within, he released Ray with a courteous bow, as if willing to leave him now to his own devices. He went off to a distant counter in the wide, low room, and occupied himself with the books on it; Ray advanced and spoke to a clerk, who met him half-way. He asked for Mr. Chapley, and the clerk said he was not down yet--he seldom got down so early; but Mr. Brandreth would be in almost any minute now. When Ray said he had a letter for the firm, and would wait if the clerk pleased, the clerk asked if he would not take a chair in Mr. Brandreth’s room.

Ray could not help thinking the civility shown him was for an imaginable customer rather than a concealed author, but he accepted it all the same, and sat looking out into the salesroom, with its counters of books, and its shelves full of them around its walls, while he waited. Chapley & Co. were of the few old-fashioned publishers who had remained booksellers too, in a day when most publishers have ceased to be so. They were jobbers as well as booksellers; they took orders and made terms for public and private libraries; they had customers all over the country who depended on them for advice and suggestion about forth-coming books, and there were many booksellers in the smaller cities who bought through them. The bookseller in Midland, who united bookselling with a stationery and music business, was one of these, and he had offered Ray a letter to them.

“If you ever want to get a book published,” he said, with a touch on the quick that made the conscious author wince, “they’re your men.”

Ray knew their imprint and its relative value better than the Midland bookseller, stationer, and music-dealer; and now, as he sat in the junior partner’s neat little den, with the letter of introduction in his hand, it seemed to him such a crazy thing to think of having his book brought out by them that he decided not to say anything about it, but to keep to that character of literary newspaper man which his friend gave him in his rather florid letter. He had leisure enough to make this decision and unmake it several times while he was waiting for Mr. Brandreth to come. It was so early that, with all the delays Ray had forced, it was still only a little after nine, and no one came in for a quarter of an hour. The clerks stood about and chatted together. The bookkeepers, in their high-railed enclosure, were opening their ledgers under the shaded gas-burners that helped out the twilight there. Ray could see his unknown street friend scanning the books on the upper shelf and moving his person from side to side, and letting his cane rise and fall behind him as if he were humming to himself and keeping time to the tune.

VIII.

The distant street door opened at last, and a gentleman came in. His entrance caused an indefinite sensation in the clerks, such as we all feel in the presence of the man who pays our wages. At the sound of his step, Ray’s street friend turned about from his shelf, but without offering to leave it.

“Ah, good-morning, good-morning!” he called out; and the other called back, “Ah, good-morning, Mr. Kane!” and pushed on up towards a door near that of Ray’s retreat. A clerk stopped him, and after a moment’s parley he came in upon the young fellow. He was a man of fifty-five or sixty, with whiskers slightly frosted, and some puckers and wrinkles about his temples and at the corners of his mouth, and a sort of withered bloom in his cheeks, something like the hardy self-preservation of the late-hanging apple that people call a frozen-thaw. He was a thin man, who seemed once to have been stouter; he had a gentle presence and a somewhat careworn look.

“Mr. Brandreth?” Ray said, rising.

“No,” said the other; “Mr. Chapley.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Ray. “They showed me into Mr. Brandreth’s room, and I thought”--

“It’s quite right, quite right,” said Mr. Chapley. “Mr. Brandreth will be in almost any moment if you wish to see him personally.” Mr. Chapley glanced at the parcel in Ray’s hand.

“Oh no; I have a letter for the firm,” and Ray gave it to Mr. Chapley, who read it through and then offered his hand, and said he was glad to meet Mr. Ray. He asked some questions of commonplace friendliness about his correspondent, and he said, with the kind of melancholy which seemed characteristic of him: “So you have come to take a hand in the great game here. Well, if there is anything I can do to serve you, I shall be very glad.”

Ray answered promptly, in pursuance of his plan: “You are very kind, Mr. Chapley. I’m going to write letters to the paper I’ve been connected with in Midland, and I wish to give them largely a literary character. I shall be obliged to you for any literary news you have.”

Mr. Chapley seemed relieved of a latent dread. A little knot of anxiety between his eyes came untied; he did not yet go to the length of laying off his light overcoat, but he set his hat down on Mr. Brandreth’s desk, and he loosed the grip he had kept of his cane.

“Why, Mr. Brandreth rather looks after that side of the business. He’s more in touch with the younger men--with what’s going on, in fact, than I am. He can tell you all there is about our own small affairs, and put you in relations with other publishers, if you wish.”

“Thank you--” Ray began.

“Not at all; it will be to our advantage, I’m sure. We should be glad to do much more for any friend of our old friends”--Mr. Chapley had to refer to the letter-head of the introduction before he could make sure of his old friends’ style--“Schmucker & Wills. I hope they are prospering in these uncertain times?”

Ray said they were doing very well, he believed, and Mr. Chapley went on.

“So many of the local booksellers are feeling the competition of the large stores which have begun to deal in books as well as everything else under the sun, nowadays. I understand they have completely disorganized the book trade in some of our minor cities; completely! They take hold of a book like _Robert Elsmere_, for instance, as if it were a piece of silk that they control the pattern of, and run it at a price that is simply ruinous; besides doing a large miscellaneous business in books at rates that defy all competition on the part of the regular dealers. But perhaps you haven’t suffered from these commercial monstrosities yet in Midland?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ray; “We have our local Stewart’s or Macy’s, whichever it is; and I imagine Schmucker & Wills feel it, especially at the holidays.” He had never had to buy any books himself, because he got the copies sent to the _Echo_ for review; and now, in deference to Mr. Chapley, he was glad that he had not shared in the demoralization of the book trade. “But I think,” he added, cheerfully, “that they are holding their own very well.”

“I am very glad to hear it, very glad, indeed,” said Mr. Chapley. “If we can only get this international copyright measure through and dam up the disorganizing tide of cheap publications at its source, we may hope to restore the tone of the trade. As it is, we are ourselves constantly restricting our enterprise as publishers. We scarcely think now of looking at the manuscript of an unknown author.”

Mr. Chapley looked at the manuscript of the unknown author before him, as if he divined it through its wrappings of stiff manilla paper. Ray had no reason to think that he meant to prevent a possible offer of manuscript, but he could not help thinking so, and it cut him short in the inquiries he was going to make as to the extent of the demoralization the book trade had suffered through the competition of the large variety stores. He had seen a whole letter for the _Echo_ in the subject, but now he could not go on. He sat blankly staring at Mr. Chapley’s friendly, pensive face, and trying to decide whether he had better get himself away without seeing Mr. Brandreth, or whether he had better stay and meet him, and after a cold, formal exchange of civilities, shake the dust of Chapley & Co.’s publishing house from his feet forever. The distant street door opened again, and a small light figure, much like his own, entered briskly. Mr. Kane turned about at the new-comer’s step as he had turned at Mr. Chapley’s, and sent his cheerful hail across the book counters as before. “Ah, good-morning, good-morning!”

“Good-morning, Mr. Kane; magnificent day,” said the gentleman, who advanced rapidly towards Ray and Mr. Chapley, with a lustrous silk hat on his head, and a brilliant smile on his face. His overcoat hung on his arm, and he looked fresh and warm as if from a long walk. “Ah, good-morning,” he said to Mr. Chapley; “how are you this morning, sir?” He bent his head inquiringly towards Ray, who stood a moment while Mr. Chapley got himself together and said:

“This is Mr.--ah--Ray, who brings a letter from our old friends”--he had to glance at the letter-head--“Schmucker & Wills, of--Midland.”

“Ah! Midland! yes,” said Mr. Brandreth, for Ray felt it was he, although his name had not been mentioned yet. “Very glad to see you, Mr. Ray. When did you leave Midland? Won’t you sit down? And you, Mr. Chapley?”

“No, no,” said Mr. Chapley, nervously. “I was going to my own room. How is poor Bella this morning?”

“Wonderfully well, wonderfully! I waited for the doctor’s visit before I left home, so as to report reliably, and he says he never saw a better convalescence. He promises to let her go out in a fortnight or so, if the weather’s good.”

“You must be careful! Don’t go too fast!” said Mr. Chapley. “And the--child?”

“Perfectly splendid! He slept like a top last night, and we could hardly get him awake for breakfast.”

“Poor thing!” said Mr. Chapley. He offered Ray his hand, and said that he hoped they should see him often; he must drop in whenever he was passing. “Mr. Ray,” he explained, “has come on to take up his residence in New York. He remains connected with one of the papers in--Midland; and I have been referring him to you for literary gossip, and that kind of thing.”

“All right, sir, all right!” said Mr. Brandreth. He laughed out after Mr. Chapley had left them, and then said: “Excuse me, Mr. Ray. You mustn’t mind my smiling rather irrelevantly. We’ve had a great event at my house this week--in fact, we’ve had a boy.”

“Indeed!” said Ray. He had the sort of contempt a young man feels for such domestic events; but he easily concealed it from the happy father, who looked scarcely older than himself.

“An eight-pounder,” said Mr. Brandreth. “I have been pretty anxious for the last few weeks, and--I don’t know whether you married or not, Mr. Ray?”

“No.”

“Well, then you wouldn’t understand.” Mr. Brandreth arrested himself reluctantly, Ray thought, in his confidences. “But you will, some day; you will, some day,” he added, gayly; “and then you’ll know what it is to have an experience like that go off well. It throws a new light on everything.” A clerk came in with a pile of opened letters and put them on Mr. Brandreth’s desk, with some which were still sealed; Ray rose again. “No, don’t go. But you won’t mind my glancing these over while we talk. I don’t know how much talk you’ve been having with Mr. Chapley--he’s my father-in-law, you know?”

Ray owned that he did not.

“Yes; I came into the firm and into the family a little over a year ago. But if there are any points I can give you, I’m quite at your service.”

“Thank you,” said Ray. “Mr. Chapley was speaking of the effect of the competition of the big variety stores on the regular booksellers.”

Mr. Brandreth slitted the envelope of one of the letters with a slim paper-knife, and glanced the letter over. “Well, that’s a little matter I differ with Mr. Chapley about. Of course, I know just how he feels, brought up the way he was, in the old traditions of the trade. It seems to him we must be going to the bad because our books are sold over a counter next to a tin-ware counter, or a perfume and essence counter, or a bric-à-brac counter. I don’t think so. I think the great thing is to sell the books, and I wish we could get a book into the hands of one of those big dealers; I should be glad of the chance. We should have to make him a heavy discount; but look at the discounts we have to make to the trade, now! Forty per cent., and ten cents off for cash; so that a dollar and a half book, that it costs twenty-five cents or thirty cents to make, brings you in about seventy cents. Then, when you pay the author his ten per cent. copyright, how far will the balance go towards advertising, rent, clerk hire and sundries? If you want to get a book into the news companies, you have got to make them a discount of sixty per cent. out of hand.”

“Is it possible?” asked Ray. “I’d no idea it was anything like that!”

“No; people haven’t. They think publishers are rolling in riches at the expense of the author and the reader. And some publishers themselves believe that if we could only keep up the old system of letting the regular trade have the lion’s share on long credit, their prosperity would be assured. I don’t, myself. If we could get hold of a good, breezy, taking story, I’d like to try my chance with it in the hands of some large dry-goods man.”

Ray’s heart thrilled. His own story had often seemed to him good and taking; whether it was breezy or not, he had never thought. He wished he knew just what Mr. Brandreth meant by breezy; but he did not like to ask him. His hand twitched nervelessly on the manuscript in his lap, and he said, timidly: “Would it be out of the way for me to refer to some of these facts--they’re not generally known--in my letters? Of course not using your name.”

“Not at all! I should be very glad to have them understood,” said Mr. Brandreth.