Were a man never so lonely, there is something in a first introduction to a strange city which communicates a spirit of elation. The mere strangeness of what he sees, the novel aspect of things, the touch of the original and unexpected in the buildings, the conformation of the streets, the faces of the hurrying throngs—this new note of life, everywhere audible, is itself so surprising and absorbing that the mind is insensibly withdrawn from the contemplation of private griefs and memories. A more exact examination may reveal the depressing fact that a new world is new alone in name; that men carry their conventions with them wheresoever they travel, and may reproduce upon the loneliest rock of the Pacific or in the heart of the Sahara the complete social counterpart of those narrower forms of civilisation which they might be supposed to have renounced for ever. But even so, it still remains true that the thing which seems new is really new to us, for we live by our sensations as much as by our knowledge. He who cannot yield himself to this illusion of the senses will certainly deny himself the finer pleasures of existence; he will march across the world with the stiff air of the pedant, who sacrifices poetry to precision, declining more and more into a bloomless frugality of life, until at last not alone the outer world but the inner places of his own heart will become arid as a desert.
Arthur was much too young to reject the illusion of the senses, and too essentially a poet to desire to do so. He had his own private griefs, and they were by no means a negligible burden. In the noisy darkness of the long nights at sea, when the clanging of the piston kept him wakeful, he had again and again reviewed these griefs with a self-torturing persistence. Would he ever see his mother again?—and sometimes out of the heart of the black night a voice told him he would not. Would that exquisite but slender bond that held him to Elizabeth withstand the strain of a dateless separation? Would he find the things he sought, have strength to build the life he had had the vision to design, justify himself before the world? These and many cognate thoughts oppressed him; they wrote their abrupt interrogations on the curtain of the night, until he hid his face from them, and could have wept for weakness. But in spite of these oppressions, his spirit had gained both in hope and fortitude upon the voyage. He had begun to find himself blunderingly, as all men must at first, yet with some sincerity and real truth of vision. Two things he had discovered in himself which appeared to him a sufficient base for life, at once a programme and a creed—the one was the fixed determination to be content only with the best kind of life, the other was a faith in the Guiding Hand. From this creed he drew both his inspiration and his courage, and the more he dwelt upon it the more his heart leaped to meet the future, and the less did he regret the dissolution of the past.
And so that first vision of the New World thrilled him with a vague but joyous wonder. New York impressed him as the most superb of all examples of man's will to live. Here, upon a narrow strip of rock, the most ill-fitted spot in all the world for a city metropolitan, man had compelled nature to his purpose; he had disregarded her intention and had triumphed over it; he had bridged the very seas with ropes of steel, carried his means of locomotion into the upper air, and, unable wholly to escape the limitation of the jealous earth, had invaded the sky with his monstrous fortresses of steel and masonry. The very absence of grace, suavity, dignity in all he saw was itself impressive. Brutal as it was, yet was it not also the assertion of a strength which made for its object with a kind of elemental directness, not only scorning obstacles, but defying in its course the most august conventions of the centuries? The will to live—that was the legend flaunted by invisible banners on each sky-daring tower; the city hummed and sang with its crude music; it was written on every face he met in lines of grim endeavour. And it was a needed lesson for such as he. It struck him like a buffet from a strong hand, roused him like a challenge. To the perpetual oncoming hosts of invaders from an older world, New York spoke its iron gospel, "Man is unconquerable, if he have the will to conquer." And the oncoming host received that stern gospel with acclamation as indeed good news—not the highest gospel, nor the sweetest, but assuredly a needed gospel.
Certainly his situation called for both fortitude and hopefulness, for it was highly precarious. He had left London in such haste that he had had no time to make any plans for the future; he had simply acted on an imperative instinct of the soul to assert its rights, to seize upon immediate freedom. A voice within him had whispered, "Now or never," and in a sudden access of resolution he had broken his bonds. He did not regret its precipitation, but he had begun to perceive its consequences.
The only persons to whom he had confided his intention were Hilary Vickars and Mrs. Bundy. Immediately after the midnight interview with his mother he had gone to Vickars, who listened to his story in grave silence. How every detail of that hour passed with Hilary Vickars stood out in his memory! He could see the face of Vickars, pale and eager, as it bent toward him; he remembered how he noted that the lock of hair that fell across his forehead was newly streaked with gray, and how the veins in the long thin hands showed every intricate reticulation. He recollected how he watched a little patch of sunlight as it crept across the floor, saying to himself with a kind of childish irrelevance, "When it touches the wainscot, I must go." And what length of years or gulfs of immense vicissitude could obliterate the face of Elizabeth, as he saw it through that difficult hour—so pale, so sweet, so intense, her lips parted in surprise, her eyes signalling to him messages of faith and constancy?
"You are doing right," said Vickars, and he had laid the long, blue-veined hand upon his head in benediction; and then Elizabeth had taken Arthur's hand in hers, and kissed it softly, and held it for a moment to her bosom—and both acts had been done so solemnly that they seemed like sacred rites in a religious ceremony.
When he rose to go—it was in the exact moment when the patch of sunlight touched the wainscot—Vickars had offered him some practical advice.
"I wish I could help you," he said. "Let me see, it's New York you're going to, isn't it?"
"Yes—New York."
"Well, there's a man there I know slightly—I met him once over a negotiation for book rights in the States. He had an odd name—probably that's why I remember him—Wilbur Meredith Legion, and he seemed to be a decent fellow. It won't do you any harm to have an introduction to him."
From a pigeon-hole in his desk Vickars produced a card: "Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion, Vermont Building, Broadway, New York. Literary and Press Agent."
"You'll find him interesting, at all events," said Vickars, "and he may be able to put you in the way of using your pen."
From Lonsdale Road Arthur had gone to Mrs. Bundy's. That redoubtable woman at once rose to the occasion, and indulged herself in a flight of prophecy which would have done credit to the wildest programmes of Mr. Bundy.
"You'll make your fortune before you're thirty," she exclaimed. "Think of Carnegie."
And thereupon she poured forth a stream of exhilarating and incorrect information, which sounded strangely like excerpts from Bundy's prospectuses, so that it seemed as though a conjurer flung a dozen golden balls of sudden wealth into the air, and kept them flashing and gyrating for some seconds with amazing ingenuity.
"Stop!—stop!" said Arthur, laughing.
"Not a bit of it," she replied. "I only wish you could meet Bundy. He'd be the man to help you."
"Where is Mr. Bundy just now?"
"The last I heard he was in Texas. He was negotiating the purchase of forty thousand acres of land which he says is the finest in the world. Let me see—why, to be sure, he said he'd be in New York before Christmas. He always stops at the Astor House. No doubt you'll find him there."
"I will certainly look for him," said Arthur.
"Do. If there's any man can make your fortune, it's Bundy." And then, with unremarked inconsistency, she added, "I wish I could give you something, my dear, but it's low water with us just now. Stop, though; here's something that may be useful." After rummaging in a cupboard she produced a small flat bottle, which contained something which bore a strong resemblance to furniture polish. "It's rum and butter, my dear, and let me tell you it's a splendid remedy for sore throat. Those ships are cold, draughty places, and maybe you'll be glad of it. Bundy always takes it with him on a journey. Well, my dear, let an old woman kiss you, and wish you well," whereupon the motherly creature flung her arms round his neck and kissed him heartily. The two Bundy boys, coming in at that moment from the back garden, where they had spent an exhilarating hour in lassoing a collie dog, stared round-eyed at this proceeding, the younger of the two remarking with an air of solemn impudence, "I'll tell father"—whereupon Mrs. Bundy had chased them out of the kitchen with many threats, and it was thus, in a gust of laughter, he had taken leave of his old friend. She had stood at her door till the last moment when he disappeared down the road, waving her hand energetically, and in spite of all that was ridiculous in the scene, Arthur felt a real and deep sadness when she faded from his view.
An introduction to a dubious person called Legion, the frail possibility of a rendezvous with Bundy, and a few pounds in his pocket—it must be admitted this was not an exorbitant equipment for the conquest of a new world; but to this exiguous capital there must be added something not readily assessed—the high and hopeful spirit of liberated youth. He had escaped the strangling grip of circumstance; he was free, and the blood moved in his veins with a novel speed and nimbleness; he was at last upon the world's open road.
His first act was to secure a room at the old Astor House, and make inquiries for Mr. Bundy. He addressed these inquiries to a clerk who was so busily absorbed in the task of picking his teeth with a wooden toothpick that he appeared to resent interruption. When Arthur had twice repeated his question, this youth answered curtly that he didn't know, and turned his back upon him.
"Pardon me, but I have a particular reason for asking. If you are too busy to examine the register, please let me."
The clerk pushed a formidable volume toward him, and went on picking his teeth. There was no Bundy in the long list of recent entries, but there was a wonderful array of places, with strange, exotic names, such as Saratoga, Macon, Fond du Lac, Pueblo, and a hundred others that were musical with old-world memories. Upon that sordid page they shone like gems; they exhaled a perfume of secular romance; Memphis and Carthagena, Syracuse, Ithaca, and Rome, Valparaiso and Paris, jostled each other in the wildest incongruity, as if each bore witness to some ancient mode of life which had helped to form the strange amalgam which called itself American. He was so delighted with this glittering tournament of words that at length the clerk, remarking his interest, condescended to inquire, "Found it?"
"Mr. Bundy? No; he doesn't appear to be here."
"What like was he?"
"An Englishman. A small man, very quick and active; interested in mines, I think."
"Well, why didn't you say he was interested in mines, any way? Then I should have known. He was here six months ago, stayed a week, private lunch every day in Parlour A, floating a syndicate for Texas land. I know him. Wanted me to take shares. Said he'd be back in a month. Hasn't come. Guess he's bust."
"He's expected at Christmas, isn't he?"
"Can't say. If you make out to know Mr. Bundy, like you say, you'd know that it's his pecooliarity not to answer to anybody's expectations. He's a live man, is Bundy. Yes, sir, for a Britisher he's the liveliest man I know."
With this unsolicited testimonial to the liveliness of Mr. Bundy he had to be content.
"I'll let you know when he comes," said the clerk more graciously. "I'll see you don't miss him."
"You don't know his address, do you?"
"Why, let me see. Yes, he left an address. Here it is—Bundy, Curtis House, Oklahoma City; but, you know, he won't be there. You can write and try; the Oklahoma people will trace him for you."
"Thank you, I will do so," said Arthur, and withdrew to his bedroom, where he spent an interested half-hour in studying the uses of a large coil of rope which was conspicuously displayed near the window, together with minute directions as to what to do in case of fire. He fell asleep that night with the directions in case of fire, and the exotic names he had read, and the remembered rhythm of the steamer piston all singing together in his mind, in an infinite succession of strophes, at the end of which clashed like a cymbal the words Bundy and Oklahoma.
The next morning he sought the office of Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion. He was whirled rapidly in an elevator to the eleventh floor of a populous and narrow building. When, after some explanations made to an indifferent office-boy, whose jaws appeared to be afflicted with a curious rotary motion, due, as he afterwards discovered, to the mastication of chewing-gum, he was ushered into the presence of the agent. Mr. Legion proved to be a stout, elderly man, clean-shaved, with a high, benevolent forehead, and a most remarkable squint. He had quite a patriarchal air, a manner that might be termed diaconal, and a suave and insinuating voice.
"Ah! you come from my friend, my dear friend, Vickars. A most remarkable man!" But when Arthur mentioned Vickars' latest book, he observed that Mr. Wilbur Legion did not appear to have heard of it.
"We handle such an immense quantity of stuff," he said apologetically. "The world's greatest authors come to us. They are beginning to find out what we can do for them commercially. Have you ever heard of Sampson E. Dodge?"
Arthur confessed his ignorance.
"One of our brightest young men, sir. A man destined to take rank with our greatest writers. You must have seen his story,The Perambulator with a Thousand Wheels. It has sold a hundred thousand. Two years ago he was a clerk in a dry goods store, and to-day he is among the most popular of our American authors. You've not heard of him? Well, you are to be excused, sir. We have not yet operated in Great Britain. Great Britain appears to have a prejudice against our great writers. Wilbur M. Legion means to wake Great Britain up, sir. This state of wilful ignorance cannot exist much longer. Great Britain cannot afford, I say, to be ignorant of the work of Mr. Sampson E. Dodge."
"I see that I, as well as Great Britain, have a good deal to learn," said Arthur, with quiet irony.
"You have, indeed. Not to know Mr. Sampson E. Dodge is to argue yourself unknown, as some one on your side of the water once said—Browning, wasn't it?"
"Not Browning, I think."
"Well, it's true just the same. I suppose you don't know our new poets either, do you? Mrs. Mary Bonner Slocum, for example. I am happy to say that I operate all her poetry for her. She writes a poem a day, sometimes three or four, and I place them for her in the magazines and journals of the country. HerOde to Washingtonhas been generally admired. Her little talks with women on the management of the home and the baby are even more popular than her poems. When I first knew her, she was earning nothing, sir; it is a proud reflection that to-day, through my efforts, her income is at least ten thousand dollars a year."
Mr. Legion was evidently prepared to indulge himself at length in personal reminiscences. In the course of ten minutes he had given sufficient biographies of his leading patrons, including not only the details of their earnings, but many particulars of their private lives—such as the fact that Mr. Sampson E. Dodge was not always strictly sober, and Mrs. Mary Bonner Slocum had been twice divorced. And with that amiable American frankness which stands in such marked contrast to the reticence of the British man of business, Mr. Legion proceeded to declare the amount of his own earnings, the number of his children, his fatherly hopes for Ulysses E. Legion, "a smart boy, sir," who was doing well at the high school, together with some account of how he first met Mrs. Legion, and his intentions to take his entire family to Europe, at an early date. He concluded by asking Arthur to lunch with him, and pressed on his notice a box of cigars (the cost of which he named), and a thick handbook, adorned with many portraits, which explained and justified the world-wide operations of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion.
Mr. Legion took him to a kind of club which had its quarters in the top storey of a lofty building, from which a marvellous view of New York was obtained. During the process of lunch, which was excellent, Mr. Legion drew Arthur's attention to a large number of persons, all of whom were described as among the "smartest" men in New York. Mr. Legion appeared to know all about them, and Arthur found himself listening to a vast amount of recondite information concerning their upbringing, their early struggles, their matrimonial adventures or misadventures, and above all, the amount of dollars which each was supposed to possess.
"That is the celebrated Stamford Parker, sir,"—indicating a spare, clean-shaved man. "Sure now, you must have heard of him? What? Not heard of him? The greatest magazine proprietor in America, sir. Raised in Vermont, worked on a farm, telegraph operator at Bangor, Maine, bust twice, made good at last, income half a million, his wife a lovely woman. Ah! he sees me; I think he is coming over to speak to me."
The great man strolled across the room, smoking his cigar, and Arthur was effusively introduced to him as a bright young Englishman, fresh from Oxford, and acquainted with all the leading English authors of the day.
"Well, not quite all," said Arthur, with a smile.
The great man received his demur without surprise. When he had returned to his table, Legion said, with a shake of his patriarchal head, "Now, you shouldn't have said that, you know."
"Said what?"
"That you didn't know all your leading authors."
"But I don't know them."
"Well, you needn't have said so. Didn't you see how Parker froze at once? But you don't understand our American way, so you must be excused."
"And what is the American way?"
"Always go a little beyond the truth, but on no account below it—people expect it of you. Leave them to make their discount."
This principle, so unblushingly announced, served Mr. Legion for a text, on which he discanted for some minutes, at the end of which discourse Arthur began to acquire some insight into the meaning of the word "bunkum," and was in a position to apply the method of discount to Mr. Legion's own artless superlatives concerning his business methods and success in life.
Mr. Legion was genial, affable, cordial, in a way which no Englishman could have attained toward an entire stranger, and Arthur was disposed to set a high value on these qualities. Nevertheless, he could not but remark that the agent appeared anxious to evade any practical obligations imposed on him by Vickars's letter of introduction. He drew a picture, almost comic in its gross inaccuracy, as Arthur afterwards discovered, of the extreme ease with which fortunes were made in America, and especially by the pen. Magazine writers lived in sumptuous hotels, and successful novelists built for themselves elaborate palaces. It was the age of young men. A man who had not made a reputation at thirty was a "Has-been." The old method of slowly acquired and slowly widening reputation was obsolete. This was the day of literary booms.
"And after the boom the boomerang!" interjected Arthur.
"Very good—very good indeed. I always thought you Britishers had no sense of humour. It's a general belief in the States. But that's quite a smart saying. Sampson E. Dodge might have said it."
Arthur ought to have blushed at this high praise, but instead, he stolidly explained his epigram, and observed further that no literary man who respected himself would connive in a boom. "Hilary Vickars, for example."
"And that's just where Vickars makes his mistake," said Legion. "And what's the result? He isn't known."
"But he has done excellent work."
"You make me tired," answered Legion. "What's the good of doing excellent work if no one reads it? The public doesn't know good work from bad. Some one's got to tell them. An author must be written up. And let me tell you another thing—the best writing in the world won't attract so much attention as half a dozen spicy paragraphs about the writer. Do you know howThe Perambulator of a Thousand Wheelsbecame so popular?"
"Not having seen the book, it can't be supposed I do."
"Well, I'll tell you. I killed the author three times before his book came out."
"You did what?" asked Arthur, with a shout of laughter.
"Killed him, sir. Once he perished on the Matterhorn in a snow-storm. The next time he was killed in a railway accident in Canada. The last time he was lost in a wreck in the South Sea Islands. By this time every one was talking of him. I received no fewer than four hundred press cuttings the last time headed, 'A Famous Author Lost at Sea.' The name of Sampson E. Dodge became as famous as the President's. Of course, when his book came out every one rushed for it."
"And was he really in Switzerland, Canada, or the South Seas?"
"Certainly not. As safe as you are. Writing his book at a farmhouse in Vermont."
"Do you often practise this method, Mr. Legion?"
"Well, it must be applied judiciously, of course. Dodge writes adventure novels, so I give him adventures. But for quieter authors, you must invent something else. It used to be appendicitis, but that's nearly played out. Total loss of memory through overwork used to take, but I found that the authors objected to it. Double pneumonia in a lonely shack among the mountains, where he had gone to obtain local colour for his new novel, answers as well as anything else. And that reminds me—didn't you say Vickars had been ill?"
"Yes, he nearly died. Typhoid fever from bad drains."
"And didn't anybody write it up?"
"Not that I ever heard of."
"My! what a blunder! And with a new book coming out, too. I wish I could have had the handling of that 'story.'"
"I don't think Vickars would have liked that."
"No, I suppose not. You Britishers seem to be afraid of publicity. It almost amounts to a disease."
"We are getting over it by degrees. I assure you there are British authors who are quite reconciled to the immodesty of newspaper puffs. But not men like Vickars. He is one of those who stand in proud silence, and is content to wait for his recognition."
"Well, I guess he'll have to wait till there's skating in Hades. The standing apart business is all very well if you've got the dollars and don't care; but if you haven't, it means starvation." He rose from the table, and said, "Shall we go?"
"Well, there's one thing I want to ask you first," said Arthur, "and as you haven't mentioned it, it seems I must. I want to know if you can put me in the way of earning my living in New York?"
"But, my dear sir, I thought you were just travelling through for pleasure."
"I was afraid that you were under that misconception, and I apologise for not undeceiving you sooner. The plain truth is, I have a very little money in my pocket, no particular experience of life, and my bread to earn."
"Dear me!—dear me! That sounds serious."
"It may easily become so."
The older man looked gravely sympathetic. Suddenly, however, he brightened up, as though he had discovered the solution of the whole problem.
"Well, young man, don't be alarmed," he cried. "Remember that you've come to the land of the free and the home of the brave. There are no feudal distinctions to keep you down here, as in your own unhappy country. This great and glorious Republic allows free play to individual exertions. Sir, America bids you rise, and all you have to do is to go out—and Rise!"
"It would be a good deal more to the purpose if you could tell me how and in what way to begin this process of rising."
"Ah! that's another matter. I must think that over. Come to me again in a day or two. And remember my advice to you is, Go out and Rise!"
He went out, too much amused with Legion's valediction to criticise the man very strictly. It was not until he lay a-bed that night, thinking over the curious adventures of the day, that a strong conviction seized him that Mr. Wilbur Meredith Legion was a windbag.
When a youth is thoroughly adrift in a strange city, with no better equipment than a large stock of unapplied aptitudes, he is likely to make many interesting discoveries concerning the real nature of life, the chief of which is that there is no way of living that has not a good deal more in it than meets the eye. By what adroit use of opportunity is the least foothold secured in this crowded world, by what intrigues and stratagems, comparable only with the art which governs battlefields, and less than that art only in the range of its effects! By what quickness of resource, adaptability to circumstance, infinite, weariless plotting and manoeuvering, were only so small a thing achieved as to sell a card of buttons with success! Around this exiled youth jostled the rude, vigorous world of New York, a multitude of men and women each battling toward a certain goal, and not one of whom was not better equipped to win the race than himself. Certain phrases used by this jostling crowd struck upon his ear continuously, such as "to make good," "to deliver the goods." They implied that nothing was valued in New York save the sort of brute force that trampled its way into attention.
"He has made good, sir," was Legion's verdict on that eminent writer, Mr. Sampson E. Dodge, and the phrase was uttered with an accent of reverence which was undoubtedly sincere.
With Legion ideals and intentions counted for nothing; culture and scholarship were worthless commodities; the one thing he could appreciate was concrete success—"to make good."
The same spirit met Arthur everywhere. He found the newspapers pouring adulation at the feet of men against whom every kind of crime might be alleged; but they had "made good," and therefore were unassailable. He remarked a cheerful disregard of morals, which was less disrespect than light-hearted ignorance; and the most curious thing of all was that the very men who talked as though honesty, faith, and trust did not exist were themselves men of amiable virtues. He found himself quickly and quietly appraised; a keen eye ran over him, reading his deficiencies, and his doom was pronounced with a smile. An insulting word would have been less difficult to bear than that disconcerting smile; but these arbiters of his destiny never failed in courtesy, nor in the sort of kindness which finds its outlet in easy generosity. They would invite him to lunch, introduce him to clubs, allow him to believe that he had made real progress in their friendship and esteem; but when it came to the enunciation of some plan by which he might earn his bread, they became strangely silent. They "gave him a good time," to use another cheerful American phrase—to do so appeared to be part of a definite system of international courtesy; but they were at no pains to conceal their sense that he was a virtual incompetent.
Again and again, in the still hours of the morning, he recounted the rebuffs and misadventures of the previous day with wonder and misgiving. The irony of his position was laughable, if it had not been so serious. He had been told by the eloquent Legion to go out and rise; and certainly it appeared, by the light of conspicuous examples, that he was in a land where multitudes of men had risen from the lowliest to the loftiest positions with a singular celerity. Yet no one believed him capable of rising, nor indeed did he himself venture to assert it with any vigour of conviction. And in such moments there came to him the recollection of his father. For the first time he realised with some approach to adequacy the vital elements in his father's character. He told himself that had his father been flung suddenly into the streaming tides of New York, he would not have lived through twenty-four hours without getting his feet securely planted on the rung of some ladder that led to eminence. And then, with a sudden heat of resolution, he would tell himself that he was his father's son, and he would rise and go forth once more to hammer on the barred gates of chance.
"To-day I will not fail," he would cry.
And when the day closed, recording nothing but defeat, he would still cry, "To-morrow I must succeed," and endeavour to believe it.
The real trouble was that he was assaulting the stern citadel of life with weapons not only imperfect, but nearly useless. He had been taught many things, but not the one thing needful; and he now perceived with humiliation that the humblest human creature who could work a typewriter, keep accounts, hew a stone, or shape a beam, was more efficient than he to wrest a living from the world. This discovery was the first real lesson he had ever learned from life. And it said much for his character, that he accepted it without resentment, without the bitterness and sulkiness of injured pride.
A fortnight after his first interview with Legion, he returned to the office of the literary agent, resolved to act upon his discovery.
The great man received him with friendliness, for it was one of his principles never to offend any one who might prove a valuable client at some future date.
"Ah! so you've come back," he began. "You've been studying our remarkable city, eh? And you've met some of our most remarkable men, no doubt?"
"I've certainly met some remarkable men."
"Yes, sir. New York has more remarkable men to the acre than any other city in the world. Genius has made its abode in Manhattan. 'Westward the course of Empire'—you know the rest. Paris and London must go down—they are old. New York will rule the world. Don't you think so?"
"I am afraid I have not thought upon the subject at all."
"No? Well, no doubt you've been absorbing the atmosphere of our wonderful city. That's a very wise step, for a novelist. Sampson E. Dodge always insisted on atmosphere. Have you written anything yet, any little thing that I can place for you?"
"I have written nothing, and I think I ought to tell you that I am not a novelist."
"Not a novelist! But, my dear sir, why then did your friend Vickars send you to me?"
"I suppose he did it out of consideration for me, Mr. Legion. Will you allow me to say that it is time we understood one another. I am not a novelist, not even a writer in your sense of the term. I am a young man with an excellent education, a good university degree, and a wide assortment of unmarketable knowledge. I believe that exhausts the statement of my assets, unless I add good health and a strong desire to live as honestly as I can. Upon the debit side of the account I must ask you to enter a total ignorance of business, which has been so carefully cultivated that it approaches the dignity of a fine art. I may further add that toward what is generally understood by business I entertain an invincible repugnance."
"Dear me!" interrupted Legion, "that is a most extraordinary statement."
"It has, at least, the merit of truth."
"And are there many young men like yourself in the Old Country, sir?"
"They are an innumerable army, which is constantly recruited by the credulous pride of parents who prefer accomplishments to efficiency. They call the process making their sons gentlemen."
"And what becomes of them?"
"Those who have money spend a vacuous existence in the pursuit of strenuous idleness; those who have no money and some remains of self-respect occasionally emigrate, as I have done. And that brings me to my point, Mr. Legion. I have been long enough in your remarkable city to understand that there is a welcome for the man who can do things, and for no one else. I don't flatter myself that I can do anything of much account, but I am willing to work, and I believe I am willing to learn. To be very plain, I need employment, and I ask you to give it me."
"Well, I like your honesty," said Legion. "But I think better of you than you do of yourself. A man of your splendid education must be able to write. Now, I'll tell you what—you go away and write me a descriptive sketch of your friend Vickars, and if it's the right kind of stuff I'll use it in the papers."
This seemed a feasible project at least. He went away and wrote the essay upon Vickars, and because he wrote in a spirit of genuine love and admiration, he wrote well.
On the following Sunday Legion invited him to his house in New Jersey, where he had the opportunity of making the acquaintance of the Legion family. His most immediate impression was of a Legion shorn of his beams, so to speak: no longer the arbiter of fame for struggling authors, but a singularly humble individual, whose authority in his own household was dubious and disputed. The real ruler of the household appeared to be that exceedingly smart boy, Ulysses E. Legion, whose self-confidence would have done credit to an aged diplomat whose voice had for half a century swayed the councils of kings and statesmen. He talked incessantly, making no scruple to express his views on a great variety of subjects, in such a way as to indicate that his father was mistaken in most of his opinions. At the dinner-table this young gentleman advised his father how to carve the joint, and directed him with unblushing precision toward the special tit-bits which he himself preferred. To see the great literary agent humbly obeying these directions, or listening with extreme docility to the opinions of this young patriarch of twelve, was a striking revelation of the amiability of the American parent. Of the qualities revealed in the child perhaps the less said the better. Yet it was to this young gentleman that Arthur owed a considerable advance in the esteem of Mr. Legion. It is one of the unpleasing characteristics of the American house to dispense with doors between the various living-rooms, and thus many things may be overheard that are not meant for general circulation. The parlour in Mr. Legion's house being divided from the dining-room by nothing more substantial than a flimsy curtain, Arthur could not avoid hearing a conversation which took place between the father and son after dinner.
"Say pop," said the boy, "is he a Britisher?"
"Why, yes, he comes from London."
"We always licked the Britishers, didn't we?"
To which the father replied with the popular mendacity which is taught in all American histories, "Of course, Americans have never been defeated."
"Well, I thought he was American. He looks like an American, any way."
This unsolicited testimonial to his personal appearance evidently impressed Mr. Legion, for when he returned to the dining-room there was a marked increase of geniality in his manner.
"And now let me hear what you've written about your friend," he said.
Arthur produced his manuscript, and began to read. It was an admirable paper, an uncoloured and just statement of his friend's aim and method, which a discerning critic would have readily recognised as excellent writing. It seemed, however, to produce a totally different impression on Mr. Legion. Looking up, Arthur saw the geniality fading from his face, and something like consternation displacing it. The moment he finished the reading, Legion spoke.
"My dear sir," he began, "it won't do—it won't do at all. It might suit your dull old English papers, but for the bright, smart, up-to-date American periodical, it won't do at all."
"What's wrong with it?" said Arthur, with a blush.
"Why, the trouble is, it's all wrong. Our readers don't want to know about the man's books, they want to know something abouthim. Couldn't you tell us how he looks, and what coloured ties he wears, and what he eats and drinks and how much he earns, and something about that interesting daughter of his? That's what our readers like, sir—bright, personal, spicy, snappy details. And look here, you haven't said a word about his having had a fever through bad drains. You might have worked that up, any way—how he lived among the poor on purpose to study their lives, and got the fever doing it, and that sort of stunt. You ought to have made him romantic and picturesque, and worked his lovely daughter in, and then people would have begun to ask about his books."
"I'm sorry, but that's not the English way of writing."
"English—nothing! You're in America now, and you must write the American way. I did hope for something better. You can write—I won't deny that—and you look smart enough to write any way you darn please. My boy Ulysses saw that at once. He said to me, 'Pop, he looks like an American.' And so you do, for my boy Ulysses is rarely mistaken, and yet you haven't got the first idea how to write the American way. What are those old colleges of yours for, any way, if they can't teach you to write livelier stuff that that?"
It was impossible to be angry with the man, for it was clear that his consternation was genuine and unaffected. And it was equally clear to Arthur that he meant well by him. To have argued literary ethics with Mr. Legion would have been the vainest of pursuits. This became evident a moment later, when the literary agent, following the suggestion opened up by the inability of the British colleges to impart the art of smart writing, gave some reminiscences of his own career in that spirit of innocent boastfulness which is common among men who have miraculously achieved positions for which nature never intended them.
"What I can't understand," he remarked, "is why it is you young fellows who have all the chances don't know how to use them properly. Now, look at me. I never had what may be rightly called a chance at all. I've worked for my bread since I was ten years old. I've been all sorts of things, clerk in a store, drummer on the roads, rail-roading, land-speculating, newspaper reporting, more things than I could count on my ten fingers. I never had time to ask what I wanted to do; I had to do what came to me, and do it the way those that paid me wanted it done. There was never anything superior about me, and I knew it. And that's why I've got on. That's why all the writers come to me to-day. They know very well I can't write worth a red cent, not compared with them, that is. But I've lived among the people all my life, and I know what they want. And if you'll take a word of advice from me, you'll just set yourself to find out what people like, and give it 'em hot and strong, and then you'll succeed fast enough."
"It is excellent advice—if one could take it."
"And what's to prevent you?" he cried. "You've got good looks, you've got education, you've got ability. I'll tell you what I'll do. You come to my office for a couple of weeks, and be ready to do what I tell you. I'll pay you what I think just, and if you don't like it, you're under no obligation to remain."
"I'll come with pleasure," Arthur replied; "and whether I please you or not, I shall always be grateful to you for your kindness."
"Oh! that's nothing. I was a young cub myself once, and I shouldn't have been here now if some one hadn't licked me into shape."
It was not exactly a pleasant way of putting things, but Arthur had sense enough to perceive that it was uttered in a spirit of rough kindness. He believed himself quite incapable of moulding his mind to Mr. Legion's pattern, and it was with a sense of ingratitude that he found himself secretly despising that pattern. But a fortnight of New York had taught him this much, that beggars cannot be choosers, and, moreover, Mr. Legion's door was the only door that stood open to him. He could at least try to do what was asked of him, and in the secret of his heart pride whispered that he might even succeed in elevating Mr. Legion's sense of literary merit, and impart to it a dignity which it conspicuously lacked.
He went to the office on the following morning. To his surprise he found himself introduced to a typewriting lady not at all as an unfortunate person who had failed to master the American method of writing, but as "one of our brightest and smartest young men, who is destined to become one of the star writers of our time"; from which it appeared that Mr. Legion had already forgotten his demerits, or had yielded to that spirit of innocent effusiveness which was characteristic of his usual modes of speech. The typewriting lady had heard such phrases too often to attach much importance to them, and received them with a wearied smile. She readjusted the combs in her hair, nodded to him coldly, and went on with her work unmoved by the presence of this bright particular star of Mr. Legion's firmament. Later on, when Mr. Legion had left the office, this inaccessible lady thawed a little, and informed him with a pretty grimace that she guessed that a good many stars rose and set every month in Broadway.
"You must take no notice of Mr. Legion's superlatives," he replied.
"I don't."
"I am here only as a learner, a kind of apprentice."
"Then I guess you'll get some surprises."
Surprises he certainly did get in plenty in the course of that eventful fortnight. He found, for example, that Mr. Sampson E. Dodge, in common with most of Mr. Legion's authors, always wrote the preliminary press announcements of his novels himself, in which he declared his profound conviction that the present novel was the best he had ever written, ever could write, ever would write, being dramatic in a high degree, racy of the soil, full of vigorous situations, and worthy of the highest traditions of American fictional art. As if this were not enough, Mr. Dodge's humble statements of his own powers were further embroidered with resonant superlatives by the skilled hand of Legion himself, who lavished on him praise that would have sounded excessive had it been applied to Walter Scott or Victor Hugo. The whole thing was so humorous in its gross exaggeration that one day, in a spirit of mockery, Arthur drew up a description of the works of Dodge in which he outdid his model, ending with the statement that the day would come when America would be remembered in history chiefly as the birthplace of the famous author ofThe Perambulator of a Thousand Wheels. This burlesque, left carelessly upon his desk, fell into the hands of Legion, who, to his intense surprise, congratulated him upon it.
"That's what we want," he cried joyously. "I always said you could write, but I really didn't think you'd get hold of the American method so soon."
"But it's pure nonsense—in fact, a burlesque," said Arthur.
"A what?"
"A burlesque, a skit, a satire, if you will."
"You may call it what you like, but it's what I want, and what the public wants, and I'm going to print it."
"I hope you'll do nothing of the kind. You must see it is nonsense, and no one will believe it."
"The American public will believe anything," Legion retorted with grave conviction. "They like being fooled. It is what the papers exist for. And there's no sort of fooling pleases them so much as patriotic fooling. That reference of yours now to America being remembered as the birthplace of Dodge—why, it's a stroke of genius, sir. It may not be strictly true, of course; but it is impressive, and it makes folk feel proud of their native authors, and it sells the books, and that's what we want, isn't it?"
Remonstrance was so clearly useless that Arthur said no more, and in due time read with blushes his unlucky paragraph in the advertising columns of a New York paper, and found that it had been disseminated by the hand of Legion through a hundred inferior papers, where it was duly quoted as the valuable opinion of a celebrated English critic.
This was but one instance among many of the remarkable methods of Mr. Wilbur M. Legion. He pursued mendacity with an ardour which few persons have manifested in the quest of truth. He dwelt in an atmosphere of exaggeration so dense that the real values of things were totally obscured. Words were to him the golden balls of a juggler; he tossed them hither and thither with a sole eye to rapid effect and novel combination. Upon the question of Dodge he was fantastically sincere; he was really in love with the man and his writings; but the language which he used of Dodge was substantially the same language with which he decorated all his authors. It was his boast that he would make the worst book sell by daring methods of advertisement. He once expressed to Arthur with entire gravity the opinion that the true cause for the decay of religion was that the Bible had not been sufficiently advertised; it has been left to preachers instead of being handed over to the press agents. Let him have the handling of it for a month, and he would show them! For it must be noted that Mr. Legion was in his way a respecter of religion, a zealous opponent of heterodoxies, a man of excellent Sunday proprieties, who had won the gratitude of the sect to which he belonged by presenting an organ to his church. If he had been told that his chief achievement in life was to debase the literary currency, he would have been genuinely astonished, for so singular a thing is the mind of man that he actually believed that he had advanced its interests.
Things came to a crisis at last, and, as it happened, over the very article which Arthur had written on Vickars. This article had remained in Legion's hands, and what was Arthur's astonishment when he found it duly head-lined in a sensational journal, and accompanied by a portrait which was certainly not that of Vickars. Here and there he could distinguish some remnants of his own handiwork, but the whole was overlaid by the most extraordinary flamboyant ornament, and abounded in passages which he recognised as pure Legionese. The things which he had said about Vickars in unsuspicious confidence were all remembered, but were twisted with such amazing ingenuity into novel forms that he blushed to recognise them. Vickars was described as living in a garret, existing upon the most exiguous of earnings, finding his comrades among all kinds of social outcasts, a hero, a saint, and a socialist, assisted in his sacrifice by a lovely daughter, whose personal charms were touched in with the bold hand of a police-court journalist. Arthur's heart flamed as he read the article. He could imagine what Vickars would think of it; what he would think of the pathetic fiction that he had nearly died of a fever caught in nursing a diseased outcast (this was the Legionese improvement on the drain-story), and with what feelings he would regard the exploitation of Elizabeth. It seemed to him that the world must ring with the infamous business; that Vickars would become the laughing-stock of London; and that since the article could be attributed to no one but himself, he would henceforth stand pilloried as a false friend, a liar, and a fool.
The moment Legion appeared in the office, he flung the article upon his desk, and cried in a voice shaken with anger, "Did you write that?"
"Why, what's the matter?" he replied, slowly adjusting his spectacles. "Oh! I see—the Vickars article. I meant to tell you about that. What you wrote was too good to waste, so I worked over it a bit, and I've got quite a satisfactory price for it. I wouldn't wonder if it created quite a demand for Vickars' books, and we ought to communicate with him at once about his new book."
He was going on, in the innocence of his heart, to explain how a Vickars boom might be worked, when Arthur interrupted him with a furious gesture.
"What I wrote was truth, and what you have written is lies. Why, even the portrait you have used isn't Vickars!"
"And who cares about that? No one knows any better. It's a good enough portrait, any way."
"I can't argue about it, Mr. Legion. You have done me incalculable harm. You have ruined me with Vickars. As for his ever allowing you to handle his books, let me tell you he wouldn't touch a dirty dog like you with a ten-foot pole."
"What's that?" cried Legion, his face pale with astonishment and indignation. "What was that you said?"
"I say you are a scoundrel, Mr. Legion—a mercenary, lying scoundrel!"
"Oh! come now, you're excited. I can make allowances—you don't know what you're saying."
"I know quite well what I'm saying, and I will repeat it, if you like: you're a scoundrel!"
Even Legion's good temper was not proof against this violence.
"Very good," he said. "I won't tell you what you are. But I'll tell you what's going to happen to you. You are going to starve in the streets of New York, my young friend. You're too darned superior for this country of commonsense business methods. You're the sort that comes to sleeping on the benches in Union Square, and fighting for a place in the bread-line."
"Very possibly," said Arthur. "I'm sure I don't know what sort I am, but I am sure of this, that I am not the sort you want in this office, and I beg to say good-morning."
He put on his hat and coat, and rushed for the door. Perhaps it was because Legion saw how white and drawn his face was, and how wild his eyes, that his heart relented towards him.
"Look here," he said, "hadn't you better think it over? I didn't mean what I said about starving in the streets. I hadn't ought to have said that. Besides, you know, there's some money owing to you. Don't go without that."
But the mention of money, instead of staying his flight, lent it new impulse. He was besmirched enough already without taking the wages of his defilement. He rushed out of the room, and the banging door cut short Mr. Legion's eirenicon.