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Title: The World of Chance

Author: William Dean Howells

Release date: October 21, 2021 [eBook #66584]

Language: English

Credits: Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images available at The Internet Archive)


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WORLD OF CHANCE ***




                          THE WORLD OF CHANCE


                                A Novel


                                  BY

                             W. D. HOWELLS

                 AUTHOR OF “A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES”
                      “THE QUALITY OF MERCY” ETC.


                            [Illustration]


                               NEW YORK
                     HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
                                 1893


                    WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS’S NOVELS.

                      _UNIFORM LIBRARY EDITION._

                           POST 8VO, CLOTH.


                 THE WORLD OF CHANCE. $1 50.
                 THE QUALITY OF MERCY. $1 50.
                 AN IMPERATIVE DUTY. $1 00.
                 THE SHADOW OF A DREAM. $1 00.
                 A HAZARD OF NEW FORTUNES. 2 Vols., $2 00.
                 ANNIE KILBURN. $1 50.
                 APRIL HOPES. $1 50.

               PUBLISHED BY HARPER & BROTHERS, NEW YORK.


               Copyright, 1893, by WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS.

             Electrotyped by S. J. PARKHILL & CO., Boston.




THE WORLD OF CHANCE.




I.


From the club where the farewell dinner was given him, Ray went to the
depot of the East & West Railroad with a friend of his own age, and they
walked up and down the platform talking of their lives and their loves,
as young men do, till they both at once found themselves suddenly very
drowsy. They each pretended not to be so; his friend made a show of not
meaning to leave him till the through express should come along at two
o’clock and pick up the sleeping-car waiting for it on the side track;
and Ray feigned that he had no desire to turn in, but would much rather
keep walking and talking.

They got rid of each other at last, and Ray hurried aboard his sleeper,
and plunged into his berth as soon as he could get his coat and boots
off. Then he found himself very wakeful. The soporific first effect of
the champagne had passed, but it still sent the blood thumping in his
neck and pounding in his ears as he lay smiling and thinking of the
honor that had been done him, and the affection that had been shown him
by his fellow-townsmen. In the reflected light of these the future
stretched brightly before him. He scarcely felt it a hardship any more
that he should be forced to leave Midland by the business change which
had thrown him out of his place on the Midland _Echo_, and he certainly
did not envy the friend who had just parted from him, and who was going
to remain with the new owners. His mind kept, in spite of him, a sort of
grudge toward the Hanks Brothers who had bought the paper, and who had
thought they must reduce the editorial force as a first step towards
making the property pay. He could not say that they had treated him
unfairly or unkindly; they had been very frank and very considerate with
him; but he could not conceal from himself the probability that if they
had really appreciated him they would have seen that it would be a
measure of the highest wisdom to keep him. He had given the paper
standing and authority in certain matters; he knew that; and he smiled
to think of Joe Hanks conducting his department. He hoped the estimation
in which the dinner showed that his fellow-citizens held him, had done
something to open the eyes of the brothers to the mistake they had made;
they were all three at the dinner, and Martin Hanks had made a speech
expressive of regard and regret which did not reconcile Ray to them. He
now tried to see them as benefactors in disguise, and when he recalled
the words of people who said that they always thought he was thrown away
on a daily paper, he was willing to acknowledge that the Hankses had
probably, at least, not done him an injury. He had often been sensible
himself of a sort of incongruity in using up in ephemeral paragraphs,
and even leading articles, the mind-stuff of a man who had published
poems in the _Century_ Bric-à-brac and _Harper’s_ Drawer, and had for
several years had a story accepted by the _Atlantic_, though not yet
printed. With the manuscript of the novel which he was carrying to New
York, and the four or five hundred dollars he had saved from his salary,
he felt that he need not undertake newspaper work at once again. He
meant to make a thorough failure of literature first. There would be
time enough then to fall back upon journalism, as he could always do.

He counted a good deal upon his novel in certain moods. He knew it had
weak points which he was not able to strengthen because he was too
ignorant of life, though he hated to own it; but he thought it had some
strong ones too; and he believed it would succeed if he could get a
publisher for it.

He had read passages of it to his friend, and Sanderson had praised
them. Ray knew he had not entered fully into the spirit of the thing,
because he was merely and helplessly a newspaper mind, though since Ray
had left the _Echo_, Sanderson had talked of leaving it too, and going
on to devote himself to literature in New York. Ray knew he would fail,
but he encouraged him because he was so fond of him; he thought now what
a good, faithful fellow Sanderson was. Sanderson not only praised the
novel to its author, but he celebrated it to the young ladies. They all
knew that Ray had written it, and several of them spoke to him about it;
they said they were just dying to see it. One of them had seen it, and
when he asked her what she thought of his novel, in the pretence that he
did not imagine she had looked at the manuscript, it galled him a little
to have her say that it was like Thackeray; he knew he had imitated
Thackeray, but he feigned that he did not know; and he hoped no one else
would see it. She recognized traits that he had drawn from himself, and
he did not like that, either; in the same way that he feigned not to
know that he had imitated Thackeray, he feigned not to know that he had
drawn his own likeness. But the sum of what she said gave him great
faith in himself, and in his novel. He theorized that if its subtleties
of thought and its flavors of style pleased a girl like her, and at the
same time a fellow like Sanderson was taken with the plot, he had got
the two essentials of success in it. He thought how delicately charming
that girl was; still he knew that he was not in love with her. He
thought how nice girls were, anyway; there were lots of perfectly
delightful girls in Midland, and he should probably have fallen in love
with some of them if it had not been for that long passion of his early
youth, which seemed to have vastated him before he came there. He was
rather proud of his vastation, and he found it not only fine, but upon
the whole very convenient, to be going away heart-free.

He had no embarrassing ties, no hindering obligations of any kind. He
had no one but himself to look out for in seeking his fortune. His
father, after long years of struggle, was very well placed in the little
country town which Ray had come from to Midland; his brothers had struck
out for themselves farther west; one of his sisters was going to be
married; the other was at school. None of them needed his help, or was
in anywise dependent upon him. He realized, in thinking of it all, that
he was a very lucky fellow; and he was not afraid but he should get on
if he kept trying, and if he did his best, the chances were that it
would be found out. He lay in his berth, with a hopeful and flattered
smile on his lips, and listened to the noises of the station: the feet
on the platforms; the voices, as from some disembodied life; the clang
of engine bells; the jar and clash and rumble of the trains that came
and went, with a creaking and squealing of their slowing or starting
wheels, while his sleeper was quietly side-tracked, waiting for the
express to arrive and pick it up. He felt a sort of slight for the town
he was to leave behind; a sort of contemptuous fondness; for though it
was not New York, it had used him well; it had appreciated him, and Ray
was not ungrateful. Upon the whole, he was glad that he had agreed to
write those letters from New York which the Hanks Brothers had finally
asked him to do for the _Echo_. He knew that they had asked him under a
pressure of public sentiment, and because they had got it through them
at last that other people thought he would be a loss to the paper. He
liked well enough the notion of keeping the readers of the _Echo_ in
mind of him; if he failed to capture New York, Midland would always be a
good point to fall back upon. He expected his novel to succeed, and then
he should be independent. But till then, the five dollars a week which
the Hanks Brothers proposed to pay him for his letters would be very
convenient, though the sum was despicable in itself. Besides, he could
give up the letters whenever he liked. He had his dreams of fame and
wealth, but he knew very well that they were dreams, and he was not
going to kick over his basket of glass till they had become realities.

A keen ray from one of the electric moons depending from the black roof
of the depot suddenly pierced his window at the side of his drawn
curtain; and he felt the car jolted backward. He must have been
drowsing, for the express had come in unknown to him, and was picking up
his sleeper. With a faint thrill of homesickness for the kindly town he
was leaving, he felt the train pull forward and so out of its winking
lamps into the night. He held his curtain aside to see the last of these
lights. Then, with a luxurious sense of helplessness against fate, he
let it fall; and Midland slipped back into the irrevocable past.




II.


The next evening, under a rich, mild October sky, the train drew in
towards New York over a long stretch of trestle-work spanning a New
Jersey estuary. Ray had thriftily left his sleeper at the station where
he breakfasted, and saved the expense of it for the day’s journey by
taking an ordinary car. He could be free with his dollars when he did
not suppose he might need them; but he thought he should be a fool to
throw one of them away on the mere self-indulgence of a sleeper through
to New York, when he had no use for it more than half way. He
experienced the reward of virtue in the satisfaction he felt at having
that dollar still in his pocket; and he amused himself very well in
making romances about the people who got on and off at different points
throughout the day. He read a good deal in a book he had brought with
him, and imagined a review of it. He talked with passengers who shared
his seat with him, from time to time. He ate ravenously at the station
where the train stopped twenty minutes for dinner, and he took little
supernumerary naps during the course of the afternoon, and pieced out
the broken and abbreviated slumbers of the night. From the last of these
naps he woke with a sort of formless alarm, which he identified
presently as the anxiety he must naturally feel at drawing so near the
great, strange city which had his future in keeping. He was not so
hopeful as he was when he left Midland; but he knew he had really no
more cause now than he had then for being less so.

The train was at a station. Before it started, a brakeman came in and
called out in a voice of formal warning: “This train express to Jersey
City. Passengers for way stations change cars. This train does not stop
between here and Jersey City.”

He went out and shut the door behind him, and at the same time a young
woman with a baby in her arms jumped from her seat and called out, “Oh,
dear, what did he say?”

Another young woman, with another baby in her arms, rose and looked
round, but she did not say anything. She had the place in front of the
first, and their two seats were faced, as if the two young women were
travelling together. Ray noted, with the interest that he felt in all
young women as the elements both of love and of literature, that they
looked a good deal alike, as to complexion and feature. The distraction
of the one who rose first seemed to communicate itself to her dull,
golden-brown hair, and make a wisp of it come loose from the knot at the
back of her head, and stick out at one side. The child in her arms was
fretful, and she did not cease to move it to and fro and up and down,
even in the panic which brought her to her feet. Her demand was launched
at the whole carful of passengers, but one old man answered for all:
“He said, this train doesn’t stop till it gets to Jersey City.”

The young woman said, “Oh!” and she and the other sat down again, and
she stretched across the fretful child which clung to her, and tried to
open her window. She could not raise it, and the old man who had
answered her question lifted it for her. Then she sank back in her seat,
and her sister, if it was her sister, leaned forward, and seemed to
whisper to her. She put up her hand and thrust the loosened wisp of her
hair back into the knot. To do this she gave the child the pocket-book
which she seemed to have been holding, and she did not take it away
again. The child stopped fretting, and began to pull at its play-thing
to get it open; then it made aimless dabs with it at the back of the car
seat and at its mother’s face. She moved her head patiently from side to
side to escape the blows; and the child entered with more zest into the
sport, and began to laugh and strike harder. Suddenly, mid-way of the
long trestle-work, the child turned towards the window and made a dab at
the sail of a passing sloop. The pocket-book flew from its hand, and the
mother sprang to her feet again with a wail that filled the car. “Oh,
what shall I do! He’s thrown my pocket-book out of the window, and it’s
got every cent of my money in it. Oh, couldn’t they stop the train?”

The child began to cry. The passengers all looked out of the windows on
that side of the aisle; and Ray could see the pocket-book drifting by in
the water. A brakeman whom the young woman’s lamentation had called to
the rescue, passed through the car with a face of sarcastic compassion,
and spoke to the conductor entering from the other end. The conductor
shook his head; the train kept moving slowly on. Of course it was
impossible and useless to stop. The young women leaned forward and
talked anxiously together, as Ray could see from his distant seat; they
gave the conductor their tickets, and explained to him what had
happened; he only shook his head again.

When he came to get Ray’s ticket, the young fellow tried to find out
something about them from him.

“Yes, I guess she told the truth. She had all her money, ten dollars and
some change, in that pocket-book, and of course she gave it to her baby
to play with right by an open window. Just like a woman! They’re just
about as _fit_ as babies to handle money. If they had to earn it, they’d
be different. Some poor fellow’s week’s work was in that pocket-book,
like as not. They don’t look like the sort that would have a great deal
of money to throw out of the window, if they was men.”

“Do you know where they’re going?” Ray asked. “Are they going on any
further?”

“Oh, no. They live in New York. ’Way up on the East Side somewhere.”

“But how will they get there with those two babies? They can’t walk.”

The conductor shrugged. “Guess they’ll have to try it.”

“Look here!” said Ray. He took a dollar note out of his pocket, and gave
it to the conductor. “Find out whether they’ve got any change, and if
they haven’t, tell them one of the passengers wanted them to take this
for car fares. Don’t tell them which one.”

“All right,” said the conductor.

He passed into the next car. When he came back Ray saw him stop and
parley with the young women. He went through the whole train again
before he stopped for a final word with Ray, who felt that he had
entered into the poetry of his intentions towards the women, and had
made these delays and detours of purpose. He bent over Ray with a
detached and casual air, and said:

“Every cent they had was in that pocket-book. Only wonder is they hadn’t
their tickets there, too. They didn’t want to take the dollar, but I
guess they had to. They live ’way up on Third Avenue about Hundred and
First Street; and the one that gave her baby her money to hold looks all
played out. They _couldn’t_ have walked it. I told ’em the dollar was
from a lady passenger. Seemed as if it would make it kind of easier for
’em.”

“Yes, that was, right,” said Ray.




III.


When they stopped in Jersey City, Ray made haste out of the car to see
what became of his beneficiaries, and he followed closely after them,
and got near them on the ferry-boat. They went forward out of the cabin
and stood among the people at the bow who were eager to get ashore
first. They each held her heavy baby, and silently watched the New York
shore, and scarcely spoke.

Ray looked at it too, with a sense of the beauty struggling through the
grotesqueness of the huge panorama, and evoking itself somehow from the
grossest details. The ferry-boats coming and going; the great barges
with freight trains in sections on them; the canal-boats in tow of the
river steamers; the shabby sloops slouching by with their sails
half-filled by the flagging breeze; the ships lying at anchor in the
stream, and wooding the shore with their masts, which the coastwise
steamboats stared out of like fantastic villas, all window-shutters and
wheel-houses; the mean, ugly fronts and roofs of the buildings beyond,
and hulking high overhead in the further distance in vast bulks and
clumsy towers, the masses of those ten-storied edifices which are the
necessity of commerce and the despair of art, all helped to compose the
brutal and stupid body of the thing, whose soul was collectively
expressed in an incredible picturesqueness. Ray saw nothing amiss in it.
This agglomeration of warring forms, feebly typifying the ugliness of
the warring interests within them, did not repulse him. He was not
afraid. He took a new grip of the travelling-bag where he had his
manuscript, so that he should not be parted from it for a moment till it
went into some publisher’s keeping. He would not trust it to the trunk
which he had checked at Midland, and which he now recognized among the
baggage piled on a truck near him. He fingered the outside of his bag to
make sure by feeling its shape that his manuscript was all right within.
All the time he was aware of those two young women, each with her baby
in her arms, which they amused with various devices, telling them to
look at the water, the craft going by, and the horses in the wagon-way
of the ferry-boat. The children fretted, and pulled the women’s hair,
and clawed their hats; and the passengers now and then looked
censoriously at them. From time to time the young women spoke to each
other spiritlessly. The one whose child had thrown her pocket-book away
never lost a look of hopeless gloom, as she swayed her body half round
and back, to give some diversion to the baby. Both were pretty, but she
had the paleness and thinness of young motherhood; the other, though she
was thin too, had the fresh color and firm texture of a young girl; she
was at once less tragic and more serious than her sister, if it was her
sister. When she found Ray gazing fixedly at her, she turned discreetly
away, after a glance that no doubt took in the facts of his neat,
slight, rather undersized person; his regular face, with its dark eyes
and marked brows; his straight fine nose and pleasant mouth; his
sprouting black moustache, and his brown tint, flecked with a few
browner freckles.

He was one of those men who have no vanity concerning their persons; he
knew he was rather handsome, but he did not care; his mind was on other
things. When he found those soft woman-eyes lingering a moment on him he
had the wish to please their owner, of course, but he did not think of
his looks, or the effect they might have with her. He fancied knowing
her well enough to repeat poetry to her, or of reading some favorite
author aloud with her, and making her sympathize in his admiration of
the book. He permitted his fancy this liberty because, although he
supposed her married, his fancy safely operated their intellectual
intimacy in a region as remote from experience as the dreamland of
sleep. She and her sister had both a sort of refinement; they were
ladies, he felt, although they were poorly dressed, and they somehow did
not seem as if they had ever been richly dressed. They had not the New
Yorkeress air; they had nothing of the stylishness which Ray saw in the
other women about him, shabby or splendid; their hats looked as if they
had been trimmed at home, and their simple gowns as if their wearers had
invented and made them up themselves, after no decided fashion, but
after a taste of their own, which he thought good. He began to make
phrases about them to himself, and he said there was something
pathetically idyllic about them. The phrase was indefinite, but it was
sufficiently clear for his purpose. The baby which had thrown away the
pocket-book began to express its final dissatisfaction with the
prospect, and its mother turned distractedly about for some new
diversion, when there came from the ladies’ cabin a soft whistle, like
the warbling of a bird, low and rich and full, which possessed itself of
the sense to the exclusion of all other sounds. Some of the people
pressed into the cabin; others stood smiling in the benediction of the
artless strain. Ray followed his idyllic sisters within, and saw an old
negro, in the middle of the cabin floor, lounging in an easy pose, with
his hat in one hand and the other hand on his hip, while his thick lips
poured out those mellow notes, which might have come from the heart of
some thrush-haunted wild wood. When the sylvan music ceased, and the old
negro, with a roll of his large head, and a twist of his burly shape,
began to limp round the circle, every one put something in his hat. Ray
threw in a nickel, and he saw the sisters, who faced him from the other
side of the circle, conferring together. The younger had the bill in her
hand which Ray had sent them by the conductor to pay their car fares
home. She parleyed a moment with the negro when he reached them, and he
took some of the silver from his hat and changed the bill for her. She
gave him a quarter back. He ducked his head, and said, “Thank yeh,
miss,” and passed on.

The transaction seemed to amuse some of the bystanders, and Ray heard
one of them, who stood near him, say: “Well, that’s the coolest thing
I’ve seen yet. I should have about as soon thought of asking the deacon
to change a bill for me when he came round with the plate in church.
Well, it takes all kinds to make a world!”

He looked like a country merchant, on a first business visit to the
city; his companion, who had an air of smart ease, as of a man who had
been there often, said:

“It takes all kinds to make a town like New York. You’ll see queerer
things than that before you get home. If that old darkey makes much on
that transaction, I’m no judge of human nature.”

“Pshaw! You don’t mean it wasn’t a good bill?”

The two men lost themselves in the crowd now pressing out of the cabin
door. The boat was pushing into her slip. She bumped from one elastic
side to the other, and settled with her nose at the wharf. The snarl of
the heavy chains that held her fast was heard; the people poured off and
the hollow thunder of the hoofs and wheels of the disembarking teams
began. Ray looked about for a last glimpse of the two young women and
their babies; but he could not see them.




IV.


Ray carried his bag himself when he left the elevated road, and resisted
the offer of the small Italian dodging about his elbow, and proposing to
take it, after he had failed to get Ray to let him black his boots. The
young man rather prided himself on his thrift in denying the boy, whose
naked foot came half through one of his shoes; he saw his tatters and
nakedness with the indifference of inexperience, and with his country
breeding he considered his frugality a virtue. His senses were not
offended by the foulness of the streets he passed through, or hurt by
their sordid uproar; his strong young nerves were equal to all the
assaults that the city could make; and his heart was lifted in a dream
of hope. He was going to a hotel that Sanderson had told him of, where
you could get a room, on the European plan, for seventy-five cents, and
then eat wherever you pleased; he had gone to an American hotel when he
was in New York before, and he thought he could make a saving by trying
Sanderson’s. It had a certain gayety of lamps before it, but the
splendor diminished within, and Ray’s pride was further hurt by the
clerk’s exacting advance payment for his room from him. The clerk said
he could not give him an outside room that night, but he would try to
change him in the morning; and Ray had either to take the one assigned
him or go somewhere else. But he had ordered his trunk sent to this
hotel by the express, and he did not know how he should manage about
that if he left; so he staid, and had himself shown to his room. It
seemed to be a large cupboard in the wall of the corridor; but it had a
window near the bed, and the usual equipment of stand and bureau, and
Ray did not see why he should not sleep very well there. Still, he was
glad that his friends at Midland could none of them see him in that
room, and he resolved to leave the hotel as soon as he could the next
day. It did not seem the place for a person who had left Midland with
the highest social honors that could be paid a young man. He hurried
through the hotel office when he came out, so as not to be seen by any
other Midlander that might happen to be there, and he went down to the
basement, where the clerk said the restaurant was, and got his supper.
When he had finished his oyster stew he started towards the street-door,
but was overtaken at the threshold by a young man who seemed to have run
after him, and who said, “You didn’t pay for your supper.”

Ray said, “Oh, I forgot it,” and he went back to his table and got his
check, and paid at the counter, where he tried in vain to impress the
man who took his money with a sense of his probity by his profuse
apologies. Apparently they were too used to such tricks at that
restaurant. The man said nothing, but he looked as if he did not believe
him, and Ray was so abashed that he stole back to his room, and tried
to forget what had happened in revising the manuscript of his story. He
was always polishing it; he had written it several times over, and at
every moment he got he reconstructed sentences in it, and tried to bring
the style up to his ideal of style; he wavered a little between the
style of Thackeray and the style of Hawthorne, as an ideal. It made him
homesick, now, to go over the familiar pages: they put him so strongly
in mind of Midland, and the people of the kindly city. The pages smelt a
little of Sanderson’s cigar smoke; he wished that Sanderson would come
to New York; he perceived that they had also a fainter reminiscence of
the perfume he associated with that girl who had found him out in his
story; and then he thought how he had been in the best society at
Midland, and it seemed a great descent from the drawing-rooms where he
used to call on all those nice girls to this closet in a fourth-rate New
York hotel. His story appeared to share his downfall; he thought it
cheap and poor; he did not believe now that he should ever get a
publisher for it. He cowered to think how scornfully he had thought the
night before of his engagement with the Hanks Brothers to write letters
for the Midland _Echo_; he was very glad he had so good a basis; he
wondered how far he could make five dollars a week go toward supporting
him in New York; he could not bear to encroach upon his savings, and yet
he probably must. In Midland, you could get very good board for five
dollars a week.

He determined to begin a letter to the _Echo_ at once; and he went to
open the window to give himself some air in the close room; but he found
that it would not open. He pulled down the transom over his door to keep
from stifling in the heat of his gas-burner, and some voices that had
been merely a dull rumbling before now made themselves heard in talk
which Ray could not help listening to.

Two men were talking together, one very hopelessly, and the other in a
vain attempt to cheer him from time to time. The comforter had a deep
base voice, and was often unintelligible; but the disheartened man spoke
nervously, in a high key of plangent quality, like that of an unhappy
bell.

“No,” he said; “I’d better fail, Bill. It’s no use trying to keep along.
I can get pretty good terms from the folks at home, there; they all know
me, and they know I done my best. I can pay about fifty cents on the
dollar, I guess, and that’s more than most business men could, if they
stopped; and if I ever get goin’ again, I’ll pay dollar for dollar; they
know that.”

The man with the deep voice said something that Ray did not catch. The
disheartened man seemed not to have caught it either; he said, “What
say?” and when the other repeated his words, he said: “Oh yes! I know.
But I been dancing round in a quart cup all my life there; and now it’s
turning into a pint cup, and I guess I better get out. The place did
grow for a while, and we got all ready to be a city as soon as the
railroad come along. But when the road come, it didn’t do all we
expected of it. We could get out into the world a good deal easier than
we could before, and we had all the facilities of transportation that we
could ask for. But we could get away so easy that most of our people
went to the big towns to do their trading, and the facilities for
transportation carried off most of our local industries. The luck was
against us. We bet high on what the road would do for us, and we lost.
We paid out nearly our last dollar to get the road to come our way, and
it came, and killed us. We subscribed to the stock, and we’ve got it
yet; there ain’t any fight for it anywhere else; we’d let it go without
a fight. We tried one while for the car shops, but they located them
further up the line, and since that we ha’n’t even wiggled. What say?
Yes; but, you see, I’m part of the place. I’ve worked hard all my life,
and I’ve held out a good many times when ruin stared me in the face, but
I guess I sha’n’t hold out this time. What’s the use? Most every
business man I know has failed some time or other; some of ’em three or
four times over, and scrambled up and gone on again, and I guess I got
to do the same. Had a kind of pride about it, m’ wife and me; but I
guess we got to come to it. It does seem, sometimes, as if the very
mischief was in it. I lost pretty heavy, for a small dealer, on
Fashion’s Pansy, alone--got left with a big lot of ’em. What say? It was
a bustle. Women kept askin’ for Fashion’s Pansy, till you’d ’a’ thought
every last one of ’em was going to live and be buried in it. Then all
at once none of ’em wanted it--wouldn’t touch it. That and butter begun
it. You know how a country merchant’s got to take all the butter the
women bring him, and he’s got to pay for sweet butter, and sell it for
grease half the time. You can tell a woman she’d better keep an eye on
her daughter, but if you say she don’t make good butter, that’s the last
of that woman’s custom. But what’s finally knocked me out is this drop
in bric-à-brac. If it hadn’t been for that, I guess I could have pulled
through. Then there was such a rush for Japanese goods, and it lasted so
long, that I loaded up all I could with ’em last time I was in New York,
and now nobody wants ’em; couldn’t give ’em away. Well, it’s all a game,
and you don’t know any more how it’s comin’ out--you can’t bet on it
with any more certainty--than you can on a trottin’ match. My! I wish I
was dead.”

The deep-voiced man murmured something again, and the high-voiced man
again retorted:

“What say? Oh, it’s all well enough to preach; and I’ve heard about the
law of demand and supply before. There’s about as much of a law to it as
there is to three-card monte. If it wasn’t for my poor wife, I’d let ’em
take me back on ice. I would that.”

The deep-voiced man now seemed to have risen; there was a shuffling of
feet, and presently a parley at the open door about commonplace matters;
and then the two men exchanged adieux, and the door shut again, and all
was silent in the room opposite Ray’s. He felt sorry for the unhappy
man shut in there; but he perceived no special significance in what he
had overheard. He had no great curiosity about the matter; it was one of
those things that happened every day, and for tragedy was in no wise
comparable to a disappointment in first love, such as he had carefully
studied for his novel from his own dark experience. Still it did suggest
something to Ray; it suggested a picturesque opening for his first New
York letter for the Midland _Echo_, and he used it in illustration of
the immensity of New York, and the strange associations and
juxtapositions of life there. He treated the impending failure of the
country storekeeper from an overstock of Japanese goods rather
humorously: it was not like a real trouble, a trouble of the heart; and
the cause seemed to him rather grotesquely disproportionate to the
effect. In describing the incident as something he had overheard in a
hotel, he threw in some touches that were intended to give the notion of
a greater splendor than belonged to the place.

He made a very good start on his letter, and when he went to bed the
broken hairs that pierced his sheet from the thin mattress did not keep
him from falling asleep, and they did prove that it was a horse-hair
mattress.




V.


In the morning, Ray determined that he would not breakfast at the
restaurant under the hotel, partly because he was ashamed to meet the
people who, he knew, suspected him of trying to beat them out of the
price of his supper, and partly because he had decided that it was
patronized chiefly by the country merchants who frequented the hotel,
and he wanted something that was more like New York. He had heard of
those foreign eating-houses where you got a meal served in courses at a
fixed price, and he wandered about looking for one. He meant to venture
into the first he found, and on a side street he came on a hotel with a
French name, and over the door in an arch of gilt letters the
inscription, Restaurant Français. There was a large tub on each side of
the door, with a small evergreen tree in it; some strings or wires ran
from these tubs to the door-posts and sustained a trailing vine that
formed a little bower on either hand; a Maltese cat in the attitude of a
sphinx dozed in the thicket of foliage, and Ray’s heart glowed with a
sense of the foreignness of the whole effect. He had never been abroad,
but he had read of such things, and he found himself at home in an
environment long familiar to his fancy.

The difference of things was the source of his romance, as it is with
all of us, and he looked in at the window of this French restaurant with
the feelings he would have had in the presence of such a restaurant in
Paris, and he began to imagine gay, light-minded pictures about it. At
the same time, while he was figuring inside at one of the small tables,
_vis-à-vis_ with a pretty actress whom he invented for the purpose, he
was halting on the sidewalk outside, wondering whether he could get
breakfast there so early as eight o’clock, and doubtful whether he
should not betray his strangeness to New York hours if he tried. When he
went in there was nobody there but one white-aproned waiter, who was
taking down some chairs from the middle table where they had been
stacked with their legs in the air while he was sweeping. But he did not
disdain to come directly to Ray, where he had sat down, with a plate and
napkin and knife and fork, and exchange a good-morning with him in
arranging them before him. Then he brought half a yard of French bread
and a tenuous, translucent pat of American butter; and asked Ray whether
he would have chops or beefsteak with his coffee. The steak came with a
sprig of water-cress on it, and the coffee in a pot; and the waiter, who
had one eye that looked at Ray, and another of uncertain focus, poured
out the coffee for him, and stood near, with a friendly countenance, and
a cordial interest in the young fellow’s appetite. By this time a neat
_dame de comptoir_, whom Ray knew for a _dame de comptoir_ at once,
though he had never seen one before, took her place behind a little
desk in the corner, and the day had begun for the Restaurant Français.

Ray felt that it was life, and he prolonged his meal to the last drop of
the second cup of coffee that his pot held, and he wished that he could
have Sanderson with him to show him what life really was in New York.
Sanderson had taken all his meals in the basement of that seventy-five
cent hotel, which Ray meant to leave at once. Where he was he would not
have been ashamed to have any of the men who had given him that farewell
dinner see him. He was properly placed, as a young New York literary
man; he was already a citizen of that great Bohemia which he had heard
and read so much of. He was sure that artists must come there, and
actors, but of course much later in the day. His only misgiving was lest
the taxes of Bohemia might be heavier than he could pay, and he asked
the waiter for his account somewhat anxiously. It was forty cents, and
his ambition leaped at the possibility of taking all his meals at that
place. He made the occasion of telling the cross-eyed waiter to keep the
change out of the half-dollar he gave him, serve for asking whether one
could take board there by the week, and the waiter said one could for
six dollars: a luncheon like the breakfast, but with soup and wine, and
a dinner of fish, two meats, salad, sweets, and coffee. “On Sundays,”
said the waiter, “the dinner is something splendid. And there are rooms;
oh, yes, it is a hotel.”

“Yes, I knew it was a hotel,” said Ray.

The six dollars did not seem to him too much; but he had decided that he
must live on ten dollars a week in order to make his money last for a
full experiment of New York, or till he had placed himself in some
permanent position of profit. The two strains of prudence and of poetry
were strongly blended in him; he could not bear to think of wasting
money, even upon himself, whom he liked so well, and whom he wished so
much to have a good time. He meant to make his savings go far; with
those five hundred dollars he could live a year in New York if he helped
himself out on dress and incidental expenses with the pay for his
Midland _Echo_ letters. He would have asked to see some of the rooms in
the hotel, but he was afraid it was too early, and he decided to come to
dinner and ask about them. On his way back to the place where he had
lodged he rapidly counted the cost, and he decided, at any rate, to try
it for awhile; and he shut himself into his cupboard at the hotel, and
began to go over some pages of his manuscript for the last time, with a
lightness of heart which decision, even a wrong decision, often brings.

It was still too soon to go with the story to a publisher; he could not
hope to find any one in before ten o’clock, and he had a whole hour yet
to work on it. He was always putting the last touches on it; but he
almost wished he had not looked at it, now, when the touches must really
be the last. It seemed to suffer a sort of disintegration in his mind.
It fell into witless and repellent fragments; it lost all beauty and
coherence, so that he felt ashamed and frightened with it, and he could
not think what the meaning of it had once so clearly been. He knew that
no publisher would touch it in the way of business, and he doubted if
any would really have it read or looked at. It seemed to him quite
insane to offer it, and he had to summon an impudently cynical courage
in nerving himself to the point. The best way, of course, would have
been to get the story published first as a serial, in one of the
magazines that had shown favor to his minor attempts; and Ray had tried
this pretty fully. The manuscript had gone the rounds of a good many
offices; and returned, after a longer or shorter sojourn, bearing on
some marginal corner the hieroglyphic or numerical evidence that it had
passed through the reader’s hand in each. Ray innocently fancied that he
suppressed the fact by clipping this mark away with the scissors; but
probably no one was deceived. In looking at it now he was not even
deceived himself; the thing had a desperately worn and battered air; it
was actually dog’s-eared; but he had still clung to the hope of getting
it taken somewhere, because in all the refusals there was proof that the
magazine reader had really read it through; and Ray argued that if this
were so, there must be some interest or property in it that would
attract the general reader if it could ever be got to his eye in print.

He was not wrong; for the story was fresh and new, in spite of its
simple-hearted, unconscious imitations of the style and plot of other
stories, because it was the soul if not the body of his first love. He
thought that he had wrapped this fact impenetrably up in so many
travesties and disguises that the girl herself would not have known it
if she had read it; but very probably she would have known it. Any one
who could read between the lines could penetrate through the innocent
psychical posing and literary affectation to the truth of conditions
strictly and peculiarly American, and it was this which Ray had tried to
conceal with all sorts of alien splendors of make and manner. It seemed
to him now, at the last moment, that if he could only uproot what was
native and indigenous in it, he should make it a strong and perfect
thing. He thought of writing it over again, and recoloring the heroine’s
hair and the hero’s character, and putting the scene in a new place; but
he had already rewritten it so many times that he was sick of it; and
with all his changing he had not been able to change it much. He decided
to write a New York novel, and derive the hero from Midland, as soon as
he could collect the material; the notion for it had already occurred to
him; the hero should come on with a play; but first of all it would be
necessary for Ray to get this old novel behind him, and the only way to
do that was to get it before the public.




VI.


Ray put his manuscript back into its covering, and took it under his
arm. He meant to make a thorough trial of the publishers, and not to be
discouraged by his failures as long as a publisher was left untried. He
knew from his experience with the magazine editors that it would be a
slow affair, and he must have patience. Some of the publishers, even if
they did not look at his story, would keep it for days or weeks with the
intention or the appearance of reading it, and if they did read it they
would of course want time for it. He expected this, and he calculated
that it might very well take his manuscript six months to go the rounds
of all the houses in New York. Yet he meant, if he could, to get it
through sooner, and he was going to use his journalistic connection to
make interest for it. He would have given everything but honor to have
it known that he had written some things for _Harper’s_ and the
_Century_; he did not wish, or he said to himself and stood to it that
he did not wish, any favor shown his novel because he had written those
things. At the same time he was willing the fact that he was the
correspondent of the Midland _Echo_ should help him to a prompt
examination of his manuscript if it could; and he meant to let it be
known that he was a journalist before he let it be known that he was an
author.

He formulated some phrases introducing himself in his newspaper
character, as he walked up Broadway with his manuscript held tight under
his arm, and with that lifting and glowing of the heart which a young
man cannot help feeling if he walks up Broadway on a bright October
morning. The sun was gay on the senseless facades of the edifices,
littered with signs of the traffic within, and hung with effigies and
emblems of every conceit and color, from the cornice to the threshold,
where the show-cases crowded the passengers toward the curbstones, and
to the cellarways that overflowed the sidewalks with their wares. The
frantic struggle and jumble of these appeals to curiosity and interest
jarred themselves to an effect of kaleidoscopic harmony, just as the
multitudinous noises of the hoofs and wheels and feet and tongues broke
and bruised themselves to one roar on the ear; and the adventurer among
them found no offence in their confusion. He had his stake, too, in the
tremendous game that all were playing, some fair and some foul, and
shrieking out their bets in these strident notes; and he believed so
much he should win that he was ready to take the chances of losing. From
the stainless blue sky overhead the morning sun glared down on the
thronged and noisy street, and brought out all its details with keen
distinctness; but Ray did not feel its anarchy. The irregularity of the
buildings, high and low, as if they were parts of a wall wantonly
hacked and notched, here more and here less, was of the same moral
effect to him as the beautiful spire of Grace Church thrilling
heavenward like a hymn.

He went along, wondering if he should happen to meet either of those
young women whom he had befriended the evening before. He had heard that
you were sure to meet somebody you knew whenever you stepped out on
Broadway, and he figured meeting them, in fancy. He had decided to put
them into his story of New York life, and he tried to imagine the
character he should assign them, or rather one of them; the one who had
given the old darkey a quarter out of his dollar. He did not quite know
what to do with the child; something could be made of the child if it
were older, but a mere baby like that would be difficult to manage in
such a story as Ray meant to write. He wondered if it would do to have
her deserted by her husband, and have the hero, a young literary
adventurer, not at all like himself, fall in love with her, and then
have them both die when the husband, a worthless, drunken brute, came
back in time to prevent their marriage. Such a scheme would give scope
for great suffering; Ray imagined a scene of renunciation between the
lovers, who refused each other even a last kiss; and he felt a lump rise
in his throat. It could be made very powerful.

He evolved a character of reckless generosity for her from her
beneficence to the old negro in the ferry-boat. Under that still, almost
cold exterior, he made her conceal a nature of passionate impulse,
because the story required a nature of that sort. He did not know
whether to have the husband finally die, and the lovers marry, or
whether to have the lovers killed in an accident. It would be more
powerful to have them killed; it would be so conventional and expected
to have them happily married; but he knew the reader liked a novel that
ended well. It would be at once powerful and popular to have them elope
together. Perhaps the best thing he could do would be to have them
elope; there was a fascination in the guilty thought; he could make such
a _dénoument_ very attractive; but upon the whole he felt that he must
not, for very much the same reason that he must not himself run off with
his neighbor’s wife.

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.

“And what do you think is the outlook for the winter trade, Mr.
Brandreth?”

“Never better. I think we’re going to have a _good_ trade. We’ve got a
larger list than we’ve had for a great many years. The fact is,” said
Mr. Brandreth, and he gave a glance at Ray, as if he felt the trust the
youthful gravity of his face inspired in most people--“the fact is,
Chapley & Co. have been dropping too much out of sight, as publishers;
and I’ve felt, ever since I’ve been in the firm, that we ought to give
the public a sharp reminder that we’re not merely booksellers and
jobbers. I want the house to take its old place again. I don’t mean it’s
ever really lost caste, or that its imprint doesn’t stand for as much as
it did twenty years ago. I’ll just show you our list if you can wait a
moment.” Mr. Brandreth closed a pair of wooden mandibles lying on his
desk; an electric bell sounded in the distance, and a boy appeared. “You
go and ask Miss Hughes if she’s got that list of announcements ready
yet.” The boy went, and Mr. Brandreth took up one of the cards of the
firm. “If you would like to visit some of the other houses, Mr. Ray,
I’ll give you our card,” and he wrote on the card, “Introducing Mr. Ray,
of the Midland _Echo_. P. Brandreth,” and handed it to him. “Not Peter,
but Percy,” he said, with a friendly smile for his own pleasantry. “But
for business purposes it’s better to let them suppose it’s Peter.”

Ray laughed, and said he imagined so. He said he had always felt it a
disadvantage to have been named Shelley; but he could not write himself
P. B. S. Ray, and he usually signed simply S. Ray.

“Why, then, we really have the same first name,” said Mr. Brandreth.
“It’s rather an uncommon name, too. I’m very glad to share it with you,
Mr. Ray.” It seemed to add another tie to those that already bound them
in the sympathy of youth, and the publisher said, “I wish I could ask
you up to my house; but just now, you know, it’s really a nursery.”

“You are very kind,” said Ray. “I couldn’t think of intruding on you, of
course.”

Their exchange of civilities was checked by the return of the boy, who
said Miss Hughes would have the list ready in a few minutes.

“Well, just ask her to bring it here, will you?” said Mr. Brandreth. “I
want to speak to her about some of these letters.”

“I’m taking a great deal of your time, Mr. Brandreth,” Ray said.

“Not at all, not at all. I’m making a kind of holiday week of it,
anyway. I’m a good deal excited,” and Mr. Brandreth smiled so
benevolently that Ray could not help taking advantage of him.

The purpose possessed him almost before he was aware of its activity; he
thought he had quelled it, but now he heard himself saying in a stiff
unnatural voice, “I have a novel of my own, Mr. Brandreth, that I should
like to submit to you.”




IX.


“Oh, indeed!” said Mr. Brandreth, with a change in his voice, too, which
Ray might well have interpreted as a tone of disappointment and injury.
“Just at present, Mr. Ray, trade is rather quiet, you know.”

“Yes, I know,” said Ray, though he thought he had been told the
contrary. He felt very mean and guilty; the blood went to his head, and
his face burned.

“Our list for the fall trade is full, as I was saying, and we couldn’t
really touch anything till next spring.”

“Oh, I didn’t suppose it would be in time for the fall trade,” said Ray,
and in the sudden loss of the easy terms which he had been on with the
publisher, he could not urge anything further.

Mr. Brandreth must have felt their estrangement too, for he said,
apologetically: “Of course it’s our business to examine manuscripts for
publication, and I hope it’s going to be our business to publish more
and more of them, but an American novel by an unknown author, as long as
we have the competition of these pirated English novels--If we can only
get the copyright bill through, we shall be all right.”

Ray said nothing aloud, for he was busy reproaching himself under his
breath for abusing Mr. Brandreth’s hospitality.

“What is the--character of your novel?” asked Mr. Brandreth, to break
the painful silence, apparently, rather than to inform himself.

“The usual character,” Ray answered, with a listlessness which perhaps
passed for careless confidence with the young publisher, and piqued his
interest. “It’s a love-story.”

“Of course. Does it end well? A great deal depends upon the ending with
the public, you know.”

“I suppose it ends badly. It ends as badly as it can,” said the author,
feeling that he had taken the bit in his teeth. “It’s unrelieved
tragedy.”

“That isn’t so bad, sometimes,” said Mr. Brandreth. “That is, if the
tragedy is intense enough. Sometimes a thing of that kind takes with the
public, if the love part is good and strong. Have you the manuscript
here in New York with you?”

“I have it here in my lap with me,” said Ray, with a desperate laugh.

Mr. Brandreth cast his eye over the package. “What do you call it? So
much depends upon a title with the public.”

“I had thought of several titles: the hero’s name for one; the heroine’s
for another. Then I didn’t know but _A Modern Romeo_ would do. It’s very
much on the lines of the play.”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Brandreth, with a sudden interest that flattered Ray
with fresh hopes. “That’s very curious. I once took part in an amateur
performance of _Romeo_ myself. We gave it in the open air. The effect
was very novel.”

“I should think it might be,” said Ray. He hastened to add, “My story
deals, of course, with American life, and the scene is laid in the
little village where I grew up.”

“Our play,” said Mr. Brandreth, “was in a little summer place in
Massachusetts. One of the ladies gave us her tennis-ground, and we made
our exits and our entrances through the surrounding shrubbery. You’ve no
idea how beautiful the mediæval dresses looked in the electric light. It
was at night.”

“It must have been beautiful,” Ray hastily admitted. “My Juliet is the
daughter of the village doctor, and my Romeo is a young lawyer, who half
kills a cousin of hers for trying to interfere with them.”

“That’s good,” said Mr. Brandreth. “I took the part of Romeo myself, and
Mrs. Brandreth--she was Miss Chapley, then--was cast for Juliet; but
another girl who had refused the part suddenly changed her mind and
claimed it, and we had the greatest time to keep the whole affair from
going to pieces. I beg your pardon; I interrupted you.”

“Not at all,” said Ray. “It must have been rather difficult. In my story
there has been a feud between the families of the lovers about a land
boundary; and both families try to break off the engagement.”

“That’s very odd,” said Mr. Brandreth. “The play nearly broke off my
acquaintance with Mrs. Brandreth. Of course she was vexed--as anybody
would be--at having to give up the part at the eleventh hour, when
she’d taken so much trouble with it; but when she saw my suffering with
the other girl, who didn’t know half her lines, and walked through it
all like a mechanical doll, she forgave me. _Romeo_ is my favorite play.
Did you ever see Julia Marlowe in it?”

“No.”

“Then you never _saw_ Juliet! I used to think Margaret Mather was about
the loveliest Juliet, and in fact she has a great deal of passion”--

“My Juliet,” Ray broke in, “is one of those impassioned natures. When
she finds that the old people are inexorable, she jumps at the
suggestion of a secret marriage, and the lovers run off and are married,
and come back and live separately. They meet at a picnic soon after,
where Juliet goes with her cousin, who makes himself offensive to the
husband, and finally insults him. They happen to be alone together near
the high bank of a river, and the husband, who is a quiet fellow of the
deadly sort, suddenly throws the cousin over the cliff. The rest are
dancing”--

“We introduced a minuet in our theatricals,” Mr. Brandreth interposed,
“and people said it was the best thing in it. I _beg_ your pardon!”

“Not at all. It must have been very picturesque. The cousin is taken up
for dead, and the husband goes into hiding until the result of the
cousin’s injuries can be ascertained. They are searching for the husband
everywhere, and the girl’s father, who has dabbled in hypnotism, and
has hypnotized his daughter now and then, takes the notion of trying to
discover the husband’s whereabouts by throwing her into a hypnotic
trance and questioning her: he believes that she knows. The trance is
incomplete, and with what is left of her consciousness the girl suffers
tremendously from the conflict that takes place in her. In the midst of
it all, word comes from the room where the cousin is lying insensible
that he is dying. The father leaves his daughter to go to him, and she
lapses into the cataleptic state. The husband has been lurking about,
intending to give himself up if it comes to the worst. He steals up to
the open window--I forgot to say that the hypnotization scene takes
place in her father’s office, a little building that stands apart from
the house, and of course it’s a ground floor--and he sees her stretched
out on the lounge, all pale and stiff, and he thinks she is dead.”

Mr. Brandreth burst into a laugh. “I _must_ tell you what our Mercutio
said--he was an awfully clever fellow, a lawyer up there, one of the
natives, and he made simply a _perfect_ Mercutio. He said that our
Juliet was magnificent in the sepulchre scene; and if she could have
played the part as a dead Juliet throughout, she would have beat us
all!”

“Capital!” said Ray. “Ha, ha, ha!”

“Well, go on,” said Mr. Brandreth.

“Oh! Well, the husband gets in at the window and throws himself on her
breast, and tries to revive her. She shows no signs of life, though all
the time she is perfectly aware of what is going on, and is struggling
to speak and reassure him. She recovers herself just at the moment he
draws a pistol and shoots himself through the heart. The shot brings the
father from the house, and as he enters the little office, his daughter
lifts herself, gives him one ghastly stare, and falls dead on her
husband’s body.”

“That is strong,” said Mr. Brandreth. “That is a very powerful scene.”

“Do you think so?” Ray asked. He looked flushed and flattered, but he
said: “Sometimes I’ve been afraid it was overwrought, and
improbable--weak. It’s not, properly speaking, a novel, you see. It’s
more in the region of romance.”

“Well, so much the better. I think people are getting tired of those
commonplace, photographic things. They want something with a little more
imagination,” said Mr. Brandreth.

“The motive of my story might be called psychological,” said the author.
“Of course I’ve only given you the crudest outline of it, that doesn’t
do it justice”--

“Well, they say that _roman psychologique_ is superseding the realistic
novel in France. Will you allow me?”

He offered to take the manuscript, and Ray eagerly undid it, and placed
it in his hands. He turned over some pages of it, and dipped into it
here and there.

“Yes,” he said. “Now I’ll tell you what we’ll do, Mr. Ray. You leave
this with us, and we’ll have our readers go over it, and report to us,
and then we’ll communicate with you about it. What did you say your New
York address was?”

“I haven’t any yet,” said Ray; “but I’ll call and leave it as soon as
I’ve got one.” He rose, and the young publisher said:

“Well, drop in any time. We shall always be glad to see you. Of course I
can’t promise you an immediate decision.”

“Oh, no; I don’t expect that. I can wait. And I can’t tell you how
much--how much I appreciate your kindness.”

“Oh, not at all. Ah!” The boy came back with a type-written sheet in his
hand; Mr. Brandreth took it and gave it to Ray. “There! You can get some
idea from that of what we’re going to do. Take it with you. It’s
manifolded, and you can keep this copy. Drop in again when you’re
passing.”

They shook hands, but they did not part there. Mr. Brandreth followed
Ray out into the store, and asked him if he would not like some advance
copies of their new books; he guessed some of them were ready. He
directed a clerk to put them up, and then he said, “I’d like to
introduce you to one of our authors. Mr. Kane!” he called out to what
Ray felt to be the gentleman’s expectant back, and Mr. Kane promptly
turned about from his bookshelf and met their advance half-way. “I want
to make you acquainted with Mr. Ray.”

“Fortune,” said Mr. Kane, with evident relish of his own voice and
diction, “had already made us friends, in the common interest we took in
a mistaken fellow-man whom we saw stealing a bag to travel with instead
of a road to travel on. Before you came in, we were street intimates of
five minutes’ standing, and we entered your temple of the Muses
together. But I am very glad to know my dear friend by name.” He gave
Ray the pressure of a soft, cool hand. “My name is doubtless familiar to
you, Mr. Ray. We spell it a little differently since that unfortunate
affair with Abel; but it is unquestionably the same name, and we are of
that ancient family. Am I right,” he said, continuing to press the young
man’s hand, but glancing at Mr. Brandreth for correction, with ironical
deference, “in supposing that Mr. Ray is _one_ of us? I was sure,” he
said, letting Ray’s hand go, with a final pressure, “that it must be so
from the first moment! The signs of the high freemasonry of letters are
unmistakable!”

“Mr. Ray,” said Mr. Brandreth, “is going to cast his lot with us here in
New York. He is from Midland, and he is still connected with one of the
papers there.”

“Then he is a man to be cherished and avoided,” said Mr. Kane. “But
don’t tell me that he has no tenderer, no more sacred tie to literature
than a meretricious newspaper connection!”

Ray laughed, and said from his pleased vanity, “Mr. Brandreth has kindly
consented to look at a manuscript of mine.”

“Poems?” Mr. Kane suggested.

“No, a novel,” the author answered, bashfully.

“The great American one, of course?”

“We are going to see,” said the young publisher, gaily.

“Well, that is good. It is pleasant to have the old literary tradition
renewed in all the freshness of its prime, and to have young Genius
coming up to New York from the provinces with a manuscript under its
arm, just as it used to come up to London, and I’ve no doubt to Memphis
and to Nineveh, for that matter; the indented tiles must have been a
little more cumbrous than the papyrus, and were probably conveyed in an
ox-cart. And when you offered him your novel, Mr. Ray, did Mr. Brandreth
say that the book trade was rather dull, just now?”

“Something of that kind,” Ray admitted, with a laugh; and Mr. Brandreth
laughed too.

“I’m glad of that,” said Mr. Kane. “It would not have been perfect
without that. They always say that. I’ve no doubt the publishers of
Memphis and Nineveh said it in their day. It is the publishers’ way with
authors. It makes the author realize the immense advantage of getting a
publisher on any terms at such a disastrous moment, and he leaves the
publisher to fix the terms. It is quite right. You are launched, my dear
friend, and all you have to do is to let yourself go. You will probably
turn out an ocean greyhound; we expect no less when we are launched. In
that case, allow an old water-logged derelict to hail you, and wish you
a prosperous voyage to the Happy Isles.” Mr. Kane smiled blandly, and
gave Ray a bow that had the quality of a blessing.

“Oh, that book of yours is going to do well yet, Mr. Kane,” said Mr.
Brandreth, consolingly. “I believe there’s going to be a change in the
public taste, and good literature is going to have its turn again.”

“Let us hope so,” said Mr. Kane, devoutly. “We will pray that the
general reader may be turned from the error of his ways, and eschew
fiction and cleave to moral reflections. But not till our dear friend’s
novel has made its success!” He inclined himself again towards Ray.
“Though, perhaps,” he suggested, “it is a novel with a purpose?”

“I’m afraid hardly”--Ray began; but Mr. Brandreth interposed.

“It is a psychological romance--the next thing on the cards, _I_
believe!”

“Indeed!” said Mr. Kane. “Do you speak by the card, now, as a confidant
of fate; or is this the exuberant optimism of a fond young father? Mr.
Ray, I am afraid you have taken our friend when he is all molten and
fluid with happiness, and have abused his kindness for the whole race to
your single advantage!”

“No, no! Nothing of the kind, I assure you!” said Mr. Brandreth,
joyously. “Everything is on a strict business basis with me, always. But
I wish you could see that little fellow, Mr. Kane. Of course it sounds
preposterous to say it of a child only eight days old, but I believe he
begins to notice already.”

“You must get him to notice your books. Do get him to notice mine! He is
beginning young, but perhaps not _too_ young for a critic,” said Mr.
Kane, and he abruptly took his leave, as one does when he thinks he has
made a good point, and Mr. Brandreth laughed the laugh of a man who
magnanimously joins in the mirth made at his expense.

Ray stayed a moment after Mr. Kane went out, and Brandreth said, “There
is one of the most puzzling characters in New York. If he could put
himself into a book, it would make his fortune. He’s a queer genius.
Nobody knows how he lives; but I fancy he has a little money of his own;
his book doesn’t sell fifty copies in a year. What did he mean by that
about the travelling-bag?”

Ray explained, and Mr. Brandreth said: “Just like him! He must have
spotted you in an instant. He has nothing to do, and he spends most of
his time wandering about. He says New York is his book, and he reads it
over and over. If he could only work up that idea, he could make a book
that everybody would want. But he never will. He’s one of those men
whose talk makes you think he could write anything; but his book is
awfully dry--perfectly crumby. Ever see it? _Hard Sayings_? Well,
good-by! I _wish_ I could ask you up to my house; but you see how it
is!”

“Oh, yes! I see,” said Ray. “You’re only too good as it is, Mr.
Brandreth.”




X.


Ray’s voice broke a little as he said this; but he hoped Mr. Brandreth
did not notice, and he made haste to get out into the crowded street,
and be alone with his emotions. He was quite giddy with the turn that
Fortune’s wheel had taken, and he walked a long way up town before he
recovered his balance. He had never dreamt of such prompt consideration
as Mr. Brandreth had promised to give his novel. He had expected to
carry it round from publisher to publisher, and to wait weeks, and
perhaps whole months, for their decision. Most of them he imagined
refusing to look at it at all; and he had prepared himself for rebuffs.
He could not help thinking that Mr. Brandreth’s different behavior was
an effect of his goodness of heart, and of his present happiness. Of
course he was a little ridiculous about that baby of his; Ray supposed
that was natural, but he decided that if he should ever be a father he
would not gush about it to the first person he met. He did not like Mr.
Brandreth’s interrupting him with the account of those amateur
theatricals when he was outlining the plot of his story; but that was
excusable, and it showed that he was really interested. If it had not
been for the accidental fact that Mr. Brandreth had taken the part of
Romeo in those theatricals, he might not have caught on to the notion of
_A Modern Romeo_ at all. The question whether he was not rather silly
himself to enter so fully into his plot, helped him to condone Mr.
Brandreth’s weakness, which was not incompatible with shrewd business
sense. All that Mr. Brandreth had said of the state of the trade and its
new conditions was sound; he was probably no fool where his interest was
concerned. Ray resented for him the cruelty of Mr. Kane in turning the
baby’s precocity into the sort of joke he had made of it; but he admired
his manner of saying things, too. He would work up very well in a story;
but he ought to be made pathetic as well as ironical; he must be made to
have had an early unhappy love-affair; the girl either to have died, or
to have heartlessly jilted him. He could be the hero’s friend at some
important moment; Ray did not determine just at what moment; but the
hero should be about to wreck his happiness, somehow, and Mr. Kane
should save him from the rash act, and then should tell him the story of
his own life. Ray recurred to the manuscript he had left with Mr.
Brandreth, and wondered if Mr. Brandreth would read it himself, and if
he did, whether he would see any resemblance between the hero and the
author. He had sometimes been a little ashamed of that mesmerization
business in the story, but if it struck a mood of the reading public, it
would be a great piece of luck; and he prepared himself to respect it.
If Chapley & Co. accepted the book, he was going to write all that
passage over, and strengthen it.

He was very happy; and he said to himself that he must try to be very
good and to merit the fortune that had befallen him. He must not let it
turn his head, or seem more than it really was; after all it was merely
a chance to be heard that he was given. He instinctively strove to
arrest the wheel which was bringing him up, and must carry him down if
it kept on moving. With an impulse of the old heathen superstition
lingering in us all, he promised his god, whom he imagined to be God,
that he would be very grateful and humble if He would work a little
miracle for him, and let the wheel carry him up without carrying him
over and down. In the unconscious selfishness which he had always
supposed morality, he believed that the thing most pleasing to his god
would be some immediate effort in his own behalf, of prudent industry or
frugality; and he made haste to escape from the bliss of his high hopes
as if it were something that was wrong in itself, and that he would
perhaps be punished for.

He went to the restaurant where he had breakfasted, and bargained for
board and lodging by the week. It was not so cheap as he had expected to
get it; with an apparent flexibility, the landlord was rigorous on the
point of a dollar a day for the room; and Ray found that he must pay
twelve dollars a week for his board and lodging instead of the ten he
had set as a limit. But he said to himself that he must take the risk,
and must make up the two dollars, somehow. His room was at the top of
the house, and it had a view of the fourth story of a ten-story
apartment-house opposite; but it had a southerly exposure, and there
was one golden hour of the day when the sun shone into it, over the
shoulder of a lower edifice next to the apartment-house, and round the
side of a clock tower beyond the avenue. He could see a bit of the
châlet-roof of an elevated railroad station; he could see the tops of
people’s heads in the street below if he leaned out of his window far
enough, and he had the same bird’s-eye view of the passing carts and
carriages. He shared it with the sparrows that bickered in the
window-casing, and with the cats that crouched behind the chimneys and
watched the progress of the sparrows’ dissensions with furtive and
ironical eyes.

Within, the slope of the roof gave a picturesque slant to the ceiling.
The room was furnished with an American painted set; there was a clock
on the little shelf against the wall that looked as if it were French;
but it was not going, and there was no telling what accent it might tick
with if it were wound up. There was a little mahogany table in one
corner near the window to write on, and he put his books up on the shelf
on each side of the clock.

It was all very different from the dignified housing of his life at
Midland, where less than the money he paid here got him a stately
parlor, with a little chamber out of it, at the first boarding-house in
the place. But still he would not have been ashamed to have any one from
Midland see him in his present quarters. They were proper to New York in
that cosmopolitan phase which he had most desired to see. He tried
writing at the little table, and found it very convenient. He forced
himself, just for moral effect, and to show himself that he was master
of all his moods, to finish his letter to the _Echo_, and he pleased
himself very well with it. He made it light and lively, and yet
contrived to give it certain touches of poetry and to throw in bits of
description which he fancied had caught something of the thrill and
sparkle of the air, and imparted some sense of such a day as he felt it
to be. He fancied different friends turning to the letter the first
thing in the paper; and in the fond remembrance of the kindness he had
left behind there, he became a little homesick.




XI.


Ray would have liked to go again that day, and give Mr. Brandreth his
new address in person; but he was afraid it would seem too eager, and
would have a bad effect on the fortunes of his book. He mastered himself
so far that even the next day he did not go, but sent it in a note. Then
he was sorry he had done this, for it might look a little too
indifferent; that is, he feigned that it might have this effect; but
what he really regretted was that it cut him off from going to see Mr.
Brandreth as soon as he would have liked. It would be absurd to run to
him directly after writing. He languished several days in the heroic
resolution not to go near Chapley & Co. until a proper time had passed;
then he took to walking up and down Broadway, remote from their place at
first, and afterwards nearer, till it came to his pacing slowly past
their door, and stopping at their window, in the hope that one or other
of the partners would happen upon him in some of their comings or
goings. But they never did, and he had a faint, heart-sick feeling of
disappointment, such as he used to have when he hung about the premises
of his first love in much the same fashion and to much the same effect.

He cajoled himself by feigning interviews, now with Mr. Chapley and now
with Mr. Brandreth; the publishers accepted his manuscript with
transport, and offered him incredible terms. The good old man’s voice
shook with emotion in hailing Ray as the heir of Hawthorne; Mr.
Brandreth had him up to dinner, and presented him to his wife and baby;
he named the baby for them jointly. As nothing of this kind really
happened, Ray’s time passed rather forlornly. Without being the richer
for it, he won the bets he made himself, every morning, that he should
not get a letter that day from Chapley & Co., asking to see him at once,
or from Mr. Brandreth hoping for the pleasure of his company upon this
social occasion or that. He found that he had built some hopes upon Mr.
Brandreth’s hospitable regrets; and as he did not know how long it must
be after a happiness of the kind Mrs. Brandreth had conferred upon her
husband before her house could be set in order for company, he was
perhaps too impatient. But he did not suffer himself to be censorious;
he was duly grateful to Mr. Brandreth for his regrets; he had not
expected them; but for them he would not have expected anything.

He did what he could to pass the time by visiting other publishers with
Mr. Brandreth’s card. He perceived sometimes, or fancied that he
perceived, a shadow of anxiety in the gentlemen who received him so
kindly, but it vanished, if it ever existed, when he put himself frankly
on the journalistic ground, and satisfied them that he had no manuscript
lurking about him. Then he found some of them willing to drop into chat
about the trade, and try to forecast its nearer future, if not to
philosophize its conditions. They appeared to think these were all
right; and it did not strike Ray as amiss that a work of literary art
should be regarded simply as a merchantable or unmerchantable commodity,
or as a pawn in a game, a counter that stood for a certain money value,
a risk which the player took, a wager that he made.

“You know it’s really that,” one publisher explained to Ray. “_No_ one
can tell whether a book will succeed or not; no one knows what makes a
book succeed. We have published things that I’ve liked and respected
thoroughly, and that I’ve taken a personal pride and pleasure in
pushing. They’ve been well received and intelligently praised by the
best critics from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and cultivated people
have talked about them everywhere; and they haven’t sold fifteen hundred
copies. Then we’ve tried trash--decent trash, of course; we always
remember the cheek of the Young Person--and we’ve all believed that we
had something that would hit the popular mood, and would leap into the
tens of thousands; and it’s dropped dead from the press. Other works of
art and other pieces of trash succeed for no better reason than some
fail. You can’t tell anything about it. If I were to trust my own
observation, I should say it was _luck_, pure and simple, and mostly bad
luck. Ten books fail, and twenty books barely pay, where one succeeds.
Nobody can say why. Can’t I send you some of our new books?” He had a
number of them on a table near him, and he talked them over with Ray,
while a clerk did them up; and he would not let Ray trouble himself to
carry them away with him. They were everywhere lavish of their
publications with him, and he had so many new books and advance sheets
given him that if he had been going to write his letters for the _Echo_
about literature alone, he would have had material for many weeks ahead.

The letters he got at this time were some from home: a very sweet one
from his mother, fondly conjecturing and questioning about his comfort
in New York, and cautioning him not to take cold; a serious one from his
father, advising him to try each week to put by something for a rainy
day. There was also a letter from Sanderson, gay with news of all the
goings on in Midland, and hilariously regretful of his absence.
Sanderson did not say anything about coming to New York to seek his
fortune, and the effect of his news was to leave Ray pining for the
society of women, which had always been the sweetest thing in life to
him, and next to literature the dearest. If he could have had immediate
literary success, the excitement of it might have made him forget the
privilege he had enjoyed at Midland of going every evening to call on
some lovely young girl, and of staying as long as he liked. What made
him feel still more lonesome and dropped out was Sanderson’s telling of
several engagements among the girls they knew in Midland; it appeared to
him that he only was destined to go loveless and mateless through life.

There were women enough in his hotel, but after the first interest of
their strangeness, and the romantic effect of hearing them speak in
their foreign tongues as if they were at home in them, he could not
imagine a farther interest in those opaque Southern blondes, who spoke
French, or the brunettes with purple-ringed vast eyes, who coughed out
their Spanish gutturals like squirrels. He was appointed a table for his
meals in a dining-room that seemed to be reserved for its inmates, as
distinguished from the frequenters of the restaurant, who looked as if
they were all Americans; and he was served by a shining black waiter
weirdly ignorant of English. He gazed wistfully across into the
restaurant at times, and had half a mind to ask if he might not eat
there; but he liked the glances of curiosity and perhaps envy which its
frequenters now and then cast at him in the hotel dining-room. There
were no young ladies among them, that he ever saw, but sometimes there
were young men whom he thought he would have liked to talk with. Some of
them came in company, and at dinner they sat long, discussing matters
which he could overhear by snatches were literary and artistic matters.
They always came late, and rarely sat down before seven, when Ray was
finishing his coffee. One night these comrades came later than usual and
in unusual force, and took a large table set somewhat apart from the
rest in the bay of a deep window which had once looked out into the
little garden of the dwelling that the hotel had once been. They sat
down, with a babble of questions and answers, as of people who had not
all met for some time, and devoured the little radishes and olives and
anchovies, with which the table had been prefatorily furnished, in
apparent patience till all the places but the head of the table had been
taken; then they began to complain and to threaten at the delay of the
dinner. Ray was not aware just how a furious controversy suddenly began
to rage between two of them. As nearly as he could make out, amidst the
rapid thrust and parry of the principals, and the irregular lunges of
this one or that of the company which gave it the character of a free
fight, it turned upon a point of æsthetics, where the question was
whether the moral aspect ought or ought not to be sought in it. In the
heat of the debate the chiefs of the discussion talked both at once,
interrupted each other, tried which should clamor loudest and fastest,
and then suddenly the whole uproar fell to silence. The two parties
casually discovered that they were of exactly the same mind, but each
had supposed the other thought differently. Some one came in during the
lull that followed, and took the seat at the head of the table.

It was Mr. Kane, and Ray’s heart leaped with the hope that he would see
him and recognize him, but out of self-respect he tried to look as if it
were not he, but perhaps some one who closely resembled him. He
perceived that it was a club dinner of some literary sort; but because
he could not help wishing that he were one of the company, he snubbed
his desires with unsparing cruelty. He looked down at his plate, and
shunned the roving glance which he felt sure Mr. Kane was sending into
the room where he now sat almost alone; and he did his best to be
ashamed of overhearing the talk now and then. He grew very bitter in his
solitude, and he imagined himself using Mr. Kane with great hauteur,
after _A Modern Romeo_ had succeeded. He was not obliged to go out that
way, when he left the dining-room, but he feigned that he must, and in
spite of the lofty stand he had taken with Mr. Kane in fancy, he meanly
passed quite near him. Kane looked up, and called out, “Ah,
good-evening, good-evening!” and rose and shook hands with him, and
asked him how in the world he happened to have found out that
restaurant, and he was astonished to hear that Ray was staying in the
hotel; he said that was very _chic_. He introduced him to the company
generally, as his young friend Mr. Ray, of Midland, who had come on to
cast in his literary lot with them in New York; and then he presented
him personally to the nearest on either hand. They were young fellows,
but their names were known to Ray with the planetary distinctness that
the names of young authors have for literary aspirants, though they are
all so nebulous to older eyes.

Mr. Kane asked Ray to sit down and take his coffee with them; Ray said
he had taken his coffee; they all urged that this was no reason why he
should not take some more; he stood out against them, like a fool--as he
later called himself with gnashing teeth. He pretended he had an
engagement, and he left the pleasant company he was hungering so to
join, and went out and walked the streets, trying to stay himself with
the hope that he had made a better impression than if he had remained
and enjoyed himself. He was so lonesome when he came back, and caught
the sound of their jolly voices on his way up stairs, that he could
hardly keep from going in upon them, and asking if they would let him
sit with them. In his room he could not work; he wanted to shed tears in
his social isolation. He determined to go back to Midland, at any cost
to his feelings or fortunes, or even to the little village where his
family lived, and where he had been so restless and unhappy till he
could get away from it. Now, any place seemed better than this waste of
unknown hundreds of thousands of human beings, where he had not a
friend, or even an enemy.




XII.


In the morning Ray woke resolved to brace up against the nerveless
suspense he had been in ever since he had left his manuscript with Mr.
Brandreth, and go and present the letters that some people in Midland
had given him to their friends in New York. At least he need not suffer
from solitude unless he chose; he wondered if it would do to present his
letters on Sunday.

He breakfasted in this question. Shortly after he went back to his room,
there was a knock at his door, and when he shouted “Come in!” it was set
softly ajar, and Mr. Kane showed his face at the edge of it.

“I suppose you know,” he said, ignoring Ray’s welcome, “or if you
haven’t been out, you don’t know, that this is one of those Sunday
mornings which make you feel that it has been blessed and hallowed above
all the other days of the week. But I dare say,” he added, coming
inside, “that the Mohammedans feel exactly so about a particularly fine
Friday.”

He glanced round the little room with an air of delicate impartiality,
and asked leave to look from Ray’s window. As he put his head out, he
said to the birds in the eaves, “Ah, sparrows!” as if he knew them
personally, before he began to make compliments to the picturesque
facts of the prospect. Then he stood with his back to Ray, looking down
into the street, and praising the fashion of the shadow and sunshine in
meeting so solidly there, at all sorts of irregular points and angles.
Once he looked round and asked, with the sun making his hair all a
shining silver:

“Has any one else been shown this view? No? Then let me be the first to
utter the stock imbecility that it ought to inspire you if anything
could.” He put out his head again, and gave a glance upward at the
speckless heaven, and then drew it in. “Yes,” he said, thoughtfully, “a
partially clouded sky is better for us, no doubt. Why didn’t you sit
down with us last night? I saw that you wished to do so.” He faced Ray
benignly, with a remote glimmer of mocking in his eye.

Ray felt it safest to answer frankly. “Yes, I did want to join you
awfully. I overheard a good deal you were saying where I was sitting,
but I couldn’t accept your invitation. I knew it was a great chance, but
I couldn’t.”

“Don’t you know,” Mr. Kane asked, “that the chances have a polite horror
of iteration? Those men and those moods may never be got together again.
You oughtn’t to have thrown such a chance away!”

“I know,” said Ray. “But I had to.”

Mr. Kane leaned back in the chair he had taken, and murmured as if to
himself: “Ah, youth, youth! Yes, it has to throw chances away. Waste is
a condition of survival. Otherwise we should perish of mere fruition.
But could you,” he asked, addressing Ray more directly, “without too
much loss to the intimacies that every man ought to keep sacred, could
you tell me just _why_ you had to refuse us your company?”

“Oh, yes,” said Ray, with the self-scorn which Mr. Kane’s attitude
enabled him to show. “I was so low-spirited that I couldn’t rise to the
hands that offered to pull me out of my Slough of Despond. I felt that
the slightest exertion would sink me over head and ears. I had better
stay as I was.”

“I understand,” said Mr. Kane. “But why should a man of your age be in
low spirits?”

“Why? Nobody can tell why he’s in low spirits exactly. I suppose I got
to thinking the prospect for my book wasn’t very gay. It’s hard to
wait.”

“Was that all?”

“I was a little homesick, too. But wasn’t the other enough?”

“I can’t say. It’s a long time since I was your age. But shall I tell
you what I first thought your unhappiness was, when you confessed it
just now?”

“Yes, by all means.”

“I wonder if I’d better! I supposed it was not such as any _man_ could
inflict. Excuse me!” He kept his eyes smilingly on the young fellow’s
face, as if to prevent his taking the audacity in bad part. “I don’t
know why I should say this to you, except that it really went through my
mind, and I did you the wrong to wonder why you should mention it.”

“I can forgive the wrong; it’s so very far from the fact”--Ray began.

“Ah, you’ve already noticed _that_!” Mr Kane interrupted.

“Noticed what?”

“That we can forgive people their injurious conjectures when they’re
wrong rather than when they’re right?”

“No, I hadn’t noticed,” Ray confessed; and he added, “I was only
thinking how impossible that was for me in a place where I haven’t
spoken to a woman yet.”

If Mr. Kane tasted the bitterness in a speech which Ray tried to carry
off with a laugh, his words did not confess it. “It wasn’t a reasoned
conjecture, and I don’t defend it; I’m only too glad to escape from it
without offence. When I was of your age, a slight from a woman was the
only thing that could have kept me from any pleasure that offered
itself. But I understand that now youth is made differently.”

“I don’t see why,” said Ray, and he quelled a desire he had to boast of
his wounds; he permitted himself merely to put on an air of gloom.

“Why, I’ve been taught that modern society and civilization generally
has so many consolations for unrequited affection that young men don’t
suffer from that sort of trouble any more, or not deeply.”

Ray was sensible that Mr. Kane’s intrusiveness was justifiable upon the
ground of friendly interest; and he was not able to repel what seemed
like friendly interest. “It may be as you say, in New York; I’ve not
been here long enough to judge.”

“But in Midland things go on in the old way? Tell me something about
Midland, and why any one should ever leave Midland for New York?”

“I can’t say, generally speaking,” answered Ray, with pleasure in Kane’s
pursuit, “but I think that in my case Midland began it.”

“Yes?”

Ray was willing enough to impart as much of his autobiography as related
to the business change that had thrown him out of his place on the
_Echo_. Then he sketched with objective airiness the sort of life one
led in Midland, if one was a young man in society; and he found it no
more than fair to himself to give some notion of his own local value in
a graphic little account of the farewell dinner.

“Yes,” said Mr. Kane, “I can imagine how you should miss all that, and I
don’t know that New York has anything so pleasant to offer. I fancy the
conditions of society are incomparably different in Midland and in New
York. You seem to me a race of shepherds and shepherdesses out there;
your pretty world is like a dream of my own youth, when Boston was still
only a large town, and was not so distinctly an aoristic Athens as it is
now.”

“I had half a mind to go to Boston with my book first,” said Ray. “But
somehow I thought there were more chances in New York.”

“There are certainly more publishers,” Kane admitted. “Whether there
are more chances depends upon how much independent judgment there is
among the publishers. Have you found them very judicial?”

“I don’t quite understand what you mean.”

“Did any one of them seem to be a man who would give your novel an
unprejudiced reading if you took it to him and told him honestly that it
had been rejected by all the others?”

“No, I can’t say any of them did. But I don’t know that I could give my
manuscript an unprejudiced reading myself under the same circumstances.
I certainly shouldn’t blame any publisher who couldn’t. Should you?”

“I? I blame nobody, my dear friend,” said Kane. “That is the way I keep
my temper. I should not blame you if Chapley & Co. declined your book,
and you went to the rest of the trade carefully concealing from each
publisher, the fact that he was not the first you had approached with
it.”

Ray laughed, but he winced, too. “I suppose that’s what I should have to
do. But Chapley & Co. haven’t declined it yet.”

“Ah, I’m glad of that. Not that you could really impose upon any one.
There would be certain infallible signs in your manuscript that would
betray you: an air of use; little private marks and memoranda of earlier
readers; the smell of their different brands of tobacco and sachet
powder.”

“I shouldn’t try to impose upon any one,” Ray began, with a flush of
indignation, which ended in shame. “What would _you_ do under the same
circumstances?” he demanded, with desperation.

“My dear friend! My dear boy,” Mr. Kane protested. “I am not censuring
you. It’s said that Bismarck found it an advantage to introduce truth
even into diplomacy. He discovered there was nothing deceived _like_ it;
_nobody_ believed him. Some successful advertisers have made it work in
commercial affairs. You mustn’t expect me to say what I should do under
the same circumstances; the circumstances couldn’t be the same. I am not
the author of a manuscript novel with a potential public of tens of
thousands. But you can imagine that as the proprietor of a volume of
essays which has a certain sale--Mr. Brandreth used that fatal term in
speaking of my book, I suppose?”

“No, I don’t remember that he did,” said Ray.

“He was kinder than I could have expected. It is the death-knell of hope
to the devoted author when his publisher tells him that his book will
always have a certain sale; he is expressing in a pitying euphemism of
the trade that there is no longer any chance for it, no happy accident
in the future, no fortuity; it is dead. As the author of a book with a
certain sale, I feel myself exempt from saying what I should do in your
place. But I’m very glad it hasn’t come to the ordeal with you. Let us
hope you won’t be tempted. Let us hope that Messrs. Chapley & Co. will
be equal to the golden opportunity offered them, and gradually--snatch
it.”

Kane smiled, and Ray laughed out. He knew that he was being played
upon, but he believed the touch was kindly, and even what he felt an
occasional cold cynicism in it had the fascination that cynicism always
has for the young when it does not pass from theory to conduct; when it
does that, it shocks. He thought that Mr. Kane was something like
Warrington in _Pendennis_, and again something like Coverdale in
_Blithedale Romance_. He valued him for that; he was sure he had a
history; and when he now rose, Ray said: “Oh, must you go?” with eager
regret.

“Why, I had thought of asking you to come with me. I’m going for a walk
in the Park, and I want to stop on the way for a moment to see an old
friend of mine”--he hesitated, and then added--“a man whom I was once
intimately associated with in some joint hopes we had for reconstructing
the world. I think you will be interested in him, as a type, even if you
don’t like him.”

Ray professed that he should be very much interested, and they went out
together.




XIII.


The streets had that Sunday sense which is as unmistakable as their
week-day effect. Their noises were subdued almost to a country quiet; as
he crossed with his friend to the elevated station, Ray noted with a
lifting heart the sparrows that chirped from the knots and streamers of
red Virginia-creeper hanging here and there from a porch roof or over a
bit of garden wall; overhead the blue air was full of the jargoning of
the blended church bells.

He tried to fit these facts with phrases in the intervals of his
desultory talk with Kane, and he had got two or three very good epithets
by the time they found seats together in an up-town train. It was not
easy to find them, for the cars were thronged with work-people going to
the Park for one of the last Sundays that could be fine there.

Kane said: “The man we are going to see belongs to an order of thinking
and feeling that one would have said a few years ago had passed away
forever, but of late its turn seems to be coming again; it’s curious how
these things recur. Do you happen to hate altruism in any of its protean
forms?”

Ray smiled with the relish for the question which Kane probably meant
him to feel. “I can’t say that I have any violent feeling against it.”

“It is usually repulsive to young people,” Kane went on, “and I could
very well conceive your loathing it. My friend has been an altruist of
one kind or another all his life. He’s a man whom it would be perfectly
useless to tell that the world is quite good enough for the sort of
people there are in it; he would want to set about making the people
worthy of a better world, and he would probably begin on _you_. You have
heard of Brook Farm, I suppose?”

“Of course,” Ray answered, with a show of resentment for such a
question. “_Blithedale Romance_--I think it’s the best of Hawthorne’s
books.”

“Blithedale,” said Mr. Kane, ignoring the literary interest, “is no more
Brook Farm than--But we needn’t enter upon that! My friend’s career as
an altruist began there; and since then there’s hardly been a
communistic experiment in behalf of Man with a capital and without
capital that he hasn’t been into and out of.”

“I should like immensely to see him,” said Ray. “Any man who was at
Brook Farm--Did he know Hollingsworth and Zenobia, and Priscilla and
Coverdale? Was it at Brook Farm that you met?”

Kane shook his head. “I think no one knew them but Hawthorne. I don’t
speak positively; Brook Farm was a little before my day, or else I
should have been there too, I dare say. But I’ve been told those
characters never were.”

Then it was doubly impossible that Hawthorne should have studied Miles
Coverdale from Kane; Ray had to relinquish a theory he had instantly
formed upon no ground except Kane’s sort of authority in speaking of
Brook Farm; what was worse he had to abandon an instant purpose of
carrying forward the romance and doing _The Last Days of Miles
Coverdale_; it would have been an attractive title.

“I met David Hughes,” Kane continued, “after the final break-up of the
community, when I was beginning to transcendentalize around Boston, and
he wanted me to go into another with him, out West. He came out of his
last community within the year; he founded it himself, upon a perfectly
infallible principle. It was so impregnable to the logic either of
metaphysics or events, that Hughes had to break it up himself, I
understand. At sixty-nine he has discovered that his efforts to oblige
his fellow-beings ever since he was twenty have been misdirected. It
isn’t long for an error of that kind in the life of the race, but it
hasn’t exactly left my old friend in the vigor of youth. However, his
hope and good-will are as athletic as ever.”

“It’s rather pathetic,” Ray suggested.

“Why, I don’t know--I don’t know! Is it so? He hasn’t found out the
wrong way without finding the right way at the same time, and he’s
buoyantly hopeful in it, though he’s not only an old man; he’s a sick
man, too. Of course, he’s poor. He never was a fellow to do things by
halves, and when he dispersed his little following he divided nearly
all his substance among his disciples. He sees now that the right way to
universal prosperity and peace is the political way; and if he could
live long enough, we should see him in Congress--if _we_ lived long
enough. Naturally, he is paving the way with a book he’s writing.” Kane
went on to speak of his friend at length; he suddenly glanced out of the
car window, and said: “Ah, we’re just there. This is our station.”

The avenue had been changing its character as they rushed along. It had
ceased to be a street of three or four story houses, where for the most
part the people lived over their shops, and where there was an effect of
excessive use on everything, a worn-out and shabby look, rather than a
squalid look. The cross-streets of towering tenement-houses, had come
and gone, and now the buildings were low again, with greater or less
gaps between them, while the railroad had climbed higher, and was like a
line drawn through the air without reference to the localities which the
train left swiftly behind. The houses had begun to be of wood here and
there, and it was at a frame of two stories that Mr. Kane stopped with
Ray, when they clambered down the long iron staircase of the station to
the footway below. They pulled a bell that sounded faintly somewhere
within, and the catch of the lock clicked as if it were trying to
release itself; but when they tried the door it was still fast, and Mr.
Kane rang again. Then a clatter of quick, impatient feet sounded on the
stairs; the door was pulled sharply open, and they confronted a tall
young man, with a handsome pale face, who bent on them a look of
impartial gloom from clouded blue eyes under frowning brows. A heavy
fringe of dull yellow hair almost touched their level with its straight
line, which the lower lip of the impassioned mouth repeated.

“Ah, Denton!” said Mr. Kane. “Good-morning, good-morning! This is my
friend, Mr. Ray.” The young men shook hands with a provisional civility,
and Mr. Kane asked, “Are you all at home?”

“We are, at the moment,” said the other. “I’m just going out with the
babies; but father will be glad to see you. Come in.”

He had a thick voice that came from his throat by nervous impulses; he
set the door open and twisted his head in the direction of the stairs,
as if to invite them to go up. They found he had a perambulator in the
narrow hall behind the door, and two children facing each other in it.
He got it out on the sidewalk without further attention to them, and
shut the door after him. But in the light which his struggles to get out
had let into the entry they made their way up the stairs, where a
woman’s figure stood silhouetted against an open door-way behind her.

“Ah, Mrs. Denton, how do you do?” said Kane, gaily.

The figure answered gaily back, “Oh, Mr. Kane!” and after Kane’s
presentation of Ray, set open a door that opened from the landing into
the apartment. “Father will be so glad to see you. Please walk in.”

Ray found himself in what must be the principal room of the apartment;
its two windows commanded an immediate prospect of the elevated road,
with an effect of having their sills against its trestle work. Between
them stood a tall, gaunt old man, whose blue eyes flamed under the heavy
brows of age, from a face set in a wilding growth of iron-gray hair and
beard. He was talking down upon a gentleman whom Ray had black against
the light, and he was saying: “No, Henry, no! Tolstoï is mistaken. I
don’t object to his theories of non-resistance; the Quakers have found
them perfectly practicable for more than two centuries; but I say that
in quitting the scene of the moral struggle, and in simplifying himself
into a mere peasant, he begs the question as completely as if he had
gone into a monastery. He has struck out some tremendous truths, I don’t
deny that, and his examination of the conditions of civilization is one
of the most terrifically searching studies of the facts that have ever
been contributed to the science of sociology; but his conclusions are as
wrong as his premises are right. If I had back the years that I have
wasted in a perfectly futile effort to deal with the problem of the race
at a distance where I couldn’t touch it, I would have nothing to do with
eremitism in any of its forms, either collectively as we have had it in
our various communistic experiments, or individually on the terms which
Tolstoï apparently advises.”

“But I don’t understand him to advise eremitism,” the gentleman began.

“It amounts to the same thing,” said the other, cutting himself short in
hollow cough, so as not to give up the word. “He would have us withdraw
from the world, as if, where any man was, the world was not there in the
midst of him!”

“Poor Tolstoï,” said Mr. Kane, going up and shaking hands with the
others, “as I understand it, is at present able only to rehearse his
rôle, because his family won’t consent to anything else. He’s sold all
he has in order to give to the poor, but his wife manages the proceeds.”

“It’s easy enough to throw ridicule on him,” said the gentleman against
the window, who now stood up.

“_I_ throw no ridicule upon him,” said the tall, gaunt man. “He has
taught me at least this, that contempt is of the devil--I beg your
pardon, Kane--and I appreciate to the utmost the spiritual grandeur of
the man’s nature. But practically, I don’t follow him. We shall never
redeem the world by eschewing it. Society is not to be saved by
self-outlawry. The body politic is to be healed politically. The way to
have the golden age is to elect it by the Australian ballot. The people
must vote themselves into possession of their own business, and intrust
their economic affairs to the same faculty that makes war and peace,
that frames laws, and that does justice. What I object to in Tolstoï is
his utter unpracticality. I cannot forgive any man, however good and
great, who does not measure the means to the end. If there is anything
in my own life that I can regard with entire satisfaction it is that at
every step of my career I have invoked the light of common-sense.
Whatever my enemies may say against me, they cannot say that I have not
instantly abandoned any project when I found it unpractical. I abhor
dreamers; they have no place in a world of thinking and acting.” Ray saw
Kane arching his eyebrows, while the other began again: “I tell you”--

“I want to introduce my young friend Mr. Ray,” Mr. Kane broke in.

The old man took Ray’s hand between two hot palms, and said, “Ah!” with
a look at him that was benign, if somewhat bewildered.

“You know Mr. Ray, Chapley,” Kane pursued, transferring him to the
other, who took his hand in turn.

“Mr. Ray?” he queried, with the distress of the elderly man who tries to
remember.

“If you forget your authors in the green wood so easily, how shall it be
with them in the dry?” Kane sighed; and now the publisher woke up to
Ray’s identity.

“Oh, yes, yes, yes! Of course! Mr. Ray, of--of--Mr. Ray, of”--

“Midland,” Ray suggested, perspiring.

“Why, certainly!” Mr. Chapley pressed his hand with as much apologetic
entreaty as he could intimate in that way, and assured him that he was
glad to see him; and then he said to the old man, whose name Kane had
not mentioned to Ray in presenting him, but whom Ray knew to be Hughes,
“Well, I must be going now. I’m glad to find you looking so much better
this morning.”

“Oh; I’m quite a new man--quite a new man!”

“You were always that!” said Mr. Chapley, with a certain fondness. He
sighed, “I wish I knew your secret.”

“Stay, and let him expound it to us all!” Kane suggested. “I’ve no doubt
he would.”

“No; I must be going,” said Mr. Chapley. “Good-by.” He shook hands with
the old man. “Good-by, Kane. Er--good-morning, Mr.--er--Ray. You must
drop in and see us, when you can find time.”

Ray bubbled after him some incoherencies about being afraid he could
find only too much time. Apparently Mr. Chapley did not hear. He
pottered out on the landing, and Ray heard him feeling his way carefully
down stairs. It was an immense relief for him to have met Mr. Chapley
there. It stamped his own presence in the place with propriety; he was
fond of adventure and hungry for experience, but he wished all his
adventures and experiences to be respectable. He had a young dread of
queerness and irregularity; and he could not conceal from himself that
but for Mr. Chapley his present environment was not in keeping with his
smooth Philistine traditions. He had never been in an apartment before,
much less a mere tenement; at Midland every one he knew lived in his own
house; most of the people he knew lived in handsome houses of their
own, with large grass-plots and shade-trees about them. But if Mr.
Chapley were here, with this old man who called him by his first name,
and with whom he and Mr. Kane seemed to have the past if not the present
in common, it must be all right.




XIV.


Ray woke from his rapid mental formulation of this comforting
reassurance to find the old man saying to him, “What is the nature of
the work that Chapley has published for you? I hope something by which
you intend to advance others, as well as yourself: something that is to
be not merely the means of your personal aggrandizement in fame and
fortune. Nothing, in my getting back to the world, strikes me as more
shamelessly selfish than the ordinary literary career. I don’t wonder
the art has sunk so low; its aims are on the business level.”

Mr. Kane listened with an air of being greatly amused, and even
gratified, and Ray thought he had purposely let the old man go on as if
he were an author who had already broken the shell. Before he could
think of some answer that should at once explain and justify him, Kane
interposed:

“I hope Mr. Ray is no better than the rest of us; but he may be; you
must make your arraignment and condemnation conditional, at any rate.
He’s an author _in petto_, as yet; Chapley may never publish him.”

“Then why,” said the old man, irascibly, “did you speak of him as you
did to Chapley? It was misleading.”

“In the world you’ve come back to, my dear friend,” said Kane, “you’ll
find that we have no time to refine upon the facts. We can only sketch
the situation in large, bold outlines. Perhaps I wished to give Mr. Ray
a hold upon Chapley by my premature recognition of him as an author, and
make the wicked publisher feel that there was already a wide general
impatience to see Mr. Ray’s book.”

“That would have been very corrupt, Kane,” said the other. “But I owe
Mr. Ray an apology.”

Ray found his tongue. “Perhaps you won’t think so when you see my
novel.”

“A novel! Oh, I have no time to read novels!” the old man burst out. “A
practical man”--

“Nor volumes of essays,” said Kane, picking up a book from the table at
his elbow. “Really, as a measure of self-defence, I must have the leaves
of my presentation copies cut, at any rate. I must sacrifice my taste to
my vanity. Then I sha’n’t know when the grateful recipients haven’t
opened them.”

“I’ve no time to read books of any kind”--the old man began again.

“You ought to set up reviewer,” Kane interposed again.

“Oh, I’ve looked into your essays, Kane, here and there. The literature
is of a piece with the affectation of the uncut edges: something utterly
outdated and superseded. It’s all as impertinent as the demand you make
that the reader should do the work of a bookbinder, and cut your
leaves.”

“Do you know that I’m really hurt--not for myself, but for you!--by
what you say of my uncut edges? You descend to the level of a
Brandreth,” said Kane.

“A Brandreth? What is a Brandreth?”

“It is a publisher: Chapley’s son-in-law and partner.”

“Oh, yes, yes,” said Hughes.

“I spent many hours,” said Kane, plaintively, “pleading with him for an
edition with uncut edges. He contended that the public would not buy it
if the edges were not cut; and I told him that I wished to have that
fact to fall back upon, in case they didn’t buy it for some other
reason. And I was right. The edition hasn’t sold, and the uncut edges
have saved me great suffering until now. Why not have confined your own
remarks, my dear friend, to the uncut edges? I might have agreed with
you.”

“Because,” said the old man, “I cannot have patience with a man of your
age who takes the mere dilettante view of life--who regards the world as
something to be curiously inspected and neatly commented, instead of
toiled for, sweated for, suffered for!”

“It appears to me that there is toiling and sweating and suffering
enough for the world already,” said Kane, with a perverse levity. “Look
at the poor millionnaires, struggling to keep their employés in work! If
you’ve come back to the world for no better purpose than to add to its
perseverance and perspiration, I could wish for your own sake that you
had remained in some of your communities--or all of them, for that
matter.”

The other turned half round in his chair, and looked hard into Kane’s
smiling face. “You are a most unserious spirit, Kane, and you always
were! When will you begin to be different? Do you expect to continue a
mere frivolous maker of phrases to the last? Your whole book there is
just a bundle of phrases--labels for things. Do you ever intend to _be_
anything?”

“I intend to be an angel, some time--or some eternity,” said Kane. “But,
in the meanwhile, have you ever considered that perhaps you are
demanding, in your hopes of what you call the redemption of the race
from selfishness, as sheer and mere an impossibility as a change of the
physical basis of the soul?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean--or, I won’t put it affirmatively; I will put it
interrogatively.”

“Yes, that was always your way!”

“I will merely ask you,” Kane went on, without heeding the interruption,
“what reason you have to suppose the altruistic is not eternally
conditioned in the egoistic, just as the spiritual is conditioned in the
animal?”

“What jargon is that?” demanded the old man, throwing one leg over the
other, and smoothing the upper one down with his hand, as he bent
forward to glower at Kane.

“It is the harmony of the spheres, my dear David; it is a metaphysical
variation of the pleasing air that the morning stars sang together; it
is the very truth. The altruistic can no more shake off the egoistic in
this world than the spiritual can shake off the animal. As soon as man
ceases to get hungry three times a day, just so soon will he cease to
eat his fellow-man.”

“There is the usual trivial truth in what you say,” Hughes replied, “and
the usual serious impiety. You probably are not aware that your
miserable paradox accuses the Creative Intelligence.”

“Ah, but use another word! Say Nature, and then where is the impiety?”

“But I decline to use the other word,” Hughes retorted.

“And I insist upon it; I must. It is Nature that I accuse; not the
divine nature, or even human nature, but brute nature, that commits a
million blunders, and destroys myriads of types, in order to arrive at
such an imperfect creature as man still physically is, after untold ages
of her blind empiricism. If the human intelligence could be put in
possession of the human body, we should have altruism at once. We should
not get hungry three times a day; instead of the crude digestive
apparatus which we have inherited with apparently no change whatever
from the cave-dweller, we should have an organ delicately adjusted to
the exigencies of modern life, and responsive to all the emotions of
philanthropy. But no! The stomach of the nineteenth century remains
helplessly in the keeping of primeval nature, who is a mere Bourbon; who
learns nothing and forgets nothing. She obliges us to struggle on with a
rude arrangement developed from the mollusk, and adapted at best to the
conditions of the savage; imperative and imperfect; liable to get out of
order with the carefulest management, and to give way altogether with
the use of half a lifetime. No, David! You will have to wait until man
has come into control of his stomach, and is able to bring his ingenuity
to bear upon its deficiencies. Then, and not till then, you will have
the Altruistic Man. Until then the egoistic man will continue to eat his
brother, and more or less indigest him--if there is such a verb.”

Ray listened with one ear to them. The other was filled with the soft
murmur of women’s voices from the further end of the little apartment;
they broke now and then from a steady flow of talk, and rippled into
laughter, and then smoothed themselves to talk again. He longed to know
what they were talking about, laughing about.

“No, David,” Kane went on, “when you take man out of the clutches of
Nature, and put Nature in the keeping of man, we shall have the
millennium. I have nothing to say against the millennium, _per se_,
except that it never seems to have been on time. I am willing to excuse
its want of punctuality; there may have always been unavoidable delays;
but you can’t expect me to have as much faith in it as if it had never
disappointed people. Now with you I admit it’s different. You’ve seen it
come a great many times, and go even oftener.”

“Young man!” the other called so abruptly to Ray that it made him start
in his chair, “I wish you would step out into the room yonder, and ask
one of my daughters to bring me my whiskey and milk. It’s time for it,”
and he put down a watch which he had taken from the table beside him.

He nodded toward a sort of curtained corridor at one side of the room,
and after a glance of question at Kane, who answered with a reassuring
smile, Ray went out through this passage. The voices had suddently
fallen silent, but he found their owners in the little room beyond; they
were standing before their chairs as if they had jumped to their feet in
a feminine dismay which they had quelled. In one he made out the young
Mrs. Denton, whose silhouette had received him and Kane; the other
looked like her, but younger, and in the two Ray recognized the heroines
of the pocket-book affair on the train.

He trembled a little inwardly, but he said, with a bow for both: “I beg
your pardon. Your father wished me to ask you for his”--

He faltered at the queerness of it all, but the younger said, simply and
gravely: “Oh, yes, I’ll take it in. I’ve got it ready here,” and she
took up a tumbler from the hearth of the cooking-stove keeping itself
comfortable at one side of a little kitchen beyond the room where they
were, and went out with it.

Ray did not know exactly what to do, or rather how he should do what he
wished. He hesitated, and looked at Mrs. Denton, who said, “Won’t you
sit down--if it isn’t too hot here?”




XV.


“Oh, it isn’t at all hot,” said Ray, and in fact the air was blowing
freely in through the plants at the open window. Then he sat down, as if
to prove that it was not too hot; there was no other reason that he
could have given for staying, instead of going back to Kane and her
father.

“We can keep the windows open on this side,” said Mrs. Denton, “but the
elevated makes too much noise in front. When we came here first, it was
warm weather; it was stifling when we shut the windows, and when we
opened them, it seemed as if the trains would drive us wild. It was like
having them in the same room with us. But now it’s a little cooler, and
we don’t need the front windows open; so it’s very pleasant.”

Ray said it was delightful, and he asked, “Then you haven’t been in New
York long?”

“No; only since the beginning of September. We thought we would settle
in New Jersey first, and we did take a house there, in the country; but
it was too far from my husband’s work, and so we moved in. Father wants
to meet people; he’s more in the current here.”

As she talked, Mrs. Denton had a way of looking down at her apron, and
smoothing it across her knees with one hand, and now and then glancing
at Ray out of the corner of her eye, as if she were smiling on the
further side of her face.

“We went out there a little while ago to sell off the things we didn’t
want to keep. The neighbors took them.” She began to laugh, and Ray
laughed, too, when she said, “We found they had taken _some_ of them
before we got there. They might as well have taken all, they paid us so
little for the rest. I didn’t suppose there would be such a difference
between first-hand and second-hand things. But it was the first time we
had ever set up housekeeping for ourselves, and we had to make mistakes.
We had always lived in a community.”

She looked at him for the impression of this fact, and Ray merely said,
“Yes; Mr. Kane told me something of the kind.”

“It’s all very different in the world. I don’t know whether you’ve ever
been in a community?”

“No,” said Ray.

“Well,” she went on, “we’ve had to get used to all sorts of things since
we came out into the world. The very day we left the community, I heard
some people in the seat just in front of me, in the car, planning how
they should do something to get a living; it seemed ridiculous and
dreadful. It fairly frightened me.”

Ray was struck with the literary value of the fact. He said: “I suppose
it would be startling if we could any of us realize it for the first
time. But for most of us there never is any first time.”

Mrs. Denton said: “No, but in the community we never had to think how we
should get things to eat and wear, any more than how we should get air
to breathe. You know father believes that the world can be made like the
Family, in that, and everybody be sure of a living, if he is willing to
work.”

She glanced at Ray with another of her demure looks, which seemed
inquiries both as to his knowledge of the facts and his opinion of them.

“I didn’t know just what your father’s ideas were,” he said; and she
went on:

“Yes; he thinks all you’ve got to do is to have patience. But it seems
to me you’ve got to have money too, or you’ll starve to death before
your patience gives out.”

Mrs. Denton laughed, and Ray sat looking at her with a curious mixture
of liking and misgiving: he would have liked to laugh with her from the
poet in him, but his civic man could not approve of her
irresponsibility. In her quality of married woman, she was more
reprehensible than she would have been as a girl; as a girl, she might
well have been merely funny. Still, she was a woman, and her voice, if
it expressed an irresponsible nature, was sweet to hear. She seemed not
to dislike hearing it herself, and she let it run lightly on. “The
hardest thing for us, though, has been getting used to money, and the
care of it. It seems to be just as bad with a little as a great
deal--the care does; and you have to be thinking about it all the time;
we never had to think of it at all in the Family. Most of us never saw
it, or touched it; only the few that went out and sold and bought
things.”

“That’s very odd,” said Ray, trying the notion if it would not work
somewhere into literature; at the same time he felt the charm of this
pretty young woman, and wondered why her sister did not come back. He
heard her talking with Kane in the other room; now and then her voice,
gentle and clear and somewhat high, was lost in Kane’s laugh, or the
hoarse plunge of her father’s bass.

“Yes,” Mrs. Denton went on, “I think I feel it more than my husband or
my sister does; they just have to earn the money, but I have to take
care of it, and see how far I can make it go. It’s perfectly
distracting; and sometimes when I forget, and do something careless!”
She let an impressive silence follow, and Ray laughed.

“Yes, that’s an anxious time for us, even if we’re brought up with the
advantages of worldly experience.”

“Anxious!” Mrs. Denton repeated; and her tongue ran on. “Why, the day I
went out to New Jersey with my sister to settle up our ‘estate’ out
there, we each of us had a baby to carry--my children are twins, and we
couldn’t leave them here with father; it was bad enough to leave him!
and my husband was at work; and on the train coming home I forgot and
gave the twins my pocket-book to play with; and just then a kind old
gentleman put up the car window for me, and the first thing I knew they
threw it out into the water--we were crossing that piece of water before
you get to Jersey City. It had every cent of my money in it; and I was
so scared when they threw my pocket-book away--we always say _they_,
because they’re so much alike we never can remember which did a thing--I
was so scared that I didn’t know what I was doing, and I just screamed
out all about it.” Ray listened restively; he felt as if he were
eavesdropping; but he did not know quite how, or when, or whether, after
all, to tell her that he had witnessed the whole affair; he decided that
he had better not; and she went on: “My sister said it was just as if I
had begged of the whole carful; and I suppose it was. I don’t suppose
that a person who was more used to money would have given it to a baby
to play with.”

She stopped, and Ray suddenly changed his mind; he thought he ought not
to let her go on as if he knew nothing about it; that was hardly fair.

“The conductor,” he said, “appeared to think _any_ woman would have done
it.”

Mrs. Denton laughed out her delight. “It _was_ you, then. My sister was
sure it was, as soon as she saw you at Mr. Chapley’s.”

“At Mr. Chapley’s?”

“Yes; his store. That is where she works. You didn’t see her, but she
saw you,” said Mrs. Denton; and then Ray recalled that Mr. Brandreth had
sent to a Miss Hughes for the list of announcements she had given him.

“We saw you noticing us in the car, and we saw you talking with the
conductor. Did he say anything else about us?” she asked, significantly.

“I don’t know exactly what you mean,” Ray answered, a little
consciously, and coloring slightly.

“Why,” Mrs. Denton began; but she stopped at sight of her sister, who
came in with the empty tumbler in her hand, and set it down in the room
beyond. “Peace!” she called to her, and the girl came back reluctantly,
Ray fancied. He had remained standing since her reappearance, and Mrs.
Denton said, introducing them, “This is my sister, Mr. Ray;” and then
she cried out joyfully, “It _was_ Mr. Ray!” while he bowed ceremoniously
to the girl, who showed an embarrassment that Mrs. Denton did not share.
“The conductor told him that any woman would have given her baby her
pocket-book to play with; and so you see I wasn’t so very bad, after
all. But when one of these things happens to me, it seems as if the
world had come to an end; I can’t get over it. Then we had another
experience! One of the passengers that heard me say all our money was in
that pocket-book, gave the conductor a dollar for us, to pay our
car-fares home. We had to take it; we _couldn’t_ have carried the
children from the ferry all the way up here; but I never knew before
that charity hurt so. It was dreadful!”

A certain note made itself evident in her voice which Ray felt as an
appeal. “Why, I don’t think you need have considered it as charity. It
was what might have happened to any lady who had lost her purse.”

“It wasn’t like that,” Miss Hughes broke in. “It would have been offered
then so that it could be returned. We were to blame for not making the
conductor say who gave it. But we were so confused!”

“I think the giver was to blame for not sending his address with it. But
perhaps he was confused too,” said Ray.

“The conductor told us it was a lady,” said Mrs. Denton, with a sudden
glance upward at Ray.

They all broke into a laugh together, and the girl sprang up and went
into another room. She came back with a bank-note in her hand, which she
held out toward Ray.

He did not offer to take it. “I haven’t pleaded guilty yet.”

“No,” said Mrs. Denton; “but we know you did it. Peace always thought
you did; and now we’ve got you in our power, and you _must_ take it
back.”

“But you didn’t use it all. You gave a quarter to the old darkey who
whistled. You’re as bad as I am. You do charity, too.”

“No; he earned his quarter. You paid him something yourself,” said the
girl.

“He did whistle divinely,” Ray admitted. “How came you to think of
asking him to change your bill? I should have thought you’d have given
it all to him.”

They had a childlike joy in his railery, which they laughed simply out.
“We did want to,” Mrs. Denton said; “but we didn’t know how we could get
home.”

“I don’t see but that convicts me.” Ray put out his hand as if to take
the note, and then withdrew it. “I suppose I ought to take it,” he
began. “But if I did, I should just spend it on myself. And the fact is,
I had saved it on myself, or else, perhaps, I shouldn’t have given it to
the conductor for you.” He told them how he had economized on his
journey, and they laughed together at the picture he gave of his
satisfaction in his self-denial.

“Oh, I know that _good_ feeling!” said Mrs. Denton.

“Yes, but you can’t imagine how _superior_ I felt when I handed my
dollar over to the conductor. _Good_ is no name for it; and I’ve simply
gloated over my own merit ever since. Miss Hughes, you must keep that
dollar, and give it to somebody who needs it!”

This was not so novel as it seemed to Ray; but the sisters glanced at
each other as if struck with its originality.

Then the girl looked at him steadily out of her serene eyes a moment, as
if thinking what she had better do, while Mrs. Denton cooed her pleasure
in the situation.

“I knew just as _well_, when the conductor said it was a lady passenger
sent it! He said it like a sort of after-thought, you know; he turned
back to say it just after he left us.”

“Well, I will do that,” said the girl to Ray; and she carried the money
back to her room.

“Do sit down!” said Mrs. Denton to Ray when she came back. The community
of experience, and the wonder of the whole adventure, launched them
indefinitely forward towards intimacy in their acquaintance. “We were
awfully excited when my sister came home and said she had seen you at
Mr. Chapley’s.” Her sister did not deny it; but when Mrs. Denton added
the question, “Are you an author?” she protested--“Jenny!”

“I wish I were,” said Ray; “but I can’t say I am, yet. That depends upon
whether Mr. Chapley takes my book.”

He ventured to be so frank because he thought Miss Hughes probably knew
already that he had offered a manuscript; but if she knew, she made no
sign of knowing, and Mrs. Denton said:

“Mr. Chapley gives my sister all the books he publishes. Isn’t it
splendid? And he lets her bring home any of the books she wants to, out
of the store. Are you acquainted in his family?”

“No; I only know Mr. Brandreth, his son-in-law.”

“My sister says he’s very nice. Everybody likes Mr. Brandreth. Mr.
Chapley is an old friend of father’s. I should think his family would
come to see us, some of them. But they haven’t. Mr. Chapley comes ever
so much.”

Ray did not know what to say of a fact which Mrs. Denton did not suffer
to remain last in his mind. She went on, as if it immediately followed.

“We are reading Browning now. But my husband likes Shelley the best of
all. Which is your favorite poet?”

Ray smiled. “I suppose Shelley ought to be. I was named after him.” When
he had said this he thought it rather silly, and certainly superfluous.
So he added, “My father was a great reader of him when he was a young
man, and I got the benefit of his taste, if it’s a benefit.”

“Why, do you hate to be named Shelley?” Mrs. Denton asked.

“Oh, no; except as I should hate to be named Shakespeare; it suggests
comparisons.”

“Yes; but it’s a very pretty name.” As if it recalled him, she said, “My
husband was just going out with the twins when you came in with Mr.
Kane. He was taking them over to the Park. Do you like cats?” She leaned
over and lugged up into her lap a huge Maltese from the further side of
her. “My sister doesn’t because they eat sparrows.” She passed her hand
slowly down the cat’s smooth flank, which snapped electrically, while
the cat shut its eyes to a line of gray light.

“If your cat’s fond of sparrows, he ought to come and live with me,”
said Ray. “I’ve got a whole colony of them outside of my dormer-window.”

Mrs. Denton lifted the cat’s head and rubbed her cheek on it. “Oh, we’ve
got plenty of sparrows here, too. Where do you live? Down town? Mr. Kane
does.”

Ray gave a picturesque account of his foreign hotel; but he had an
impression that its strangeness was thrown away upon his hearers, who
seemed like children in their contact with the world; it was all so
strange that nothing was stranger than another to them. They thought
what he told them of life in Midland as queer as life in New York.

The talk went on without sequence or direction, broken with abrupt
questions and droll comments; and they laughed a good deal. They spoke
of poems and of dreams. Ray told of a fragment of a poem he had made in
a dream, and repeated it; they thought it was fine, or at least Mrs.
Denton said she did. Her sister did not talk much, but she listened, and
now and then she threw in a word. She sat against the light, and her
face was in shadow to Ray, and this deepened his sense of mystery in
her; her little head, so distinctly outlined, was beautiful. Her voice,
which was so delicate and thin, had a note of childish innocence in it.
Mrs. Denton cooed deep and low. She tried to make her sister talk more,
and tell this and that. The girl did not seem afraid or shy, but only
serious. Several times they got back to books, and at one of these times
it appeared that she knew of Ray’s manuscript, and that it was going
through the hands of the readers.

“And what is the name of your story?” Mrs. Denton asked, and before he
could tell her she said, “Oh, yes; I forgot,” and he knew that they must
have talked of it together. He wondered if Miss Hughes had read it.
“Talking of names,” Mrs. Denton went on, “I think my sister’s got the
queerest one: Peace. Isn’t it a curious name?”

“It’s a beautiful name,” said Ray. “The Spanish give it a great deal, I
believe.”

“Do they? It was a name that mother liked; but she had never heard of
it, although there were so many Faiths, Hopes, and Charities. She died
just a little while after Peace was born, and father gave her the name.”

Ray was too young to feel the latent pathos of the lightly treated fact.
“It’s a beautiful name,” he said again.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Denton, “and it’s so short you can’t _nick_ it. There
can’t be anything shorter than Peace, can there?”

“Truce,” Ray suggested, and this made them laugh.

The young girl rose and went to the window, and began looking over the
plants in the pots there. Ray made bold to go and join her.

“Are you fond of flowers?” she asked gently, and with a seriousness as
if she really expected him to say truly.

“I don’t know. I’ve never thought,” he answered, thinking how pretty she
was, now he had her face where he could see it fully. Her hair was of
the indefinite blonde tending to brown, which most people’s hair is of;
her sensitive face was cast in the American mould that gives us such a
high average of good looks in our women; her eyes were angelically
innocent. When she laughed, her lip caught on her upper teeth, and
clung there; one of the teeth was slightly broken; and both these little
facts fascinated Ray. She did not laugh so much as Mrs. Denton, whose
talk she let run on with a sufferance like that of an older person,
though she was the younger. She and Ray stood awhile there playing the
game of words in which youth hides itself from its kind, and which bears
no relation to what it is feeling. The charm of being in the presence of
a lovely and intelligent girl enfolded Ray like a caressing atmosphere,
and healed him of all the hurts of homesickness, of solitude. Their talk
was intensely personal, because youth is personal, and they were young;
they thought that it dealt with the different matters of taste they
touched on, but it really dealt with themselves, and not their
preferences in literature, in flowers, in cats, in dress, in country and
city. Ray was aware that they were discussing these things in a place
very different from the parlors where he used to enjoy young ladies’
society in Midland; it was all far from the Midland expectation of his
career in New York society. He recalled how, before the days of his
social splendor in Midland, he had often sat and watched his own mother
and sisters about their household work, which they did for themselves,
while they debated the hopes and projects of his future, or let their
hearts out in jest and laughter. Afterwards, he would not have liked to
have this known among the fashionable people in Midland, with whom he
wished to be so perfectly _comme il faut_.

From time to time Mrs. Denton dropped the cat out of her lap, and ran
out to pull the wire which operated the latch of the street door; and
then Ray heard her greeting some comer and showing him into the front
room, where presently he heard him greeting her father. At last there
was a sound below as of some one letting himself in with a latch-key,
and then came the noises of the perambulator wheels bumping from step to
step as it was pulled up. Mrs. Denton sat still, and kept on talking to
Ray, but her sister went out to help her husband; and reappeared with a
sleeping twin in her arms, and carried it into the room adjoining. The
husband, with his pale face flushed from his struggle with the
perambulator, came in with the other, and when he emerged from the next
room again, Mrs. Denton introduced him to Ray.

“Oh, yes,” he said; “I saw you with Mr. Kane.” He sat down a moment at
the other window, and put his bare head out for the air. “It has grown
warm,” he said.

“Was the Park very full?” his wife asked.

“Crowded. It’s one of their last chances for the year.”

“I suppose it made you homesick.”

“Horribly,” said the husband, with his head still half out of the
window. He took it in, and listened with the tolerance of a husband
while she explained him to Ray.

“My husband’s so homesick for the old Family place--it _was_ a pretty
place!--that he almost dies when he goes into the Park; it brings it all
back so. Are you homesick, too, Mr. Ray?”

“Well, not exactly for the country,” said Ray. “I’ve been homesick for
the place I came from--for Midland, that is.”

“Midland?” Denton repeated. “I’ve been there. I think those small cities
are more deadly than New York. They’re still trying to get rid of the
country, and New York is trying to get some of it back. If I had my way,
there wouldn’t be a city, big or little, on the whole continent.” He did
not wait for any reply from Ray, but he asked his wife, “Who’s come?”

She mentioned a number of names, ten or twelve, and he said, “We’d
better go in,” and without further parley he turned toward the curtained
avenue to the front room.




XVI.


In the front room the little assemblage had the effect of some small
religious sect. The people were plainly dressed in a sort of keeping
with their serious faces; there was one girl who had no sign of a ribbon
or lace about her, and looked like a rather athletic boy in her short
hair and black felt hat, and her jacket buttoned to her throat. She sat
with her hands in the side pockets of her coat, and her feet pushed out
beyond the hem of her skirt. There were several men of a foreign type,
with beards pointed and parted; an American, who looked like a
school-master, and whose mouth worked up into his cheek at one side with
a sort of mechanical smile when he talked, sat near a man who was so
bald as not to have even a spear of hair anywhere on his head. The rest
were people who took a color of oddity from these types; a second glance
showed them to be of the average humanity; and their dress and its
fashion showed them to be of simple condition. They were attired with a
Sunday consciousness and cleanliness, though one gentleman, whose coat
sleeves and seams were brilliant with long use, looked as if he would be
the better for a little benzining, where his moustache had dropped soup
and coffee on his waistcoat; he had prominent eyes, with a straining,
near-sighted look.

Kane sat among them with an air at once alert and aloof; his arms were
folded, and he glanced around from one to another with grave interest.
They were all listening, when Ray came in, to a young man who was
upholding the single-tax theory, with confidence and with eagerness, as
something which, in its operation, would release the individual energies
to free play and to real competition. Hughes broke in upon him:

“That is precisely what I object to in your theory. I don’t _want_ that
devil released. Competition is the Afreet that the forces of
civilization have bottled up after a desperate struggle, and he is
always making fine promises of what he will do for you if you will let
him out. The fact is he will do nothing but mischief, because that is
his nature. He is Beelzebub, he is Satan; in the Miltonic fable he
attempted to compete with the Almighty for the rule of heaven; and the
fallen angels have been taking the consequence ever since. Monopoly is
the only prosperity. Where competition is there can be finally nothing
but disaster and defeat for one side or another. That is self-evident.
Nothing succeeds till it begins to be a monopoly. This holds good from
the lowest to the highest endeavor--from the commercial to the æsthetic,
from the huckster to the artist. As long, for instance, as an author is
young and poor”--Ray felt, looking down, that the speaker’s eye turned
on him--“he must compete, and his work must be deformed by the struggle;
when it becomes known that he alone can do his kind of work, he
monopolizes and prospers in the full measure of his powers; and he
realizes his ideal unrestrictedly. Competition enslaves, monopoly
liberates. We must, therefore, have the greatest possible monopoly; one
that includes the whole people economically as they are now included
politically. Try to think of competition in the political administration
as we now have it in the industrial. It isn’t thinkable! Or, yes! They
do have it in those Eastern countries where the taxes are farmed to the
highest bidder, and the taxpayer’s life is ground out of him.”

“I think,” said the school-masterly-looking man, “we all feel this
instinctively. The trusts and the syndicates are doing our work for us
as rapidly as we could ask.”

A voice, with a German heaviness of accent, came from one of the
foreigners. “But they are not doing it for our sake, and they mean to
stop distinctly short of the whole-people trust. As far back as Louis
Napoleon’s rise we were expecting the growth of the corporate industries
to accomplish our purposes for us. But between the corporation and the
collectivity there is a gulf--a chasm that has never yet been passed.”

“We must bridge it!” cried Hughes.

A young man, with a clean-cut, English intonation, asked, “Why not fill
it up with capitalists?”

“No,” said Hughes, “our cause should recognize no class as enemies.”

“I don’t think it matters much to them whether we recognize them or not,
if we let them have their own w’y,” said the young man, whose cockney
origin betrayed itself in an occasional vowel and aspirate.

“We shall not let them have their own way unless it is the way of the
majority, too,” Hughes returned. “From my point of view they are simply
and purely a part of the movement, as entirely so as the proletariat.”

“The difficulty will be to get them to take your point of view,” the
young man suggested.

“It isn’t necessary they should,” Hughes answered, “though some of them
do already. Several of the best friends of our cause are capitalists;
and there are numbers of moneyed people who believe in the
nationalization of the telegraphs, railroads, and expresses.”

“Those are merely the first steps,” urged the young man, “which may lead
now’ere.”

“They are the first steps,” said Hughes, “and they are not to be taken
over the bodies of men. We must advance together as brothers, marching
abreast, to the music of our own heart-beats.”

“Good!” said Kane. Ray did not know whether he said it ironically or
not. It made the short-haired girl turn round and look at him where he
sat behind her.

“We, in Russia,” said another of the foreign-looking people, “have seen
the futility of violence. The only force that finally prevails is love;
and we must employ it with those that can feel it best--with the little
children. The adult world is hopeless; but with the next generation we
may do something--everything. The highest office is the teacher’s, but
we must become as little children if we would teach them, who are of
the kingdom of heaven. We must begin by learning of them.”

“It appears rather complicated,” said the young Englishman, gayly; and
Ray heard Kane choke off a laugh into a kind of snort.

“Christ said He came to call sinners to repentance,” said the man who
would have been the better for benzining. “He evidently thought there
was some hope of grown-up people if they would cease to do evil.”

“And several of the disciples were elderly men,” the short-haired girl
put in.

“Our Russian friend’s idea seems to be a version of our Indian policy,”
said Kane. “Good adults, dead adults.”

“No, no. You don’t understand, all of you,” the Russian began, but
Hughes interrupted him.

“How would you deal with the children?”

“In communities here, at the heart of the trouble, and also in the West,
where they could be easily made self-supporting.”

“I don’t believe in communities,” said Hughes. “If anything in the world
has thoroughly failed, it is communities. They have failed all the more
lamentably when they have succeeded financially, because that sort of
success comes from competition with the world outside. A community is an
aggrandized individual; it is the extension, of the egoistic motive to a
large family, which looks out for its own good against other families,
just as a small family does. I have had enough of communities. The
family we hope to found must include all men who are willing to work; it
must recognize no aliens except the drones, and the drones must not be
suffered to continue. They must either cease to exist by going to work,
or by starving to death. But this great family--the real human
family--must be no agglutinated structure, no mere federation of
trades-unions; it must be a natural growth from indigenous stocks, which
will gradually displace individual and corporate enterprises by pushing
its roots and its branches out wider and over them, till they have no
longer earth or air to live in. It will then slowly possess itself of
the whole field of production and distribution.”

“_Very_ slowly,” said the young Englishman; and he laughed.

The debate went on, and it seemed as if there were almost as many
opinions as there were people present. At times it interested Ray, at
times it bored him; but at all times he kept thinking that if he could
get those queer zealots into a book, they would be amusing material,
though he shuddered to find himself personally among them. Hughes
coughed painfully in the air thickened with many breaths, and the
windows had to be opened for him; then the rush of the elevated trains
filled the room, and the windows were shut again. After one of these
interludes, Ray was aware of Hughes appealing to some one in the same
tone in which he had asked him to go and send in his whiskey and milk;
he looked up, and saw that Hughes was appealing to him.

“Young man, have you nothing to say on all these questions? Is it
possible that you have not thought of them?”

Ray was so startled that for a moment he could not speak. Then he said,
hardily, but in the frank spirit of the discussion, “No, I have never
thought of them at all.”

“It is time you did,” said Hughes. “All other interests must yield to
them. We can have no true art, no real literature, no science worthy the
name, till the money-stamp of egoism is effaced from success, and it is
honored, not paid.”

The others turned and stared at Ray; old Kane arched his eyebrows at
him, and made rings of white round his eyes; he pursed his mouth as if
he would like to laugh. Ray saw Mrs. Denton put her hand on her mouth;
her husband glowered silently; her sister sat with downcast eyes.

Hughes went on: “I find it easier to forgive enmity than indifference;
he who is not for us is against us in the worst sense. Our cause has a
sacred claim upon all generous and enlightened spirits; they are
recreant if they neglect it. But we must be patient, even with
indifference; it is hard to bear, but we cannot fight it, and we must
bear it. Nothing has astonished me more, since my return to the world,
than to find the great mass of men living on, as when I left it, in
besotted indifference to the vital interests of the hour. I find the
politicians still talking of the tariff, just as they used to talk; low
tariff and cheap clothes for the working-man; high tariff and large
wages for the working-man. Whether we have high tariff or low, the
working-man always wins. But he does not seem to prosper. He is poor; he
is badly fed and housed; when he is out of work he starves in his den
till he is evicted with a ruthlessness unknown in the history of Irish
oppression. Neither party means to do anything for the working-man, and
he hasn’t risen himself yet to the conception of anything more
philosophical than more pay and fewer hours.”

A sad-faced man spoke from a corner of the room. “We must have time to
think, and something to eat to-day. We can’t wait till to-morrow.”

“That is true,” Hughes answered. “Many must perish by the way. But we
must have patience.”

His son-in-law spoke up, and his gloomy face darkened. “I have no heart
for patience. When I see people perishing by the way, I ask myself how
they shall be saved, not some other time, but now. Some one is guilty of
the wrong they suffer. How shall the sin be remitted?” His voice shook
with fanatical passion.

“We must have patience,” Hughes repeated. “We are all guilty.”

“It would be a good thing,” said the man with a German accent, “if the
low-tariff men would really cut off the duties. The high-tariff men
don’t put wages up because they have protection, but they would surely
put them down if they didn’t have it. Then you would see labor troubles
everywhere.”

“Yes,” said Hughes; “but such hopes as that would make me hate the
cause, if anything could. Evil that good may come? Never! Always good,
and good for evil, that the good may come more and more! We must have
the true America in the true American way, by reasons, by votes, by
laws, and not otherwise.”

The spirit which he rebuked had unlocked the passions of those around
him. Ray had a vision of them in the stormy dispute which followed, as
waves beating and dashing upon the old man; the head of the bald man was
like a buoy among the breakers, as it turned and bobbed about, in his
eagerness to follow all that was said.

Suddenly the impulses spent themselves, and a calm succeeded. One of the
men looked at his watch; they all rose one after another to go.

Hughes held them a little longer. “I don’t believe the good time is so
far off as we are apt to think in our indignation at wrong. It is coming
soon, and its mere approach will bring sensible relief. We must have
courage and patience.”

Ray and Kane went away together. Mrs. Denton looked at him with demure
question in her eyes when they parted; Peace imparted no feeling in her
still glance. Hughes took Ray’s little hand in his large, loose grasp,
and said:

“Come again, young man; come again!”




XVII.


“If ever I come again,” Ray vowed to himself, when he got into the
street, “I think I shall know it!” He abhorred all sorts of social
outlandishness; he had always wished to be conformed, without and
within, to the great world of smooth respectabilities. If for the
present he was willing to Bohemianize a little, it was in his quality of
author, and as part of a world-old tradition. To have been mixed up with
a lot of howling dervishes like those people was intolerable. He tingled
with a sense of personal injury from Hughes’s asking him to take part in
their discussion; and he was all the angrier because he could not resent
it, even to Kane, on account of that young girl, who could not let him
see that it distressed her, too; he felt bound to her by the tie of
favor done which he must not allow to become painful.

He knew, as they walked rapidly down the avenue, crazy with the trains
hurtling by over the jingling horse-cars and the clattering holiday
crowds, that old Kane was seeking out his with eyes brimming with
laughter, but he would not look at him, and he would not see any fun in
the affair. He would not speak, and he held his tongue the more
resolutely because he believed Kane meant to make him speak first.

He had his way; it was Kane who broke the silence, after they left the
avenue and struck into one of the cross-streets leading to the Park.
Piles of lumber and barrels of cement blocked two-thirds of its space,
in front of half-built houses, which yawned upon it from cavernous
depths. Boys were playing over the boards and barrels, and on the rocky
hill-side behind the houses, where a portable engine stood at Sunday
rest, and tall derricks rose and stretched their idle arms abroad. At
the top of the hill a row of brown-stone fronts looked serenely down
upon the havoc thrown up by the blasting, as if it were a quiet
pleasance.

“Amiable prospect, isn’t it?” said Kane. “It looks as if Hughes’s Afreet
has got out of his bottle, and had a good time here, holding on for a
rise, and then building on spec. But perhaps we oughtn’t to judge of it
at this stage, when everything is in transition. Think how beautiful it
will be when it is all solidly built up here as it is down-town!” He
passed his hand through Ray’s lax arm, and leaned affectionately toward
him as they walked on, after a little pause he made for this remark on
the scenery. “Well, my dear young friend, what do you think of my dear
old friend?”

“Of Mr. Hughes?” Ray asked; and he restrained himself in a pretended
question.

“Of Mr. Hughes, and of Mr. Hughes’s friends.”

Ray flashed out upon this. “I think his friends are a lot of cranks.”

“Yes; very good; very excellent good! They _are_ a lot of cranks. Are
they the first you have met in New York?”

“No; the place seems to be full of them.”

“Beginning with the elderly gentleman whom you met the first morning?”

“Beginning with the young man who met the elderly gentleman.”

Kane smiled with appreciation. “Well, we won’t be harsh on those two. We
won’t call _them_ cranks. They are philosophical observers, or inspired
dreamers, if you like. As I understand it, we are all dreamers. If we
like a man’s dream, we call him a prophet; if we don’t like his dream,
we call him a crank. Now, what is the matter with the dreams, severally
and collectively, of my dear old friend and his friends? Can you deny
that any one of their remedies, if taken faithfully according to the
directions blown on the bottle, would cure the world of all its woes
inside of six months?”

The question gave Ray a chance to vent his vexation impersonally. “What
is the matter with the world?” he burst out. “I don’t see that the world
is so very sick. Why isn’t it going on very well? I don’t understand
what this talk is all about. I don’t see what those people have got to
complain of. All any one can ask is a fair chance to show how much his
work is worth, and let the best man win. What’s the trouble? Where’s the
wrong?”

“Ah,” said Kane, “what a pity you didn’t set forth those ideas when
Hughes called upon you!”

“And have all that crew jump on me? Thank you!” said Ray.

“You would call them a crew, then? Perhaps they were a crew,” said Kane.
“I don’t know why a reformer should be so grotesque; but he is, and he
is always the easy prey of caricature. I couldn’t help feeling to-day
how very like the burlesque reformers the real reformers are. And they
are always the same, from generation to generation. For all outward
difference, those men and brethren of both sexes at poor David’s were
very like a group of old-time abolitionists conscientiously qualifying
themselves for tar and feathers. Perhaps you don’t like being spoken to
in meeting?”

“No, I don’t,” said Ray, bluntly.

“I fancied a certain reluctance in you at the time, but I don’t think
poor David meant any harm. He preaches patience, but I think he secretly
feels that he’s got to hurry, if he’s going to have the kingdom of
heaven on earth in his time; and he wants every one to lend a hand.”

For the reason, or from the instinct, that forbade Ray to let out his
wrath directly against Hughes, he now concealed his pity. He asked
stiffly: “Couldn’t he be got into some better place? Where he wouldn’t
be stunned when he tried to keep from suffocating?”

“No, I don’t know that he could,” said Kane, with a pensive singleness
rare in him. “Any help of that kind would mean dependence, and David
Hughes is proud.”

They had passed through lofty ranks of flats, and they now came to the
viaduct carrying the northern railways; one of its noble arches opened
before them like a city gate, and the viaduct in its massy extent was
like a wall that had stood a hundred sieges. Beyond they found open
fields, with the old farm fences of stone still enclosing them, but with
the cellars of city blocks dug out of the lots. In one place there was a
spread of low sheds, neighbored by towering apartment-houses; some old
cart-horses were cropping the belated grass; and comfortable companies
of hens and groups of turkeys were picking about the stableyard; a
shambling cottage fronted on the avenue next the park, and drooped
behind its dusty, leafless vines.

“He might be got into that,” said Kane, whimsically, “at no increase of
rent, and at much increase of comfort and quiet--at least till the
Afreet began to get in his work.”

“Wouldn’t it be rather too much like that eremitism which he’s so down
on?” asked Ray, with a persistence in his effect of indifference.

“Perhaps it would, perhaps it would,” Kane consented, as they struck
across into the Park. The grass was still very green, though here and
there a little sallow; the leaves, which had dropped from the trees in
the October rains, had lost their fire, and lay dull and brown in the
little hollows and at the edges of the paths and the bases of the rocks;
the oaks kept theirs, but in death; on some of the ash-trees and lindens
the leaves hung in a pale reminiscence of their summer green.

“I understood the son-in-law to want a hermitage somewhere--a
co-operative hermitage, I suppose,” Ray went on. He did not feel bound
to spare the son-in-law, and he put contempt into his tone.

“Ah, yes,” said Kane. “What did you make of the son-in-law?”

“I don’t know. He’s a gloomy sprite. What is he, anyway? His wife spoke
of his work.”

“Why, it’s rather a romantic story, I believe,” said Kane. “He was a
young fellow who stopped at the community on his way to a place where he
was going to find work; he’s a wood-engraver. I believe he’s always had
the notion that the world was out of kilter, and it seems that he wasn’t
very well himself when he looked in on the Family to see what they were
doing to help it. He fell sick on their hands, and the Hugheses took
care of him. Naturally, he married one of them when he got well enough,
and naturally he married the wrong one.”

“Why the wrong one?” demanded Ray, with an obscure discomfort.

“Well, I don’t know! But if it isn’t evident to you that Mrs. Denton is
hardly fitted to be the guide, philosopher, and friend of such a man”--

Ray would not pursue this branch of the inquiry. “_His_ notion of what
the world wanted was to have its cities eliminated. Then he thought it
would be all serene.”

“Ah, that wouldn’t do,” said Kane. “Cities are a vice, but they are
essential to us now. We could not live without them; perhaps we are to
be saved by them. But it is well to return to Nature from time to
time.”

“I thought I heard you saying some rather disparaging things of Nature a
little while ago,” said Ray, with a remaining grudge against Kane, and
with a young man’s willingness to convict his elder of any
inconsistency, serious or unserious.

“Oh, primeval Nature, yes. But I have nothing but praise for this
kind--the kind that man controls and guides. It is outlaw Nature that I
object to, the savage survival from chaos, the mother of earthquakes and
cyclones, blizzards and untimely frosts, inundations and indigestions.
But ordered Nature--the Nature of the rolling year; night and day, and
seedtime and harvest”--

“The seasons,” Ray broke in scornfully, from the resentment still
souring in his soul, “turn themselves upside down and wrong end to,
about as often as financial panics occur, and the farmer that has to
rely on them is as apt to get left as the husbandman that sows and reaps
in Wall Street.”

“Ah!” sighed Kane. “That was well said. I wish I had thought of it for
my second series of _Hard Sayings_.”

“Oh, you’re welcome to it!”

“Are you so rich in paradoxes? But I will contrive to credit it somehow
to the gifted author of _A New Romeo_. Is that what you call it?”

Ray blushed and laughed, and Kane continued:

“It’s a little beyond the fact, but it’s on the lines of truth. I don’t
justify Nature altogether. She is not free from certain little foibles,
caprices; perhaps that’s why we call her _she_. But I don’t think that,
with all her faults, she’s quite so bad as Business. In that we seem to
have gone to Nature for her defects. Why copy her weakness and bad
faith? Why not study her steadfastness, her orderliness, her obedience,
in laying the bases of civilization? We don’t go to her for the
justification of murder, incest, robbery, gluttony, though you can find
them all in her. We have our little prejudice against these things, and
we seem to derive it from somewhere outside of what we call Nature. Why
not go to that Somewhere for the law of economic life? But come,” Kane
broke off, gayly, “let us babble of green fields; as for God, God, I
hope we have no need to think of such things yet. Please Heaven, our
noses are not as sharp as pens, by a long way. I don’t wonder you find
it a beautiful and beneficent world, in spite of our friends yonder, who
want to make it prettier and better, in their way.” Kane put his arm
across Ray’s shoulder, and pulled him affectionately towards him. “Are
you vexed with me for having introduced you to those people? I have been
imagining something of the kind.”

“Oh, no”--Ray began.

“I didn’t really mean to stay for Hughes’s conventicle,” said Kane.
“Chapley was wise, and went in time, before he could feel the wild charm
of those visionaries; it was too much for me; when they began to come, I
_couldn’t_ go. I forgot how repugnant the golden age has always been to
the heart of youth, which likes the nineteenth century much better. The
fact is, I forgot that I had brought you till it was too late to take
you away.”

He laughed, and Ray, more reluctantly, laughed with him.

“I have often wondered,” he went on, “how it is we lose the youthful
point of view. We have it some night, and the next morning we haven’t
it; and we can hardly remember what it was. I don’t suppose you could
tell me what the youthful point of view of the present day is, though I
should recognize that of forty years ago. I”--

He broke off to look at a party of horsemen pelting by on the stretch of
the smooth hard road, and dashing into a bridle-path beyond. They were
heavy young fellows, mounted on perfectly groomed trotters, whose round
haunches trembled and dimpled with their hard pace.

“Perhaps _that_ is the youthful point of view now: the healthy, the
wealthy, the physically strong, the materially rich. Well, I think ours
was better; pallid and poor in person and in purse as we imagined the
condition of the ideal man to be. There is something,” said Kane, “a
little more expressive of the insolence of money in one of those brutes
than in the most glittering carriage and pair. I think if I had in me
the material for really hating a fellow-man, I should apply it to the
detestation of the rider of one of those animals. But I haven’t. I am
not in prospective need even, and I am at the moment no hungrier than a
gentleman ought to be who is going to lunch with a lady in the Mandan
Flats. By-the-way! Why shouldn’t you come with me? They would be
delighted to see you. A brilliant young widow, with a pretty
step-daughter, is not to be lunched with every day, and I can answer for
your welcome.”

Ray freed himself. “I’m sorry I can’t go. But I can’t. You must excuse
me; I really couldn’t; I am very much obliged to you. But”--

“You don’t trust me!”

“Oh, yes, I do. But I don’t feel quite up to meeting people just now;
I’ll push on down town. I’m rather tired. Good-by.”

Kane held his hand between both his palms. “I wonder what the real
reason is! Is it grudge, or pride, or youth?”

“Neither,” said Ray. “It’s--clothes. My boots are muddy, and I’ve got on
my second-best trousers.”

“Ah, now you are frank with me, and you give me a real reason. Perhaps
you are right. I dare say I should have thought so once.”




XVIII.


Ray did not go to deliver any of his letters that afternoon; he decided
now that it would be out of taste to do so on Sunday, as he had already
doubted that it would be, in the morning. He passed the afternoon in his
room, trying from time to time to reduce the turmoil of his reveries to
intelligible terms in verse, and in poetic prose. He did nothing with
them; in the end, though, he was aware of a new ideal, and he resolved
that if he could get his story back from Chapley & Co., he would rewrite
the passages that characterized the heroine, and make it less like the
every-day, simple prettiness of his first love. He had always known that
this did not suit the character he had imagined; he now saw that it
required a more complex and mystical charm. But he did not allow himself
to formulate these volitions and perceptions, any more than his
conviction that he had now a double reason for keeping away from Mr.
Brandreth and from Miss Hughes. He spent the week in an ecstasy of
forbearance. On Saturday afternoon he feigned the necessity of going to
ask Mr. Brandreth how he thought a novel in verse, treating a strictly
American subject in a fantastic way, would succeed. He really wished to
learn something without seeming to wish it, about his manuscript, but
he called so late in the afternoon that he found Mr. Brandreth putting
his desk in order just before starting home. He professed a great
pleasure at sight of Ray, and said he wished he would come part of the
way home with him; he wanted to have a little talk.

As if the word home had roused the latent forces of hospitality in him,
he added, “I want to have you up at my place, some day, as soon as we
can get turned round. Mrs. Brandreth is doing first-rate, now; and that
boy--well, sir, he’s a perfect Titan. I wish you could see him
undressed. He’s just like the figure of the infant Hercules strangling
the serpent when he grips the nurse’s finger. I know it sounds
ridiculous, but I believe that fellow recognizes me, and distinguishes
between me and his mother. I suppose it’s my hat--I come in with my hat
on, you know, just to try him; and when he catches sight of that hat,
you ought to see his arms go!”

The paternal rhapsodies continued a long time after they were in the
street, and Ray got no chance to bring in either his real or pretended
business. He listened with mechanical smiles and hollow laughter, alert
at the same time for the slightest vantage which Mr. Brandreth should
give him. But the publisher said of his own motion:

“Oh, by-the-way, you’ll be interested to know that our readers’ reports
on your story are in.”

“Are they?” Ray gasped. He could not get out any more.

Mr. Brandreth went on: “I didn’t examine the reports very attentively
myself, but I think they were favorable, on the whole. There were
several changes suggested: I don’t recall just what. But you can see
them all on Monday. We let Miss Hughes go after lunch on Saturdays, and
she generally takes some work home with her, and I gave them to her to
put in shape for you. I thought it would be rather instructive for you
to see the different opinions in the right form. I believe you can’t
have too much method in these things.”

“Of course,” said Ray, in an anguish of hope and fear. The street seemed
to go round; he hardly knew where he was. He bungled on inarticulately
before he could say: “I believe in method, too. But I’m sorry I couldn’t
have had the reports to-day, because I might have had Sunday to think
the suggestions over, and see what I could do with them.”

“Well, I’m sorry, too. She hadn’t been gone half an hour when you came
in. If I’d thought of your happening in! Well, it isn’t very long till
Monday! She’ll have them ready by that time. I make it a rule myself to
put all business out of my mind from 2 P.M. on Saturday till Monday 9
A.M., and I think you’ll find it an advantage, too. I won’t do business,
and I won’t talk business, and I won’t think business after two o’clock
on Saturday. I believe in making Sunday a day of rest and family
enjoyment. We have an early dinner; and then I like to have my wife read
or play to me, and now we have in the baby, and that amuses us.”

Ray forced himself to say that as a rule he did not believe in working
on Sunday either; he usually wrote letters. He abruptly asked Mr.
Brandreth how he thought it would do for him to go and ask Miss Hughes
for a sight of the readers’ reports in the rough.

Mr. Brandreth laughed. “You _are_ anxious! Do you know where she lives?”

“Oh, yes; I stopped there last Sunday with Mr. Kane on our way to the
Park. I saw Mr. Chapley there.”

“Oh!” said Mr. Brandreth, with the effect of being arrested by the last
fact in something he might otherwise have said. It seemed to make him
rather unhappy. “Then you saw Miss Hughes’s father?”

“Yes; and all his friends,” Ray answered, in a way that evidently
encouraged Mr. Brandreth to go on.

“Yes? What did you think of them?”

“I thought they were mostly harmless; but one or two of them ought to
have been in the violent wards.”

“Did Mr. Chapley meet them?”

“Oh, no; he went away before any of them came in. As Mr. Kane took me, I
had to stay with him.”

Mr. Brandreth got back a good deal of his smiling complacency, which had
left him at Ray’s mention of Mr. Chapley in connection with Hughes. “Mr.
Chapley and Mr. Hughes are old friends.”

“Yes; I understood something of that kind.”

“They date back to the Brook Farm days together.”

“Mr. Hughes is rather too much of the Hollingsworth type for my use,”
said Ray. He wished Mr. Brandreth to understand that he had no sympathy
with Hughes’s wild-cat philosophy, both because he had none, and because
he believed it would be to his interest with Mr. Brandreth to have none.

“I’ve never seen him,” said Mr. Brandreth. “I like Mr. Chapley’s loyalty
to his friends--it’s one of his fine traits; but I don’t see any
necessity for my taking them up. He goes there every Sunday morning to
see Mr. Hughes, and they talk--political economy together. You knew Mr.
Chapley has been a good deal interested in this altruistic agitation.”

“No, I didn’t,” said Ray.

“Yes. You can’t very well keep clear of it altogether. I was mixed up in
it myself at one time: our summer place is on the outskirts of a
manufacturing town in Massachusetts, and we had our _Romeo and Juliet_
for the benefit of a social union for the work-people; we made over two
hundred dollars for them. Mr. Chapley was a George man in ’86. Not that
he agreed with the George men exactly; but he thought there ought to be
some expression against the way things are going. You know a good many
of the nicest kind of people went the same way at that time. I don’t
object to that kind of thing as long as it isn’t carried too far. Mr.
Chapley used to see a good deal of an odd stick of a minister at our
summer place that had got some of the new ideas in a pretty crooked kind
of shape; and then he’s read Tolstoï a good deal, and he’s been
influenced by him. I think Hughes is a sort of safety valve for Mr.
Chapley, and that’s what I tell the family. Mr. Chapley isn’t a fool,
and he’s always had as good an eye for the main chance as anybody.
That’s all.”

Ray divined that Mr. Brandreth would not have entered into this
explanation of his senior partner and father-in-law, except to guard
against the injurious inferences which he might draw from having met Mr.
Chapley at Hughes’s, but he did not let his guess appear in his words.
“I don’t wonder he likes Mr. Hughes,” he said. “He’s fine, and he seems
a light of sanity and reason among the jack-a-lanterns he gathers round
him. He isn’t at all Tolstoïan.”

“He’s a gentleman, born and bred,” said Mr. Brandreth, “and he was a
rich man for the days before he began his communistic career. And Miss
Hughes is a perfect lady. She’s a cultivated girl, too, and she reads a
great deal. I’d rather have her opinion about a new book than half the
critics’ I know of, because I know I could get it honest, and I know it
would be intelligent. Well, if you’re going up there, you’ll want to be
getting across to the avenue to take the elevated.” He added, “I don’t
mean to give you the impression that we’ve made up our minds about your
book, yet. We haven’t. A book is a commercial venture as well as a
literary venture, and we’ve got to have a pow-wow about that side of it
before we come to any sort of conclusion. You understand?”

“Oh, yes, I understand that,” said Ray, “and I’ll try not to be
unreasonably hopeful,” but at the same moment his heart leaped with
hope.

“Well, that’s right,” said Mr. Brandreth, taking his hand for parting.
He held it, and then he said, with a sort of desperate impulse,
“By-the-way, why not come home with me, now, and take dinner with us?”




XIX.


Ray’s heart sank. He was so anxious to get at those opinions; and yet he
did not like to refuse Mr. Brandreth; a little thing might prejudice the
case; he ought to make all the favor at court that he could for his
book. “I--I’m afraid it mightn’t be convenient--at such a time--for Mrs.
Brandreth”--

“Oh, yes it would,” said Mr. Brandreth in the same desperate note. “Come
along. I don’t know that Mrs. Brandreth will be able to see you, but I
want you to see my boy; and we can have a bachelor bite together,
anyway.”

Ray yielded, and the stories of the baby began again when he moved on
with Mr. Brandreth. It was agony for him to wrench his mind from his
story, which he kept turning over and over in it, trying to imagine what
the readers had differed about, and listen to Mr. Brandreth saying,
“Yes, sir, I believe that child knows his grandmother and his nurse
apart, as well as he knows his mother and me. He’s got his likes and his
dislikes already: he cries whenever his grandmother takes him.
By-the-way, you’ll see Mrs. Chapley at dinner, I hope. She’s spending
the day with us.”

“Oh, I’m very glad,” said Ray, wondering if the readers objected to his
introduction of hypnotism.

“She’s a woman of the greatest character,” said Mr. Brandreth, “but she
has some old-fashioned notions about children. I want my boy to be
trained as a boy from the very start. I think there’s nothing like a
manly man, unless it’s a womanly woman. I hate anything masculine about
a girl; a girl ought to be yielding and gentle; but I want my boy to be
self-reliant from the word Go. I believe in a man’s being master in his
own house; his will ought to be law, and that’s the way I shall bring up
my boy. Mrs. Chapley thinks there ought always to be a light in the
nurse’s room, but I don’t. I want my boy to get used to the dark, and
not be afraid of it, and I shall begin just as soon as I can, without
seeming arbitrary. Mrs. Chapley is the best soul in the world, and of
course I don’t like to differ with her.”

“Of course,” said Ray. The mention of relationship made him think of the
cousin in his story; if he had not had the cousin killed, he thought it
would have been better; there was too much bloodshed in the story.

They turned into a cross-street from Lexington Avenue, where they had
been walking, and stopped at a pretty little apartment-house, which had
its door painted black and a wide brass plate enclosing its key-hole,
and wore that air of standing aloof from its neighbors peculiar to
private houses with black doors and brass plates.

Mr. Brandreth let himself in with a key. “There are only three families
in our house, and it’s like having a house of our own. It’s so much
easier living in a flat for your wife, that I put my foot down, and
wouldn’t hear of a separate house.”

They mounted the carpeted stairs through the twilight that prevails in
such entries, and a sound of flying steps was heard within the door
where Mr. Brandreth applied his latch-key again, and as he flung it open
a long wail burst upon the ear.

“Hear that?” he asked, with a rapturous smile, as he turned to Ray for
sympathy; and then he called gayly out in the direction that the wail
came from; “Oh, hello, hello, hello! What’s the matter, what’s the
matter? You sit down here,” he said to Ray, leading the way forward into
a pretty drawing-room. He caught something away from before the fire.
“Confound that nurse! She’s always coming in here in spite of
everything. I’ll be with you in a moment. Heigh! What ails the little
man?” he called out, and disappeared down the long narrow corridor, and
he was gone a good while.

At moments Ray caught the sound of voices in hushed, but vehement
dispute; a door slammed violently; there were murmurs of expostulation.
At last Mr. Brandreth reappeared with his baby in his arms, and its
nurse at his heels, twitching the infant’s long robe into place.

“What do you think of that?” demanded the father, and Ray got to his
feet and came near, so as to be able to see if he could think anything.

By an inspiration he was able to say, “Well, he _is_ a great fellow!”
and this apparently gave Mr. Brandreth perfect satisfaction. His son’s
downy little oblong skull wagged feebly on his weak neck, his arms waved
vaguely before his face.

“Now give him your finger, and see if he won’t do the infant Hercules
act.”

Ray promptly assumed the part of the serpent, but the infant Hercules
would not open his tightly-clinched, wandering fist.

“Try the other one,” said his father; and Ray tried the other one with
no more effect. “Well, he isn’t in the humor; he’ll do it for you some
time. All right, little man!” He gave the baby, which had acquitted
itself with so much distinction, back into the arms of its nurse, and it
was taken away.

“Sit down, sit down!” he said, cheerily. “Mrs. Chapley will be in
directly. It’s astonishing,” he said, with a twist of his head in the
direction the baby had been taken, “but I believe those little things
have their moods just like any of us. That fellow knows as well as you
do, when he’s wanted to show off, and if he isn’t quite in the key for
it, he won’t do it. I wish I had tried him with my hat, and let you see
how he notices.”

Mr. Brandreth went on with anecdotes, theories, and moral reflections
relating to the baby, and Ray answered with praiseful murmurs and
perfunctory cries of wonder. He was rescued from a situation which he
found more and more difficult by the advent of Mrs. Chapley, and not of
Mrs. Chapley alone, but of Mrs. Brandreth. She greeted Ray with a
certain severity, which he instinctively divined was not so much for him
as for her husband. A like quality imparted itself, but not so
authoritatively, from her mother; if Mr. Brandreth was not master in his
house, at least his mother-in-law was not. Mrs. Brandreth went about the
room and made some housekeeperly rearrangements of its furniture, which
had the result of reducing it, as it were, to discipline. Then she sat
down, and Ray, whom she waited to have speak first, had a feeling that
she was sitting in judgment on him, and the wish, if possible, to
justify himself. He began to praise the baby, its beauty, and great
size, and the likeness he professed to find in it to its father.

Mrs. Brandreth relented slightly. She said, with magnanimous
impartiality, “It’s a very _healthy_ child.”

Her mother made the reservation, “But even healthy children are a great
care,” and sighed.

The daughter must have found this intrusive. “Oh, I don’t know that
Percy is any great care as yet, mamma.”

“He pays his way,” Mr. Brandreth suggested, with a radiant smile. “At
least,” he corrected himself, “we shouldn’t know what to do without
him.”

His wife said, drily, as if the remark were in bad taste, “It’s hardly a
question of that, I think. Have you been long in New York, Mr. Ray?” she
asked, with an abrupt turn to him.

“Only a few weeks,” Ray answered, inwardly wondering how he could render
the fact propitiatory.

“Everything is very curious and interesting to me as a country person,”
he added, deciding to make this sacrifice of himself.

It evidently availed somewhat. “But you don’t mean that you are really
from the country?” Mrs. Brandreth asked.

“I’m from Midland; and I suppose that’s the country, compared with New
York.”

Mrs. Chapley asked him if he knew the Mayquayts there. He tried to think
of some people of that name; in the meantime she recollected that the
Mayquayts were from Gitchigumee, Michigan. They talked some
irrelevancies, and then she said, “Mr. Brandreth tells me you have _met_
my husband,” as if they had been talking of him.

“Yes; I had that pleasure even before I met Mr. Brandreth,” said Ray.

“And you know Mr. Kane?”

“Oh, yes. He was the first acquaintance I made in New York.”

“Mr. Brandreth told me.” Mrs. Chapley made a show of laughing at the
notion of Kane, as a harmless eccentric, and she had the effect of
extending her kindly derision to Hughes, in saying, “And you’ve been
taken to sit at the feet of his prophet already, Mr. Brandreth tells me;
that strange Mr. Hughes.”

“I shouldn’t have said he was Mr. Kane’s prophet exactly,” said Ray with
a smile of sympathy. “Mr. Kane doesn’t seem to need a prophet; but I’ve
certainly seen Mr. Hughes. And heard him, for that matter.” He smiled,
recollecting his dismay when he heard Hughes calling upon him in
meeting. He had a notion to describe his experience, and she gave him
the chance.

“Yes?” she said, with veiled anxiety. “Do tell me about him!”

At the end of Ray’s willing compliance, she drew a deep breath, and
said, “Then he is _not_ a follower of Tolstoï?”

“Quite the contrary, I should say.”

Mrs. Chapley laughed more easily. “I didn’t know but he made shoes that
nobody could wear. I couldn’t imagine what other attraction he could
have for my husband. I believe he would really like to go into the
country and work in the fields.” Mrs. Chapley laughed away a latent
anxiety, apparently, in making this joke about her husband, and seemed
to feel much better acquainted with Ray. “How are they living over
there? What sort of family has Mr. Hughes? I mean, besides the daughter
we know of?”

Ray told, as well as he could, and he said they were living in an
apartment.

“Oh!” said Mrs. Chapley, “I fancied a sort of tenement.”

“By-the-way,” said Mr. Brandreth, “wouldn’t you like to see our
apartment, Mr. Ray”--his wife quelled him with a glance, and he
added,--“some time?”

Ray said he should, very much.

Mrs. Brandreth, like her mother, had been growing more and more
clement, and now she said, “Won’t you stay and take a family dinner with
us, Mr. Ray?”

Ray looked at her husband, and saw that he had not told her of the
invitation he had already given. He did not do so now, and Ray rose and
seized his opportunity. He thanked Mrs. Brandreth very earnestly, and
said he was so sorry he had an appointment to keep, and he got himself
away at once.

Mrs. Chapley hospitably claimed him for her Thursdays, at parting; and
Mrs. Brandreth said he must let Mr. Brandreth bring him some other day;
they would always be glad to see him.

Mr. Brandreth went down to the outer door with him, to make sure that he
found the way, and said, “Then you _will_ come some time?” and
gratefully wrung his hand. “I saw how anxious you were about those
opinions!”




XX.


With an impatience whose intensity he began to feel as soon as he
permitted himself to indulge it, Ray hurried across to the line of the
elevated road. Now he perceived how intolerable it would be to have
staid to dinner with the Brandreths. He did not resent the failure of
Mr. Brandreth to tell his wife that he had already asked him when she
asked him again; he did not even care to know what his reasons or
exigencies were; the second invitation had been a chance to get away.
From time to time while Mr. Brandreth was showing him the baby, and then
while Mrs. Chapley was setting her mind at rest about her husband by her
researches into the philosophy and character of Hughes, he had
superficially forgotten that the readers’ opinions of his story were in,
while his nether thought writhed in anguish around the question of what
their opinions were. When at moments this fully penetrated his
consciousness, it was like a sort of vertigo, and he was light-headed
with it now as he walked, or almost ran, away from Mr. Brandreth’s door.
He meant to see Miss Hughes, and beg for a sight of the criticisms;
perhaps she might say something that would save him from the worst, if
they were very bad. He imagined a perfect interview, in which he met no
one but her.

It was Mrs. Denton who stood at the head of the stairs to receive him
when the door promptly opened to his ring; she explained that her
husband had put the lock in order since she last admitted him. Ray
managed to say that he wished merely to see her sister for a moment, and
why, and she said that Peace had gone out, but would be at home again
very soon. She said her father would be glad to have him sit down with
him till Peace came back.

Ray submitted. He found the old man coughing beside the front window,
that looked out on the lines of the railroad, and the ugly avenue
beneath.

Hughes knew him at once, and called to him: “Well, young man! I am glad
to see you! How do you do?” He held out his hand when he was seated, and
when Ray had shaken it, he motioned with it to the vacant chair on the
other side of the window.

“I hope you are well, sir?” said Ray.

“I’m getting the better of this nasty cough gradually, and I pick up a
little new strength every day. Yes, I’m doing very well. For the present
I have to keep housed, and that’s tiresome. But it gives me time for a
bit of writing that I have in hand; I’m putting together the impressions
that this civilization of yours makes on me, in a little book that I
call _The World Revisited_.”

Ray did not see exactly why Hughes should say _his_ civilization, as if
he had invented it; but he did not disclaim it; and Hughes went on
without interruption from him.

“I hope to get my old friend Chapley to bring it out for me, if I can
reconcile him to its radical opinions. He’s timid, Chapley is; and my
book’s rather bold.”

Ray’s thought darted almost instantly to his own book, and ran it over
in every part, seeking whether there might be something in it that was
too bold for a timid publisher, or a timid publisher’s professional
readers. He was aware of old Hughes monologuing on with the satisfaction
of an author who speaks of his work to a listener he has at his mercy.

“My book is a criticism of modern life in all its aspects, though
necessarily as the field is so vast, I can touch on some only in the
most cursory fashion. For instance, take this whole architectural
nightmare that we call a city. I hold that the average tasteless man has
no right to realize his ideas of a house in the presence of a great
multitude of his fellow-beings. It is an indecent exposure of his mind,
and should not be permitted. All these structural forms about us, which
with scarcely an exception are ugly and senseless, I regard as so many
immoralities, as deliriums, as imbecilities, which a civilized state
would not permit, and I say so in my book. The city should build the
city, and provide every denizen with a fit and beautiful habitation to
work in and rest in.”

“I’m afraid,” said Ray, tearing his mind from his book to put it on this
proposition, “that such an idea might be found rather startling.”

“How, startling? Why, startling?” Hughes demanded.

“I don’t know. Wouldn’t it infringe upon private rights? Wouldn’t it be
a little tyrannical?”

“What private rights has a man in the outside of his house,” Hughes
retorted. “The interior might be left to his ignorance and vulgarity.
But the outside of my house is not for _me_! It’s for others! The public
sees it ten times where I see it once. If I make it brutal and stupid,
_I_ am the tyrant, _I_ am the oppressor--I, the individual! Besides,
when the sovereign people is really lord of itself, it can and will do
no man wrong.”

Ray had his misgivings, but he would not urge them, because it was a
gnawing misery to think of anything but his story, and he let Hughes
break the silence that he let follow.

“And so,” the old man said presently, as if speaking of his own book had
reminded him of Ray’s, “you have written a novel, young man. And what is
your justification for writing a novel at a time like this, when we are
all trembling on the verge of a social cataclysm?”

“Justification?” Ray faltered.

“Yes. How does it justify itself? How does it serve God and help man?
Does it dabble with the passion of love between a girl and boy as if
that were the chief concern of men and women? Or does it touch some of
the real concerns of life--some of the problems pressing on to their
solution, and needing the prayerful attention of every human creature?”

“It isn’t merely a love-story,” said Ray, glad to get to it on any
terms, “though it is a love-story. But I’ve ventured to employ a sort of
psychological motive.”

“What sort?”

“Well--hypnotism.”

“A mere toy, that Poe and Hawthorne played with in the old mesmerist
days, and I don’t know how many others.”

“I don’t play with it as they did, exactly,” said Ray.

“Oh, I’ve no doubt you employ it to as new effect as the scientifics who
are playing with it again. But how can you live in this camp of
embattled forces, where luxury and misery are armed against each other,
and every lover of his kind should give heart and brain to the solution
of the riddle that is maddening brother against brother,--how can you
live on here and be content with the artistic study of hysteria?”

The strong words of the old man, which fell tingling with emotion, had
no meaning for the soul of youth in Ray; he valued them æsthetically,
but he could not make personal application of them. He had a kind of
amusement in answering: “Well, I’m not quite so bad as you think, Mr.
Hughes. I wrote my story several years ago. I don’t suppose I could do
anything of the kind, now.”

Hughes’s mouth seemed stopped for the moment by this excuse. He sat
glaring at Ray’s bright, handsome face through his overhanging, shaggy
eyebrows, and seemed waiting to gather strength for another onset, when
his daughter Peace came silently into the room behind Ray.

Her father did not give her time to greet their visitor. “Well,” he
called out with a voice of stormy pathos, “how did you leave that poor
woman?”

“She is dead,” answered the girl.

“Good!” said Hughes. “So far, so good. Who is living?”

“There are several children. The people in the house are taking care of
them.”

“Of course! There, young man,” said Hughes, “is a psychological problem
better worth your study than the phenomena of hypnotism: the ability of
poverty to provide for want out of its very destitution. The miracle of
the loaves and fishes is wrought here every day in the great
tenement-houses. Those who have nothing for themselves can still find
something for others. The direst want may be trusted to share its crust
with those who have not a crust; and still something remains, as if
Christ had blessed the bread and broken it among the famishing. Don’t
you think that an interesting and romantic fact, a mystery meriting the
attention of literary art?”

It did strike Ray as a good notion; something might be done with it, say
in a Christmas story, if you could get hold of a tenement-house incident
of that kind, and keep it from becoming allegorical in the working out.

This went through Ray’s mind as he stood thinking also how he should
ask the girl for his manuscript and the criticisms on it without seeming
foolishly eager. Her father’s formidable intervention had dispensed him
from the usual greetings, and he could only say, “Oh! Miss Hughes, Mr.
Brandreth told me I might come and get my story of you--_A Modern
Romeo_--and the readers’ opinions. I--I thought I should like to look
them over; and--and”--

“I haven’t had time to copy them yet,” she answered. “Mr. Brandreth
wished you to see them; but we keep the readers anonymous, and he
thought I had better show them to you all in my handwriting.”

“I shouldn’t know the writers. He said I could see them as they are.”

“Well, then, I will go and get them for you,” she answered. She left him
a moment, and he remained with her father unmolested. The old man sat
staring out on the avenue, with his head black against its gathering
lights.

She gave him the packet she brought back with her, and then she followed
him out of the apartment upon the landing, after he had made his
acknowledgments and adieux.

“I thought,” she said, timidly, “you would like to know that I had given
your dollar for these poor children. Was that right?”

Ray’s head was so full of his story that he answered vaguely, “My
dollar?” Then he remembered. “Oh! Oh yes! It was right--quite right! I’m
glad you did it. Miss Hughes! Excuse me; but would you mind telling me
whether you have happened to look at the story yourself?”

She hesitated, and then answered: “Yes, I’ve read it.”

“Oh, then,” he bubbled out, knowing that he was wrong and foolish, but
helpless to refrain, “before I read those things, won’t you tell me--I
should care more--I should like so much to know what _you_--I suppose
I’ve no right to ask!”

He tried to make some show of decency about the matter, but in fact he
had the heart to ask a dying man his opinion, in that literary passion
which spares nothing, and is as protean as love itself in its disguises.

“I suppose,” she answered, “that I had no right to read it; I wasn’t
asked to do it.”

“Oh, yes, you had. I’m very glad you did.”

“The opinions about it were so different that I couldn’t help looking at
it, and then--I kept on,” she said.

“Were they so _very_ different?” he asked, trembling with his author’s
sensitiveness, while the implication of praise in her confession worked
like a frenzied hope in his brain. “And you kept on? Then it interested
you?”

She did not answer this question, but said: “None of them thought just
alike about it. But you’ll see them”--

“No, no! Tell me what you thought of it yourself! Was there some part
that seemed better than the rest?”

She hesitated. “No, I would rather not say. I oughtn’t to have told you
I had read it.”

“You didn’t like it!”

“Yes; I did like parts of it. But I musn’t say any more.”

“But what parts?” he pleaded.

“You mustn’t ask me. The readers’ opinions”--

“I don’t care for them. I care for your opinion,” said Ray, perversely.
“What did you mean by their being all different? Of course, I’m absurd!
But you don’t know how much depends upon this book. It isn’t that it’s
the only book I expect ever to write; but if it should be rejected! I’ve
had to wait a long while already; and then to have to go peddling it
around among the other publishers! Do you think that it’s hopelessly
bad, or could I make it over? What did you dislike in it? Didn’t you
approve of the hypnotism? That was the only thing I could think of to
bring about the climax. And did it seem too melodramatic? _Romeo and
Juliet_ is melodramatic! I hope you won’t think I’m usually so nervous
about my work,” he went on, wondering that he should be giving himself
away so freely, when he was really so reserved. “I’ve been a long time
writing the story; and I’ve worked over it and worked over it, till I’ve
quite lost the sense of it. I don’t believe I can make head or tail of
those opinions. That’s the reason why I wanted you to tell me what you
thought of it yourself.”

“But I have no right to do that. It would be interfering with other
people’s work. It wouldn’t be fair towards Mr. Brandreth,” she pleaded.

“I see. I didn’t see that before. And you’re quite right, and I beg your
pardon. Good-night!”

He put his manuscript on the seat in the elevated train, and partly sat
upon it, that he might not forget it when he left the car. But as he
read the professional opinions of it he wished the thing could lose him,
and never find him again. No other novel, he thought, could ever have
had such a variety of certain faults, together with the vague merit
which each of its critics seemed to feel in greater measure or less.
Their work, he had to own, had been faithfully done; he had not even the
poor consolation of accusing them of a neglect of duty. They had each
read his story, and they spoke of it with intelligence in a way, if not
every way. Each condemned it on a different ground, but as it stood they
all joined in condemning it; and they did not so much contradict one
another as dwell on different defects; so that together they covered the
whole field with their censure. One of them reproached it for its crude
realism, and the sort of helpless fidelity to provincial conditions
which seemed to come from the author’s ignorance of anything different.
Another blamed the youthful romanticism of its dealings with passion. A
third pointed out the gross improbability of the plot in our modern
circumstance. A fourth objected to the employment of hypnotism as a
clumsy piece of machinery, and an attempt to reach the public interest
through a prevailing fad. A fifth touched upon the obvious imitation of
Hawthorne in the psychical analyses. A sixth accused the author of
having adopted Thackeray’s manner without Thackeray’s material.

Ray resented, with a keen sense of personal affront, these criticisms in
severalty, but their combined effect was utter humiliation, though they
were less true taken together than they were separately. At the bottom
of his sore and angry heart he could not deny their truth, and yet he
knew that there was something in his book which none of them had taken
account of, and that this was its life, which had come out of his own.
He was aware of all those crude and awkward and affected things, but he
believed there was something, too, that went with them, and that had not
been in fiction before.

It was this something which he hoped that girl had felt in his story,
and which he was trying to get her to own to him before he looked at the
opinions. They confounded and distracted him beyond his foreboding even,
and it was an added anguish to keep wondering, as he did all night,
whether she had really found anything more in the novel than his critics
had. As he turned from side to side and beat his pillow into this shape
and that, he reconstructed the story after one critic’s suggestion, and
then after another’s; but the material only grew more defiant and
impossible; if it could not keep the shape it had, it would take no
other. That was plain; and the only thing to be done was to throw it
away, and write something else; for it was not reasonable to suppose
that Mr. Brandreth would think of bringing the book out in the teeth of
all these adverse critics. But now he had no heart to think of anything
else, although he was always thinking of something else, while there was
hope of getting this published. His career as an author was at an end;
he must look about for some sort of newspaper work; he ought to be very
glad if he could get something to do as a space man.




XXI.


He rose, after a late nap following his night-long vigils, with despair
in his soul. He believed it was despair, and so it was to all intents
and purposes. But, when he had bathed, he seemed to have washed a little
of his despair away; when he had dressed, he felt hungry, and he ate his
breakfast with rather more than his usual appetite.

The reaction was merely physical, and his gloom settled round him again
when he went back to his attic and saw his manuscript and those deadly
opinions. He had not the heart to go out anywhere, and he cowered alone
in his room. If he could only get the light of some other mind on the
facts he might grapple with them; but without this he was limp and
helpless. Now he knew, in spite of all his pretences to the contrary, in
spite of the warnings and cautions he had given himself, that he had not
only hoped, but had expected, that his story would be found good enough
to publish. Yet none of these readers--even those who found some
meritorious traits in it--had apparently dreamed of recommending it for
publication. It was no wonder that Miss Hughes had been so unwilling to
tell him what she thought of it; that she had urged him so strongly to
read the opinions first. What a fool she must have thought him!

There was no one else he could appeal to, unless it was old Kane. He did
not know where Kane lived, even if he could have gathered the courage to
go to him in his extremity; and he bet himself that Kane would not
repeat his last Sunday’s visit. The time for any reasonable hope of
losing passed, and then to his great joy he lost. There came a
hesitating step outside his door, as if some one were in doubt where to
knock, and then a tap at it.

Ray flung it open, and at sight of Kane the tears came into his eyes,
and he could not speak.

“Why, my dear friend!” cried Kane, “what is the matter?”

Ray kept silent till he could say coldly, “Nothing. It’s all over.”

Kane stepped into the room, and took off his hat. “If you haven’t been
rejected by the object of your affections, you have had the manuscript
of your novel declined. These are the only things that really bring
annihilation. I think the second is worse. A man is never so absolutely
and solely in love with one woman but he knows some other who is
potentially lovable; that is the wise provision of Nature. But while a
man has a manuscript at a publisher’s, it is the only manuscript in the
world. You can readily work out the comparison. I hope you have merely
been disappointed in love, my dear boy.”

Ray smiled ruefully. “I’m afraid it’s worse.”

“Then Chapley & Co. have declined your novel definitely?”

“Not in set terms; or not yet. But their readers have all reported
against it, and I’ve passed the night in reading their opinions. I’ve
got them by heart. Would you like to hear me repeat them?” he demanded,
with a fierce self-scorn.

Kane looked at him compassionately. “Heaven forbid! I could repeat them,
I dare say, as accurately as you; the opinions of readers do not vary
much, and I have had many novels declined.”

“Have you?” Ray faltered with compunction for his arrogation of all such
suffering to himself.

“Yes. That was one reason why I began to write _Hard Sayings_. But if
you will let me offer you another leaf from my experience, I will
suggest that there are many chances for reprieve and even pardon after
the readers have condemned your novel. I once had a novel accepted--the
only novel I ever had accepted--after all the publisher’s readers had
pronounced against it.”

“Had you?” Ray came tremulously back at him.

“Yes,” sighed Kane. “That is why Chapley is so fond of me; he has
forgiven me a deadly injury.” He paused to let his words carry Ray down
again, and then he asked, with a nod toward the bed where the young
fellow had flung his manuscript and the readers’ opinions, “Might I?”

“Oh, certainly,” said Ray from his depths; and Kane took up the opinions
and began to run them over.

“Yes, they have a strangely familiar effect; they are like echoes from
my own past.” He laid them down again. “Do you think they are right?”

“Yes. Perfectly! That is”--

“Oh! _That is._ There is hope, I see.”

“How, hope?” Ray retorted. “Does my differing with them make any
difference as to the outcome?”

“For the book, no, perhaps; for you, yes, decidedly. It makes all the
difference between being stunned and being killed. It is not pleasant to
be stunned, but it is not for such a long time as being killed. What is
your story about?”

It astonished Ray himself to find how much this question revived his
faith and courage. His undying interest in the thing, by and for itself,
as indestructible as a mother’s love, revived, and he gave Kane the
outline of his novel. Then he filled this in, and he did not stop till
he had read some of the best passages. He suddenly tossed his manuscript
from him. “What a fool I am!”

Kane gave his soft, thick laugh, shutting his eyes, and showing his
small white teeth, still beautifully sound. “Oh, no! Oh, no! I have read
worse things than that! I have written worse than that. Come, come! Here
is nothing to beat the breast for. I doubt if Chapley’s will take it, in
defiance of their readers; their experience with me has rendered that
very improbable. But they are not the only publishers in New York, or
Philadelphia even; I’m told they have very eager ones in Chicago. Why
shouldn’t the _roman psychologique_, if that’s the next thing, as Mr.
Brandreth believes, get on its legs at Chicago, and walk East?”

“I wonder,” Ray said, rising aimlessly from his chair, “whether it would
do to call on Mr. Brandreth to-day? This suspense--Do you know whether
he is very religious?”

“How should I know such a thing of my fellow-man in New York? I don’t
know it even of myself. At times I am very religious, and at times, not.
But Mr. Brandreth is rather a formal little man, and a business
interview on Sunday, with an agonized author, might not seem exactly
decorous to him.”

“I got the impression he wasn’t very stiff. But it wouldn’t do,” said
Ray, before Kane had rounded his neat period. “What an ass I am!”

“We are all asses,” Kane sighed. “It is the great bond of human
brotherhood. When did you get these verdicts?”

“Oh, Mr. Brandreth told me Miss Hughes had taken them home with her
yesterday, and I couldn’t rest till I had his leave to go and get them
of her.”

“Exactly. If we know there is possible unhappiness in store for us, we
don’t wait for it; we make haste and look it up, and embrace it. And how
did my dear old friend Hughes, if you saw him, impress you this time?”

“I saw him, and I still prefer him to _his_ friends,” said Ray.

“Naturally. There are not many people, even in a planet so overpeopled
as this, who are the peers of David Hughes. He goes far to make me
respect my species. Of course he is ridiculous. A man so hopeful as
Hughes is the _reductio ad absurdum_ of the human proposition. How can
there reasonably be hope in a world where poverty and death are? To be
sure, Hughes proposes to eliminate poverty and explain death. You know
he thinks--he really believes, I suppose--that if he could once get his
millenium going, and everybody so blessed in this life that the absolute
knowledge of heavenly conditions in another would not tempt us to
suicide, then the terror and the mystery of death would be taken away,
and the race would be trusted with its benificent meaning. It’s rather a
pretty notion.”

Ray, with his narrow experience, would not have been able to grasp it
fully. Now he broke out without the least relevancy to it, “I wonder how
it would do to remodel my story so far as to transfer the scene to New
York? It might be more popular.” The criticism that one of those readers
had made on the helplessness of his fidelity to simple rustic conditions
had suddenly begun to gall him afresh. “I beg your pardon. I _didn’t_
notice what you were saying! I can’t get my mind off that miserable
thing!”

Kane laughed. “Oh, don’t apologize. I know how it is. Perhaps a change
of scene _would_ be good; it’s often advised, you know.” He laughed
again, and Ray with him, ruefully, and now he rose.

“Oh, must you go?” Ray entreated.

“Yes. You are best alone; when we are in pain we _are_, alone, anyway.
If misery loves company, company certainly does not love misery. I can
stand my own troubles, but not other people’s. Good-by! We will meet
again when you are happier.”




XXII.


Mr. Brandreth tried hard to escape from the logic of his readers’
opinions. In the light of his friendly optimism they took almost a
favorable cast. He argued that there was nothing absolutely damnatory in
those verdicts, that they all more or less tacitly embodied a
recommendation to mercy. So far his personal kindliness carried him, but
beyond this point business put up her barrier. He did not propose to
take the book in spite of his readers; he said he would see; and after
having seen for a week longer, he returned the MS. with a letter
assuring Ray of his regret, and saying that if he could modify the story
according to the suggestions of their readers, Chapley & Co. would be
pleased to examine it again.

Ray had really expected some such answer as this, though he hoped
against reason for something different. In view of it he had spent the
week mentally recasting the story in this form and in that; sometimes it
yielded to his efforts in one way or another; when the manuscript came
into his hands again, he saw that it was immutably fixed in the terms he
had given it, and that it must remain essentially what it was, in spite
of any external travesty.

He offered Mr. Brandreth his thanks and his excuses for not trying to
make any change in it until he had first offered it as it was to other
publishers. He asked if it would shut him out of Chapley & Co.’s grace
if he were refused elsewhere, and received an answer of the most
flattering cordiality to the effect that their desire to see the work in
another shape was quite unconditioned. Mr. Brandreth seemed to have put
a great deal of heart in this answer; it was most affectionately
expressed; it closed with the wish that he might soon see Ray at his
house again.

Ray could not have believed, but for the experience which came to him,
that there could be so many reasons for declining to publish any one
book as the different publishers now gave him. For the most part they
deprecated the notion of even looking at it. The book-trade had never
been so prostrate before; events of the most unexpected nature had
conspired to reduce it to a really desperate condition. The unsettled
state of Europe had a good deal to do with it; the succession of bad
seasons at the West affected it most distinctly. The approach of a
Presidential year was unfavorable to this sensitive traffic. Above all,
the suspense created by the lingering and doubtful fate of the
international copyright bill was playing havoc with it; people did not
know what course to take; it was impossible to plan any kind of
enterprise, or to risk any sort of project. Men who had been quite
buoyant in regard to the bill seemed carried down to the lowest level of
doubt as to its fate by the fact that Ray had a novel to offer them;
they could see no hope for American fiction, if that English trash was
destined to flood the market indefinitely. They sympathized with him,
but they said they were all in the same boat, and that the only thing
was to bring all the pressure each could to bear upon Congress. The sum
of their counsel and condolence came to the effect in Ray’s mind that
his best hope was to get _A Modern Romeo_ printed by Congress as a
Public Document and franked by the Senators and Representatives to their
constituents. He found a melancholy amusement in noting the change in
the mood of those who used to meet him cheerfully and carelessly as the
correspondent of a newspaper, and now found themselves confronted with
an author, and felt his manuscript at their throats. Some tried to joke;
some became helplessly serious; some sought to temporize.

Those whose circumstances and engagements forbade them even to look at
his novel were the easiest to bear with. They did not question the
quality or character of his work; they had no doubt of its excellence,
and they had perfect faith in its success; but simply their hands were
so full they could not touch it. The other sort, when they consented to
examine the story, kept it so long that Ray could not help forming false
hopes of the outcome; or else they returned it with a precipitation that
mortified his pride, and made him sceptical of their having looked into
it at all. He did not experience unconditional rejection everywhere. In
some cases the readers proposed radical and impossible changes, as
Chapley & Co.’s readers had done. In one instance they so far
recommended it that the publisher was willing to lend his imprint and
manage the book for the per cent usually paid to authors, if Ray would
meet all the expenses. There was an enthusiast who even went so far as
to propose that he would publish it if Ray would pay the cost of the
electrotype plates. He appeared to think this a handsome offer, and Ray
in fact found it so much better than nothing that he went into some
serious estimates upon it. He called in the help of old Kane, who was an
expert in the matter of electrotyping, and was able from his sad
experience to give him the exact figures. They found that _A New Romeo_
would make some four hundred and thirty or forty pages, and that at the
lowest price the plates would cost more than three hundred dollars. The
figure made Ray gasp; the mere thought of it impoverished him. His
expenses had already eaten a hundred dollars into his savings beyond the
five dollars a week he had from the _Midland Echo_ for his letters. If
he paid out this sum for his plates, he should now have some ninety
dollars left.

“But then,” said Kane, arching his eyebrows, “the trifling sum of three
hundred dollars, risked upon so safe a venture as _A New Romeo_, will
probably result in riches beyond the dreams of avarice.”

“Yes: or it may result in total loss,” Ray returned.

“It is a risk. But what was it you have been asking all these other
people to do? One of them turns and asks you to share the risk with him;
he asks you to risk less than half on a book that you have written
yourself, and he will risk the other half. What just ground have you for
refusing his generous offer?”

“It isn’t my business to publish books; it’s my business to write them,”
said Ray, coldly.

“Ah-h-h! Very true! That is a solid position. Then all you have to do to
make it quite impregnable is to write such books that other men will be
eager to take all the risks of publishing them. It appears that in the
present case you omitted to do that.” Kane watched Ray’s face with
whimsical enjoyment. “I was afraid you were putting your reluctance upon
the moral ground, and that you were refusing to bet on your book because
you thought it wrong to bet.”

“I’m afraid,” said Ray, dejectedly, “that the moral question didn’t
enter with me. If people thought it wrong to make bets of that kind, it
seems to me that all business would come to a standstill.”

“‘Sh!” said Kane, putting his finger to his lip, and glancing round with
burlesque alarm. “This is open incivism. It is accusing the whole
framework of commercial civilization. Go on; it’s delightful to hear
you; but don’t let any one _over_hear you.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” said Ray, with sullen resentment, “about
incivism. I’m saying what everybody knows.”

“Ah! But what everybody _knows_ is just what nobody _says_. If people
said what they knew, society would tumble down like a house of cards.”

Ray was silent, far withdrawn from these generalities into his personal
question.

Kane asked compassionately, “Then you think you can’t
venture--risk--chance it? Excuse me! I was trying to find a euphemism
for the action, but there seems none!”

“No; I daren’t do it! The risk is too great.”

“That seems to be the consensus of the book trade concerning it. Perhaps
you are right. _Would_ you mind,” asked Kane with all his sweet
politeness, “letting me take your manuscript home, and go over it
carefully?”

“_Let_ you!” Ray began in a rapture of gratitude, but Kane stopped him.

“No, no! Don’t expect anything! _Don’t_ form any hopes. Simply suppose
me to be reading it as a lover of high-class fiction, with no ulterior
view whatever. I am really the feeblest of conies, and I have not even
the poor advantage of having my habitation in the rocks. Good-by!
Good-day! Don’t try to stop me with civilities! Heaven knows how far my
noble purpose will hold if it is weakened by any manner of delay.”

Ray lived a day longer in the flimsiest air-castles that ever the
vagrant winds blew through. In the evening Kane came back with his
story.

“Well, my dear young friend, you have certainly produced the despair of
criticism in this extraordinary fiction of yours. I don’t wonder all the
readers have been of so many minds about it. I only wonder that any one
man could be of any one mind about it long enough to get himself down
on paper. In some respects it is the very worst thing I ever saw, and
yet--and yet--it interested me, it held me to the end. I will make a
confession; I will tell you the truth. I took the thing home, hoping to
find justification in it for approaching a poor friend of mine who is in
the publishing line, and making him believe that his interest lay in
publishing it. But I could not bring myself to so simple an act of bad
faith. I found I should have to say to my friend, ‘Here is a novel which
might make your everlasting fortune, but most of the chances are against
it. There are twenty chances that it will fail to one that it will
succeed; just the average of failure and success in business life. You
had better take it.’ Of course he would not take it, because he could
not afford to add a special risk to the general business risk. You see?”

“I see,” said Ray, but without the delight that a case so beautifully
reasoned should bring to the logical mind. At the bottom of his heart,
though he made such an outward show of fairness and impersonality, he
was simply and selfishly emotional about his book. He could not enter
into the humor of Kane’s dramatization of the case; he tacitly accused
him of inconsistency, and possibly of envy and jealousy. It began to be
as if it were Kane alone who was keeping his book from its chance with
the public. This conception, which certainly appeared perverse to Ray at
times, was at others entirely in harmony with one of several theories of
the man. He had chilled Ray more than once by the cold cynicism of his
opinions concerning mankind at large; and now Ray asked himself why
Kane’s cynicism should not characterize his behavior towards him, too.
Such a man would find a delight in studying him in his defeat, and
turning his misery into phrases and aphorisms.

He was confirmed in his notion of Kane’s heartlessness by the strange
behavior of Mr. Brandreth, who sent for his manuscript one morning,
asking if he might keep it a few days, and then returned it the same
day, with what Ray thought an insufficient explanation of the
transaction. He proudly suffered a week under its inadequacy, and then
he went to Mr. Brandreth, and asked him just what the affair meant; it
seemed to him that he had a right to know.

Mr. Brandreth laughed in rather a shame-faced way. “I may as well make a
clean breast of it. As I told you when we first met, I’ve been wanting
to publish a novel for some time; and although I haven’t read yours, the
plot attracted me, and I thought I would give it another chance--the
best chance I could. I wanted to show it to a friend of yours--I suppose
I may say friend, at least it was somebody that I thought would be
prejudiced more in favor of it than against it; and I had made up my
mind that if the person approved of it I would read it too, and if we
agreed about it, I would get Mr. Chapley to risk it. But--I found that
the person had read it.”

“And didn’t like it.”

“I can’t say that, exactly.”

“If it comes to that,” said Ray, with a bitter smile, “it doesn’t
matter about the precise terms.” He could not speak for a moment; then
he swallowed the choking lump in his throat, and offered Brandreth his
hand. “Thank _you_, Mr. Brandreth! I’m sure _you’re_ my friend; and I
sha’n’t forget your kindness.”




XXIII.


The disappointment which Ray had to suffer would have been bad enough
simply as the refusal of his book; with the hope raised in him and then
crushed after the first great defeat, the trial was doubly bitter. It
was a necessity of his suffering and his temperament to translate it
into some sort of literary terms, and he now beguiled his enforced
leisure by beginning several stories and poems involving his experience.
One of the poems he carried so far that he felt the need of another eye
on it to admire it and confirm him in his good opinion of it; he
pretended that he wanted criticism, but he wanted praise. He would have
liked to submit the poem to Kane; but he could not do this now, though
the coldness between them was tacit, and they met as friends when they
met. He had a vulgar moment when he thought it would be a fine revenge
if he could make Kane listen to that passage of his poem which described
the poet’s betrayal by a false friend, by the man who held his fate in
his hand and coolly turned against him. Kane must feel the sting of
self-reproach from this through all the disguises of time and place
which wrapped it; but the vulgar moment passed, and Ray became disgusted
with that part of his poem, and cut it out.

As it remained then, it was the pathetic story of a poet who comes up to
some Oriental court with his song, but never gains a hearing, and dies
neglected and unknown; he does not even achieve fame after death. Ray
did not know why he chose an Oriental setting for his story, but perhaps
it was because it removed it farther from the fact, and made it less
recognizable. It would certainly lend itself more easily to illustration
in that shape, if he could get some magazine to take it.

When he decided that he could not show it to Kane, and dismissed a
fleeting notion of Mr. Brandreth as impossible, he thought of Miss
Hughes. He had in fact thought of her first of all, but he had to feign
that he had not. There had lingered in his mind a discomfort concerning
her which he would have removed much sooner if it had been the only
discomfort there; mixed with his other troubles, his shame for having
indelicately urged her to speak of his story when he saw her last, did
not persist separately or incessantly. He had imagined scenes in which
he repaired his error, but he had never really tried to do so. It was
now available as a pretext for showing her his poem; he could make it
lead on to that; but he did not own any such purpose to himself when he
put the poem into his pocket and went to make his tardy excuses.

The Hughes family were still at table when Denton let him into their
apartment, and old Hughes came himself into the front room where Ray was
provisionally shown, and asked him to join them.

“My children thought that I was wanting in the finer hospitalities when
you were here before, and I forced my superabundance of reasons upon
you. I forget, sometimes, that no man ever directly persuaded me, in my
eagerness to have people think as I do. Will you show that you have
forgiven me by eating salt with us?”

“There is a little potato to eat it on, Mr. Ray,” Mrs. Denton called
gayly from the dining-room; and as Ray appeared there, Peace rose and
set a plate for him next the old man. In front were the twins in high
chairs, one on each side of their father, who from time to time put a
knife or fork or cup and saucer beyond their reach, and left them to
drub the table with nothing more offensive than their little soft fists.

There were not only potatoes, but some hot biscuits too, and there was
tea. Ray had often sat down to no better meal at his father’s table, and
he thought it good enough, even after several years’ sophistication in
cities.

“There was to have been steak,” Mrs. Denton went on, with a teasing look
at her husband, “but Ansel saw something on the way home which took away
his appetite so completely that he thought we wouldn’t want any steak.”

Hughes began to fill himself with the tea and biscuit and potatoes, and
he asked vaguely, “What did he see?”

“Oh, merely a family that had been put out on the sidewalk for their
rent. I think that after this, when Ansel won’t come home by the
Elevated, he ought to walk up on the west side, so that he can get some
good from the exercise. He won’t see families set out on the sidewalk in
Fifth Avenue.”

Ray laughed with her at her joke, and Peace smiled with a deprecating
glance at Denton. Hughes paid no heed to what they were saying, and
Denton said: “The more we see and feel the misery around us, the better.
If we shut our eyes to it, and live in luxury ourselves”--

“Oh, I don’t call salt and potatoes luxury,” exactly, said his wife.

Denton remained darkly silent a moment, and then began to laugh with the
helplessness of a melancholy man when something breaks through his
sadness. “I should like to see a family set out on Fifth Avenue for back
rent,” he said, and he laughed on; and then he fell suddenly silent
again.

Ray said, for whatever relief it could give the situation, that it was
some comfort to realize that the cases of distress which one saw were
not always genuine. He told of a man who had begged of him at a certain
point that morning, and then met him a few minutes later, and asked alms
again on the ground that he had never begged before in his life. “I
recalled myself to him, and he apologized handsomely, and gave me his
blessing.”

“Did he look as if he had got rich begging?” Denton asked.

“No; he looked as if he could have got a great deal richer working,” Ray
answered, neatly.

Mrs. Denton laughed, but her laugh did not give him the pleasure it
would have done if Peace had not remained looking seriously at him.

“You think so,” Denton returned. “How much should you say the average
laboring-man with a family could save out of his chances of wages?”

Hughes caught at the word save, and emerged with it from his revery.
“Frugality is one of the vices we must hope to abolish. It is one of the
lowest forms of selfishness, which can only be defended by reference to
the state of Ishmaelitism in which we live.”

“Oh, but surely, father,” Mrs. Denton mocked, “you want street beggars
to save, don’t you, so they can have something to retire on?”

“No; let them take their chance with the rest,” said the old man, with
an imperfect hold of her irony.

“There are so many of them,” Ray suggested, “they couldn’t all hope to
retire on a competency. I never go out without meeting one.”

“I wish there were more,” said Denton, passionately. “I wish they would
swarm up from their cellars and garrets into all the comfortable streets
of the town, till every rich man’s door-step had a beggar on it, to show
him what his wealth was based on.”

“It wouldn’t avail,” Hughes replied. “All that is mere sentimentality.
The rich man would give to the first two or three, and then he would
begin to realize that if he gave continually he would beggar himself. He
would harden his heart; he would know, as he does now, that he must not
take the chance of suffering for himself and his family by relieving
the suffering of others. He could put it on the highest moral ground.”

“In the Family,” said Peace, speaking for the first time, “there was no
chance of suffering.”

“No. But the community saved itself from chance by shutting out the rest
of the world. It was selfish, too. The Family must include the whole
world,” said her father. “There is a passage bearing upon that point in
what I have been writing to-day. I will just read a part of it.”

He pushed back his chair, but Peace said, “I’ll get your manuscript,
father,” and brought it to him.

The passage was a long one, and Hughes read it all with an author’s
unsparing zest. At that rate Ray saw no hope of being able to read his
poem, and he felt it out of taste for Hughes to take up the time. When
he ended at last and left the table, Peace began to clear it away, while
Mrs. Denton sat hearing herself talk and laugh. The twins had fallen
asleep in their chairs, and she let their father carry them off and
bestow them in the adjoining room. As he took them tenderly up from
their chairs, he pressed his face close upon their little slumbering
faces, and mumbled their fingers with his bearded lips. The sight of his
affection impressed Ray, even in the preoccupation of following the
movements of Peace, as she kept about her work.

“Is he as homesick as ever?” Ray asked Mrs. Denton, when he was gone.

“Yes; he’s worse,” she answered lightly. “He hasn’t got father’s faith
in the millennium to keep him up. He would like to go back to-morrow, if
there was anything to go back to.”

Peace halted a moment in her passing to and fro, and said, as if in
deprecation of any slight or censure that her sister’s words might seem
to imply: “He sees a great many discouraging things. They’re doing so
much now by process, and unless an engraver has a great deal of talent,
and can do the best kind of work, there’s very little work for him.
Ansel has seen so many of them lose their work by the new inventions.
What seems so bad to him is that these processes really make better
pictures than the common engravers can, and yet they make life worse. He
never did believe that an artist ought to get a living by his art.”

“Then I don’t see why he objects to the new processes,” said Ray, with
the heartlessness which so easily passes for wit. Peace looked at him
with grave surprise.

Mrs. Denton laughed over the cat which had got up in her lap. “That’s
what I tell him. But it doesn’t satisfy him.”

“You know,” said the younger sister, with a reproach in her tone, which
brought Ray sensibly under condemnation, too, “that he means that art
must be free before it can be true, and that there can be no freedom
where there is the fear of want.”

“Well,” said Mrs. Denton, turning her head for a new effect of the
sleeping cat, “there was no fear of want in the Family; but there
wasn’t much art, either.”

Ray was tempted to laugh, but he wanted above all to read his poem, and
to lead up to it without delay, and he denied himself the pleasure of a
giggle with Mrs. Denton. “I suppose,” he said, “the experiment of
emancipation is tried on too small a scale in a community.”

“That is what father thinks,” said Peace. “That is why he wants the
whole world to be free.”

“Yes,” said Ray, aware of a relenting in her towards himself; and he
added, with apparent inconsequence: “Perhaps it would help forward the
time for it if every artist could express his feeling about it, or
represent it somehow.”

“I don’t see exactly how they could in a picture or a statue,” said Mrs.
Denton.

“No,” Ray assented from the blind alley where he had unexpectedly
brought up. He broke desperately from it, and said, more toward Peace
than toward her sister, “I have been trying to turn my own little
disappointment into poetry. You know,” he added, “that Chapley & Co.
have declined my book?”

“Yes,” she admitted, with a kind of shyness.

“I wonder,” and here Ray took the manuscript out of his pocket, “whether
you would let me read you some passages of my poem.”

Mrs. Denton assented eagerly, and Peace less eagerly, but with an
interest that was enough for him. Before he began to read, Mrs. Denton
said a number of things that seemed suddenly to have accumulated in her
mind, mostly irrelevant; she excused herself for leaving the room, and
begged Ray to wait till she came back. Several times during the reading
she escaped and returned; the poet finished in one of her absences.




XXIV.


“You see,” Ray said, “it’s merely a fragment.” He wiped the perspiration
from his forehead.

“Of course,” the girl answered, with a sigh. “Isn’t disappointment
always fragmentary?” she asked, sadly.

“How do you mean?”

“Why, happiness is like something complete; and disappointment like
something broken off, to me. A story that ends well seems rounded; and
one that ends badly leaves you waiting, as you do just after some one
dies.”

“Is that why you didn’t like my story?” Ray asked, imprudently. He added
quickly, at an embarrassment which came into her face, “Oh, I didn’t
mean to add to my offence! I came here partly to excuse it. I was too
persistent the other night.”

“Oh, no!”

“Yes, I was. I had no right to an opinion from you. I knew it at the
time, but I couldn’t help it. You were right to refuse. But you can tell
me how my poem strikes you. It isn’t offered for publication!”

He hoped that she would praise some passages that he thought fine; but
she began to speak of the motive, and he saw that she had not missed
anything, that she had perfectly seized his intention. She talked to
him of it as if it were the work of some one else, and he said
impulsively, “If I had you to criticise my actions beforehand, I should
not be so apt to make a fool of myself.”

Mrs. Denton came back. “I ran off toward the last. I didn’t want to be
here when Peace began to criticise. She’s so severe.”

“She hasn’t been at all severe this time,” said Ray.

“I don’t see how she could be,” Mrs. Denton returned. “All that I heard
was splendid.”

“It’s merely a fragment,” said Ray, with grave satisfaction in her
flattery.

“You must finish it, and read us the rest of it.”

Ray looked at Peace, and something in her face made him say, “I shall
never finish it; it isn’t worth it.”

“Did Peace say that?”

“No.”

Mrs. Denton laughed. “That’s just like Peace. She makes other people say
the disagreeable things she thinks about them.”

“What a mysterious power!” said Ray. “Is it hypnotic suggestion?”

He spoke lightly toward Peace, but her sister answered: “Oh, we’re full
of mysteries in this house. Did you know that my husband had a Voice?”

“A voice! Is a voice mysterious?”

“This one is. It’s an internal Voice. It tells him what to do.”

“Oh, like the demon of Socrates.”

“I _hope_ it isn’t a demon!” said Mrs. Denton.

“That depends upon what it tells him to do,” said Ray. “In Socrates’ day
a familiar spirit could be a demon without being at all bad. How proud
you must be to have a thing like that in the family!”

“I don’t know. It has its inconveniences, sometimes. When it tells him
to do what we don’t want him to,” said Mrs. Denton.

“Oh, but think of the compensations!” Ray urged. “Why, it’s equal to a
ghost.”

“I suppose it is a kind of ghost,” said Mrs. Denton, and Ray fancied she
had the pride we all feel in any alliance, direct or indirect, with the
supernatural. “Do you believe in dreams?” she asked abruptly.

“Bad ones, I do,” said Ray. “We always expect bad dreams and dark
presentiments to come true, don’t we!”

“I don’t know. My husband does. He has a Dream as well as a Voice.”

“Oh, indeed!” said Ray; and he added: “I see. The Voice is the one he
talks with in his sleep.”

The flippant suggestion amused Mrs. Denton; but a shadow of pain came
over Peace’s face, that made Ray wish to get away from the mystery he
had touched; she might be a believer in it, or ashamed of it.

“I wonder,” he added, “why we never expect our day-dreams to come true?”

“Perhaps because they’re never bad ones--because we know we’re just
making them,” said Mrs. Denton.

“It must be that! But, do we always make them? Sometimes my day-dreams
seem to make themselves, and they keep on doing it so long that they
tire me to death. They’re perfect daymares.”

“How awful! The only way would be to go to sleep, if you wanted to get
rid of them.”

“Yes; and that isn’t so easy as waking up. Anybody can wake up; a man
can wake up to go to execution; but it takes a very happy man to go to
sleep.”

The recognition of this fact reminded Ray that he was himself a very
unhappy man; he had forgotten it for the time.

“He might go into society and get rid of them that way,” Mrs. Denton
suggested, with an obliquity which he was too simply masculine to
perceive. “I suppose you go into society a good deal, Mr. Ray?”

Peace made a little movement as of remonstrance, but she did not speak,
and Ray answered willingly: “_I_ go into society? I have been inside of
just one house--or flat--besides this, since I came to New York.”

“Why!” said Mrs. Denton.

She seemed to be going to say something more, but she stopped at a look
from her sister, and left Ray free to so on or not, as he chose. He told
them it was Mr. Brandreth’s flat he had been in; at some little hints of
curiosity from Mrs. Denton, he described it to her.

“I have some letters from people in Midland, but I haven’t presented
them yet,” he added at the end. “The Brandreths are all I know of
society.”

“They’re much more than we know. Well, it seems like fairyland,” said
Mrs. Denton, in amiable self-derision. “I used to think that was the way
we should live when we left the Family. I suppose there are people in
New York that would think it was like fairyland to live like us, and not
all in one room. Ansel is always preaching that when I grumble.”

The cat sprang up into her lap, and she began to smooth its long flank,
and turn her head from side to side, admiring its enjoyment.

“Well,” Ray said, “whatever we do, we are pretty sure to be sorry we
didn’t do something else.”

He was going to lead up to his own disappointments by this commonplace,
but Mrs. Denton interposed.

“Oh, I’m not sorry we left the Family, if that’s what you mean. There’s
some chance, here, and there everything went by rule; you had your share
of the work, and you knew just what you had to expect every day. I used
to say I wished something _wrong_ would happen, just so as to have
_something_ happen. I believe it was more than half that that got father
out, too,” she said, with a look at her sister.

“I thought,” said Ray, “but perhaps I didn’t understand him, that your
father wanted to make the world over on the image of your community.”

“I guess he wanted to have the fun of chancing it, too,” said Mrs.
Denton. “Of course he wants to make the world over, but he has a pretty
good time as it is; and I’m glad of all I did and said to get him into
it. He had no chance to bring his ideas to bear on it in the Family.”

“Then it was you who got him out of the community,” said Ray.

“I did my best,” said Mrs. Denton. “But I can’t say I did it,
altogether.”

“Did you help?” he asked Peace.

“I wished father to do what he thought was right. He had been doubtful
about the life there for a good while--whether it was really doing
anything for humanity.”

She used the word with no sense of cant in it; Ray could perceive that.

“And do you ever wish you were back in the Family?”

Mrs. Denton called out joyously: “Why, there is no Family to be back in,
I’m thankful to say! Didn’t you know that?”

“I forgot.” Ray smiled, as he pursued, “Well, if there was one to be
back in, would you like to be there, Miss Hughes?”

“I can’t tell,” she answered, with a trouble in her voice. “When I’m not
feeling very strong or well, I should. And when I see so many people
struggling so hard here, and failing after all they do, I wish they
could be where there was no failure, and no danger of it. In the Family
we were safe, and we hadn’t any care.”

“We hadn’t any choice, either,” said her sister.

“What choice has a man who doesn’t know where the next day’s work is
coming from?”

Ray looked round to find that Denton had entered behind them from the
room where he had been, and was sitting beside the window apparently
listening to their talk. There was something uncanny in the fact of his
unknown presence, though neither of the sisters seemed to feel it.

“Oh, you’re there,” said Mrs. Denton, without turning from her cat.
“Well, I suppose that’s a question that must come home to you more and
more. Did you ever hear of such a dreadful predicament as my husband’s
in, Mr. Ray? He’s just hit on an invention that’s going to make us rich,
and throw all the few remaining engravers out of work, when he gets it
finished.” Her husband’s face clouded, but she went on: “His only hope
is that the invention will turn out a failure. You don’t have any such
complications in your work, do you, Mr. Ray?”

“No,” said Ray, thinking what a good situation the predicament would be,
in a story. “If they had taken my novel, and published an edition of
fifty thousand, I don’t see how it could have reduced a single author to
penury. But I don’t believe I could resist the advances of a publisher,
even if I knew it might throw authors out of work right and left. I
could support their families till they got something to do.”

“Yes, you might do that, Ansel,” his wife suggested, with a slanting
smile at him. “I only hope we may have the opportunity. But probably it
will be as hard to get a process accepted as a book.”

“That hasn’t anything to do with the question,” Denton broke out. “The
question is whether a man ought not to kill his creative thought as he
would a snake, if he sees that there is any danger of its taking away
work another man lives by. That is what I look at.”

“And father,” said Mrs. Denton, whimsically, “is so high-principled that
he won’t let us urge on the millenium by having pandemonium first. If we
were allowed to do that, Ansel might quiet his conscience by reflecting
that the more men he threw out of work, the sooner the good time would
come. I don’t see why that isn’t a good plan, and it would work in so
nicely with what we want to do. Just make everything so bad people
cannot bear it, and then they will rise up in their might and make it
better for themselves. Don’t you think so, Mr. Ray?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said.

All this kind of thinking and feeling, which was a part and parcel of
these people’s daily life, was alien to his habit of mind. He grasped it
feebly and reluctantly, without the power or the wish to follow it to
conclusions, whether it was presented ironically by Mrs. Denton, or with
a fanatical sincerity by her husband.

“No, no! That won’t do,” Denton said. “I have tried to see that as a
possible thoroughfare; but it isn’t possible. If we were dealing with
statistics it would do; but it’s men we’re dealing with: men like
ourselves that have women and children dependent on them.”

“I am glad to hear you say that, Ansel,” Peace said, gently.

“Yes,” he returned, bitterly, “whichever way I turn, the way is barred.
My hands are tied, whatever I try to do. Some one must be responsible.
Some one must atone. Who shall it be?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Denton, with a look of comic resignation, “it seems to
be a pretty personal thing, after all, in spite of father’s philosophy.
I always supposed that when we came into the world we should have an
election, and vote down all these difficulties by an overwhelming
majority.”

Ray quoted, musingly:

    “The world is out of joint:--O cursed spite!
     That ever I was born to set it right!”

“Yes? Who says that?”

“Hamlet.”

“Oh yes. Well, I feel just exactly as Ham does about it.”

Denton laughed wildly out at her saucy drolling, and she said, as if his
mirth somehow vexed her, “I should think if you’re so much troubled by
that hard question of yours, you would get your Voice to say something.”

Her husband rose, and stood looking down, while a knot gathered between
his gloomy eyes. Then he turned and left the room without answering
her.

She sent a laugh after him. “Sometimes,” she said to the others, “the
Voice doesn’t know any better than the rest of us.”

Peace remained looking gravely at her a moment, and then she followed
Denton out of the room.

Mrs. Denton began to ask Ray about Mrs. Brandreth and Mrs. Chapley,
pressing him with questions as to what kind of people they really were,
and whether they were proud; she wondered why they had never come to
call upon her. It would all have been a little vulgar if it had not been
so childlike and simple. Ray was even touched by it when he thought that
the chief concern of these ladies was to find out from him just what
sort of crank her father was, and to measure his influence for evil on
Mr. Chapley.

At the same time he heard Peace talking to Denton in a tone of entreaty
and pacification. She staid so long that Ray had risen to go when she
came back. He had hoped for a moment alone with her at parting, so that
he might renew in better form the excuses that he pretended he had come
to make. But the presence of her sister took all the seriousness and
delicacy from them; he had to make a kind of joke of them; and he could
not tell her at all of the mysterious message from Mr. Brandreth about
the friend to whom he wished to submit his book, and of the final pang
of disappointment which its immediate return had given him. He had meant
that she should say something to comfort him for this, but he had to
forego his intended consolation.




XXV.


Ray had no doubt that Kane was the court of final resort which the case
against his novel had been appealed to, and he thought it hard that he
should have refused to give it a last chance, or even to look at it
again. Surely it was not so contemptible as that, so hopelessly bad that
a man who seemed his friend could remember nothing in it that would make
it valuable in a second reading. If the fault were not in the book, then
it must be in the friend, and Ray renounced old Kane by every means he
could command. He could not make it an open question; he could only
treat him more and more coldly, and trust to Kane’s latent sense of
guilt for the justification of his behavior. But Kane was either so
hardened, or else regarded his own action as so venial, or perhaps
believed it so right, that he did not find Ray’s coldness intelligible.

“My dear young friend,” he frankly asked, “is there anything between us
but our disparity of years? That existed from the first moment of our
acquaintance. I have consoled myself at times with the notion of our
continuing together in an exemplary friendship, you growing older and
wiser, and I younger and less wise, if possible, like two Swedenborgian
spirits in the final state. But evidently something has happened to
tinge our amity with a grudge in your mind. Do you object to saying just
what property in me has imparted this unpleasant discoloration to it?”

Ray was ashamed to say, or rather unable. He answered that nothing was
the matter, and that he did not know what Kane meant. He was obliged to
prove this by a show of cordiality, which he began perhaps to feel when
he reasoned away his first resentment. Kane had acted quite within his
rights, and if there was to be any such thing as honest criticism, the
free censure of a friend must be suffered and even desired. He said this
to himself quite heroically; he tried hard to be ruled by a truth so
obvious.

In other things his adversity demoralized him, for a time. He ceased to
live in the future, as youth does and should do; he lived carelessly and
wastefully in the present. With nothing in prospect, it was no longer
important how his time or money went; he did not try to save either. He
never finished his poem, and he did not attempt anything else.

In the midst of his listlessness and disoccupation there came a letter
from Hanks Brothers asking if he could not give a little more social
gossip in his correspondence for the _Echo_; they reminded him that
there was nothing people liked so much as personalities. Ray scornfully
asked himself, How should he, who knew only the outsides of houses,
supply social gossip, even if he had been willing? He made a sarcastic
reply to Hanks Brothers, intimating his readiness to relinquish the
correspondence if it were not to their taste; and they took him at his
word, and wrote that they would hereafter make use of a syndicate
letter.

It had needed this blow to rouse him from his reckless despair. If he
were defeated now, it would be in the face of all the friends who had
believed in him and expected success of him. His motive was not high; it
was purely egoistic at the best; but he did not know this; he had a
sense of virtue in sending his book off to a Boston publisher without
undoing the inner wrappings in which the last New York publisher had
returned it.

Then he went round to ask Mr. Brandreth if he knew of any literary or
clerical or manual work he could get to do. The industrial fury which
has subdued a continent, and brought it under the hard American hand,
wrought in him, according to his quality, and he was not only willing
but eager to sacrifice the scruples of delicacy he had in appealing to a
man whom he had sought first on such different terms. His only question
was how to get his business quickly, clearly, and fully before him.

Mr. Brandreth received him with a gayety that put this quite out of his
mind; and he thought the publisher was going to tell him that he had
decided, after all, to accept his novel.

“Ah, Mr. Ray,” Mr. Brandreth called out at sight of him, “I was just
sending a note to you! Sit down a moment, won’t you? The editor of
_Every Evening_ was in here just now, and he happened to say he wished
he knew some one who could make him a synopsis of a rather important
book he’s had an advanced copy of from the other side. It’s likely to be
of particular interest in connection with Coquelin’s visit; it’s a study
of French comic acting from Molière down; and I happened to think of
you. You know French?”

“Why, yes, thank you--to read. You’re very kind, Mr. Brandreth, to think
of me.”

“Oh, not at all! I didn’t know whether you ever did the kind of thing
the _Every Evening_ wants, or whether you were not too busy; but I
thought I’d drop an anchor to windward for you, on the chance that you
might like to do it.”

“I should like very much to do it; and”--

“I’ll tell you why I did it,” Mr. Brandreth interrupted, radiantly. “I
happened to know they’re making a change in the literary department of
the _Every Evening_, and I thought that if this bit of work would let
you show your hand--See?”

“Yes; and I’m everlastingly”--

“Not at all, not at all!” Mr. Brandreth opened the letter he was
holding, and gave Ray a note that it inclosed. “That’s an introduction
to the editor of the _Every Evening_, and you’ll strike him at the
office about now, if you’d like to see him.”

Ray caught with rapture the hand Mr. Brandreth offered him. “I don’t
know what to say to you, but I’m extremely obliged. I’ll go at once.” He
started to the door, and turned. “I hope Mrs. Brandreth is well,
and--and--the baby?”

“Splendidly. I shall want to have you up there again as soon as we can
manage it. Why haven’t you been at Mrs. Chapley’s? Didn’t you get her
card?”

“Yes; but I haven’t been very good company of late. I didn’t want to
have it generally known.”

“I understand. Well, now you must cheer up. Good-by, and good luck to
you!”

All the means of conveyance were too slow for Ray’s eagerness, and he
walked. On his way down to that roaring and seething maelstrom of
business, whose fierce currents swept all round the _Every Evening_
office, he painted his future as critic of the journal with minute
detail; he had died chief owner and had his statue erected to his memory
in Park Square before he crossed that space and plunged into one of the
streets beyond.

He was used to newspaper offices, and he was not surprised to find the
editorial force of the _Every Evening_ housed in a series of dens,
opening one beyond the other till the last, with the chief in it, looked
down on the street from which he climbed. He thought it all fit enough,
for the present; but, while he still dwelt in the future, and before the
office-boy had taken his letter from him to the chief, he swiftly flung
up a building for the _Every Evening_ as lofty and as ugly as any of the
many-storied towers that rose about the frantic neighborhood. He
blundered upon two other writers before he reached the chief; one of
them looked up from his desk, and roared at him in unintelligible
affliction; the other simply wagged his head, without lifting it, in the
direction of the final room, where Ray found himself sitting beside the
editor-in-chief, without well knowing how he got there. The editor did
not seem to know either, or to care that he was there, for some time; he
kept on looking at this thing and that thing on the table before him; at
everything but the letter Ray had sent in. When he did take that up he
did not look at Ray; and while he talked with him he scarcely glanced at
him; there were moments when he seemed to forget there was anybody
there; and Ray’s blood began to burn with a sense of personal indignity.
He wished to go away, and leave the editor to find him gone at his
leisure; but he felt bound to Mr. Brandreth, and he staid. At last the
editor took up a book from the litter of newspapers and manuscripts
before him, and said:

“What we want is a rapid and attractive _résumé_ of this book, with
particular reference to Coquelin and his place on the stage and in art.
No one else has the book yet, and we expect to use the article from it
in our Saturday edition. See what you can do with it, and bring it here
by ten to-morrow. You can run from one to two thousand words--not over
two.”

He handed Ray the book and turned so definitively to his papers and
letters again that Ray had no choice but to go. He left with the editor
a self-respectful parting salutation, which the editor evidently had no
use for, and no one showed a consciousness of him, not even the
office-boy, as he went out.

He ground his teeth in resentment, but he resolved to take his revenge
by making literature of that _résumé_, and compelling the attention of
the editor to him through his work. He lost no time in setting about it;
he began to read the book at once, and he had planned his article from
it before he reached his hotel. He finished it before he slept, and he
went to bed as the first milkman sent his wail through the street below.
His heart had worked itself free of its bitterness, and seemed to have
imparted its lightness to the little paper, which he was not ashamed of
even when he read it after he woke from the short rest he suffered
himself. He was sure that the editor of _Every Evening_ must feel the
touch which he knew he had imparted to it, and he made his way to him
with none of the perturbation, if none of the romantic interest of the
day before.

The editor took the long slips which Ray had written his copy on, and
struck them open with his right hand while he held them with his left.

“Why the devil,” he demanded, “don’t you write a better hand?” Before
Ray could formulate an answer, he shouted again, “Why the devil don’t
you begin with a _fact_?”

He paid no heed to the defence which the hurt author-pride of the young
fellow spurred him to make, but went on reading the article through.
When he had finished he threw it down and drew toward him a narrow book
like a check-book, and wrote in it, and then tore out the page, and gave
it to Ray. It was an order on the counting-room for fifteen dollars.

Ray had a weak moment of rage in which he wished to tear it up and
fling it in the editor’s face. But he overcame himself and put the order
in his pocket. He vowed never to use it, even to save himself from
starving, but he kept it because he was ashamed to do otherwise. Even
when the editor at the sound of his withdrawal called out, without
looking round, “What is your address?” he told him; but this time he
wasted no parting salutations upon him.

The hardest part was now to make his acknowledgments to Mr. Brandreth,
without letting him know how little his personal interest in the matter
had availed. He succeeded in keeping everything from him but the fact
that his work had been accepted, and Mr. Brandreth was delighted.

“Well, that’s first-rate, as far as it goes, and I believe it’s going to
lead to something permanent. You’ll be the literary man of _Every
Evening_ yet; and I understand the paper’s making its way. It’s a good
thing to be connected with; thoroughly clean and decent, and yet
lively.”

Though Ray hid his wrath from Mr. Brandreth, because it seemed due to
his kindness, he let it break out before Kane, whom he found dining
alone at his hotel that evening when he came down from his room.

“I don’t know whether I ought to sit down with you,” he began, when Kane
begged him to share his table. “I’ve just been through the greatest
humiliation I’ve had yet. It’s so thick on me that I’m afraid some of it
will come off. And it wasn’t my fault, either; it was my misfortune.”

“We can bear to suffer for our misfortunes,” said Kane, dreamily. “To
suffer for our faults would be intolerable, because then we couldn’t
preserve our self-respect. Don’t you see? But the consciousness that our
anguish is undeserved is consoling; it’s even flattering.”

“I’m sorry to deprive you of a _Hard Saying_, if that’s one, but my
facts are against you.”

“Ah, but facts must always yield to reasons,” Kane began.

Ray would not be stopped. But he suddenly caught the humorous aspect of
his adventure with the editor of _Every Evening_, and gave it with
artistic zest. He did not spare his ridiculous hopes or his ridiculous
pangs.

From time to time Kane said, at some neat touch: “Oh, good!” “Very
good!” “Capital!” “Charming, charming!” When Ray stopped, he drew a long
breath, and sighed out: “Yes, I know the man. He’s not a bad fellow.
He’s a very good fellow.”

“A good fellow?” Ray demanded. “Why did he behave like a brute, then?
He’s the only man who’s been rude to me in New York. Why couldn’t he
have shown me the same courtesy that all the publishers have? Every one
of them has behaved decently, though none of them, confound them! wanted
my book.”

“Ah,” said Kane, “his conditions were different. They had all some
little grace of leisure, and according to your report he had none. I
don’t know a more pathetic picture than you’ve drawn of him, trying to
grasp all those details of his work, and yet seize a new one. It’s
frightful. Don’t you feel the pathos of it?”

“No man ought to place himself in conditions where he has to deny
himself the amenities of life,” Ray persisted, and he felt that he had
made a point, and languaged it well. “He’s to blame if he does.”

“Oh, no man willingly places himself in hateful or injurious
conditions,” said Kane. “He is pushed into them, or they grow up about
him through the social action. He’s what they shape him to, and when
he’s taken his shape from circumstances, he knows instinctively that he
won’t fit into others. So he stays put. You would say that the editor of
_Every Evening_ ought to forsake his conditions at any cost, and go
somewhere else and be a civilized man; but he couldn’t do that without
breaking himself in pieces and putting himself together again. Why did I
never go back to my own past? I look over my life in New York, and it is
chiefly tiresome and futile in the retrospect; I couldn’t really say why
I’ve staid here. I don’t expect anything of it, and yet I can’t leave
it. The _Every Evening_ man does expect a great deal of his conditions;
he expects success, and I understand he’s getting it. But he didn’t
place himself in his conditions in any dramatic way, and he couldn’t
dramatically break with them. They may be gradually detached from him
and then he may slowly change. Of course there are signal cases of
renunciation. People have abdicated thrones and turned monks; but
they’ve not been common, and I dare say, if the whole truth could be
known, they have never been half the men they were before, or become
just the saints they intended to be. If you’ll take the most
extraordinary instance of modern times, or of all times--if you’ll take
Tolstoï himself, you’ll see how impossible it is for a man to rid
himself of his environment. Tolstoï believes unquestionably in a life of
poverty and toil and trust; but he has not been able to give up his
money; he is defended against want by the usual gentlemanly sources of
income; and he lives a ghastly travesty of his unfulfilled design. He’s
a monumental warning of the futility of any individual attempt to escape
from conditions. That’s what I tell my dear old friend Chapley, who’s
quite Tolstoï mad, and wants to go into the country and simplify
himself.”

“Does he, really?” Ray asked, with a smile.

“Why not? Tolstoï convinces your reason and touches your heart. There’s
no flaw in his logic and no falsity in his sentiment. I think that if
Tolstoï had not become a leader, he would have had a multitude of
followers.”

The perfection of his paradox afforded Kane the highest pleasure. He
laughed out his joy in it, and clapped Ray on the shoulder, and provoked
him to praise it, and was so frankly glad of having made it that all
Ray’s love of him came back.




XXVI.


From one phase of his experience with his story, Ray took a hint, and
made bold to ask Mr. Brandreth if he could not give him some manuscripts
to read; he had rather a fancy for playing the part of some other man’s
destiny since he could have so little to do with deciding his own.
Chapley & Co. had not much work of that kind to give, but they turned
over a number of novels to him, and he read them with a jealous
interest; he wished first of all to find whether other people were
writing better novels than his, and he hoped to find that they were not.
Mostly, they really were not, and they cumulatively strengthened him
against an impulse which he had more than once had to burn his
manuscript. From certain of the novels he read he got instruction both
of a positive and negative kind; for it was part of his business to look
at their construction, and he never did this without mentally revising
the weak points of his story, and considering how he could repair them.

There was not a great deal of money in this work; but Ray got ten or
fifteen dollars for reading a manuscript and rendering an opinion of it,
and kept himself from the depravation of waiting for the turn of the
cards. He waited for nothing; he worked continually, and he filled up
the intervals of the work that was given to him with work that he made
for himself. He wrote all sorts of things,--essays, stories, sketches,
poems,--and sent them about to the magazines and the weekly newspapers
and the syndicates. When the editors were long in reporting upon them,
he went and asked for a decision; and in audacious moments he carried
his manuscript to them, and tried to surprise an instant judgment from
them. This, if it were in the case of a poem, or a very short sketch, he
could sometimes get; and it was usually adverse, as it usually was in
the case of the things he sent them by mail. They were nowhere unkindly;
they were often sympathetic, and suggested that what was not exactly
adapted to their publications might be adapted to the publication of a
fellow-editor; they were willing to sacrifice one another in his behalf.
They did not always refuse his contributions. Kane, who witnessed his
struggles at this period with an interest which he declared truly
paternal, was much struck by the fact that Ray’s failures and successes
exactly corresponded to those of business men; that is, he failed
ninety-five times out of a hundred to get his material printed. His
effort was not of the vast range suggested by these numbers; he had a
few manuscripts that were refused many times over, and made up the large
sum of his rejections by the peculiar disfavor that followed them.

Besides these regular attacks on the literary periodicals, Ray carried
on guerilla operations of several sorts. He sold jokes at two dollars
apiece to the comic papers; it sometimes seemed low for jokes, but the
papers paid as much for a poor joke as a good one, and the market was
steady. He got rather more for jokes that were ordered of him, as when
an editor found himself in possession of an extremely amusing
illustration without obvious meaning. He developed a facility wholly
unexpected to himself in supplying the meaning for a picture of this
kind; if it were a cartoon, he had the courage to ask as much as five
dollars for his point.

A mere accident opened up another field of industry to him, when one day
a gentleman halted him at the foot of the stairway to an elevated
station, and after begging his pardon for first mistaking him for a
Grand Army man, professed himself a journalist in momentary difficulty.

“I usually sell my things to the _Sunday Planet_, but my last poem was
too serious for their F. S., and I’m down on my luck. Of course, I see
_now_,” said the journalist in difficulty, “that you _couldn’t_ have
been in the war; at first glance I took you for an old comrade of mine;
but if you’ll leave your address with me--Thank you, sir! Thank you!”

Ray had put a quarter in his hand, and he thought he had bought the
right to ask him a question.

“I know that I may look twice my age when people happen to see double”--

“Capital!” said the veteran. “First-rate!” and he clapped Ray on the
shoulder, and then clung to him long enough to recover his balance.

“But _would_ you be good enough to tell me what the F. S. of the _Sunday
Planet_ is?”

“Why, the Funny Side--the page where they put the jokes and the comic
poetry. F. S. for short. Brevity is the soul of wit, you know.”

Ray hurried home and put together some of the verses that had come back
to him from the comic papers, and mailed them to the _Sunday Planet_. He
had learned not to respect his work the less for being rejected, but the
_Planet_ did not wane in his esteem because the editor of the F. S.
accepted all his outcast verses. The pay was deplorably little, however,
and for the first time he was tempted to consider an offer of
partnership with a gentleman who wrote advertisements for a living, and
who, in the falterings of his genius from overwork, had professed
himself willing to share his honors and profits with a younger man; the
profits, at any rate, were enormous.

But this temptation endured only for a moment of disheartenment. In all
his straits Ray not only did his best, but he kept true to a certain
ideal of himself as an artist. There were some things he could not do
even to make a living. He might sell anything he wrote, and he might
write anything within the bounds of honesty that would sell, but he
could not sell his pen, or let it for hire, to be used as the lessee
wished. It was not the loftiest grade of æsthetics or ethics, and
perhaps the distinctions he made were largely imaginary. But he refused
the partnership offered him, though it came with a flattering
recognition of his literary abilities, and of his peculiar fitness for
the work proposed.

He got to know a good many young fellows who were struggling forward on
the same lines with himself, and chancing it high and low with the great
monthlies, where they offered their poems and short stories, and with
the one-cent dailies, where they turned in their space-work. They had a
courage in their risks which he came to share in its gayety, if not its
irreverence, and he enjoyed the cheerful cynicism with which they
philosophized the facts of the newspaper side of their trade: they had
studied its average of successes and failures, and each of them had his
secret for surprising the favor of the managing editor, as infallible as
the gambler’s plan for breaking the bank at Monaco.

“You don’t want to be serious,” one blithe spirit volunteered for Ray’s
instruction in a moment of defeat; “you want to give a light and
cheerful cast to things. For instance, if a fireman loses his life in a
burning building, you mustn’t go straight for the reader’s pity; you
must appeal to his sense of the picturesque. You must call it, ‘Knocked
out in a Fight with Fire,’ or something like that, and treat the
incident with mingled pathos and humor. If you’ve got a case of suicide
by drowning, all you’ve got to do is to call it ‘Launch of one more
Unfortunate,’ and the editor is yours. Go round and make studies of our
metropolitan civilization; write up the ‘Leisure Moments of Surface-Car
Conductors,’ or ‘Talks with the Ticket-Choppers.’ Do the amateur
scavenger, and describe the ‘Mysteries of the Average Ash-Barrel.’”

As the time wore on, the circle of Ray’s acquaintance widened so much
that he no longer felt those pangs of homesickness which used to seize
him whenever he got letters from Midland. He rather neglected his
correspondence with Sanderson; the news of parties and sleigh-rides and
engagements and marriages which his friend wrote, affected him like
echoes from some former life. He was beginning to experience the
fascination of the mere city, where once he had a glimpse of the
situation fleeting and impalpable as those dream-thoughts that haunt the
consciousness on the brink of sleep. Then it was as if all were driving
on together, no one knew why or whither; but some had embarked on the
weird voyage to waste, and some to amass; their encounter formed the
opportunity of both, and a sort of bewildered kindliness existed between
them. Their common ignorance of what it was all for was like a bond, and
they clung involuntarily together in their unwieldy multitude because of
the want of meaning, and prospered on, suffered on, through vast
cyclones of excitement that whirled them round and round, and made a
kind of pleasant drunkenness in their brains, and consoled them for
never resting and never arriving.

The fantastic vision passed, and Ray again saw himself and those around
him full of distinctly intended effort, each in his sort, and of
relentless energy, which were self-sufficing and self-satisfying. Most
of the people he knew were, like himself, bent upon getting a story, or
a poem, or an essay, or an article, printed in some magazine or
newspaper, or some book into the hands of a publisher. They were all,
like himself, making their ninety-five failures out of a hundred
endeavors; but they were all courageous, if they were not all gay, and
if they thought the proportion of their failures disastrous, they said
nothing to show it. They did not try to blink them, but they preferred
to celebrate their successes; perhaps the rarity of these merited it
more.




XXVII.


As soon as Ray had pulled himself out of his slough of despond, and
began to struggle forward on such footing as he found firm, he felt the
rise of the social instinct in him. He went about and delivered his
letters; he appeared at one of Mrs. Chapley’s Thursdays, and began to be
passed from one afternoon tea to another. He met the Mayquaits at Mrs.
Chapley’s, those Gitchigumee people she had asked him about, and at
their house he met a lady so securely his senior that she could let him
see at once she had taken a great fancy to him. The Mayquaits have since
bought a right of way into the heart of society, but they were then in
the peripheral circles, and this lady seemed anxious to be accounted for
in that strange company of rich outcasts. Something in Ray’s intelligent
young good looks must have appealed to her as a possible solvent. As
soon as he was presented to her she began to ply him with subtle
questions concerning their hostess and their fellow-guests, with whom
she professed to find herself by a species of accident springing from
their common interest in a certain charity: that particular tea was to
promote it. Perhaps it was the steadfast good faith of the pretty boy in
refusing to share in her light satire, while he could not help showing
that he enjoyed it, which commended Ray more and more to her. He told
her how he came to be there, not because she asked, for she did not ask,
but because he perceived that she wished to know, and because it is
always pleasant to speak about one’s self upon any pretext, and he
evinced a delicate sympathy with her misgiving. It flattered him that
she should single him out for her appeal as if he were of her sort, and
he eagerly accepted an invitation she made him. Through her favor and
patronage he began to go to lunches and dinners; he went to balls, and
danced sometimes when his pockets were so empty that he walked one way
to save his car fares. But his poverty was without care; it did not eat
into his heart, for no one else shared it; and those spectres of want
and shame which haunt the city’s night, and will not always away at
dawn, but remain present to eyes that have watched and wept, vanished in
the joyous light that his youth shed about him, as he hurried home with
the waltz music beating in his blood. A remote sense, very remote and
dim, of something all wrong attended him at moments in his pleasure; at
moments it seemed even he who was wrong. But this fled before his
analysis; he could not see what harm he was doing. To pass his leisure
in the company of well-bred, well-dressed, prosperous, and handsome
people was so obviously right and fit that it seemed absurd to suffer
any question of it. He met mainly very refined persons, whose interests
were all elevated, and whose tastes were often altruistic. He found
himself in a set of young people, who loved art and literature and
music, and he talked to his heart’s content with agreeable girls about
pictures and books and theatres.

It surprised him that with all this opportunity and contiguity he did
not fall in love; after the freest give and take of æsthetic sympathies
he came away with a kindled fancy and a cold heart. There was one girl
he thought would have let him be in love with her if he wished, but when
he questioned his soul he found that he did not wish, or could not. He
said to himself that it was her money, for she was rich as well as
beautiful and wise; and he feigned that if it had not been for her money
he might have been in love with her. Her people, an aunt and uncle, whom
she lived with, made much of him, and the way seemed clear. They began
to tell each other about themselves, and once he interested her very
much by the story of his adventures in first coming to New York.

“And did you never meet the two young women afterwards?” she asked.

“Yes. That was the curious part of it,” he said, and piqued that she
called them “two young women,” he went on to tell her of the Hugheses,
whom he set forth in all the picturesqueness he could command. She
listened intensely, and even provoked him with some questions to go on;
but at the end she said nothing; and after that she was the same and not
the same to him. At first he thought it might be her objection to his
knowing such queer people; she was very proud; but he was still made
much of by her family, and there was nothing but this difference in her
that marked with its delicate distinctness the loss of a chance.

He was not touched except in his vanity. Without the subtle willingness
which she had subtly withdrawn, his life was still surpassingly rich on
the side where it had been hopelessly poor; and in spite of his personal
poverty he was in the enjoyment of a social affluence beyond the magic
of mere money. Sometimes he regarded it all as his due, and at all times
he took it with simple ingratitude; but he had moments of passionate
humility when he realized that he owed his good fortune to the caprice
of a worldly old woman, whom he did not respect very much.

When he began to go into society, he did not forget his earlier friends;
he rather prided himself on his constancy; he thought it was uncommon,
and he found it a consolation when other things failed him. It was even
an amusement full of literary suggestion for him to turn from his own
dream of what the world was to Hughes’s dream of what the world should
be; and it flattered him that the old man should have taken the sort of
fancy to him that he had. Hughes consulted him as a person with a
different outlook on life, and valued him as a practical mind, akin to
his own in quality, if not in direction. First and last, he read him his
whole book; he stormily disputed with him about the passages which Ray
criticised as to their basal facts; but he adopted some changes Ray
suggested.

The young fellow was a whole gay world to Mrs. Denton, in his
reproduction of his society career for her. She pursued him to the
smallest details of dress and table and manner; he lived his society
events over again for her with greater consciousness than he had known
in their actual experience; and he suffered patiently the little
splenetic resentment in which her satiety was apt finally to express
itself. He decided that he must not take Mrs. Denton in any wise
seriously; and he could see that Peace was grateful to him for his
complaisance and forbearance. She used to listen, too, when he described
the dinners and dances for her sister, and their interest gave the
material a fascination for Ray himself: it emphasized the curious
duality of his life, and lent the glamor of unreality to the regions
where they could no more have hoped to follow him than to tread the
realms of air. Sometimes their father hung about him--getting points for
his morals, as Ray once accused him of doing.

“No, no!” Hughes protested. “I am interested to find how much better
than their conditions men and women always are. The competitive
conditions of our economic life characterize society as well as
business. Yet business men and society women are all better and kinder
than you would believe they could be. The system implies that the weak
must always go to the wall, but in actual operation it isn’t so.”

“From Mr. Ray’s account there seem to be a good many wall-flowers,” Mrs.
Denton suggested.

Hughes ignored her frivolity. “It shows what glorious beings men and
women would be if they were rightly conditioned. There is a whole heaven
of mercy and loving-kindness in human nature waiting to open itself: we
know a little of what it may be when a man or woman rises superior to
circumstance and risks a generous word or deed in a selfish world. Then
for a moment we have a glimpse of the true life of the race.”

“Well, I wish I had a glimpse of the untrue life of the race, myself,”
said Mrs. Denton, as her father turned away. “I would give a whole year
of the millennium for a week in society.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” said her husband. He had
been listening in gloomy silence to Ray’s talk, and he now turned on his
wife. “I would rather see you dead than in such ‘good society’ as that.”

“Oh, well,” she answered, “you’re much likelier to see me dead. If I
understand Mr. Ray, it’s a great deal easier to get into heaven than to
get into good society.” She went up to her husband and pushed his hair
back from his eyes. “If you wore it that way, people could see what a
nice forehead you’ve got. You look twice as ‘brainy,’ now, Ansel.”

He caught her hand and flung it furiously away. “Ansel,” she said, “is
beginning to feel the wear and tear of the job of setting the world
right as much as I do. He never had as much faith in the millennium as
father has; he thinks there’s got to be some sort of sacrifice first;
he hasn’t made up his mind quite what it’s to be, yet.”

Denton left them abruptly, and after a while Ray heard him talking in
the next room; he thought he must be talking to some one there, till his
wife said, “Ansel doesn’t say much in company, but he’s pretty sociable
when he gets by himself.”




XXVIII.


The next time Ray came, he found Denton dreamily picking at the strings
of a violin which lay in his lap; the twins were clinging to his knees,
and moving themselves in time to the music. “You didn’t know Ansel was a
musician?” his wife said. “He’s just got a new violin--or rather it’s a
second-hand one; but it’s splendid, and he got it so cheap.”

“I profited by another man’s misfortune,” said Denton. “That’s the way
we get things cheap.”

“Oh, well, never mind about that, now. Play the ‘Darky’s Dream,’ won’t
you, Ansel? I wish we had our old ferry-boat darky here to whistle!”

After a moment in which he seemed not to have noticed her, he put the
violin to his chin, and began the wild, tender strain of the piece. It
seemed to make the little ones drunk with delight. They swayed
themselves to and fro, holding by their father’s knees, and he looked
down softly into their uplifted faces. When he stopped playing, their
mother put out her hand toward one of them, but it clung the faster to
its father.

“Let me take your violin a moment,” said Ray. He knew the banjo a
little, and now he picked out on the violin an air which one of the
girls in Midland had taught him.

The twins watched him with impatient rejection; and they were not easy
till their father had the violin back. Denton took them up one on each
knee, and let them claw at it between them; they looked into his face
for the effect on him as they lifted themselves and beat the strings.
After a while Peace rose and tried to take it from them, for their
father seemed to have forgotten what they were doing; but they stormed
at her, in their baby way, by the impulse that seemed common to them,
and screamed out their shrill protest against her interference.

“Let them alone,” said their father, gently, and she desisted.

“You’ll spoil those children, Ansel,” said his wife, “letting them have
their own way so. The first thing you know, they’ll grow up
capitalists.”

He had been looking down at them with dreamy melancholy, but he began to
laugh helplessly, and he kept on till she said:

“I think it’s getting to be rather out of proportion to the joke; don’t
you, Mr. Ray? Not that Ansel laughs too much, as a rule.”

Denton rose, when the children let the violin slip to the floor at last,
and improvised the figure of a dance with them on his shoulders, and let
himself go in fantastic capers, while he kept a visage of perfect
seriousness.

Hughes was drawn by the noise, and put his head into the room.

“We’ve got the old original Ansel back, father!” cried Mrs. Denton, and
she clapped her hands and tried to sing to the dance, but broke down,
and mocked at her own failure.

When Denton stopped breathless, Peace took the children from him, and
carried them away. His wife remained.

“Ansel was brought up among the Shakers; that’s the reason he dances so
nicely.”

“Oh, was that a Shaker dance?” Ray asked, carelessly.

“No. The Shaker dance is a rite,” said Denton, angrily. “You might as
well expect me to burlesque a prayer.”

“Oh, I beg your pardon,” said Ray. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about
it.”

But Denton left the room without visible acceptance of his excuse.

“You must be careful how you say anything about the Shakers before
Ansel,” his wife explained. “I believe he would be willing to go back to
them now, if he knew what to do with the children and me.”

“If it were not for their unpractical doctrine of celibacy,” said
Hughes, “the Shakers, as a religious sect, could perform a most useful
office in the transition from the status to better conditions. They are
unselfish, and most communities are not.”

“We might all go back with Ansel,” said Mrs. Denton, “and they could
distribute us round in the different Families. I wonder if Ansel’s bull
is hanging up in the South Family barn yet? You know,” she said, “he
painted a red bull on a piece of shingle when they were painting the
barn one day, and nailed it up in a stall; when the elders found it they
labored with him, and then Ansel left the community, and went out into
the world. But they say, once a Shaker always a Shaker, and I believe
he’s had a bad conscience ever since he’s left them.”

Not long after this Ray came in one night dressed for a little dance
that he was going to later, and Mrs. Denton had some moments alone with
him before Peace joined them. She made him tell where he was going, and
who the people were that were giving the dance, and what it would all be
like--the rooms and decorations, the dresses, the supper.

“And don’t you feel very strange and lost, in such places?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” said Ray. “I can’t always remember that I’m a poor
Bohemian with two cents in my pocket. Sometimes I imagine myself really
rich and fashionable. But to-night I shan’t, thank you, Mrs. Denton.”

She laughed at the look he gave her in acknowledgment of her little
scratch. “Then you wouldn’t refuse to come to a little dance here, if we
were rich enough to give one?” she asked.

“I would come instantly.”

“And get your fashionable friends to come?”

“That might take more time. When are you going to give your little
dance?”

“As soon as Ansel’s invention is finished.”

“Oh! Is he going on with that?”

“Yes. He has seen how he can do more good than harm with it--at last.”

“Ah! We can nearly always coax conscience along the path of
self-interest.”

This pleased Mrs. Denton too. “That sounds like Mr. Kane.”

Peace came in while Mrs. Denton was speaking, and gave Ray her hand,
with a glance at his splendor, enhanced by his stylish manner of holding
his silk hat against his thigh.

“Who was it told you that Mr. Kane was sick?” Mrs. Denton asked.

Peace answered, “Mr. Chapley.”

“Kane? Is Mr. Kane sick?” said Ray. “I must go and see him.”

He asked Peace some questions about Kane, but she knew nothing more than
that Mr. Chapley said he was not very well, and he was going to step
round and see him on his way home. Ray thought of the grudge he had
borne for a while against Kane, and he was very glad now that there was
none left in his heart.

“It’s too late to-night; but I’ll go in the morning. He usually drops in
on me Sundays; he didn’t come last Sunday; but I never thought of his
being sick.” He went on to praise Kane, and he said, as if it were one
of Kane’s merits, “He’s been a good friend of mine. He read my novel all
over after Chapley declined it, and tried to find enough good in it to
justify him in recommending it to some other publisher. I don’t blame
him for failing, but I did feel hard about his refusing to look at it
afterwards; I couldn’t help it for a while.” He was speaking to Peace,
and he said, as if it were something she would be cognizant of, “I mean
when Mr. Brandreth sent for it again after he first rejected it.”

“Yes,” she admitted, briefly, and he was subtly aware of the withdrawal
which he noticed in her whenever the interest of the moment became
personal.

But there was never any shrinking from the personal interest in Mrs.
Denton; her eagerness to explore all his experiences and sentiments was
vivid and untiring.

“Why did he send for it?” she asked. “What in the world for?”

Ray was willing to tell, for he thought the whole affair rather
creditable to himself. “He wanted to submit it to a friend of mine; and
if my friend’s judgment was favorable he might want to reconsider his
decision. He returned the manuscript the same day, with a queer note
which left me to infer that my mysterious friend had already seen it,
and had seen enough of it. I knew it was Mr. Kane, and for a while I
wanted to destroy him. But I forgave him, when I thought it all over.”

“It was pretty mean of him,” said Mrs. Denton.

“No, no! He had a perfect right to do it, and I had no right to
complain. But it took me a little time to own it.”

Mrs. Denton turned to Peace. “Did you know about it?”

Denton burst suddenly into the room, and stared distractedly about as if
he were searching for something.

“What is it, Ansel?” Peace asked.

“That zinc plate.”

“It’s on the bureau,” said his wife.

He was rushing out, when she recalled him.

“Here’s Mr. Ray.”

He turned, and glanced at Ray impatiently, as if he were eager to get
back to his work; but the gloomy face which he usually wore was gone;
his eyes expressed only an intense preoccupation through which gleamed a
sudden gayety, as if it flashed into them from some happier time in the
past. “Oh, yes,” he said to his wife, while he took hold of Ray’s arm
and turned him about; “this is the way you want me to look.”

“As soon as your process succeeds, I expect you to look that way all the
time. And I’m going to go round and do my work in a low-neck dress; and
we are going to have champagne at every meal. I am going to have a day,
on my card, and I am going to have afternoon teas and give dinners. We
are going into the best society.”

Denton slid his hand down Ray’s arm, and kept Ray’s hand in his hot
clasp while he rapidly asked him about the side of his life which that
costume represented, as though now for the first time he had a reason
for caring to know anything of the world and its pleasures.

“And those people don’t do anything else?” he asked, finally.

“Isn’t it enough?” Ray retorted. “They think they do a great deal.”

Denton laughed in a strange nervous note, catching his breath, and
keeping on involuntarily. “Yes; too much. I pity them.”

“Well,” said his wife, “I want to be an object of pity as soon as
possible. Don’t lose any more time, now, Ansel, from that precious
process.” The light went out of his face again, and he jerked his head
erect sharply, like one listening, while he stood staring at her. “Oh,
now, don’t be ridiculous, Ansel!” she said.




XXIX.


The next day after a little dance does not dawn very early. Ray woke
late, with a vague trouble in his mind, which he thought at first was
the sum of the usual regrets for awkward things done and foolish things
said the night before. Presently it shaped itself as an anxiety which
had nothing to do with the little dance, and which he was helpless to
deal with when he recognized it. Still, as a definite anxiety, it was
more than half a question, and his experience did not afford him the
means of measuring its importance or ascertaining its gravity. He
carried it loosely in his mind when he went to see Kane, as something he
might or might not think of.

Kane was in bed, convalescent from a sharp gastric attack, and he
reached Ray a soft moist hand across the counterpane and cheerily
welcomed him. His coat and hat hung against a closet door, and looked so
like him that they seemed as much part of him as his hair and beard,
which were smoothly brushed, and gave their silver delicately against
the pillow. A fire of soft coal purred in the grate, faded to a fainter
flicker by the sunlight that poured in at the long south windows, and
lit up the walls book-lined from floor to ceiling.

“Yes,” he said, in acceptance of the praises of its comfort that Ray
burst out with, “I have lived in this room so long that I begin to
cherish the expectation of dying in it. But, really, is this the first
time you’ve been here?”

“The first,” said Ray. “I had to wait till you were helpless before I
got in.”

“Ah, no; ah, no! Not so bad as that. I’ve often meant to ask you, when
there was some occasion; but there never seemed any occasion; and I’ve
lived here so much alone that I’m rather selfish about my solitude; I
like to keep it to myself. But I’m very glad to see you; it was kind of
you to think of coming.” He bent a look of affection on the young
fellow’s handsome face. “Well, how wags the gay world?” he asked.

“Does the gay world do anything so light-minded as to wag?” Ray asked in
his turn, with an intellectual coxcombry that he had found was not
offensive to Kane. “It always seems to me very serious as a whole, the
gay world, though it has its reliefs, when it tries to enjoy itself.” He
leaned back in his chair, and handled his stick a moment, and then he
told Kane about the little dance which he had been at the night before.
He sketched some of the people and made it amusing.

“And which of your butterfly friends told you I was ill?” asked Kane.

“The butterflyest of all: Mrs. Denton.”

“Oh! Did _she_ give the little dance?”

“No. I dropped in at the Hugheses’ on the way to the dance. But I don’t
know how soon she may be doing something of the kind. They’re on the
verge of immense prosperity. Her husband has invented a new art process,
and it’s going to make them rich. He doesn’t seem very happy about it,
but she does. He’s a dreary creature. At first I used to judge her
rather severely, as we do with frivolous people. But I don’t know that
frivolity is so bad; I doubt if it’s as bad as austerity; they’re both
merely the effect of temperament, it strikes me. I like Mrs. Denton,
though she does appear to care more for the cat than the twins. Perhaps
she thinks she can safely leave them to him. He’s very devoted to them;
it’s quite touching. It’s another quality of paternal devotion from Mr.
Brandreth’s; it isn’t half so voluble. But it’s funny, all the same, to
see how much more care of them he takes than their mother does. He looks
after them at table, and he carries them off and puts them to bed with
his own hands apparently,” said Ray, in celibate contempt of the
paternal tenderness.

“I believe that in David’s community,” Kane suggested, “the male
assisted the female in the care of their offspring. We still see the
like in some of the feathered tribes. In the process of social evolution
the father bird will probably leave the baby bird entirely to the mother
bird; and the mother bird, as soon as she begins to have mind and money,
will hire in some poor bird to look after them. Mrs. Denton seems to
have evolved in the direction of leaving them entirely to the father
bird.”

“Well, she has to do most of the talking. Have you ever heard,” Ray
asked from the necessary association of ideas, “about her husband’s
Voice?”

“What do you mean?”

“Why, it seems that Mr. Denton has an inward monitor of some kind, like
the demon of Socrates, that they call a Voice, and that directs his
course in life, as I understand. I suppose it’s authorized him to go on
with his process, which he was doubtful about for a good while, because
if it succeeded it would throw a lot of people out of work. Then you’ve
never heard of his Voice?”

“No,” said Kane. He added: “I suppose it’s part of the psychical
nonsense that they go into in all sorts of communities. And Hughes,” he
asked after a moment--“how is Hughes now?”

“He’s generally busy with his writing, and I don’t always see him. He’s
a fine old fellow, if he does prefer to call me out of my name; he still
addresses me generally as Young Man. Mrs. Denton has tried to teach him
better; but he says that names are the most external of all things, and
that I am no more essentially Ray than I am Hughes. There’s something in
it; I think one might get a kind of story out of the notion.”

Kane lay silent in a pensive muse, which he broke to ask with a smile:
“And how is Peace these days? Do you see her?”

“Yes; she’s very well, I believe,” said Ray, briefly, and he rose.

“Oh!” said Kane, “must you go?”

He kept Ray’s hand affectionately, and seemed loath to part with him.
“I’m glad you don’t forget the Hugheses in the good time you’re having.
It shows character in you not to mind their queerness; I’m sure you
won’t regret it. Your visits are a great comfort to them, I know. I was
afraid that you would not get over the disagreeable impression of that
first Sunday, and I’ve never been sure that you’d quite forgiven me for
taking you.”

“Oh yes, I had,” said Ray, and he smiled with the pleasure we all feel
when we have a benefaction attributed to us. “I’ve forgiven you much
worse things than that!”

“Indeed! You console me! But for example?”

“Refusing to look at my novel a second time,” answered Ray, by a sudden
impulse.

“I don’t understand you,” said Kane, letting his hand go.

“When Mr. Brandreth offered to submit it to you in the forlorn hope that
you might like it and commend it.”

“Brandreth never asked me to look at it at all; the only time I saw it
was when you let me take it home with me. What do you mean?”

“Mr. Brandreth wrote me saying he wanted to try it on a friend of mine,
and it came back the same day with word that my friend had already seen
it,” said Ray, in an astonishment which Kane openly shared.

“And was that the reason you were so cold with me for a time? Well, I
don’t wonder! You had a right to expect that I would say anything in
your behalf under the circumstances. And I’m afraid I should. But I
never was tempted. Perhaps Brandreth got frightened and returned the
manuscript with that message because he knew he couldn’t trust me.”

“Perhaps,” said Ray, blankly.

“Who else could it have been? Have you any surmise?”

“What is the use of surmising?” Ray retorted. “It’s all over. The story
is dead, and I wish it was buried. Don’t bother about it! And try to
forgive me for suspecting _you_.”

“It was very natural. But you ought to have known that I loved you too
much not to sacrifice a publisher to you if I had him fairly in my
hand.”

“Oh, thank you! And--good-by. Don’t think anything more about it. I
sha’n’t.”




XXX.


There could be only one answer to the riddle, if Kane’s suggestion that
Mr. Brandreth had returned the manuscript without showing it to any one
were rejected. The publisher could speak of no one besides Kane as a
friend except Miss Hughes, and it was clearly she who had refused to
look again at Ray’s book. She had played a double part with him; she had
let him make a fool of himself; she had suffered him to keep coming to
her, and reading his things to her, and making her his literary
confidante. He ground his teeth with shame to think how he had sought
her advice and exulted in her praise; but the question was not merely,
it was not primarily, a question of truth or untruth, kindness or
unkindness toward himself, but of justice toward Kane. He had told her
of the resentment he had felt toward Kane; he had left her to the belief
that he still suspected Kane of what she had done. If she were willing
that he should remain in this suspicion, it was worse than anything he
now accused her of.

He kept away from Chapley’s all day, because of the embarrassment of
seeing her with that in his mind. He decided that he must never see her
again till she showed some wish to be relieved from the false position
she had suffered herself to be placed in. At the end of the afternoon
there came a knock at his door, and he set the door open and confronted
Mr. Brandreth, who stood smiling at the joke of his being there, with
his lustrous silk hat and gloves and light overcoat on. Ray passed some
young banter with him in humorous recognition of the situation, before
they came to business, as Mr. Brandreth called it.

“Look here!” said the publisher, with a quizzical glance at him from
Ray’s easy-chair, while Ray himself lounged on the edge of his bed. “Did
you think I wanted to show your novel to old Kane, that time when I sent
back for it?”

“Yes,” said Ray; and he could not say any more for his prescience of
what was coming.

“Well, I didn’t,” Mr. Brandreth returned. “And if I’d ever thought you
suspected him, I should have told you so long ago. The person that I did
want it for is anxious you should know it wasn’t Kane, and I thought I’d
better come and tell you so by word of mouth; I rather made a mess of it
before, in writing. If you’ve any feeling about the matter, it’s only
fair to Kane to assure you that he wasn’t at all the person.”

“Kane told me so himself to-day,” said Ray; “and all the grudge I felt
was gone long ago.”

“Well, of course! It’s a matter of business.” In turning it off in this
common-sense way Mr. Brandreth added lightly, “I’m authorized to tell
you who it really was, if you care to know.”

Ray shook his head. “I don’t care to know. What’s the use?”

“There isn’t any. I’m glad you take it the way you do, and it will be a
great relief to--the real one.”

“It’s all right.”

Ray had been strengthening his defences against any confidential
approach from the moment Mr. Brandreth began to speak; he could not help
it. Now they began to talk of other things. At the end the publisher
returned to the book with a kind of desperate sigh: “You haven’t done
anything with your story yet, I suppose?”

“No,” said Ray.

Mr. Brandreth, after a moment’s hesitation, went away without saying
anything more. Even that tentative inquiry about the fate of his book
could not swerve Ray now from his search for the motives which had
governed Peace in causing this message to be sent him. It could only be
that she had acted in Kane’s behalf, who had a right to justice from
her, and she did not care what Ray thought of her way of doing justice.
In the complex perversity of his mood the affair was so humiliating to
him, as it stood, that he could not rest in it. That evening he went
determined to make an opportunity to speak with her alone, if none
offered.

It was she who let him in, and then she stood looking at him in a kind
of daze, which he might well have taken for trepidation. It did not give
him courage, and he could think of no better way to begin than to say,
“I have come to thank you, Miss Hughes, for your consideration for Mr.
Kane. I couldn’t have expected less of you, when you found out that I
had been suspecting him of that friendly refusal to look at my
manuscript the second time.”

His hard tone, tense with suppressed anger, had all the effect he could
have wished. He could see her wince, and she said, confusedly, “I told
Mr. Brandreth, and he said he would tell you it wasn’t Mr. Kane.”

“Yes,” said Ray, stiffly, “he came to tell me.”

She hesitated, and then she asked, “Did he tell you who it was?”

“No. But I knew.”

If she meant him to say something more, he would not; he left to her the
strain and burden that in another mood he would have shared so
willingly, or wholly assumed.

At a little noise she started, and looked about, and then, as if
returning to him by a painful compliance with his will, she said, “When
he told me what he had done to get the manuscript back, I couldn’t let
him give it to me.”

She stopped, and Ray perceived that, for whatever reason, she could say
nothing more, at least of her own motion. But it was not possible for
him to leave it so.

“Of course,” he said, angrily, “I needn’t ask you why.”

“It was too much for me to decide,” she answered, faintly.

“Yes,” he assented, “it’s a good deal to take another’s fate in one’s
hands. But you knew,” he added, with a short laugh, “you had my fortune
in your hands, anyway.”

“I didn’t see that then,” she answered, and she let her eyes wander, and
lapsed into a kind of absence, which vexed him as a slight to the
importance of the affair.

“But it doesn’t really matter whether you decided it by refusing or
consenting to look at the book again,” he said. “The result would have
been the same, in any case.”

She lifted her eyes to his with a scared look, and began, “I didn’t say
that”--and then she stopped again, and looked away from him as before.

“But if I can’t thank you for sparing me an explicit verdict,” he pushed
on, “I can appreciate your consideration for Kane, and I will carry him
any message you will trust me with.” He rose as he said this, and he
found himself adding, “And I admire your strength in keeping your own
counsel when I’ve been talking my book over with you. It must have been
amusing for you.”

When he once began to revenge himself he did not stop till he said all
he had thought he thought. She did not try to make any answer or
protest. She sat passive under his irony; at times he thought her hardly
conscious of it, and that angered him the more, and he resented the
preoccupation, and then the distraction with which she heard him to the
end.

“Only I don’t understand exactly,” he went on, “how you could let me do
it, in spite of the temptation. I can imagine that the loss of my
acquaintance will be a deprivation to you; you’ll miss the pleasure of
leading me on to make a fool of myself; but you know you can still laugh
at me, and that ought to keep you in spirits for a long time. I won’t
ask your motive in sending word to me by a third person. I dare say you
didn’t wish to tell me to my face; and it couldn’t have been an easy
thing to write.”

“I ought to have written,” she said, meekly. “I see that now. But
to-day, I couldn’t. There is something--He offered to go to you--he
wished to; and--I let him. I was wrong. I didn’t think how it might
seem.”

“Oh, there was no reason why you should have thought of me in the
matter. I’m glad you thought of Mr. Kane; I don’t ask anything more than
that.”

“Oh, you don’t understand,” she began. “You don’t know”--

“Yes, I understand perfectly, and I know all that I wish to know. There
was no reason why you should have protected me against my own folly. I
have got my deserts, and you are not to blame if I don’t like them.
Good-by.”

As he turned to go, she lifted her eyes, and he could see that they were
blind with tears.

He went out and walked up and down the long, unlovely avenue, conscious
of being the ugliest thing in it, and unconsciously hammered by its
brutal noises, while he tried to keep himself from thinking how, in
spite of all he had said, he knew her to be the soul of truth and
goodness. He knew that all he had said was from the need of somehow
venting his wounded vanity. As far as any belief in wrong done him was
concerned, the affair was purely histrionic on his part; but he had seen
that the pain he gave was real; the image of her gentle sufferance of
his upbraiding went visibly before him. The wish to go back and own
everything to her became an intolerable stress, and then he found
himself again at her door.

He rang, and after waiting a long time to hear the click of the
withdrawing latch, he rang again. After a further delay the door opened,
and he saw Hughes standing at the top of the stairs with a lamp held
above his head.

“Who is there?” the old man called down, with his hoarse voice.

“It’s I, Mr. Hughes,” Ray answered, a new trouble blending with his
sense of the old man’s picturesque pose, and the leonine grandeur of his
shaggy head. “Mr. Ray,” he explained.

“Oh!” said Hughes. “I’m glad to see you. Will you come up?” He added, as
Ray mounted to him, and they entered his room together, “I am alone here
for the time. My daughters have both gone out. Will you sit down?” Ray
obeyed, with blank disappointment. Hughes could not have known of his
earlier visit, or had forgotten it. “They will be in presently. Peace
was here till a little while ago; when Ansel and Jenny came in, they all
went out together.” He lapsed into a kind of muse, staring absently at
Ray from his habitual place beside the window. He came back to a sense
of him with words that had no evident bearing upon the situation.

“The thing which renders so many reformers nugatory and ridiculous, and
has brought contempt and disaster on so many good causes, is the attempt
to realize the altruistic man in competitive conditions. That must
always be a failure or worse.” He went on at length to establish this
position. Then, “Here is my son-in-law”--and the old man had the effect
of stating the fact merely in illustration of the general principle he
had laid down--“who has been giving all his spare time this winter to an
invention in the line of his art, and had brought it to completion
within a few days. He has all along had misgivings as to the moral
bearing of his invention, since every process of the kind must throw a
number of people out of work, and he has shown a morbid scruple in the
matter which I have tried to overcome with every argument in my power.”

“I thought,” Ray made out to say, in the pause Hughes let follow, “he
had come to see all that in another light.”

“Yes,” the old man resumed, “he has commonly yielded to reason, but
there is an unpractical element in the man’s nature. In fact, here, this
morning, while we supposed he was giving the finishing touches to his
work, he was busy in destroying every vestige of result which could
commend it to the people interested in it. Absolutely nothing remains to
show that he ever had anything of the kind successfully in hand.”

“Is it possible?” said Ray, deeply shocked. “I am so sorry to hear
it”--

The old man had not heard him or did not heed him. “He has been in a
very exalted state through the day, and my daughters have gone out to
walk with him; it may quiet his nerves. He believes that he has acted in
obedience to an inner Voice which governs his conduct. I know nothing
about such things; but all such suggestions from beyond are to my
thinking mischievous. Have you ever been interested in the phenomena of
spiritualism, so-called?”

Ray shook his head decidedly. “Oh, no!” he said, with abhorrence.

“Ah! The Family were at one time disposed to dabble in those shabby
mysteries. But I discouraged it; I do not deny the assumptions of the
spiritualists; but I can see no practical outcome to the business; and I
have used all my influence with Ansel to put him on his guard against
this Voice, which seems to be a survival of some supernatural
experiences of his among the Shakers. It had lately been silent, and had
become a sort of joke with us. But he is of a very morbid temperament,
and along with this improvement, there have been less favorable
tendencies. He has got a notion of expiation, of sacrifice, which is
perhaps a survival of his ancestral Puritanism. I suppose the hard
experiences of the city have not been good for him. They prey upon his
fancy. It would be well if he could be got into the country somewhere;
though I don’t see just how it could be managed.”

Hughes fell into another muse, and Ray asked, “What does he mean by
expiation?”

The old man started impatiently. “Mere nonsense; the rags and tatters of
man’s infancy, outworn and outgrown. The notion that sin is to be atoned
for by some sort of offering. It makes me sick; and of late I haven’t
paid much attention to his talk. I supposed he was going happily forward
with his work; I was necessarily much preoccupied with my own; I have
many interruptions from irregular health, and I must devote every
available moment to my writing. There is a passage, by-the-way, which I
had just completed when you rang, and which I should like to have your
opinion of, if you will allow me to read it to you. It is peculiarly
apposite to the very matter we have been speaking of; in fact, I may say
it is an amplification of the truth that I am always trying to impress
upon Ansel, namely, that when you are in the midst of a battle, as we
all are here, you must fight, and fight for yourself, always, of course,
keeping your will fixed on the establishment of a lasting peace.” Hughes
began to fumble among the papers on the table beside him for his
spectacles, and then for the scattered sheets of his manuscript. “Yes,
there is a special obligation upon the friends of social reform to a
life of common-sense. I have regarded the matter from rather a novel
standpoint, and I think you will be interested.”

The old man read on and on. At last Ray heard the latch of the street
door click, and the sound of the opening and then the shutting of the
door. A confused noise of feet and voices arrested the reading which
Hughes seemed still disposed to continue, and light steps ascended the
stairs, while as if in the dark below a parley ensued. Ray knew the
high, gentle tones of Peace in the pleading words, “But try, try to
believe that if it says that, it can’t be the Voice you used to hear,
and that always told you to do what was right. It is a wicked Voice,
now, and you must keep saying to yourself that it is wicked and you
mustn’t mind it.”

“But the words, the words! Whose words were they? Without the shedding
of blood: what does that mean? If it was a sin for me to invent my
process, how shall the sin be remitted?”

“There is that abject nonsense of his again!” said old Hughes, in a
hoarse undertone which drowned for Ray some further words from Denton.
“It’s impossible to get him away from that idea. Men have nothing to do
with the remission of sins; it is their business to cease to do evil!
But you might as well talk to a beetle!”

Ray listened with poignant eagerness for the next words of Peace, which
came brokenly to his ear. He heard-- “...justice and not sacrifice. If
you try to do what is right--and--and to be good, then”--

“I will try, Peace, I will try. O Lord, help me!” came in Denton’s deep
tones. “Say the words again. The Voice keeps saying those--But I will
say yours after you!”

“I will have justice.” The girl’s voice was lifted with a note in it
that thrilled to Ray’s heart, and made him start to his feet; Hughes
laid a detaining hand upon his arm.

“I will have justice,” Denton repeated.

“And not sacrifice,” came in the girl’s tremulous accents.

“And not sacrifice,” followed devoutly from the man. “I will have
justice, without the shedding of blood--it gets mixed; I can’t keep the
Voice out!--and not sacrifice. What is justice? What is justice but
sacrifice?”

“Yes, it is self-sacrifice! All our selfish wishes”--

“I have burnt them in a fire, and scattered their ashes!”

“And all gloomy and morbid thoughts that distress other people.”

“Oh, you know I wouldn’t distress any one! You know how my heart is
breaking for the misery of the world.”

“Let her alone!” said old Hughes to Ray, in his thick murmur, as if he
read Ray’s impulse in the muscle of his arm. “She will manage him.”

“But say those words over again!” Denton implored. “The Voice keeps
putting them out of my mind!”

She said the text, and let him repeat it after her word by word, as a
child follows its mother in prayer.

“And try hard, Ansel! Remember the children and poor Jenny!”

“Yes, yes. I will, Peace! Poor Jenny! I’m sorry for her. And the
children--You know I wouldn’t harm any one for the whole world, don’t
you, Peace?”

“Yes, I do know, Ansel, how good and kind you are; and I know you’ll
see all this in the true light soon. But now you’re excited.”

“Well, say it just once more, and then I shall have it.”

Once more she said the words, and he after her. He got them straight
this time, without admixture from the other text. There came a rush of
his feet on the stairs, and a wild laugh.

“Jenny! Jenny! It’s all right now, Jenny!” he shouted, as he plunged
into the apartment, and was heard beating as if on a door closed against
him. It must have opened, for there was a sound like its shutting, and
then everything was still except a little pathetic, almost inaudible
murmur as of suppressed sobbing in the dark of the entry below.
Presently soft steps ascended the stairs and lost themselves in the rear
of the apartment.

“Now, young man,” said Hughes, “I think you had better go. Peace will be
in here directly to look after me, and it will distress her to find any
one else. It is all right now.”

“But hadn’t I better stay, Mr. Hughes? Can’t I be of use?”

“No. I will defer reading that passage to another time. You will be
looking in on us soon again. We shall get on very well. We are used to
these hypochrondriacal moods of Ansel’s.”




XXXI.


There was nothing for Ray to do but to accept his dismissal. He got
himself stealthily down stairs and out of the house, but he could not
leave it. He walked up and down before it, doubting whether he ought not
to ring and try to get in again. When he made up his mind to this he saw
that the front windows were dark. That decided him to go home.

He did not sleep, and the next morning he made an early errand to the
publishers’. He saw Peace bent over her work in Mr. Chapley’s room. He
longed to go and speak to her, and assure himself from her own words
that all was well; but he had no right to do that, and with the first
stress of his anxiety abated, he went to lay the cause of it before
Kane.

“It was all a mere chance that I should know of this; but I thought you
ought to know,” he explained.

“Yes, certainly,” said Kane; but he was less moved than Ray had
expected, or else he showed his emotion less. “Hughes is not a fool,
whatever Denton is; this sort of thing must have been going on a good
while, and he’s got the measure of it. I’ll speak to Chapley about it.
They mustn’t be left altogether to themselves with it.”

As the days began to go by, and Ray saw Peace constantly in her place
at the publishers’, his unselfish anxiety yielded to the question of his
own relation to her, and how he should make confession and reparation.
He went to Kane in this trouble, as in the other, after he had fought
off the necessity as long as he could, but they spoke of the other
trouble first.

Then Ray said, with the effort to say it casually, “I don’t think I told
you that the great mystery about my manuscript had been solved.” Kane
could not remember at once what the mystery was, and Ray was forced to
add, “It seems that the unknown friend who wouldn’t look twice at my
book was--Miss Hughes.”

Kane said, after a moment, “Oh!” and then, as if it should be a very
natural thing, he asked, “How did you find that out?”

“She got Mr. Brandreth to tell me it wasn’t you, as soon as she knew
that I had suspected you.”

“Of course. Did he tell you who it was?”

“He was to tell me if I wished. But I knew it couldn’t be anybody but
she, if it were not you, and I went to see her about it.”

“Well?” said Kane, with a kind of expectation in his look and voice that
made it hard for Ray to go on.

“Well, I played the fool. I pretended that I thought she had used me
badly. I don’t know. I tried to make her think so.”

“Did you succeed?”

“I succeeded in making her very unhappy.”

“That was success--of a kind,” said Kane, and he lay back in his chair
looking into the fire, while Ray sat uncomfortably waiting at the other
corner of the hearth.

“Did she say why she wouldn’t look at your manuscript a second time?”
Kane asked finally.

“Not directly.”

“Did you ask?”

“Hardly!”

“You knew?”

“It was very simple,” said Ray. “She wouldn’t look at it because it
wasn’t worth looking at. I knew that. That was what hurt me, and made me
wish to hurt her.”

Kane offered no comment. After a moment he asked: “Has all this just
happened? Have you just found it out?”

“Oh, it’s bad enough, but isn’t so bad as that,” said Ray, forcing a
laugh. “Still, it’s as bad as I could make it. I happened to go to see
her that evening when I overheard her talk with Denton.”

“Oh! And you spoke to her after that?”

There was a provisional condemnation in Kane’s tone which kindled Ray’s
temper and gave him strength to retort: “No, Mr. Kane! I spoke to her
before that; and it was when I came back--to tell her I was all wrong,
and to beg her pardon--that I saw her father, and heard what I’ve told
you.”

“Oh, I didn’t understand; I might have known that the other thing was
impossible,” said Kane.

They were both silent, and Ray’s anger had died down into the shame that
it had flamed up from, when Kane thoughtfully asked, “And you want my
advice?”

“Yes.”

“Concretely?”

“As concretely as possible.”

“Then, if you don’t really know the reason why a girl so conscientious
as Peace Hughes wouldn’t look at your manuscript again when she was
practically left to decide its fate, I think you’d better not go there
any more.”

Kane spoke with a seriousness the more impressive because he was so
rarely serious, and Ray felt himself reddening under his eye.

“Aren’t you rather enigmatical?” he began.

“No, I don’t think so,” said Kane, and then neither spoke.

Some one knocked at the door. Kane called out, “Come in!” and Mr.
Chapley entered.

After he had shaken hands with Kane and made Ray out, and had shaken
hands with him, he said, with not more than his usual dejection, “I’m
afraid poor David is in fresh trouble, Kane.”

“Yes?” said Kane, and Ray waited breathlessly to hear what the trouble
was.

“That wretched son-in-law of his--though I don’t know why I should
condemn him--seems to have been somewhere with his children and exposed
them to scarlet fever; and he’s down with diphtheritic sore throat
himself. Peace has been at home since the trouble declared itself,
helping take care of them.”

“Is it going badly with them?” Kane asked.

“I don’t know. It’s rather difficult to communicate with the family
under the circumstances.”

“You might have said impossible, without too great violence, Henry,”
said Kane.

“I had thought of seeing their doctor,” suggested Mr. Chapley, with his
mild sadness. “Ah, I wish David had stayed where he was.”

“We are apt to think these things are accidents,” said Kane. “Heaven
knows. But scarlet fever and diphtheria are everywhere, and they take
better care of them in town than they do in the country. Who did you say
their doctor was?”

“Dear me! I’m sure I don’t know who he is. I promised Mr. Brandreth to
look the matter up,” said Mr. Chapley. “He’s very anxious to guard
against any spread of the infection to his own child, and my whole
family are so apprehensive that it’s difficult. I should like to go and
see poor David, myself, but they won’t hear of it. They’re quite in a
panic as it is.”

“They’re quite right to guard against the danger,” said Kane, and he
added, “I should like to hear David philosophize the situation. I can
imagine how he would view the effort of each one of us to escape the
consequences that we are all responsible for.”

“It is civilization which is in the wrong,” said Mr. Chapley.

“True,” Kane assented. “And yet our Indians suffered terribly from the
toothache and rheumatism. You can carry your return to nature too far,
Henry; Nature must meet Man half-way.” Kane’s eye kindled with pleasure
in his phrase, and Ray could perceive that the literary interest was
superseding the personal interest in his mind. “The earth is a dangerous
planet; the great question is how to get away from it alive,” and the
light in Kane’s eyes overspread his face in a smile of deep satisfaction
with his paradox.

The cold-blooded talk of the two elderly men sent a chill to Ray’s
heart. For him, at least, there was but one thing to do; and half an
hour later he stood at the open street door of the Hughes apartment,
looking up at Mrs. Denton silhouetted against the light on the landing
as he had first seen her there.

“Oh, Mrs. Denton,” he called up, “how are the children?”

“I--I don’t know. They are very sick. The doctor is afraid”--

“Oh!” Ray groaned, at the stop she made. “Can I help--can’t I do
something? May I come up?”

“Oh, yes,” she answered mechanically, and Ray was stooping forward to
mount the stairs when he saw her caught aside, and Peace standing in her
place.

“Don’t come up, Mr. Ray! You can’t do any good. It’s dangerous.”

“I don’t care for the danger,” he began. “Some one--some one must help
you! Your father”--

“My father doesn’t need any help, and we don’t. Every moment you stay
makes the danger worse!”

“But you, _you_ are in danger! You”--

“It’s my _right_ to be. But it’s wrong for you. Oh, do go away!” She
wrung her hands, and he knew that she was weeping. “I do thank you for
coming. I was afraid you would come.”

“Oh, were you?” he exulted. “I am glad of that! You know how I must have
felt, when I came to think what I had said.”

“Yes--but, go, now!”

“How can I do that? I should be ashamed”--

“But you mustn’t,” she entreated. “It would put others in danger, too.
You would carry the infection. You must go,” she repeated.

“Well, I shall come again. I must know how it is with you. When may I
come again!”

“I don’t know. You mustn’t come inside again.” She thought a moment. “If
you come I will speak to you from that window over the door. You must
keep outside. If you will ring the bell twice, I shall know it is you.”

She shut the door, and left him no choice but to obey. It was not
heroic; it seemed cowardly; and he turned ruefully away. But he
submitted, and twice a day, early in the morning and late at night, he
came and rang for her. The neighbors, such as cared, understood that he
was the friend of the family who connected its exile with the world;
sometimes the passers mistook these sad trysts for the happy lovers’
meetings which they resembled, and lingered to listen, and then passed
on.

They caught only anxious questions and hopeless answers; the third
morning that Ray came, Peace told him that the little ones were dead.

They had passed out of the world together, as they had entered it, and
Ray stood with their mother beside the grave where they were both laid,
and let her cling to his hand as if he were her brother. Her husband was
too sick to be with them, and there had been apparently no question of
Hughes’s coming, but Peace was there. The weather was that of a day in
late March, bitter with a disappointed hope of spring. Ray went back to
their door with the mourners. The mother kept on about the little ones,
as if the incidents of their death were facts of a life that was still
continuing.

“Oh, I know well enough,” she broke off from this illusion, “that they
are gone, and I shall never see them again; perhaps their father will.
Well, I don’t think I was so much to blame. I didn’t make myself, and I
never asked to come here, any more than they did.”

She had the woe-begone hopeless face which she wore the first day that
Ray saw her, after the twins had thrown her porte-monnaie out of the car
window; she looked stunned and stupefied.

They let her talk on, mostly without interruption. Only, at this point
Peace said, “That will be thought of, Jenny,” and the other asked,
wistfully, “Do you think so, Peace? Well!”




XXXII.


Peace did not come back to her work at the publishers’ for several
weeks. The arrears began to accumulate, and Mr. Brandreth asked Ray to
help look after it; Ray was now so often with him that their friendly
acquaintance had become a confidential intimacy.

Men’s advance in these relations is rapid, even in later life; in youth
it is by bounds. Before a week of their daily contact was out, Ray knew
that Mrs. Chapley, though the best soul in the world, and the most
devoted of mothers and grandmothers, had, in Mr. Brandreth’s opinion, a
bad influence on his wife, and through her on his son. She excited Mrs.
Brandreth by the long visits she paid her; and she had given the baby
medicine on one occasion at least that distinctly had not agreed with
it. “That boy has taken so much belladonna, as a preventive of scarlet
fever, that I believe it’s beginning to affect his eyes. The pupils are
tremendously enlarged, and he doesn’t notice half as much as he did a
month ago. I don’t know when Mrs. Chapley will let us have Miss Hughes
back again. Of course, I believe in taking precautions too, and I never
could forgive myself if anything really happened. But I don’t want to be
a perfect slave to my fears, or my mother-in-law’s, either--should
you?”

He asked Ray whether, under the circumstances, he did not think he ought
to get some little place near New York for the summer, rather than go to
his country home in Massachusetts, where the Chapleys had a house, and
where his own mother lived the year round. When Ray shrank from the
question as too personal for him to deal with, Mr. Brandreth invited him
to consider the more abstract proposition that if the two grandmothers
had the baby there to quarrel over all summer, they would leave nothing
of the baby, and yet would not part friends.

“I’ll tell you another reason why I want to be near my business so as to
keep my finger on it all the time, this year,” said Mr. Brandreth, and
he went into a long and very frank study of the firm’s affairs with Ray,
who listened with the discreet intelligence which made everybody trust
him. “With Mr. Chapley in the state he’s got into about business, when
he doesn’t care two cents whether school keeps or not, I see that I’ve
got to take the reins more and more into my own hands.” Mr. Brandreth
branched off into an examination of his own character, and indirectly
paid himself some handsome tributes as a business man. “I don’t mean to
say,” he concluded, “that I’ve got the experience of some of the older
men, but I do mean to say that experience doesn’t count for half of what
they claim, in the book business, and I can prove it out of their own
mouths. They all admit that nobody can forecast the fate of a book. Of
course if you’ve got a book by a known author, you’ve got something to
count on, but not so much as people think, and some unknown man may
happen along with a thing that hits the popular mood and outsell him ten
times over. It’s a perfect lottery.”

“I wonder they let you send your lists of new publications through the
mails,” said Ray, dryly.

“Oh, it isn’t quite as bad as that,” said Mr. Brandreth. “Though there
are a good many blanks too. I suppose the moral difference between
business and gambling is that in business you do work for a living, and
you don’t propose to give nothing for something, even when you’re buying
as cheap as you can to sell as dear as you can. With a book it’s even
better. It’s something you’ve put value into, and you have a right to
expect to get value out of it. That’s what I tell Mr. Chapley when he
gets into one of his Tolstoï moods, and wants to give his money to the
poor and eat his bread in the sweat of his brow.”

The two young men laughed at these grotesque conceptions of duty, and
Mr. Brandreth went on:

“Yes, sir, if I could get hold of a good, strong, lively novel”--

“Well, there is always _A Modern Romeo_,” Ray suggested.

Mr. Brandreth winced. “I know.” He added, with the effect of hurrying to
get away from the subject, “I’ve had it over and over again with Mr.
Chapley till I’m tired of it. Well, I suppose it’s his age, somewhat,
too. Every man, when he gets to Mr. Chapley’s time of life, wants to go
into the country and live on the land. I’d like to see him living on the
land in Hatboro’, Massachusetts! You can stand up in your buggy and
count half-a-dozen abandoned farms wherever you’ve a mind to stop on the
road. By-the-way,” said Mr. Brandreth, from an association of ideas that
Ray easily followed, “have you seen anything of the book that Mr. Hughes
is writing? He’s got a good title for it. ‘The World Revisited’ ought to
sell the first edition of it at a go.”

“Before people found out what strong meat it was? It condemns the whole
structure of society; he’s read me parts of it.”

“Well, well,” said Mr. Brandreth, in a certain perplexity, “that might
make it go too. People like strong meat. They like to have the structure
of society condemned. There’s a good deal of sympathy with the
underpinning; there’s no use trying to deny it. Confound it! I should
like to try such a book as that in the market. But it would be regarded
by everybody who knew him as an outcome of Mr. Chapley’s Tolstoï twist.”

“I understand that Mr. Hughes’s views are entirely opposed to Tolstoï’s.
He regards him as unpractical,” said Ray, with a smile for Hughes’s
practicality.

“It wouldn’t make any difference. They would call it Tolstoïan on Mr.
Chapley’s account. People don’t know. There was _Looking Backward_; they
took that at a gulp, and didn’t know that it was the rankest sort of
socialism. My! If I could get hold of a book like _Looking Backward_!”

“I might have it come out that the wicked cousin in _A Modern Romeo_ was
a secret Anarchist. That ought to make the book’s fortune.”

Ray could deal lightly with his rejected novel, but even while he made
an open jest of it, the book was still inwardly dear to him. He still
had his moments of thinking it a great book, in places. He was always
mentally comparing it with other novels that came out, and finding it
better. He could not see why they should have got publishers, and his
book not; he had to fall back upon that theory of mere luck which first
so emboldens and then so embitters the heart; and the hope that lingered
in him was mixed with cynicism.




XXXIII.


When Peace came back to her work, Mr. Brandreth, in admiration of her
spirit, confided to Ray that she had refused to take pay for the time
she had been away, and that no arguments availed with her.

“They must have been at unusual expense on account of this sickness, and
I understand that the son-in-law hasn’t earned anything for a month. But
what can you do?”

“You can’t do anything,” said Ray. Their poverty might be finally
reached from without, and it was not this which made him chiefly anxious
in his futile sympathy for Peace. He saw her isolated in the presence of
troubles from which he was held as far aloof as her father lived in his
dream of a practicable golden age. Their common sorrow, which ought to
have drawn the mother and father of the dead children nearer together,
seemed to have alienated them. After the first transports of her grief,
Mrs. Denton appeared scarcely to miss the little ones; the cat, which
they had displaced so rarely, was now always in her lap, and her idle,
bantering talk went on, about anything, about everything, as before, but
with something more of mockery for her husband’s depressions and
exaltations. It might have been from a mistaken wish to rouse him to
some sort of renewed endeavor that she let her reckless tongue run upon
what he had done with his process; it might have been from her
perception that he was most vulnerable there; Ray could not decide. For
the most part Denton remained withdrawn from the rest, a shadow and a
silence which they ignored. Sometimes he broke in with an irrelevant
question or comment, but oftener he evaded answering when they spoke to
him. If his wife pressed him at such times he left them; and then they
heard him talking to himself in his room, after an old habit of his; now
and then Ray thought he was praying. If he did not come back, Peace
followed him, and then her voice could be heard in entreaty with him.

“She’s the only one that can do anything with Ansel,” her sister lightly
explained one evening. “She has so much patience with him; father hasn’t
any more than I have; but Peace can persuade him out of almost anything
except his great idea of sacrifice.”

“Sacrifice?” Ray repeated.

“Yes. I don’t know what he means. But he thinks he’s been very wicked,
trying to invent that process, and he can’t get forgiveness without some
kind of sacrifice. He’s found it in the Old Testament somewhere. _I_
tell him it’s a great pity he didn’t live in the days of the prophets;
he might have passed for one. I don’t know what he’s going to do. He
says we must make some sacrifice; but I can’t see what we’ve got left
to sacrifice. We might make a burnt offering of the chairs in father’s
stove; the coal’s about gone.”

She stopped, and looked up at Denton, who had come in with a book in his
hand; Peace glided in behind him.

“Oh, are you going to read us something, Ansel?” his wife asked with her
smile of thoughtless taunting. “I don’t see why you don’t give public
readings. You could read better than the elocutionists that used to read
to us in the Family. And it wouldn’t be taking the bread out of any one
else’s mouth.” She turned to Ray: “You know Ansel’s given up his place
so as to let another man have his chance. It was the least he could do
after he had tried to take away the livelihood of so many by inventing
that wicked process of his.”

Denton gave no sign of having heard her. He fixed his troubled eyes on
Ray. “Do you know that poem?” he asked, handing him the open book.

“Oh, yes,” said Ray.

“It’s a mistake,” said Denton, “all a mistake. I should like to write to
Tennyson and tell him so. I’ve thought it out. The true sacrifice would
have been the best, not the dearest; the best.”

The next day was Sunday, and it broke, with that swift, capricious heat
of our climate, after several days of cloudy menace. The sun shone, and
the streets were thronged with people. They were going to church in
different directions, but there was everywhere a heavy trend toward the
stations of the elevated road, and the trains were crammed with men,
women and children going to the Park. When Ray arrived there with one of
the throngs he had joined, he saw the roads full of carriages, and in
the paths black files of foot-passengers pushing on past the seats
packed with those who had come earlier, and sat sweltering under the
leafless trees. The grass was already green; some of the forwarder
shrubs were olive-gray with buds.

Ray walked deep into the Park. He came in sight of a bench near a shelf
of rock in a by-path, with a man sitting alone on it. There was room for
two, and Ray made for the place.

The man sat leaning forward with his heavy blonde head hanging down as
if he might have been drunk. He suddenly lifted himself, and Ray saw
that it was Denton. His face was red from the blood that had run into
it, but as it grew paler it showed pathetically thin. He stared at Ray
confusedly, and did not know him till he spoke.

Then he said, “Oh!” and put out his hand. A sudden kindness in Ray, more
than he commonly felt for the man whom he sometimes pitied, but never
liked, responded to the overture.

“May I have part of your bench?” he asked.

“Yes,” said Denton. “Sit down,” and he made way for him. “It isn’t mine;
it’s one of the few things in this cursed town that belongs to every
one.”

“Well,” said Ray, cheerfully, “I suppose we’re all proprietors of the
Park, even if we’re not allowed to walk on our own grass.”

“Yes; but don’t get me thinking about that. There’s been too much of
that in my life. I want to get away--away from it all. We are going into
the country. Do you know about those abandoned farms in New England?
Could we go and take up one of them?”

“I’m sure I don’t know. But what could you do with it, if you did? The
owners left those farms because they couldn’t live on them. You would
have to fight a battle you’re not strong enough for. Better wait till
you get fairly on your feet.”

“Yes, I’m sick; I’m no good. But it would be expiation.”

Ray did not speak at once. Then, partly because he thought he might be
of use to the man by helping him to an objective vision of what was
haunting him, and partly from an æsthetic desire to pry into the
confusion of his turbid soul, he asked: “Do you mean for that invention
of yours?”

“No; that’s nothing; that was a common crime.”

“Well, I have no right to ask you anything further. But in any given
case of expiation, the trouble is that a man can’t expiate alone; he
makes a lot of other people expiate with him.”

“Yes; you can’t even sin alone. That is the curse of it, and then the
innocent have to suffer with the sinners. But I meant--the children.”

“The children?”

“Yes; I let them die.”

Ray understood now that it was remorse for his exposure of the little
ones to contagion which was preying on him. “I don’t think you were to
blame for that. It was something that might have happened to any one.
For the sake of your family you ought to look at it in the true light.
You are no more responsible for your children’s death than I am.” Ray
stopped, and Denton stared as if listening.

“What? What? What?” he said, in the tone of a man who tries to catch
something partly heard. “Did you hear?” he asked. “They are both talking
at once--with the same voice; it’s the twin nature.” He shook his head
vehemently, and said, with an air of relief: “Well, now it’s stopped.
What did you say?”

“I didn’t say anything,” Ray answered.

“Oh! It was the Voice, then. You see it was a mistake not to do it
sooner; I ought to have _given_ them; not waited for them to be _taken_.
I couldn’t understand, because in the flesh they couldn’t speak. They
had to speak in the spirit. That was it--why they died. I thought that
if I took some rich man who had made his millions selfishly,
cruelly--you see?--it would satisfy justice; then the reign of peace and
plenty could begin. But that was wrong. That would have made the guilty
suffer for the innocent; and the innocent must suffer for the guilty.
Always! There is no other atonement. Now I see that. Oh, my soul, my
soul! What? No! Yes, yes! The best, the purest, the meekest! Always
that! Without the shedding of blood, there is no remission--Who do you
think is the best person in New York--the purest, the meekest?”

“Who?” Ray echoed.

“Yes,” said Denton. Then he broke off. “She said, No! No! No!” He
started up from the seat. “For their life, their life, their life! That
was where the wrong was. I knew it was all wrong, always. Oh, my soul,
my soul! What shall the atonement be?” He moved away, and at a few
paces’ distance he began to run.

Ray watched him running, running, till he was out of sight.

He passed a restless, anxious day, and in the evening he could not keep
from going to the Hugheses’. He found them all together, and gayer than
he had seen them since the children’s death. He tried to join in the
light-hearted fun that Mrs. Denton was making with her husband; she was
unusually fond, and she flattered him with praises of his talent and
good looks; she said his pallor became him.

“Do you know,” she asked Ray, “that we’re all going to New Hampshire to
live on an abandoned farm?”

She made Denton get his violin, and he played a long time. Suddenly he
stopped, and waited in the attitude of listening. He called out, “Yes!”
and struck the instrument over a chair-top, breaking it to splinters. He
jumped up as if in amaze at what had happened; then he said to Peace,
“I’ve made you some kindling.”

His wife said with a smile, “A man must do _something_ for a living.”

Denton merely looked at her with a kind of vague surprise. After a
moment’s suspense he wheeled about and caught his hat from the wall, and
rushed down the stairs into the street.

Hughes came in from the front room, with his pen in his hand, and
hoarsely gasping. “What is the matter?” he weakly whispered. No one
spoke, but the ruin of the violin answered for itself. “Some more of
that fool’s work, I suppose. It is getting past all endurance. He was
always the most unpractical creature, and of late, he’s become utterly
worthless.” He kept on moving his lips as if he were speaking, but no
sound came from them.

Mrs. Denton burst into a crowing laugh: “It’s too bad Ansel should have
_two_ voices and father none at all!”

The old man’s lips still moved, and now there came from them, “A fool, a
perfect fool!”

“Oh, no, father,” said Peace, and she went up to the old man. “You know
Ansel isn’t a fool. You know he has been tried; and he is good, you know
he is! He has worked hard for us all; and I can’t bear to have you call
him names.”

“Let him show some common-sense, then,” said her father. “I have no wish
to censure him. But his continual folly wears me out. He owes it to the
cause, if not to his family, to be sensible and--and--practical. Tell
him I wish to see him when he comes in,” he added, with an air of
authority, like the relic of former headship. “It’s high time I had a
talk with him. These disturbances in the family are becoming very
harassing. I cannot fix my mind on anything.”

He went back into his own room, where they heard him coughing. It was a
moment of pain without that dignity which we like to associate with the
thought of suffering, but which is seldom present in it; Ray did not
dare to go; he sat keenly sensible of the squalor of it, unable to stir.
He glanced toward Peace for strength; she had her face hidden in her
hands. He would not look at Mrs. Denton, who was saying: “I think father
is right, and if Ansel can’t control himself any better than he has of
late, he’d better leave us. It’s wearing father out. Don’t you think he
looks worse, Mr. Ray?”

He did not answer, but remained wondering what he had better do.

Peace took down her hands and looked at him, and he saw that she wished
him to go. He went, but in the dark below he lingered, trying to think
whom he should turn to for help. He ran over Mr. Chapley, Brandreth,
Kane in his mind with successive rejection, and then he thought of
Kane’s doctor; he had never really seen him, but he feigned him the
wisest and most efficient of the doctors known to fiction. Of course it
must be a doctor whom Ray should speak to; but he must put the affair
hypothetically, so that if the doctor thought it nothing, no one would
be compromised. It must be a physician of the greatest judgment, a man
of sympathy as well as sagacity; no, it could be any sort of doctor, and
he ought to go to him at once.

He was fumbling in the dark for the wire that pulled the bolt of the
street door when a night-latch was thrust into the key-hole outside, and
the door was burst open with a violence that flung him back against the
wall behind it. Before it could swing to again he saw Denton’s figure
bent in its upward rush on the stairs; he leaped after him.

“Now, then!” Denton shouted, as they burst into the apartment together.
“The time has come! The time has come! They are calling you, Peace! You
wouldn’t let me give them, and the Lord had to take them, but they have
reconciled Him to you; He will accept you for their sake!”

Old Hughes had entered from his room, and stood looking on with a
frowning brows, but with more vexation than apprehension. “Be done with
that arrant nonsense!” he commanded. “What stuff are you talking?”

Denton’s wife shrank into the farthest corner, with the cat still in her
arms. Peace stood in the middle of the room staring at him. He did not
heed Hughes except to thrust him aside as he launched himself towards
the girl.

Ray slipped between them, and Denton regarded him with dull wavering
eyes like a drunken man’s. “Oh, you’re here still, are you?” he said; a
cunning gleam came into his eyes, and he dropped his voice from its
impassioned pitch. He kept his right hand in his coat pocket, and Ray
watched that hand too solely. Denton flashed past him, and with his left
swept away the hands which Peace mechanically lifted to her face, and
held them in his grip. Ray sprang upon him, and pinioned his right
wrist.

“Hold him fast!” Hughes added his grip to Ray’s. “He’s got something in
his pocket, there! Run to the window, Jenny, and call for help!”

“No, no, Jenny, don’t!” Peace entreated. “Don’t call out. Ansel won’t
hurt me! I know he’ll listen to me; won’t you Ansel? Oh, what is it you
want to do?”

“Here!” cried Denton. “Take it! In an instant you will be with them! The
sin will be remitted.” He struggled to reach her lips with the hand
which he had got out of his pocket. Old Hughes panted out:

“Open his fist! Tear it open. If I had a knife”--

“Oh, don’t hurt him!” Peace implored. “He isn’t hurting me.”

Denton suddenly released her wrists, and she sank senseless. Ray threw
himself on his knees beside her, and stretched his arms out over her.

Denton did not look at them; he stood a moment listening; then with a
formless cry he whirled into the next room. The door shut crashing
behind him, and then there came the noise of a heavy fall within. The
rush of a train made itself loudly heard in the silence.

A keen bitter odor in the air rapt Ray far away to an hour of childhood
when a storm had stripped the blossoms from a peach-tree by the house,
and he noted with a child’s accidental observance the acrid scent which
rose from them.

“That is prussic acid,” Hughes whispered, and he moved feebly towards
the door and pushed it open. Denton lay on the floor with his head
toward the threshold, and the old man stood looking down into his dead
face.

“It must have been that which he had in his hand.”




XXXIV.


“Well, old fellow, I’ve got some good news for you,” said Mr. Brandreth,
when Ray showed himself at the door of the publisher’s little den the
next morning. Ray thought that he carried the record of the event he had
witnessed in every lineament, but Mr. Brandreth could have seen nothing
unusual in his face. “The editor of _Every Evening_ has just been here,
and he wants to see you about taking hold of his literary department.”
Ray stared blankly. Mr. Brandreth went on with generous pleasure: “He’s
had some trouble with the man who’s been doing it, and it’s come to a
complete break at last, and now he wants you to try. He’s got some new
ideas about it. He wants to make something specially literary of the
Saturday issue; he has a notion of restoring the old-fashioned serial.
If you take charge, you could work in the _Modern Romeo_ on him; and
then, if it succeeds as a serial, we can republish it in book form!
Better see him at once! Isn’t it funny how things turn out? He said he
was coming down town in a Broadway car, and happened to catch sight of
Coquelin’s name on a poster at the theatre, and it made him think of
you. He’d always liked that thing you did for him, and when he got down
here, he jumped out and came in to ask about you. I talked you into him
good and strong, and he wants to see you.”

Ray listened in nerveless passivity to news that would have transported
him with hope a few hours before. Mr. Brandreth might well have mistaken
his absent stare for the effect of such a rapture. He said, as a man
does when tempted a little beyond prudence by the pleasure he is giving:

“The fact is, I’ve been thinking about that work of yours, myself. I
want to try _some_ novel for the summer trade; and I want you to let me
see it again. I want to read it myself this time. They say a publisher
oughtn’t to know anything about the inside of a book, but I think we
might make an exception of yours.” Ray’s face remained unchanged, and
Mr. Brandreth now asked, with a sudden perception of its strangeness:
“Hello! What’s the matter? Anything gone wrong with you?”

“No, no,” Ray struggled out, “not with me. But”--

“Nothing new with the Hugheses, I hope?” said Mr. Brandreth, with
mounting alarm. “Miss Hughes was to have come back to work this morning,
but she hasn’t yet. No more diphtheria, I hope? By Jove, my dear fellow,
I don’t think you ought to come here if there is! I don’t think it’s
quite fair to me.”

“It isn’t diphtheria,” Ray gasped. “But they’re in great trouble. I
hardly know how to tell you. That wretched creature, Denton, has killed
himself. He’s been off his base for some time, and I’ve been
dreading--I’ve been there all night with them. He took prussic acid and
died instantly. Mr. Hughes and I had a struggle with him to
prevent--prevent him; and the old man got a wrench, and then he had a
hemorrhage. He is very weak from it, but the doctor’s brought him round
for the present. Miss Hughes wanted me to come and tell you.”

“Has it got out yet?” Mr. Brandreth asked. “Are the reporters on to it?”

“The fact has to come out officially through the doctor, but it isn’t
known yet.”

“I wish it hadn’t happened,” said Mr. Brandreth. “It will be an awful
scandal.”

There had been a moment with Ray too when the scandal of the fact was
all he felt. “Yes,” he said, mechanically.

“You see,” Mr. Brandreth explained, “those fellows will rummage round in
every direction, for every bit of collateral information, relevant and
irrelevant, and they will make as much as they can of the fact that Miss
Hughes was employed here.”

“I see,” said Ray.

Mr. Brandreth fell into a rueful muse, but he plucked himself out of it
with self-reproachful decency. “It’s awful for them, poor things!”

“It’s the best thing that could have happened, under the circumstances,”
said Ray, with a coldness that surprised himself, and a lingering
resentment toward Denton that the physical struggle had left in his
nerves. “It was a question whether he should kill himself, or kill some
one else. He had a mania of sacrifice, of atonement. Somebody had to be
offered up. He was a crank.” Ray pronounced the word with a strong
disgust, as if there were nothing worse to be said of a man. He paused,
and then he went on. “I shall have to tell you all about it, Brandreth;”
and he went over the event again, and spared nothing.

Mr. Brandreth listened with starting eyes. As if the additional details
greatly discouraged him, he said, “I don’t think those things can be
kept from coming out. It will be a terrible scandal. Of course, I pity
the family; and Miss Hughes. It’s strange that they could keep living on
with such a danger hanging over them for weeks and months, and not try
to do anything about it--not have him shut up.”

“The doctor says we’ve no idea what sort of things people keep living on
with,” said Ray, gloomily. “The danger isn’t always there, and the hope
is. The trouble keeps on, and in most cases nothing happens. The doctor
says nothing would have happened in this case, probably, if the man had
staid quietly in the country, in the routine he was used to. But when he
had the stress of new circumstances put on him, with the anxieties and
the chances, and all the miseries around him, his mind gave way; I don’t
suppose it was ever a very strong one.”

“Oh, I don’t see how the strongest stands it, in this infernal
hurly-burly,” said Mr. Brandreth, with an introspective air. He added,
with no effect of relief from his reflection, “I don’t know what I’m
going to say to my wife when all this comes out. I’ve got to prepare
her, somehow--her and her mother. Look here! Why couldn’t you go up to
Mr. Chapley’s with me, and see him? He wasn’t very well, yesterday, and
said he wouldn’t be down till this afternoon. My wife’s going there to
lunch, and we can get them all together before the evening papers are
out. Then I think we could make them see it in the right light. What do
you say?”

“I don’t see why I shouldn’t go with you. If I can be of any use,” said
Ray, with an inward regret that he could think of no excuse for not
going.

“I think you can be of the greatest use,” said Mr. Brandreth. He called
a clerk, and left word with him that he should not be in again till
after lunch. “You see,” he explained, as they walked out together, “if
we can get the story to Mrs. Brandreth and her mother before it comes to
them in print it won’t seem half as bad. Some fellow is going to get
hold of the case and work it for all it is worth. He is going to unearth
Mr. Hughes’s whole history, and exploit him as a reformer and a
philosopher. He’s going to find out everybody who knows him, or has ever
had anything to do with him, and interview people right and left.”

Ray had to acknowledge that this was but too probable. He quailed to
think of the publicity which he must achieve in the newspapers, and how
he must figure before the people of Midland, who had expected such a
different celebrity for him.

“You must look out for yourself. I’m going to put Mr. Chapley on his
guard, and warn the ladies not to see any reporters or answer any
questions. By-the-way, does Mr. Kane know about this yet?”

“I’ve just come from his place; he wasn’t at home; I left a note for
him.”

“I wonder if we hadn’t better go round that way and tell him?” Mr.
Brandreth faltered a moment, and then pushed on. “Or, no! He’s a wary
old bird, and I don’t think he’ll say anything that will commit
anybody.” They walked on in silence for awhile before Mr. Brandreth
said, with an air of relevance, “Of course, I shouldn’t want you to
count too much upon our being able to do anything with your book this
year, after all.”

“Of course,” said Ray. “If I’m mixed up with this business in the
papers, my name won’t be a very good one for a respectable house to
conjure with for some years to come. Perhaps never.”

At that moment he was mere egoist, feeling nothing but the mockery and
the malice of fortune; all his compassion for the hapless creatures
whose misery had involved him died within him.

“Oh, I don’t mean that, exactly,” said Mr. Brandreth. “But isn’t it
curious how we’re all bound together here? It’s enough to make one
forswear all intercourse with his fellow-beings. Here we are in same
boat with people whom I didn’t know the existence of six months ago; and
because Mr. Chapley has stood by his old friend and tried to help him
along, he will probably be pilloried with him before the public as a
fellow-Tolstoïan, and people all over the country that used to order
their books through us will think we’re in sympathy with the anarchists,
and won’t have any more to do with us than if we had published the
_Kreuzer Sonata_.”

Ray thought how he had never asked to know the Hugheses at all, and was
not justly responsible for them, even through a tie of ancient
friendship. But in the presence of Mr. Brandreth’s shameless anxieties,
he was ashamed to air his own. He only said, cynically: “Yes, it appears
that a homicidal lunatic can’t take himself harmlessly out of the world.
His fate reaches out in every direction, and covers everybody that knew
him with confusion. And they talk of a moral government of the
universe!”

“Yes!” said Mr. Brandreth, with as much satisfaction in Ray’s scorn of
the order of things as his mild nature could probably feel.

At Mr. Chapley’s house they learned that Mrs. Brandreth had brought the
baby to spend the day with her mother. Her sister, whom Ray knew, met
the two men at the door on her way out to a young ladies’ lunch, and
told them they would find her father in his library. She said Mr. Kane
was there with him; and Mr. Brandreth, with a glance at Ray, said,
“Well, that’s first-rate!” and explained, as they pushed on upstairs,
“He may be able to suggest something.”

Kane did not suggest anything at once. He listened in silence and
without apparent feeling to Ray’s story.

“Dear me!” Mr. Chapley lamented. “Dreadful, dreadful! Poor David must be
in a sad state about it! And I’m not fit to go to him!”

“He wouldn’t expect you, sir,” Mr. Brandreth began.

“I don’t know; he would certainly come to me if I were in trouble. Dear,
dear! Was the hemorrhage very exhausting, Mr.--er--Ray?”

Ray gave the doctor’s word that there was no immediate danger from it,
and Mr. Brandreth made haste to say that he had come to tell the ladies
about the affair before they saw it in the papers, and to caution them
against saying anything if reporters called.

“Yes, that’s very well,” said Mr. Chapley. “But I see nothing
detrimental to us in the facts.”

“No, sir. Not unless they’re distorted, and--in connection with your
peculiar views, sir. When those fellows get on to your old friendship
with Mr. Hughes, and _his_ peculiar views, there’s no telling what they
won’t make of them.” Kane glanced round at Ray with arched eyes and
pursed mouth. Mr. Brandreth turned toward Ray, and asked sweetly,
“Should you mind my lighting one of those after-dinner pastilles?” He
indicated the slender stem in the little silver-holder on the mantel.
“Of course there’s no danger of infection now; but it would be a little
more reassuring to my wife, especially as she’s got the boy here with
her.”

“By all means,” said Ray, and the pastille began sending up a delicate
thread of pungent blue smoke, while Mr. Brandreth went for his wife and
mother-in-law.

“It seems to me you’re in a parlous state, Henry,” said Kane. “I don’t
see but you’ll have to renounce Tolstoï and all his works if you ever
get out of this trouble. I’m sorry for you. It takes away half the
satisfaction I feel at the lifting of that incubus from poor David’s
life. I think I’d better go.” He rose, and went over to give his hand to
Mr. Chapley, where he sat in a reclining-chair.

Mr. Chapley clung to him, and said feebly: “No, no! Don’t go, Kane. We
shall need your advice, and--and--counsel,” and while Kane hesitated,
Mr. Brandreth came in with the ladies, who wore a look of mystified
impatience.

“I thought they had better hear it from you, Mr. Ray,” he said, and for
the third time Ray detailed the tragical incidents. He felt as if he had
been inculpating himself.

Then Mrs. Chapley said: “It is what we might have expected from the
beginning. But if it will be a warning to Mr. Chapley”--

Mrs. Brandreth turned upon her mother with a tone that startled Mr.
Chapley from the attitude of gentle sufferance in which he sat resting
his chin upon his hand. “I don’t see what warning there can be for papa
in such a dreadful thing. Do you think he’s likely to take prussic
acid?”

“I don’t say that, you know well enough, child. But I shall be quite
satisfied if it is the last of Tolstoïsm in _this_ family.”

“It has nothing to do with Tolstoï,” Mrs. Brandreth returned, with
surprising energy. “If we’d all been living simply in the country, that
wretched creature’s mind wouldn’t have been preyed upon by the misery of
the city.”

“There’s more insanity in proportion to the population in the country
than there is in the city,” Mrs. Chapley began.

Mrs. Brandreth ignored her statistical contribution. “There’s no more
danger of father’s going out to live on a farm, or in a community, than
there is of his taking poison; and at any rate he hasn’t got anything to
do with what’s happened. He’s just been faithful to his old friend, and
he’s given his daughter work. I don’t care how much the newspapers bring
that in. We haven’t done anything wrong.”

Mr. Brandreth looked at his wife in evident surprise; her mother said,
“Well, my dear!”

Her father gently urged: “I don’t think you’ve quite understood your
mother. She doesn’t look at life from my point of view.”

“No, Henry, I’m thankful to say I don’t,” Mrs. Chapley broke in; “and I
don’t know anybody who does. If I had followed you and your prophet, we
shouldn’t have had a roof over our heads.”

“A good many people have no roofs over their heads,” Mr. Chapley meekly
suggested.

“That’s no reason why we shouldn’t,” said his wife.

“No; you’re right there, my dear. That’s the hopeless part of it.
Perhaps poor David is right, and the man who attempts to solve the
problem of altruism singly and in his own life”--

Mrs. Brandreth would not let him finish. “The question is, what are we
going to do for these poor things in their trouble?” She looked at Ray,
who had sat by trying in his sense of intrusion and superfluity to
shrink into as small a space as possible. He now blushed to find himself
appealed to. He had not seen Mrs. Brandreth often, and he had not
reversed his first impression of a narrow, anxious, housewifely spirit
in her, sufficient to the demands of young motherhood, but of few and
scanty general sympathies.

“When did you see them last?” she asked.

He told her, and she said, “Well, I am going right up there with Percy.”

“And bring back the scarlet fever to your child!” cried her mother. “You
shall neither of you go, as long as I have anything to say about it. Or,
if you do, you shall not come back to this house, and I shall keep the
baby here till there isn’t the least fear of danger; and I don’t know
how long that will be.”

All the grandmother rose in Mrs. Chapley; she lifted her voice, and in
the transport of her alarm and indignation she suddenly appealed to Mr.
Kane from the wilfulness she evidently feared in her daughter: “What do
you think, Mr. Kane?”

“I wouldn’t presume to decide such a question finally; it’s too
important,” Kane said, in his mellow murmur. “But I wish that for the
moment Mrs. Brandreth would let me be the bearer of her kind messages
and inquiries. If you haven’t been in the habit of calling there”--

“I have never been there at all, I’m sorry to say,” Mrs. Brandreth
frankly declared.

“Ah! Well, I don’t see what good could come of it, just at present; and
there might be some lingering infection.”

“It has been carried in clothes across the ocean months afterwards, and
in letters,” Mrs. Chapley triumphed.

Kane abandoned the point to her. “The situation might be very much worse
for the Hugheses, as I was saying to Henry before you came in. The
Powers are not commonly so considerate. It seems to me distinctly the
best thing that could have happened, at least as far as Denton is
concerned.”

“Surely,” said Mrs. Chapley, “you don’t approve of suicide?”

“Not in the case of sane and happy people,” Kane blandly replied. “The
suicide of such persons should be punished with the utmost rigor of the
law. But there seem to be extenuating circumstances in the present
instance; I hope the coroner’s jury will deal leniently with the
culprit. I must go and see if I can do anything for David. Probably I
can’t. It’s always a question in these cases whether you are not adding
to the sufferings of the mourners by your efforts to alleviate them; but
you can only solve it at their expense by trying.”

“And you will let us know,” said Mrs. Chapley, “whether _we_ can do
anything, Mr. Kane.”

Mrs. Brandreth did not openly persist in her determination to go to the
Hugheses. She said, “Yes, be sure you let us know,” and when Kane had
gone on an errand of mercy which he owned was distasteful to him, her
husband followed Ray down to the door.

“You see what splendid courage she has,” he whispered, with a backward
glance up the stairs. “I must confess that it surprised me, after all
I’ve seen her go through, that stand she took with her mother. But I
don’t altogether wonder at it; they were disagreeing about keeping up
the belladonna when I found them, upstairs, and I guess Mrs. Brandreth’s
opposition naturally carried over into this question about the Hugheses.
Of course Mrs. Chapley means well, but if Mrs. Brandreth could once be
got from under her influence she would be twice the woman she is. I
think she’s right about the effect of our connection with the family
before the public. They can’t make anything wrong out of it, no matter
how they twist it or turn it. I’m not afraid. After all, it isn’t as if
Mr. Hughes was one of those howling socialists. An old-time Brook
Farmer--it’s a kind of literary tradition; it’s like being an original
abolitionist. I’m going to see if I can’t get a glimpse of that book of
his without committing myself. Well, let me know how you get on. I
wouldn’t let that chance on _Every Evening_ slip. Better see the man.
Confound the papers! I hope they won’t drag us in!”




XXXV.


A few lines, with some misspelling of names, told the story of the
suicide and inquest in the afternoon papers, and it dwindled into still
smaller space and finer print the next morning. The publicity which
those least concerned had most dreaded was spared them. Ray himself
appeared in print as a witness named Bray; there was no search into the
past of Hughes and his family, or their present relations; none of the
rich sensations of the case were exploited; it was treated as one of
those every-day tragedies without significance or importance, which
abound in the history of great cities, and are forgotten as rapidly as
they occur. The earth closed over the hapless wretch for whom the dream
of duty tormenting us all, more or less, had turned to such a hideous
nightmare, and those whom his death threatened even more than his life
drew consciously or unconsciously a long breath of freedom.

Mr. Brandreth’s courage rose with his escape; there came a moment when
he was ready to face the worst; the moment did not come till the danger
of the worst was past. Then he showed himself even eager to retrieve the
effect of anxieties not compatible with a scrupulous self-respect.

“Why should we laugh at him?” Kane philosophized, in talking the matter
over with Ray. “The ideals of generosity and self-devotion are
preposterous in our circumstances. He was quite right to be cautious, to
be prudent, to protect his business and his bosom from the invasion of
others’ misfortunes, and to look anxiously out for the main chance. Who
would do it for him, if he neglected this first and most obvious duty?
He has behaved most thoughtfully and kindly toward Peace through it all,
and I can’t blame him for not thrusting himself forward to offer help
when nothing could really be done.”

Kane had himself remained discreetly in the background, and had not
cumbered his old acquaintance with offers of service. He kept away from
the funeral, but he afterwards visited Hughes frequently, though he
recognized nothing more than the obligation of the early kindness
between them. This had been affected by many years of separation and
wide divergence of opinion, and it was doubtful whether his visits were
altogether a pleasure to the invalid. They disputed a good deal, and
sometimes when Hughes lost his voice from excitement and exhaustion,
Kane’s deep pipe kept on in a cool smooth assumption of positions which
Hughes was physically unable to assail.

Mr. Chapley went out of town to his country place in Massachusetts, to
try and get back his strength after a touch of the grippe. The Sunday
conventicles had to be given up because Hughes could no longer lead
them, and could not suffer the leadership of others. He was left mainly
for society and consolation to the young fellow who did not let him feel
that he differed from him, and was always gently patient with him.

Ray had outlived the grudge he felt at Kane for delivering him over to
bonds which he shirked so lightly himself; but this was perhaps because
they were no longer a burden. It was not possible for him to refuse his
presence to the old man when he saw that it was his sole pleasure; he
had come to share the pleasure of these meetings himself. As the days
which must be fewer and fewer went by he tried to come every day, and
Peace usually found him sitting with her father when she reached home at
the end of the afternoon. Ray could get there first because his work on
the newspaper was of a more flexible and desultory sort; and he often
brought a bundle of books for review with him, and talked them over with
Hughes, for whom he was a perspective of the literary world, with its
affairs and events. Hughes took a vivid interest in the management of
Ray’s department of _Every Evening_, and gave him advice about it,
charging him not to allow it to be merely æsthetic, but to imbue it with
an ethical quality; he maintained that literature should be the handmaid
of reform; he regretted that he had not cast the material of _The World
Revisited_ in the form of fiction, which would have given it a charm
impossible to a merely polemical treatise.

“I’m convinced that if I had it in that shape it would readily find a
publisher, and I’m going to see what I can do to work it over as soon as
I’m about again.”

“I hope you’ll be luckier than I’ve been with fiction,” said Ray. “I
don’t know but it might be a good plan to turn _A Modern Romeo_ into a
polemical treatise. We might change about, Mr. Hughes.”

Hughes said, “Why don’t you bring your story up here and read it to me?”

“Wouldn’t that be taking an unfair advantage of you?” Ray asked. “Just
at present my chief’s looking over it, to see if it won’t do for the
_feuilleton_ we’re going to try. He won’t want it; but it affords a
little respite for you, Mr. Hughes, as long as he thinks he may.”

He knew that Peace must share his constraint in speaking of his book.
When they were alone for a little while before he went away that evening
he said to her, “You have never told me yet that you forgave me for my
bad behavior about my book the last time we talked about it.”

“Did you wish me to tell you?” she asked, gently. “I thought I needn’t.”

“Yes, do,” he urged. “You thought I was wrong?”

“Yes,” she assented.

“Then you ought to say, in so many words, ‘I forgive you.’”

He waited, but she would not speak.

“Why can’t you say that?”

She did not answer, but after a while she said, “I think what I did was
a good reason for”--

“My being in the wrong? Then why did you do it? Can’t you tell me
that?”

“Not--now.”

“Some time?”

“Perhaps,” she murmured.

“Then I may ask you again?”

She was silent, sitting by the window in the little back room, where her
head was dimly outlined against the late twilight. Between the rushing
trains at the front they could hear Mrs. Denton talking to her father,
joking and laughing. Our common notion of tragedy is that it alters the
nature of those involved, as if it were some spiritual chemistry
combining the elements of character anew. But it is merely an incident
of our being, and, for all we can perceive, is of no more vital effect
than many storms in the material world. What it does not destroy, it
leaves essentially unchanged. The light creature whom its forces had
beaten to the earth, rose again with the elasticity of light things,
when it had passed. She was meant to be what she was made, and even Ray,
with the severity of his young morality, and the paucity of his
experience, perceived that the frivolity which shocked him was comfort
and cheer to the sick old man. She sat with him, and babbled and jested;
and Ray saw with a generous resentment that she must always have been
his favorite. There was probably a responsive lightness in Hughes’s own
soul to which hers brought the balm of kinship and of perfect sympathy.
There was no apparent consciousness of his preference in the sisters;
each in her way accepted it as something just and fit. Peace looked
after the small housekeeping, and her sister had more and more the care
of their father.

Mrs. Denton’s buoyant temperament served a better purpose in the economy
of sorrow than a farther-sighted seriousness. In virtue of all that Ray
had ever read or fancied of such experiences, the deaths that had
bereaved her ought to have chastened and sobered her, and he could not
forgive her because she could not wear the black of a hushed and
spiritless behavior. It even shocked him that Peace did nothing to
restrain her, but took her from moment to moment as she showed herself,
and encouraged her cheerful talk, and smiled at her jokes. He could not
yet understand how the girl’s love was a solvent of all questions that
harass the helpless reason, and embitter us with the faults of others;
but from time to time he had a sense of quality in her that awed him
from all other sense of her. There is something in the heart of man that
puts a woman’s charm before all else, and that enables evil and foolish
women to find husbands, while good and wise women die unwed. But in the
soul of incontaminate youth there is often a passionate refusal to
accept this instinct as the highest. The ideal of womanhood is then
something too pure and hallowed even for the dreams of love. It was
something like this, a mystical reverence or a fantastic exaltation,
which removed Ray further from Peace, in what might have joined their
lives, than he was the first day they met, when he began to weave about
her the reveries which she had no more part in than if they had been the
dreams of his sleep. They were of the stuff of his literature, and like
the innumerably trooping, insubstantial fancies that followed each
other through his brain from nothing in his experience. When they ceased
to play, as they must after the little romance of that first meeting had
yielded to acquaintance, what had taken their place? At the end of the
half-year which had united them in the intimacy of those strange events
and experiences, he could not have made sure of anything but a sort of
indignant compassion that drew him near her, and the fantastic sentiment
that held him aloof. The resentment in his pity was toward himself as
much as her father; when he saw her in the isolation where the old man’s
preference for her sister left her, he blamed himself as much as them.

Peace blamed no one by word or look. He doubted if she saw it, till he
ventured one day to speak of her father’s fondness for her sister, and
then she answered that he would always rather have Jenny with him than
any one else. Ray returned some commonplaces, not too sincere, about the
compensation the care of her father must be to Mrs. Denton in her
bereavement, and Peace answered as frankly as before that they had got
each other back again. “Father didn’t want her to marry Ansel, and he
didn’t care for the children. He couldn’t help that; he was too old; and
after we were all shut up here together they fretted him.”

She sighed gently, in the way she had, and Ray said, with the fatuity of
comforters, “I suppose they are better off out of this world.”

“They were born into this world,” she answered.

“Yes,” he had to own.

He saw how truly and deeply she grieved for the little ones, and he
realized without umbrage that she mourned their wretched father too,
with an affection as simple and pure. There were times when he thought
how tragical it would be for her to have cared for Denton, in the way
his wife cared so little; and then his fancy created a situation in
whose unreality it ran riot. But all the time he knew that he was
feigning these things, and that there was no more truth in them than in
the supposition which he indulged at other times that he was himself in
love with Mrs. Denton, and always had been, and this was the reason why
he could not care for Peace. It was the effect in both cases of the
æsthetic temperament, which is as often the slave as the master of its
reveries.

It was in Mrs. Denton’s favor that she did not let the drift of their
father’s affections away from Peace carry her with them. The earthward
bodily decline of the invalid implied a lapse from the higher sympathies
to the lower, and she seemed to have some vague perception of this,
which she formulated in her own way, once, when she wished to account
for the sick man’s refusal of some service from Peace which he accepted
from herself.

“He has more use for me here, Peace, because I’m of the earth, earthy,
but he’ll want you somewhere else.”

The old man clung to the world with a hope that admitted at least no
open question of his living. He said that as soon as the spring fairly
opened, and the weather would allow him to go out without taking more
cold, he should carry his manuscript about to the different publishers,
and offer it personally. He thought his plan carefully out, and talked
it over with Ray, whom he showed that his own failure with his novel was
from a want of address in these interviews. He proposed to do something
for Ray’s novel as soon as he secured a publisher for himself, and again
he bade him bring it and read it to him. Ray afterwards realized with
shame that he would have consented to this if Hughes had persisted. But
the invitation was probably a mere grace of civility with him, an effect
of the exuberant faith he had in his own success.

As the season advanced, and the heat within-doors increased, they had to
open the windows, and then the infernal uproar of the avenue filled the
room, so that they could not hear one another speak till the windows
were closed again. But the rush and clank of the elevated trains, the
perpetual passage of the surface cars, with the clatter of their horses’
hoofs, and the clash of the air-slitting bells, the grind and jolt of
the heavy trucks, the wild clatter of express carts across the rails or
up and down the tracks, the sound of feet and voices, the cries of the
fruit-venders, and the whiffs of laughter and blasphemy that floated up
from the turmoil below like filthy odors, seemed not so keenly to
afflict the sick man, or to rend his nerves with the anguish that forced
the others to shut it all out, and rather stifle in the heat. Yet, in
some sort, he felt it too, for once when Ray spoke of it, he said yes,
it was atrocious. “But,” he added, “I am glad I came and placed myself
where I could fully realize the hideousness of a competitive metropolis.
All these abominations of sight and sound, these horrible discords, that
offend every sense, physically express the spiritual principle
underlying the whole social framework. It has been immensely instructive
to me, and I have got some color of it into my book: not enough, of
course, but infinitely more than I could possibly have imagined. No one
can imagine the horror, the squalor, the cruel and senseless turpitude
which these things typify, except in their presence. I have merely
represented the facts in regard to them, and have left the imagination
free to deal with the ideal city as a contrast, with its peaceful
streets, cleanly and quiet, its stately ranks of beautiful dwellings,
its noble piles of civic and religious architecture, its shaded and
colonnaded avenues, its parks and gardens, and all planned and built,
not from the greed and the fraud of competition, but from the generous
and unselfish spirit of emulation, wherein men join to achieve the best
instead of separating to get the most. Think of a city operated by
science, as every city might be now, without one of the wretched animals
tamed by the savage man, and still perpetuated by the savage man for the
awkward and imperfect uses of a barbarous society! A city without a
horse, where electricity brought every man and everything silently to
the door. Jenny! Get me that manuscript, will you? The part I was
writing on to-day--in the desk--the middle drawer--I should like to
read”--

Mrs. Denton dropped her cat from her lap and ran to get the manuscript.
But when she brought it to her father, and he arranged the leaves with
fluttering fingers, he could not read. He gasped out a few syllables,
and in the paroxysm of coughing which began, he thrust the manuscript
toward Ray.

“He wants you to take it,” said Peace. “You can take it home with you.
You can give it to me in the morning.”

Ray took it, and stood by, looking on, not knowing how to come to their
help for the sick man’s relief, and anxious not to cumber them. When
they had got him quiet again, and Ray had once more thrown up the
window, and let in the mild night air which came laden with that
delirium of the frenzied city, Peace followed him into the little back
room, where they stood a moment.

“For Heaven’s sake,” he said, “why don’t you get him away from here,
where he could be a little more out of the noise? It’s enough to drive a
well man mad.”

“He doesn’t feel it as if he were well,” she answered. “We have tried to
get him to let us bring his bed out here. But he won’t. I think,” she
added, “that he believes it would be a bad omen to change.”

“Surely,” said Ray, “a man like your father couldn’t care for that
ridiculous superstition. What possible connection could his changing to
a quieter place have with his living or”--

“It isn’t a matter of reason with him. I can see how he’s gone back to
his early life in a great many things in these few days. He hasn’t been
so much like himself for a long time as he has to-night.”

“What does the doctor say?”

“He says to let him have his own way about it. He says that--the noise
can’t make any difference--now.”

They were in the dark; but he knew from her voice that tears were in her
eyes. He felt for her hand to say good-night. When he had found it, he
held it a moment, and then he kissed it. But no thrill or glow of the
heart justified him in what he had done. At the best he could excuse it
as an impulse of pity.




XXXVI.


The editor of _Every Evening_ gave Ray his manuscript back. He had
evidently no expectation that Ray could have any personal feeling about
it, or could view it apart from the interests of the paper. He himself
betrayed no personal feeling where the paper was concerned, and he
probably could have conceived of none in Ray.

“I don’t think it will do for us,” he said. “It is a good story, and I
read it all through, but I don’t believe it would succeed as a serial.
What do you think, yourself?”

“I?” said Ray. “How could I have an unprejudiced opinion?”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t. You know what we want; we’ve talked it
over enough; and you ought to know whether this is the kind of thing.
Anyhow, it’s within your province to decide. I don’t think it will do,
but if you think it will, I’m satisfied. You must take the
responsibility. I leave it to you, and I mean business.”

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.

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
fulfil 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 new 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
_Modern 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.”

He went on to tell Ray some of the things he had said in his paragraphs,
and Ray listened with that mingled shame and pleasure which the artist
must feel whenever the commercial side of his life presents itself.

“I kept Miss Hughes pretty late this afternoon, working the things into
shape, so as to get them to the papers at once. I just give her the main
points, and she has such a neat touch.”

Ray left his publisher with a light heart, and a pious sense of the
divine favor. He had conceived of a difficult duty, and he had
discharged it with unflinching courage. He had kept his word to Hughes;
he had done all that he could for him, even to offering his own chance
of fame and fortune a sacrifice to him. Now he could do no more, and if
he could not help being glad that the sacrifice had not been accepted of
him, he was not to be blamed. He was very much to be praised, and he
rewarded himself with a full recognition of his virtue; he imagined some
words, few but rare, from Peace, expressing her sense of his
magnanimity, when she came to know of it. He hoped that a fact so
creditable to him, and so characteristic, would not escape the notice of
his biographer. He wished that Hughes could know what he had done, and
in his revery he contrived that his generous endeavor should be brought
to the old man’s knowledge; he had Hughes say that such an action was
more to him than the publication of his book.

Throughout his transport of self-satisfaction there ran a nether torment
of question whether Peace Hughes could possibly suppose that he was
privy to that paragraphing about his book, and this finally worked to
the surface, and become his whole mood. After his joyful riot it was
this that kept him awake till morning, that poisoned all his pleasure in
his escape from self-sacrifice. He could only pacify himself and get
some sleep at last by promising to stop at the publisher’s on his way
down to the _Every Evening_ office in the morning, and beseech her to
believe that he had nothing to do with priming the press, and that he
wished Mr. Brandreth had not told him of it. Nothing less than this was
due him in the character that he desired to appear in hereafter.

He reached the publisher’s office before Mr. Brandreth came down, and
when he said he would like to see Miss Hughes, the clerk answered that
Miss Hughes had sent word that her father was not so well, and she would
not be down that day.

“He’s pretty low, I believe,” the clerk volunteered.

“I’m afraid so,” said Ray.

He asked if the clerk would call a messenger to take a note from him to
his office, and when he had despatched it he went up to see Hughes.

“Did you get our message?” Peace asked him the first thing.

“No,” said Ray. “What message?”

“That we sent to your office. He has been wanting to see you ever since
he woke this morning. I knew you would come!”

“O yes. I went to inquire of you about him at Chapley’s, and when I
heard that he was worse, of course I came. Is he much worse?”

“He can’t live at all. The doctor says it’s no use. He wants to see you.
Will you come in?”

“Peace!” Ray hesitated. “Tell me! Is it about his book?”

“Yes, something about that. He wishes to speak with you.”

“Oh, Peace! I’ve done all I could about that. I went straight to Mr.
Brandreth and tried to get him to take it. But I couldn’t. What shall I
tell your father, if he asks me?”

“You must tell him the truth,” said the girl, sadly.

“Is that Mr. Ray?” Mrs. Denton called from the sick-room. “Come in, Mr.
Ray. Father wants you.”

“In a moment. Come here, Mrs. Denton,” Ray called back.

She came out, and he told her what he had told Peace. She did not seem
to see its bearing at once. When she realized it all, and had spent her
quick wrath in denunciation of Mr. Brandreth’s heartlessness, she said
desperately: “Well, you must come now. Perhaps it isn’t his book;
perhaps it’s something else. But he wants you.”

She had to rouse her father from the kind of torpor in which he lay like
one dead. She made him understand who was there, and then he smiled, and
turned his eyes appealingly toward Ray. “Put your ear as close to his
lips as you can. He can’t write any more. He wants to say something to
you.”

Ray stooped over and put his ear to the drawn lips. A few whiffs of
inarticulate breath mocked the dying man’s endeavor to speak. “I’m
sorry; I can’t catch a syllable,” said Ray.

A mute despair showed itself in the old man’s eyes.

“Look at me father!” cried Mrs. Denton. “Is it about your book?”

The faintest smile came over his face.

“Did you wish to ask Mr. Ray if he would speak to Mr. Brandreth about
it?”

The smile dimly dawned again.

“Well, he has spoken to him. He went to see him last night, and he’s
come to tell you”--Ray shuddered and held his breath--“to tell you that
Mr. Brandreth will take your book, and he’s going to publish it right
away!”

A beatific joy lit up Hughes’s face; and Ray drew a long breath.

Peace looked at her sister.

“I don’t care!” said Mrs. Denton, passionately, dropping her voice. “You
have your light, and I have mine.”




XXXIX.


Ray followed Hughes to his grave in the place where Denton and his
children were already laid. It did not seem as if the old man were more
related to them in death than he had been in life by their propinquity;
but it satisfied a belated maternal and conjugal sentiment in Mrs.
Denton. She did not relinquish the leading place in the family affairs
which she had taken in her father’s last days. She decided against
staying in their present apartment after their month was out, and found
a tiny flat of three rooms in a better neighborhood down-town, where she
had their scanty possessions established, including the cat.

Kane did not go to the funeral because of a prejudice which he said he
had against such events; David Hughes, he said, would have been the
first to applaud his sincerity in staying away. But he divined that
there might be need of help of another kind in the emergency, and he
gave it generously and delicately. He would not suffer Mr. Brandreth to
render any part of this relief; he insisted that it was his exclusive
privilege as Hughes’s old friend. Now that David was gone, he professed
a singularly vivid sense of his presence; and he owned that he had
something like the pleasure of carrying a point against him in
defraying his funeral expenses.

Hughes’s daughters accepted his help frankly, each after her kind: Mrs.
Denton as a gift which it must long continue to be; Peace as a loan
which must some day be repaid. The girl went back to her work in due
time, and whenever Ray visited his publisher he saw her at her desk.

He did not always go to speak to her, for he had a shamefaced fear that
she was more or less always engaged in working up hints from Mr.
Brandreth into paragraphs about a _A Modern Romeo_. His consciousness
exaggerated the publisher’s activity in this sort; and at first he
shunned all these specious evidences of public interest in the
forthcoming novel. Then he began jealously to look for them, and in his
mind he arraigned the journals where they did not appear for envy and
personal spite. It would have been difficult for him to prove why there
should have been either in his case, unless it was because their
literary notes were controlled by people whose books had been ignored or
censured by _Every Evening_, and this theory could not hold with all.
Most of the papers, however, published the paragraphs, with that
munificence which journalism shows towards literature. The author found
the inspired announcements everywhere; sometimes they were varied by the
office touch, but generally they were printed exactly as Mr. Brandreth
framed them; however he found them, they gave Ray an insensate joy. Even
the paragraphs in the trade journals, purely perfunctory as they were,
had a flavor of sincere appreciation; the very advertisements which
accompanied them there affected him like favorable expressions of
opinion. His hunger for them was inappeasable; in his heart he accused
Mr. Brandreth of a stinted proclamation.

The publisher was hurrying the book forward for the summer trade, and
was aiming it especially at the reader going into the country, or
already there. He had an idea that the summer resorts had never been
fully worked in behalf of the better sort of light literature, and he
intended to make any sacrifice to get the book pushed by the news
companies. He offered them rates ruinously special, and he persuaded Ray
to take five per cent. on such sales if they could be made. He pressed
forward the printing, and the author got his proofs in huge batches,
with a demand for their prompt return. The nice revision which he had
fancied himself giving the work in type was impossible; it went from his
hand with crudities that glared in his tormented sense, till a new
instalment eclipsed the last. He balanced the merits and defects against
one another, and tried to believe that the merits would distract the
attention of criticism from the defects. He always knew that the story
was very weak in places; he conceived how it could be attacked in these;
he attacked it himself with pitiless ridicule in a helpless
impersonation of different reviewers; and he gasped in his
self-inflicted anguish. When the last proof left his hands the feeblest
links were the strength of the whole chain, which fell to pieces from
his grasp like a rope of sand.

There was some question at different times whether the book had not
better be published under a pseudonym, and Ray faithfully submitted it
to the editor of _Every Evening_, as something he was concerned in. It
was to be considered whether it was advisable for a critic to appear as
an author, and whether the possible failure of the book would not react
unfavorably upon the criticisms of the journal. The chief decided that
it would make no difference to him, and at the worst it could do no more
than range Ray with the other critics who had failed as authors. With
the publisher it was a more serious matter, and he debated much whether
the book, as a stroke of business, had not better go to the public
anonymously. They agreed that P. B. S. Ray on the title-page would be
rather formidable from the number of the initials which the reader would
have to master in speaking of the author. Shelley Ray, on the other
hand, would be taken for a sentimental pseudonym. They decided that
anonymity was the only thing for it.

“But then, it will be losing the interest of your money, if the book
goes,” Mr. Brandreth mused. “You have a right to the cumulative
reputation from it, so that if you should write another”--

“Oh, don’t be afraid of there ever being another!” said Ray, with his
distracted head between his hands. He suddenly lifted it. “What is the
matter with the Spartan severity of S. Ray?”

“S. Ray might do,” Mr. Brandreth assented, thoughtfully. “Should you
mind my asking Mrs. Brandreth how it strikes her?”

“Not at all. Very glad to have you. It’s short, and unpretentious, and
non-committal. I think it might do.”

Mrs. Brandreth thought so too, and in that form the author’s name
appeared on the title-page. Even in that form it did not escape question
and censure. One reviewer devoted his criticism of the story to inquiry
into the meaning of the author’s initial; another surmised it a mask.
But, upon the whole, its simplicity piqued curiosity, and probably
promoted the fortune of the book, as far as that went.

There was no immediate clamor over it. In fact, it was received so
passively by the public and the press that the author might well have
doubted whether there was any sort of expectation of it, in spite of the
publisher’s careful preparation of the critic’s or the reader’s mind.
There came back at once from obscure quarters a few echoes, more or less
imperfect, of the synopsis of the book’s attractions sent out with the
editorial copies, but the influential journals remained
heart-sickeningly silent concerning _A Modern Romeo_. There was a
boisterous and fatuous eulogy of the book in the Midland _Echo_, which
Ray knew for the expression of Sanderson’s friendship; but eager as he
was for recognition, he could not let this count; and it was followed by
some brief depreciatory paragraphs in which he perceived the willingness
of Hanks Brothers to compensate themselves for having so handsomely let
Sanderson have his swing. He got some letters of acknowledgment from
people whom he had sent the book; he read them with hungry zest, but he
could not make himself believe that they constituted impartial opinion;
not even the letter of the young lady who had detected him in the
panoply of his hero, and who now wrote to congratulate him on a success
which she too readily took for granted. One of his sisters replied on
behalf of his father and mother, and said they had all been sitting up
reading the story aloud together, and that their father liked it as much
as any of them; now they were anxious to see what the papers would say;
had he read the long review in the _Echo_, and did not he think it
rather cool and grudging for a paper that he had been connected with? He
hardly knew whether this outburst of family pride gave him more or less
pain than an anonymous letter which he got from his native village, and
which betrayed the touch of the local apothecary; his correspondent, who
also dealt in books, and was a man of literary opinions, heaped the
novel with ridicule and abuse, and promised the author a coat of tar and
feathers on the part of his betters whom he had caricatured, if ever he
should return to the place. Ray ventured to offer a copy to the lady who
had made herself his social sponsor in New York, and he hoped for some
intelligent praise from her. She asked him where in the world he had got
together such a lot of queer people, like nothing on earth but those one
used to meet in the old days when one took country board; she mocked at
the sufferings of his hero, and said what a vulgar little piece his
heroine was; but she supposed he meant them to be what they were, and
she complimented him on his success in handling them. She confessed,
though, that she never read American novels, or indeed any but French
ones, and that she did not know exactly where to rank his work; she
burlesqued a profound impression of the honor she ought to feel in
knowing a distinguished novelist. “You’ll be putting us all into your
next book, I suppose. Mind you give me golden hair, not yet streaked
with silver.”

In the absence of any other tokens of public acceptance, Ray kept an
eager eye out for such signs of it as might be detected in the
booksellers’ windows and on their sign-boards. The placards of other
novels flamed from their door-jambs, but they seemed to know nothing of
_A Modern Romeo_. He sought his book in vain among those which formed
the attractions of their casements; he found it with difficulty on their
counters, two or three rows back, and in remote corners. It was like a
conspiracy to keep it out of sight; it was not to be seen on the
news-stands of the great hotels or the elevated stations, and Ray
visited the principal railway depots without detecting a copy.

He blamed Mr. Brandreth for a lack of business energy in all this; he
would like to see him fulfil some of those boasts of push which, when he
first heard them, made him creep with shame. Mr. Brandreth had once
proposed a file of sandwich men appealing with successive bill-boards:

                                  I.
                             HAVE YOU READ

                                  II.
                           “A MODERN ROMEO?”

                                 III.
                         EVERY ONE IS READING

                                  IV.
                           “A MODERN ROMEO.”

                                  V.
                                 WHY?

                                  VI.
                                BECAUSE

                                 VII.
                          “A MODERN ROMEO” IS

                                 VIII.
                       THE GREAT AMERICAN NOVEL.

Ray had absolutely forbidden this procession, but now he would have
taken off his hat to it, and stood uncovered, if he could have met it in
Union Square or in Twenty-third Street.




XL.


In this time of suspense Ray kept away from old Kane, whose peculiar
touch he could not bear. But he knew perfectly well what his own
feelings were, and he did not care to have them analyzed. He could not
help sending Kane the book, and for a while he dreaded his
acknowledgments; then he resented his failure to make any.

In the frequent visits he paid to his publisher, he fancied that his
welcome from Mr. Brandreth was growing cooler, and he did not go so
often. He kept doggedly at his work in the _Every Evening_ office; but
here the absolute silence of his chief concerning his book was as hard
to bear as Mr. Brandreth’s fancied coolness; he could not make out
whether it meant compassion or dissatisfaction, or how it was to effect
his relation to the paper. The worst of it was that his adversity, or
his delayed prosperity, which ever it was, began to corrupt him. In his
self-pity he wrote so leniently of some rather worthless books that he
had no defence to make when his chief called his attention to the wide
divergence between his opinions and those of some other critics. At
times when he resented the hardship of his fate he scored the books
before him with a severity that was as unjust as the weak commiseration
in his praises. He felt sure that if the situation prolonged itself his
failure as an author must involve his failure as a critic.

It was not only the coolness in Mr. Brandreth’s welcome which kept him
aloof; he had a sense of responsibility, which was almost a sense of
guilt, in the publisher’s presence, for he was the author of a book
which had been published contrary to the counsel of all his literary
advisers. It was true that he had not finally asked Mr. Brandreth to
publish it, but he had been eagerly ready to have him do it; he had kept
his absurd faith in it, and his steadfastness must have imparted a
favorable conviction to Mr. Brandreth; he knew that there had certainly
been ever so much personal kindness for him mixed up with its
acceptance. The publisher, however civil outwardly--and Mr. Brandreth,
with all his foibles, was never less than a gentleman--must inwardly
blame him for his unlucky venture. The thought of this became
intolerable, and at the end of a Saturday morning, when the book was
three or four weeks old, he dropped in at Chapley’s to have it out with
Mr. Brandreth. The work on the Saturday edition of the paper was always
very heavy, and Ray’s nerves were fretted from the anxieties of getting
it together, as well as from the intense labor of writing. He was going
to humble himself to the publisher, and declare their failure to be all
his own fault; but he had in reserve the potentiality of a bitter
quarrel with him if he did not take it in the right way.

He pushed on to Mr. Brandreth’s room, tense with his purpose, and stood
scowling and silent when he found Kane there with him. Perhaps the old
fellow divined the danger in Ray’s mood; perhaps he pitied him; perhaps
he was really interested in the thing which he was talking of with the
publisher, and which he referred to Ray without any preliminary ironies.

“It’s about the career of a book; how it begins to go, and why, and
when.”

“Apropos of _A Modern Romeo_?” Ray asked, harshly.

“If you please, _A Modern Romeo_.” Ray took the chair which Mr.
Brandreth signed a clerk to bring him from without. Kane went on: “It’s
very curious, the history of these things, and I’ve looked into it
somewhat. Ordinarily a book makes its fortune, or it doesn’t, at once. I
should say this was always the case with a story that had already been
published serially; but with a book that first appears as a book, the
chances seem to be rather more capricious. The first great success with
us was _Uncle Tom’s Cabin_, and that was assured before the story was
finished in the old _National Era_, where it was printed. But that had
an immense motive power behind it--a vital question that affected the
whole nation.”

“I seem to have come too late for the vital questions,” said Ray.

“Oh no! oh no! There are always plenty of them left. There is the
industrial slavery, which exists on a much more universal scale than the
chattel slavery; that is still waiting its novelist.”

“Or its Trust of novelists,” Ray scornfully suggested.

“Very good; very excellent good; nothing less than a syndicate perhaps
could grapple with a theme of such vast dimensions.”

“It would antagonize a large part of the reading public,” Mr. Brandreth
said; but he had the air of making a mental memorandum to keep an eye
out for MSS. dealing with industrial slavery.

“So much the better! So much the better!” said Kane. “_Robert Elsmere_
antagonized much more than half its readers by its religious positions.
But that wasn’t what I was trying to get at. I was thinking about how
some of the phenomenally successful books hung fire at first.”

“Ah, that interests me as the author of a phenomenally successful book
that is still hanging fire,” sighed Ray.

Kane smiled approval of his attempt to play with his pain, and went on:
“You know that _Gates Ajar_, which sold up into the hundred thousands,
was three months selling the first fifteen hundred.”

“Is that so?” Ray asked. “_A Modern Romeo_ has been three weeks selling
the first fifteen.” He laughed, and Mr. Brandreth with him; but the fact
encouraged him, and he could see that it encouraged the publisher.

“We won’t speak of _Mr. Barnes of New York_”--

“Oh no! Don’t!” cried Ray.

“You might be very glad to have written it on some accounts, my dear
boy,” said Kane.

“Have you read it?”

“That’s neither here nor there. I haven’t seen _Little Lord Fauntleroy_.
But I wanted to speak of _Looking Backward_. Four months after that was
published, the first modest edition was still unsold.”

Kane rose. “I just dropped in to impart these facts to your publisher,
in case you and he might be getting a little impatient of the triumph
which seems to be rather behind time. I suppose you’ve noticed it? These
little disappointments are not suffered in a corner.”

“Then your inference is that at the end of three or four months _A
Modern Romeo_ will be selling at the rate of five hundred a day? I’m
glad for Brandreth here, but I shall be dead by that time.”

“Oh no! Oh no!” Kane softly entreated, while he took Ray’s hand between
his two hands. “One doesn’t really die of disappointed literature any
more than one dies of disappointed love. That is one of the pathetic
superstitions which we like to cherish in a world where we get well of
nearly all our hurts, and live on to a hale old imbecility. Depend upon
it, my dear boy, you will survive your book at least fifty years.” Kane
wrung Ray’s hand, and got himself quickly away.

“There is a good deal of truth in what he says”--Mr. Brandreth began
cheerfully.

“About my outliving my book?” Ray asked. “Thank you. There’s all the
truth in the world in it.”

“I don’t mean that, of course. I mean the chances that it will pick up
any time within three months, and make its fortune.”

“You’re counting on a lucky accident.”

“Yes, I am. I’ve done everything I can to push the book, and now we must
trust to luck. You have to trust to luck in the book business, in every
business. Business is buying on the chance of selling at a profit. The
political economists talk about the laws of business; but there are no
laws of business. There is nothing but chances, and no amount of wisdom
can forecast them or control them. You had better be prudent, but if you
are always prudent you will die poor. ‘Be bold; be bold; be not too
bold.’ That’s about all there is of it. And I’m going to be cheerful
too. I’m still betting on _A Modern Romeo_.” The young publisher leaned
forward and put his hand on Ray’s shoulder, in a kindly way, and shook
him a little. “Come! What will you bet that it doesn’t begin to go
within the next fortnight? I don’t ask you to put up any money. Will you
risk the copyright on the first thousand?”

“No, I won’t bet,” said Ray, more spiritlessly than he felt, for the
proposition to relinquish a part of his copyright realized it to him.
Still he found it safest not to allow himself any revival of his hopes;
if he did it would be tempting fate to dash them again. In that way he
had often got the better of fate; there was no other way to do it, at
least for him.




XLI.


After a silent and solitary dinner, Ray went to see Mrs. Denton and
Peace in their new lodging. It was the upper floor of a little house in
Greenwich Village, which was sublet to them by a machinist occupying the
lower floors; Ray vaguely recalled something in his face at his first
visit, and then recognized one of the attendants at Hughes’s Sunday
ministrations. He was disposed to fellowship Ray in Hughes’s doctrine,
and in the supposition of a community of interest in Hughes’s daughters.
They could not have been in better or kindlier keeping than that of the
machinist’s friendly wife, who must have fully shared his notion of
Ray’s relation to them. She always received him like one of the family,
and with an increasing intimacy and cordiality.

That evening when she opened the street door to him she said, “Go right
along up; I guess you’ll find them there all right,” and Ray mounted
obediently. Half-way up he met Mrs. Denton coming down, with her cat in
her arms. “Oh, well!” she said. “You’ll find Peace at home; I’ll be back
in a moment.”

He suspected that Mrs. Denton fostered the belief of the machinist and
his wife that there was a tacit if not an explicit understanding between
himself and Peace, and he thought that she would now very probably talk
the matter over with them. But he kept on up to the little apartment at
the top of the house, and tapped on the door standing wide open. The
girl was sitting at one of the windows, with her head and bust sharply
defined against the glassy clear evening light of the early summer. She
had her face turned toward the street, and remained as if she did not
hear him at first, so that there was a moment when it went through his
mind that he would go away. Then she looked round, and greeted him; and
he advanced into the room, and took the seat fronting her on the other
side of the window. There was a small, irregular square below, and above
the tops of its trees the swallows were weaving their swift flight and
twittering song; the street noises came up slightly muted through the
foliage; it was almost like a sylvan withdrawal from the city’s worst;
and they talked of the country, and how lovely it must be looking now.

He said: “Yes, I wonder we can ever leave it. This is the first
spring-time that I have ever been where I couldn’t feel my way with
Nature at every step she took. It’s like a great loss out of my life. I
think sometimes I am a fool to have staid here; I can never get it back.
I could have gone home, and been the richer by the experience of another
spring. Why didn’t I do it?”

“Perhaps you couldn’t have done your work there,” she suggested.

“Oh, my work! That is what people are always sacrificing the good of
life to--their work! Is it worth so much? If I couldn’t do my
newspaper-work there, I could do something else. I could write another
unsuccessful novel.”

“Is your novel a failure?” she asked.

“Don’t you know it is? It’s been out three weeks, and nobody seems to
know it. That’s my grief, now; it may one day be my consolation. I don’t
complain. Mr. Brandreth still keeps his heroic faith in it, and even old
Kane was trying to rise on the wings of favorable prophecy when I saw
him just before dinner. But I haven’t the least hope any more. I think I
could stand it better if I respected the book itself more. But to fail
in a bad cause--that’s bitter.” He stopped, knowing as well as if he had
put his prayer in words, that he had asked her to encourage him, and if
possible, flatter him.

“I’ve been reading it all through again, since it came out,” she said.

“Oh, have you?” he palpitated.

“And I have lent it to the people in the house here, and they have read
it. They are very intelligent in a kind of way”--

“Yes?”

“And they have been talking to me about it; they have been discussing
the characters in it. They like it because they say they can understand
just how every one felt. They like the hero, and Mrs. Simpson cried over
the last scene. She thinks you have managed the heroine’s character
beautifully. Mr. Simpson wondered whether you really believe in
hypnotism. They both said they felt as if they were living it.”

Ray listened with a curious mixture of pleasure and of pain. He knew
very well that it was not possible for such people as the Simpsons to
judge his story with as fine artistic perception as that old society
woman who thought he meant to make his characters cheap and ridiculous,
and in the light of this knowledge their praise galled him. But then
came the question whether they could not judge better of its truth and
reality. If he had made a book which appealed to the feeling and
knowledge of the great, simply-conditioned, sound-hearted,
common-schooled American mass whom the Simpsons represented, he had made
his fortune. He put aside that other question, which from time to time
presses upon every artist, whether he would rather please the few who
despise the judgment of the many, or the many who have no taste, but
somehow have in their keeping the touchstone by which a work of art
proves itself a human interest, and not merely a polite pleasure. Ray
could not make this choice. He said dreamily: “If Mr. Brandreth could
only find out how to reach all the Simpsons with it! I believe a
twenty-five-cent paper edition would be the thing after all. I wish you
could tell me just what Mr. and Mrs. Simpson said of the book; and if
you can remember what they disliked as well as what they liked in it.”

Peace laughed a little. “Oh, they disliked the wicked people. They
thought the hard old father of the heroine was terrible, and was justly
punished by his daughter’s death. At the same time they thought you
ought to have had her revive in time to seize the hero’s hand, when he
is going to shoot himself, and keep him from giving himself a mortal
wound. The cousin ought to get well, too; or else confess before he dies
that he intended to throw the hero over the cliff, so that it could be
made out a case of self-defence. Mr. Simpson says that could be done to
the satisfaction of any jury.”

Ray laughed too. “Yes. It would have been more popular if it had ended
well.”

“Perhaps not,” Peace suggested. “Isn’t it the great thing to make people
talk about a book? If it ended well they wouldn’t have half so much to
say as they will now about it.”

“Perhaps,” Ray assented with meek hopefulness. “But, Peace, what do
_you_ say about it? You’ve never told me that yet. Do you really despise
it so much?”

“I’ve never said that I despised it.”

“You’ve never said you didn’t, and by everything that you’ve done,
you’ve left me to think that you do. I know,” said the young man, “that
I’m bringing up associations and recollections that must be painful to
you; they’re painful and humiliating to me. But it seems to me that you
owe me that much.”

“I owe you much more than that,” said the girl. “Do you think that I
forget--can forget--anything--all that you’ve been to us?”

“Oh, don’t speak of it!” said Ray. “I didn’t mean that. And you needn’t
tell me now what you think of my book. But sometime you will, won’t
you?” He drew forward a little nearer to her, where they sat in the
light which had begun to wane. “Until then--until then--I want you to
let me be the best friend you have in the world--the best friend I can
be to any one.”

He stopped for some answer from her, and she said: “No one could be a
truer friend to us than you have been, from the very first. And we have
mixed you up so in our trouble!”

“Oh, no! But if it’s given me any sort of right to keep on coming to see
Mrs. Denton and you, just as I used?”

“Why not?” she returned.




XLII.


Ray went home ill at ease with himself. He spent a bad night, and he
seemed to have sunk away only a moment from his troubles, when a knock
at his door brought him up again into the midst of them. He realized
them before he realized the knock sufficiently to call out, “Who’s
there?”

“Oh!” said Mr. Brandreth’s voice without; “you’re not up yet! Can I come
in?”

“Certainly,” said Ray, and he leaned forward and slid back the bolt of
his door: it was one advantage of a room so small that he could do this
without getting out of bed.

Mr. Brandreth seemed to beam with one radiance from his silk hat, his
collar, his boots, his scarf, his shining eyes and smooth-shaven
friendly face, as he entered.

“Of course,” he said, “you haven’t seen the _Metropolis_ yet?”

“No; what is the matter with the _Metropolis_?”

Mr. Brandreth, with his perfectly fitted gloves on, and his natty cane
dangling from his wrist, unfolded the supplement of the newspaper, and
accurately folded it again to the lines of the first three columns of
the page. Then he handed it to Ray, and delicately turned away and
looked out of the window.

Ray glanced at the space defined, and saw that it was occupied by a
review of _A Modern Romeo_. There were lengths of large open type for
the reviewer’s introduction and comments and conclusion, and embedded
among these, in closer and finer print, extracts from the novel, where
Ray saw his own language transfigured and glorified.

The critic struck in the beginning a note which he sounded throughout; a
cry of relief, of exultation, at what was apparently the beginning of a
new order of things in fiction. He hailed the unknown writer of _A
Modern Romeo_ as the champion of the imaginative and the ideal against
the photographic and the commonplace, and he expressed a pious joy in
the novel as a bold advance in the path that was to lead forever away
from the slough of realism. But he put on a philosophic air in making
the reader observe that it was not absolutely a new departure, a break,
a schism; it was a natural and scientific evolution, it was a
development of the spiritual from the material; the essential part of
realism was there, but freed from the grossness, the dulness of realism
as we had hitherto known it, and imbued with a fresh life. He called
attention to the firmness and fineness with which the situation was
portrayed and the characters studied before the imagination began to
deal with them; and then he asked the reader to notice how, when this
foundation had once been laid, it was made to serve as a
“star-ypointing pyramid” from which the author’s fancy took its bold
flight through realms untravelled by the photographic and the
commonplace. He praised the style of the book, which he said
corresponded to the dual nature of the conception, and recalled
Thackeray in the treatment of persons and things, and Hawthorne in the
handling of motives and ideas. There was, in fact, so much subtlety in
the author’s dealing with these, that one might almost suspect a
feminine touch, but for the free and virile strength shown in the
passages of passion and action.

The reviewer quoted several of such passages, and Ray followed with a
novel intensity of interest the words he already knew by heart. The
whole episode of throwing the cousin over the cliff was reprinted; but
the parts which the reviewer gave the largest room and the loudest
praise were those embodying the incidents of the hypnotic trance and the
tragical close of the story. Here, he said, was a piece of the most
palpitant actuality, and he applauded it as an instance of how the
imagination might deal with actuality. Nothing in the whole range of
commonplace, photographic, realistic fiction was of such striking effect
as this employment of a scientific discovery in the region of the ideal.
He contended that whatever lingering doubt people might have of the
usefulness of hypnotism as a remedial agent, there could be no question
of the splendid success with which the writer of this remarkable novel
had turned it to account in poetic fiction of a very high grade. He did
not say the highest grade; the book had many obvious faults. It was
evidently the first book of a young writer, whose experience of life had
apparently been limited to a narrow and comparatively obscure field. It
was in a certain sense provincial, even parochial; but perhaps the very
want of an extended horizon had concentrated the author’s thoughts the
more penetratingly on the life immediately at hand. What was important
was that he had seen this life with the vision of an idealist, and had
discerned its poetic uses with the sense of the born artist, and had set
it in

    “The light that never was on sea or land.”

Much more followed to like effect, and the reviewer closed with a
promise to look with interest for the future performance of a writer who
had already given much more than the promise of mastery; who had given
proofs of it. His novel might not be the great American novel which we
had so long been expecting, but it was a most notable achievement in the
right direction. The author was the prophet of better things; he was a
Moses, who, if we followed him, would lead us up from the flesh-pots of
Realism toward the promised land of the Ideal.

From time to time Ray made a little apologetic show of not meaning to do
more than glance the review over, but Mr. Brandreth insisted upon his
taking his time and reading it all; he wanted to talk to him about it.
He began to talk before Ray finished; in fact he agonized him with
question and comment, all through; and when Ray laid the paper down at
last, he came and sat on the edge of his bed.

“Now, I’ll tell you what I’m going to do. I don’t believe in working on
Sunday, and that sort of thing; but I believe this is providential. My
wife does, too; she says it’s a reward for the faith we’ve had in the
book; and that it would be a sin to lose a moment’s time. If there is to
be any catch-on at all, it must be instantaneous; we mustn’t let the
effect of this review get cold, and I’m going to strike while it’s
red-hot.” The word seem to suggest the magnitude of the purpose which
Mr. Brandreth expressed with seriousness that befitted the day. “I’m
simply going to paint the universe red. You’ll see.”

“Well, well,” said Ray, “you’d better not tell me how. I guess I’ve got
as much as I can stand, now.”

“If that book doesn’t succeed,” said Mr. Brandreth, as solemnly as if
registering a vow, “it won’t be my fault.”

He went away, and Ray passed into a trance such as wraps a fortunate
lover from the outer world. But nothing was further from his thoughts
than love. The passion that possessed him was egotism flattered to an
intensity in which he had no life but in the sense of himself. No
experience could be more unwholesome while it lasted, but a condition so
intense could not endure. His first impulse was to keep away from every
one who could keep him from the voluptuous sense of his own success. He
knew very well that the review in the _Metropolis_ overrated his book,
but he liked it to be overrated; he wilfully renewed his delirium from
it by reading it again and again, over his breakfast, on the train to
the Park, and in the lonely places which he sought out there apart from
all who could know him or distract him from himself. At first it seemed
impossible; at last it became unintelligible. He threw the paper into
some bushes; then after he had got a long way off, he went back and
recovered it, and read the review once more. The sense had returned, the
praises had relumed their fires; again he bathed his spirit in their
splendor. It was he, he, he, of whom those things were said. He tried to
realize it. Who was he? The question scared him; perhaps he was going
out of his mind. At any rate he must get away from himself now; that was
his only safety. He thought whom he should turn to for refuge. There
were still people of his society acquaintance in town, and he could have
had a cup of tea poured for him by a charming girl at any one of a dozen
friendly houses. There were young men, more than enough of them, who
would have welcomed him to their bachelor quarters. There was old Kane.
But they would have all begun to talk to him about that review; Peace
herself would have done so. He ended by going home, and setting to work
on some notices for the next day’s _Every Evening_. The performance was
a play of double consciousness in which he struggled with himself as if
with some alien personality. But the next day he could take the time to
pay Mr. Brandreth a visit without wronging the work he had carried so
far.

On the way he bought the leading morning papers, and saw that the
publisher had reprinted long extracts from the _Metropolis_ review as
advertisements in the type of the editorial page; in the _Metropolis_
itself he reprinted the whole review. “This sort of thing will be in the
principal Philadelphia, Boston, Chicago, Cincinnati, and St. Louis
papers just as soon as the mail can carry them my copy. I _had_ thought
of telegraphing the advertisement, but it will cost money enough as it
is,” said Mr. Brandreth.

“Are you sure you’re not throwing your money away?” Ray asked, somewhat
aghast.

“I’m sure I’m not throwing my chance away,” the publisher retorted with
gay courage. He developed the plan of campaign as he had conceived it,
and Ray listened with a kind of nerveless avidity. He looked over at Mr.
Chapley’s room, where he knew that Peace was busily writing, and he
hoped that she did not know that he was there. His last talk with her
had mixed itself up with the intense experience that had followed, and
seemed of one frantic quality with it. He walked out to the street door
with Mr. Brandreth beside him, and did not turn for a glimpse of her.

“Oh by-the-way,” said the publisher at parting, “if you’d been here a
little sooner, I could have made you acquainted with your reviewer. He
dropped in a little while ago to ask who S. Ray was, and I did my best
to make him believe it was a real name. I don’t think he was more than
half convinced.”

“I don’t more than half believe in him,” said Ray, lightly, to cover his
disappointment. “Who is he?”

“Well, their regular man is off on sick leave, and this young
fellow--Worrell is his name--is a sort of under study. He was telling me
how he happened to go in for your book--those things are always
interesting. He meant to take another book up to his house with him, and
he found he had yours when he got home, and some things about hypnotism.
He went through them, and then he thought he would just glance at yours,
anyway, and he opened on the hypnotic trance scene, just when his mind
was full of the subject, and he couldn’t let go. He went back to the
beginning and read it all through, and then he gave you the benefit of
the other fellow’s chance. He wanted to see you, when I told him about
you. Curious how these things fall out, half the time?”

“Very,” said Ray, rather blankly.

“I knew you’d enjoy it.”

“Oh, I do.”




XLIII.


Whether the boom for _A Modern Romeo_ which began with the appearance of
the _Metropolis_ review was an effect of that review or not, no one
acquainted with the caprices of the book trade would undertake to say.
There had been enthusiastic reviews of other books in the _Metropolis_
which had resulted in no boom whatever, as Kane pointed out in
ironically inviting the author to believe that the success of the book
was due wholly to its merit.

“And what was its long failure due to?” Ray asked, tasting the bitter of
the suggestion, but feigning unconsciousness.

“To its demerit.”

Mr. Brandreth was at first inclined to ascribe the boom to the review;
afterwards he held that it was owing to his own wise and bold use of the
review in advertising. There, he contended, was the true chance, which,
in moments of grateful piety, he claimed that he was inspired to seize.
What is certain is that other friendly reviews began to appear in other
influential journals, in New York and throughout the country. Ray began
to see the book on the news-stands now; he found it in the booksellers’
windows; once he heard people in an elevated car talking of it; somehow
it was in the air. But how it got in the air, no one could exactly say;
he, least of all. He could put his hand on certain causes, gross,
palpable, like the advertising activities of Mr. Brandreth; but these
had been in effectless operation long before. He could not define the
peculiar attraction that the novel seemed to have, even when frankly
invited to do so by a vivid young girl who wrote New York letters for a
Southern paper, and who came to interview him about it. The most that he
could say was that it had struck a popular mood. She was very grateful
for that idea, and she made much of it in her next letter; but she did
not succeed in analyzing this mood, except as a general readiness for
psychological fiction on the part of a reading public wearied and
disgusted with the realism of the photographic, commonplace school. She
was much more precise in her personal account of Ray; the young novelist
appeared there as a type of manly beauty, as to his face and head, but
of a regrettably low stature, which, however, you did not observe while
he remained seated. It was specially confided to lady readers that his
slightly wavy dark hair was parted in the middle over a forehead as
smooth and pure as a girl’s. The processed reproduction of Ray’s
photograph did not perfectly bear out her encomium; but it was as much
like him as it was like her account of him. His picture began to appear
in many places, with romanced biographies, which made much of the
obscurity of his origin and the struggles of his early life. When it
came to be said that he sprang from the lower classes, it brought him a
letter of indignant protest from his mother, who reminded him that his
father was a physician, and his people had always been educated and
respectable on both sides. She thought that he ought to write to the
papers and stop the injurious paragraph; and he did not wholly convince
her that this was impossible. He could not have made her understand how
in the sudden invasion of publicity his personality had quite passed out
of his own keeping. The interviewers were upon him everywhere: at his
hotel, whose quaintness and foreign picturesqueness they made go far in
their studies of him; at the _Every Evening_ office, where their visits
subjected him to the mockery of his associates on the paper. His chief
was too simple and serious of purpose to take the comic view of Ray’s
celebrity; when he realized it through the frequency of the interviews,
he took occasion to say: “I like your work and I want to keep you. As it
is only a question of time when you will ask an increase of salary, I
prefer to anticipate, and you’ll find it put up in your next check to
the figure which I think the paper ought to stand.” He did not otherwise
recognize the fact of the book’s success, or speak of it; as compared
with his paper, Ray’s book was of no importance to him whatever.

The interviews were always flattering to Ray’s vanity, in a certain way,
but it was rather wounding to find that most of the interviewers had not
read his book; though they had just got it, or they were going to get it
and read it. In some cases they came to him with poetic preoccupations
from previous interviews with Mr. Brandreth, and he could not disabuse
them of the notion that his literary career had been full of facts much
stranger than fiction.

“Mr. Brandreth says that if the truth could be told about that book,”
one young lady journalist stated, keeping her blue eyes fixed winningly
upon the author’s, “it would form one of the most dramatic chapters in
the whole history of literature. _Won’t_ you tell _me_ the truth about
it, Mr. Ray?”

“Why, I don’t know the truth about it myself,” Ray said.

“Oh, how delightful!” cried the young lady. “I’m going to put _that_ in,
at any rate;” and she continued to work the young author with her
appealing eyes and her unusually intelligent flatteries, until she had
got a great deal more out of him concerning the periculations of his
novel in manuscript than he could have believed himself capable of
telling.

He went to Mr. Brandreth smarting with a sense of having made a fool of
himself, and, “See here, Brandreth,” he said, “what is so very
remarkably dramatic in the history of a novel kicking about for six
months among the trade?”

Mr. Brandreth stared at him, and then said, with a flash of
recollection, “Oh! _That_ girl! Well, she was determined to have
_something_ exclusive about the book, and I just threw out the remark. I
wasn’t thinking of your side of the business entirely. Ray, you’re a
good fellow, and I don’t mind telling you that when I chanced it on
this book of yours, it had got to a point with us where we had to chance
it on something. Mr. Chapley had let the publishing interests of the
house go till there was hardly anything of them left; and when he went
up into the country, this spring, he was strongly opposed to my trying
anything in the publishing line. But my wife and I talked it over, and
she saw as well as I did that I should either have to go actively into
the business, or else go out of it. As it stood, it wouldn’t support two
families. So I made up my mind to risk your book. If it had failed it
would have embarrassed me awfully; I don’t say but what I could have
pulled through, but it would have been rough sledding.”

“That _is_ interesting,” said Ray. “I don’t see why I shouldn’t begin to
pose as your preserver.”

“Well, it wasn’t quite so bad as that,” Mr. Brandreth gayly protested.
“And at the last moment it might have been some one else. There’s no
reason why I shouldn’t tell you that the night you came and wanted me to
take old Hughes’s book, I talked it very seriously over with my wife,
and we determined that we would look at it in the morning, and perhaps
postpone your novel. We woke the baby up with our talk, and then he woke
us up the rest of the night, and in the morning we were not fit to
grapple with the question, and I took that for a sign and let them go on
with your book. I suppose these things were in my mind when I told that
girl what she repeated to you.”

“Well, the incidents are dramatic enough,” said Ray, musingly. “Even
tragical.”

“Yes,” sighed Mr. Brandreth. “I always dreaded to ask you how you made
it right with Mr. Hughes.”

“Oh, Mrs. Denton made it right with _him_,” Ray scoffed. “I told her how
I failed with you, and she went right to him and said that you had taken
his book and would bring it out at once.”

Mr. Brandreth looked pained. “Well, I don’t know what to say about that.
But I’m satisfied now that I acted for the best in keeping on with your
book. I’m going to have Mr. Hughes’s carefully examined, though. I
believe there’s the making of another hit in it. By-the-way,” he ended,
cheerily, “you’ll be glad to know that _A Modern Romeo_ has come of age;
we’ve just printed the twenty-first thousand of him.”

“Is it possible!” said Ray, with well-simulated rapture. With all the
talk there had been about the book, he supposed it had certainly gone to
fifty thousand by this time.

The sale never really reached that figure. It went to forty two or three
thousand, and there it stopped, and nothing could carry it farther. The
author talked the strange arrest over with the publisher, but they could
arrive at no solution of the mystery. There was no reason why a book
which had been so widely talked about and written about should not keep
on selling indefinitely; there was every reason why it should; but it
did not. Had it, by some process of natural selection, reached exactly
those people who cared for a psychological novel of its peculiar make,
and were there really no more of them than had given it just that vogue?
He sought a law for the fact in vain, in the more philosophical
discussions he held with old Kane, as well as in his inquiries with Mr.
Brandreth.

Finally, Kane said: “Why do we always seek a law for things? Is there a
law for ourselves? We think so, but it’s out of sight for the most part,
and generally we act from mere caprice, from impulse. I’ve lived a good
many years, but I couldn’t honestly say that I’ve seen the cause
overtaken by the consequence more than two or three times; then it
struck me as rather theatrical. Consequences I’ve seen a plenty, but not
causes. Perhaps this is merely a sphere of ultimations. We used to
flatter ourselves, in the simple old days, when we thought we were all
miserable sinners, that we were preparing tremendous effects, to follow
elsewhere, by what we said and did here. But what if the things that
happen here are effects initiated elsewhere?”

“It’s a very pretty conjecture,” said Ray, “but it doesn’t seem to have
a very direct bearing on the falling off in the sale of _A Modern
Romeo_.”

“Everything in the universe is related to that book, if you could only
see it properly. If it has stopped selling, it is probably because the
influence of some favorable star, extinguished thousands of years ago,
has just ceased to reach this planet.”

Kane had the air of making a mental note after he said this, and Ray
began to laugh. “There ought to be money in that,” he said.

“No, there is no money in Hard Sayings,” Kane returned, sadly; “there is
only--wisdom.”

Ray was by no means discouraged with his failures to divine the reason
for the arrested sale of his book. At heart he was richly satisfied with
its success, and he left the public without grudging, to their belief
that it had sold a hundred and fifty thousand. Mr. Brandreth was
satisfied, too. He believed that the sale would pick up again in the
fall after people got back from the country; he had discovered that the
book had enduring qualities; but now the question was, what was Ray
going to write next? “You ought to strike while the iron’s hot, you
know.”

“Of course, I’ve been thinking about that,” the young fellow admitted,
“and I believe I’ve got a pretty good scheme for a novel.”

“Could you give me some notion of it?”

“No, I couldn’t. It hasn’t quite crystallized in my mind yet. And I
don’t believe it will, somehow, till I get a name for it.”

“Have you thought of a name?”

“Yes--half-a-dozen that won’t do.”

“There’s everything in a name,” said the publisher. “I believe it made
the _Modern Romeo’s_ fortune.”

Ray mused a moment. “How would _A Rose by any other Name_ do?”

“That’s rather attractive,” said Mr. Brandreth. “Well, anyway, remember
that we are to have the book.”

Ray hesitated. “Well--not on those old ten-percent. terms, Brandreth.”

“Oh, I think we can arrange the terms all right,” said Mr. Brandreth.

“Because I can do much better, you know.”

“Oh, they’ve been after you, have they?”

The young fellow held up the fingers of one hand.

“Well,” said Mr. Brandreth, “your next book belongs to Chapley & Co. You
want to keep your books together. One will help sell the other. _A Rose
by any other Name_ will wake up _A Modern Romeo_ when it comes out.”




XLIV.


For Peace Hughes and her sister, the summer passed uneventfully. The
girl made up for the time she had lost earlier in the year by doing
double duty at the increased business of the publishing house. The
prosperity of _A Modern Romeo_ had itself added to her work, and the new
enterprises which its success had inspired Mr. Brandreth to consider
meant more letter-writing and more formulation of the ideas which he
struck shapelessly if boldly out. He trusted her advice as well as her
skill, and she had now become one of the regular readers for Chapley &
Co.

Ray inferred this from the number of manuscripts which he saw on her
table at home, and he could not help knowing the other things through
his own acquaintance, which was almost an intimacy, with Mr. Brandreth’s
affairs. The publisher was always praising her. “Talk about men!” he
broke out one day. “That girl has a better business head than half the
business men in New York. If she were not a woman, it would be only a
question of time when we should have to offer her a partnership, or run
the risk of losing her. But there’s only one kind of partnership you can
offer a woman.” Ray flushed, but he did not say anything, and Mr.
Brandreth asked, apparently from some association in his mind, “Do you
see much of them at their new place?”

“Yes; I go there every week or so.”

“How are they getting on?”

“Very well, I believe.” Ray mused a moment, and then he said: “If it
were not contrary to all our preconceptions of a sort of duty in people
who have been through what they have been through, I should say they
were both happier than I ever saw them before. I don’t think Mrs. Denton
cared a great deal for her children or husband, but in her father’s last
days he wouldn’t have anybody else about him. She strikes one like a
person who would get married again.”

Mr. Brandreth listened with the air of one trying to feel shocked; but
he smiled.

“I don’t blame her,” Ray continued. “Perhaps old Kane’s habit of not
blaming people is infectious. She once accounted for herself on the
ground that she didn’t make herself; I suppose it might be rather
dangerous ground if people began to take it generally. But Miss Hughes
did care for those poor little souls and for that wretched creature, and
now the care’s gone, and the relief has come. They both miss their
father; but he was doomed; he _had_ to die; and besides, his fatherhood
struck me as being rather thin, at times, from having been spread out
over a community so long. I can’t express it exactly, but it seems to me
that the children of a man who is trying to bring about a millennium of
any kind do not have a good time. Still, I suppose we must have the
millenniums.”

“You said that just like old Kane,” Mr. Brandreth observed.

“Did I? I just owned he was infectious. If I’ve caught his habit of
mind, I dare say I’ve caught his accent. I don’t particularly admire
either. But what I mean is that Miss Hughes and her sister are getting
on very comfortably and sweetly. Their place is as homelike as any I
know in New York.”

“As soon as we get back in the fall, Mrs. Brandreth is going to call on
them. Now that Mr. Chapley and Mr. Hughes are out of the way, there’s no
reason why we shouldn’t show them some attention. Miss Hughes, at least,
is a perfect lady. I’m going to see that she doesn’t overwork; the
success of _A Modern Romeo_ has killed us nearly all; I’m going to give
her a three weeks’ vacation toward the end of August.”

Ray called upon Peace one evening in the beginning of her vacation, and
found her with the manuscript of a book before her; Mrs. Denton was
sitting with the Simpsons on their front steps, and sent him on up to
Peace when he declined to join her there.

He said, “I supposed I should find you reading up the Adirondack
guide-books, or trying to decide between Newport and Saratoga. I don’t
see how your outing differs very much from your inning.”

“This was only a book I brought home because I had got interested in
it,” the girl explained in self-defence. “We’re not going away
anywhere.”

“I think I would stay myself,” said Ray, “if it were not for wanting to
see my family. My vacation begins to-morrow.”

“Does it?”

“Yes; and I should be very willing to spend my fortnight excursioning
around New York. But I’m off at once to-night; I came in to say good-by.
I hope you’ll miss me.”

“We shall miss you very much,” she said; and she added, “I suppose most
of our fashionable friends have gone out of town.”

“Have they?”

“I should think you would know. We had them at second-hand from you.”

“Oh! Those?” said Ray. “Yes. They’re gone, and I’m going. I hate to
leave you behind. Have you any message for the country?”

“Only my love.” She faced the manuscript down on the table before her,
and rocked softly to and fro a moment. “It does make me a little
homesick to think of it,” she said, with touching patience.

He felt the forlornness in her accent, and a sense of her isolation
possessed him. When Mrs. Denton should marry again, Peace would be alone
in the world. He looked at her, and she seemed very little and slight,
to make her way single-handed.

“Peace!” he said, and the intensity of his voice startled him. “There is
something I wanted to say to you--to ask you,” and he was aware of her
listening as intensely as he spoke, though no change of attitude or
demeanor betrayed the fact; he had to go on in a lighter strain if he
went on at all. “You know, I suppose, what a rich man I am going to be
when I get the copyright on my book. It’s almost incredible, but I’m
going to be worth five or six thousand dollars; to be as rich as most
millionaires. Well--I asked you to let me be your friend once, because I
didn’t think a man who was turning out a failure had the right to ask to
be more. Or, no! That _isn’t_ it!” he broke off, shocked by the false
ring of his words. “I don’t know how to say it. I was in love once--very
much in love; the kind of love that I’ve put into my book; and
this--this worship that I have for you, for I do worship you!--it isn’t
the same, Peace. It’s everything that honors you, and once it _was_ like
that; but now I’m not sure. But I couldn’t go away without offering you
my worship, for you to accept for all our lives; or reject, if it wasn’t
enough. Do you understand?”

“I do understand,” the girl returned, and she nervously pressed the hand
which she allowed to gather hers into it.

“I couldn’t leave you,” he went on, “without telling you that there is
no one in the world that I honor so much as you. I had it in my heart to
say this long ago; but it seems such a strange thing to stop with. If I
didn’t think you so wise and so good, I don’t believe I could say it to
you. I know that now whatever you decide will be right, and the best for
us both. I couldn’t bear to have you suppose I would keep coming to see
you without--I would have told you this long ago, but I always expected
to tell you more. But I’m twenty-six now, and perhaps I shall never
feel in that old way again. I _know_ our lives would be united in the
highest things; and you would save me from living for myself alone. What
do you say, Peace?”

He waited for her to break the silence which he did not know how to
interpret. At last she said “No!” and she drew back from him and took
her hand away. “It wouldn’t be right. I shouldn’t be afraid to trust
you”----

“Then why”----

“For I know how faithful you are. But I’m afraid--I _know_--I don’t love
you! And without that it would be a sacrilege. That isn’t enough of
itself, but everything else would be nothing without it.” As if she felt
the wound her words must have dealt to his self-love, she hurried on: “I
did love you once. Yes! I did. And when Mr. Brandreth wanted me to read
your book that time, I wouldn’t, because I was afraid of myself. But
afterwards it--went.”

“Was it my fault?” Ray asked.

“It wasn’t any one’s fault,” said the girl. “If I had not been so
unhappy, it might have been different.”

“Oh, Peace!”

“But I had no heart for it. And now my life must go on just as it is. I
have thought it all out. I thought that some time you might tell
me--what you have--or different--and I tried to think what I ought to
do. I shall never care for any one else; I shall never get married.
Don’t think I shall be unhappy! I can take good care of myself, and
Jenny and I will not be lonesome together. Even if we don’t always live
together--still, I can always make myself a home. I’m not afraid to be
an old maid. There is work in the world for me to do, and I can do it.
Is it so strange I should be saying this?”

“No, no. It’s right.”

“I suppose that most of the girls you know wouldn’t do it. But I have
been brought up differently. In the Family they did not think that
marriage was always the best thing; and when I saw how Jenny and
Ansel--I don’t mean that it would ever have been like that! But I don’t
wish you to think that life will be hard or unhappy for me. And you--you
will find somebody that you can feel towards as you did towards that
first girl.”

“Never! I shall never care for any one again!” he cried. At the bottom
of his heart there was a relief which he tried to ignore, though he
could not deny himself a sense of the unique literary value of the
situation. It was from a consciousness of this relief that he asked,
“And what do you think of me, Peace? Do you blame me?”

“Blame you? How? For my having changed?”

“I feel to blame,” said the young man. “How shall we do, now? Shall I
come to see you when I return?”

“Yes. But we won’t speak of this again.”

“Shall you tell Mrs. Denton?”

“Of course.”

“She will blame me.”

“She will blame _me_,” said Peace. “But--I shall not be troubled, and
you mustn’t,” she said, and she lightly touched him. “This is just as I
wish it to be. I’ve been afraid that if this ever happened, I shouldn’t
have the courage to tell you what I have. But you helped me, and I am so
glad you did! I was afraid you would say something that would blind me,
and keep me from going on in the right way; but now--Good-night.”

“Good-night,” said Ray, vaguely. “May I--dream of you, Peace?”

“If you’ll stop at daybreak.”

“Ah, then I shall begin to think of you.”




XLV.


They had certainly come to an understanding, and for Ray at least there
was release from the obscure sense of culpability which had so long
harassed him. He knew that unless he was sure of his love for Peace, he
was to blame for letting her trust it; but now that he had spoken, and
spoken frankly, it had freed them both to go on and be friends without
fear for each other. Her confession that there had been a time when she
loved him flattered his vanity out of the pain of knowing that she did
not love him now; it consoled him, it justified him; for the offence
which he had accused himself of was of no other kind than hers. How
wisely, how generously she had taken the whole matter!

The question whether she had not taken it more generously than he
merited began to ask itself. She might have chosen to feign a parity
with him in this. He had read of women who sacrificed their love to
their love; and consented to a life-long silence, or practised a
life-long deceit, that the men they loved might never know they loved
them. He had never personally known of such a case, but the books were
full of such cases. This might be one of them. Or it might much more
simply and probably be that she had received his strange declaration as
she did in order to spare his feelings. If that were true she had
already told her sister, and Mrs. Denton had turned the absurd side of
it to the light, and had made Peace laugh it over with her.

A cold perspiration broke out over him at the notion, which he rejected
upon a moment’s reflection as unworthy of Peace. He got back to his
compassionate admiration of her, as he walked down to the ferry and
began his homeward journey. He looked about the boat, and fancied it the
same he had crossed to New York in, when he came to the city nearly a
year before. The old negro who whistled, limped silently through the
long saloon; he glanced from right to left on the passengers, but he
must have thought them too few, or not in the mood for his music. Ray
wondered if he whistled only for the incoming passengers. He recalled
every circumstance of his acquaintance with Peace, from the moment she
caught his notice when Mrs. Denton made her outcry about the
pocket-book. He saw how once it had seemed to deepen to love, and then
had ceased to do so, but he did not see how. There had been everything
in it to make them more to each other, but after a certain time they had
grown less. It was not so strange to him that he had changed; he had
often changed; but we suppose a constancy in others as to all passions
which we cannot exact of ourselves. He tried to think what he had done
to alienate the love which she confessed she once had for him, and he
could not remember anything unless it was his cruelty to her when he
found that she was the friend who would not look at his story a second
time. She said she had forgiven him that; but perhaps she had not;
perhaps she had divined a potential brutality in him, which made her
afraid to trust him. But after that their lives had been united in the
most intimate anxieties, and she had shown absolute trust in him. He
reviewed his conduct toward her throughout, and he could find no blame
in it except for that one thing. He could truly feel that he had been
her faithful friend, and the friend of her whole uncomfortable family,
in spite of all his prejudices and principles against people of that
kind. In the recognition of this fact he enjoyed a moment’s sense of
injury, which was heightened when he reflected that he had even been
willing to sacrifice his pride, after his brilliant literary success, so
far as to offer himself to a girl who worked for her living; it had
always galled him that she held a place little better than a
type-writer’s. No, he had nothing to accuse himself of, after a scrutiny
of his behavior repeated in every detail, and applied in complex, again
and again, with helpless iteration. Still he had a remote feeling of
self-reproach, which he tried to verify, but which forever eluded him.
It was mixed up with that sense of escape, which made him ashamed.

He lay awake in the sleeping-car the greater part of the night, and
turned from side to side, seeking for the reason of a thing that can
never have any reason, and trying to find some parity between his
expectations and experiences of himself in such an affair. It went
through his mind that it would be a good thing to write a story with
some such situation in it; only the reader would not stand it. People
expected love to begin mysteriously, but they did not like it to end so;
though life itself began mysteriously and ended so. He believed that he
should really try it; a story that opened with an engagement ought to be
as interesting as one that closed with an engagement; and it would be
very original. He must study his own affair very closely when he got a
little further away from it. There was no doubt but that when the
chances that favored love were so many and so recognizable, the chance
that undid it could at last be recognized. It was merely a chance, and
that ought to be shown.

He began to wonder if life had not all been a chance with him. Nothing,
not even the success of his book, in the light he now looked at it in,
was the result of reasoned cause. That success had happened; it had not
followed; and he didn’t deserve any praise for what had merely happened.
If this apparent fatality were confined to the economic world alone, he
would have been willing to censure civilization, and take his chance
dumbly, blindly, with the rest. He had not found it so. On the contrary,
he had found the same caprice, the same rule of mere casualty, in the
world which we suppose to be ordered by law--the world of thinking, the
world of feeling. Who knew why or how this or that thought came, this or
that feeling? Then, in that world where we lived in the spirit, was
wrong always punished, was right always rewarded? We must own that we
often saw the good unhappy, and the wicked enjoying themselves. This was
not just; yet somehow we felt, we knew, that justice ruled the universe.
Nothing, then, that seemed chance was really chance. It was the
operation of a law so large that we caught a glimpse of its vast orbit
once or twice in a lifetime. It was Providence.

The car rushed on through the night with its succession of smooth
impulses. The thought of the old friends he should soon meet began to
dispossess the cares and questions that had ridden him; the notion of
certain girls at Midland haunted him sweetly, warmly. He told that one
who first read his story all about Peace Hughes, and she said they had
never really been in love, for love was eternal. After a while he
drowsed, and then he heard her saying that he had got that notion of the
larger law from old Kane. Then it was not he, and not she. It was
nothing.



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